Self-discovery in Tudor England, times two: Wendy J. Dunn's Shades of Yellow

If you love reading author’s notes in historical novels, learning about the background to writers’ research processes and the factors affecting their choices, Wendy J. Dunn’s Shades of Yellow will be an ideal choice for your TBR pile.

This uniquely constructed multi-period novel opens in 2010. Lucy Ellis is nearly done with the manuscript for her first novel, a work of biographical fiction about Amy Robsart, the heiress wife of English nobleman Robert Dudley. Amy’s shocking death and the resulting scandal – she was found with a broken neck at the bottom of a short staircase at her residence, Cumnor Place, in 1560 – put an end to his future marriage prospects with her rival for his affections, Queen Elizabeth I.

Dunn sets up interesting equivalences between her modern heroine and her 16th-century subject. Lucy is a breast cancer survivor, a disease Amy may have suffered from herself, and they were both betrayed by their husbands (Lucy’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Ben, cheated on her with her good friend). Lucy feels these similarities give her unique insight into Amy’s mindset, though she’s self-aware enough to question how much of herself she’s putting into her depiction of Amy.

A consummate researcher dedicated to historical accuracy (in other words, she’s a writer after our own heart), Lucy insists on flying from Australia to England for a six-week trip. She knows a firsthand view of Amy’s former haunts will add color and depth to her story, and she hopes to make it easier to visualize Amy living there in her own time.

But Lucy arrives across the globe under a cloud of worry. She has a small brain tumor, meaning her cancer may have returned, and her headaches are worsening. After they learn the truth, her friends and family are distraught that Lucy’s delaying her biopsy.

Readers may find Lucy’s choice unwise at best, but she’s a determined woman. Lucy presses on with her novel regardless, perhaps sensing it may be too late if she doesn’t seize every moment to complete it. At the same time, Lucy faces memories from her own past, including that of a long-ago teenage romance, and persistent emails from her estranged husband.

The stakes are high in both accounts, as the two women strive to take control of their lives as best they're able. In recounting the parallel journeys of both Lucy and Amy, Shades of Yellow doesn’t use the story-within-a-story structure we’re most familiar with, but something more original and effective in showing how a historical novel comes to be.

The scenes involving Amy don’t always occur in chronological order but arise organically via Lucy’s writing journey and as she reads parts of her manuscript to family members, including her English grandfather, himself a writer.

We see Amy in the afterlife, speaking with her Angel, desperate for a word from her husband now that he’s also passed into the beyond. As Lucy visits Amy’s burial site, we see Amy kneeling in church, desperate and frightened, while Lucy tunes into the emotions she senses from that mental image and gains new understanding about her subject. Amy as an adolescent, during her first bloom of love with her Rob. Amy on her last day of life, sending her servants away. And in the modern strand, Lucy revises her book, pens new chapters, considers new angles, adjusts her timeline, fills in “these vast gaps of unknowing with her imagination.” 

It all gets wonderfully meta. Lucy’s grandfather questions why Amy’s guardian angel needs to be included (“So, you’re certain you want to write a more experimental historical novel?”), and Lucy ponders a suggestion from her grandfather’s literary agent, who spurs her to consider adding a witchcraft thread to attract an editor. “How on Earth do I weave these witches into my story without having to pull everything apart?” she thinks.

Walking through Tudor England on two levels, both firsthand and via the stories revealed later through its artifacts, is an affecting, multi-dimensional experience. Not all answers are forthcoming, which seems appropriate for a novel presenting the ways that people come to grips with the unknown.

Shades of Yellow was published by Other Terrain Press (Australia) in September 2025.

A passionate woman's pursuit of love and art: Orange Wine

For Inés Camargo de Scala, a young wife and mother in early 20th-century Colombia, certain things have always come easy. The youngest daughter of five in a blended family, she’s beautiful and artistically talented and has no problem attracting men.

She has more trouble maintaining relationships, like with her ordinary-looking sisters and with her romantic partners. She also runs afoul of the Catholic church, even though her path into a “sinful” life was caused by someone else. Married to a handsome guitar player who soon reveals himself as a hot-tempered slacker, Inés struggles to balance her pursuit of love with societal expectations.

Described by the author as inspired by her grandparents, Inés’s story takes place mostly in the small town of Paipa (“located in a part of Colombia that few people visit more than once”) and the capital of Bogotá, intermingled with whirlwind trips to Europe.

From the opening pages, in which Inés leaves her bed after childbirth to discover her husband, Alessandro, has run off with her sister, it feels we’ve entered an Isabel Allende-style generational saga of women’s self-actualization, complete with family ghosts and claims of second sight.

The style here, however, sets it apart. Inés’s narration is unpretentious and brisk, reading like an idiosyncratic memoir. She dwells much on her emotions, but it’s hard to feel the impact of pivotal life events when they’re skimmed over in a few paragraphs. Inés’s children get little opportunity to show personality; likewise for her unmarried sisters, who work for a living while Inés inherits the family mansion.

The sense of place is strong, creating appeal for readers who enjoy uncommon settings, but the timeframe feels indistinct. More fleshed-out situations and characterizations—and more showing instead of telling—would have lent the novel more weight. That said, it holds one’s attention well and makes eloquent points about gender-based double standards.

Orange Wine (Bindery Books, Sept. 2025) is the author's debut novel, and I'd reviewed it originally for the Historical Novel Society. The author is a native of Bogotá, Colombia and now lives in the US.

The press has a publishing model that's been gaining attention. Bindery Books, based in San Francisco, incorporates online influencers (called "tastemakers") into key roles in the acquisitions and marketing process. In addition to hosting a membership platform for bookish communities and content discovery, they've offered tastemakers with significant followings the power to create their own branded imprints, with support from the press. Their site lists 12 such imprints, and Orange Wine is published under the Mareas imprint, which has published five books so far. Alongside traditional marketing and publicity from the press (I discovered this book on NetGalley), the tastemaker promotes their books to their social media followers.  

Read more at an article from the Los Angeles Times from Feb. 18th: Malia Mendez, "This publisher enlists 'bookfluencers' to choose its titles. Is it working?"  The press aims to support underrepresented voices through this model, and unlike with many publishers, the authors aren't expected to shoulder any marketing load. I imagine many will find this a refreshing change.

Orange Wine was an agented submission to the press, as are two-thirds of all submissions, per the LA Times article. With the strong Gen Z involvement and vibe, fantasy (including historical fantasy and romantasy), SF, gothics, and contemporary fiction are well-represented in their list, mainstream historical fiction not so much, aside from this one example.  Even though aspects of this book didn't work for me, I'm interested to see what the press does next and am midway through watching a fascinating video from Marines, the tastemaker who chose Orange Wine, who speaks about her selection process and what she's learned about the industry.

A preview of spring & summer 2026 in historical fiction

It’s already been a long winter. The weather here in east central Illinois has perked up a bit recently, which has me looking forward to spring and summer. (My commiserations with those back east who are still digging out from the huge snowstorm; winter isn’t over here yet either.) In terms of historical fiction, the coming months offer a good variety of upcoming novels. Below are sixteen that looked especially enticing. Usually for these previews I feature either ten or twelve books, but I had trouble limiting myself. They’re in order by publication date. I’ve read three of them so far.

The Lost Girl of Craven County, Emily Matchar (Putnam)
Release date: April 14
New Bern, North Carolina, has had a small Jewish community for centuries; I appreciate learning about lesser-known Jewish history via fiction. Set during the Depression, Matchar’s second novel (after In the Shadow of the Greenbrier) is a historical mystery about a young woman from New Bern’s Little Jerusalem and a shocking discovery she makes.

Margery & Me, Maryka Biaggio (Regal House)
Release date: April 21
Biaggio writes historical novels based on real people (see her earlier guest posts on this site: The Risks of Writing about Real Historical Figures and Fidelity to the Truth in Biographical Fiction). Her latest should interest anyone fascinated by the spiritualist movement in 1920s America, as it looks closely at psychic medium Margery Crandon, a woman previously unfamiliar to me, and Harry Houdini’s determination to debunk her.

The House of Boleyn, Tracy Borman (Hodder & Stoughton/Atlantic Monthly)
Release date: April 23 (UK); August 4 (US) 

Have you been noticing a mini-Tudor renaissance in fiction? In a decades-spanning generational saga, historian Borman zooms in on Anne Boleyn’s family story, starting when her determined father arrives at Henry VIII’s court in 1509.

Edmonia, Brianne Baker (Dafina/Kensington)
Release date: April 28
Baker’s debut is biographical fiction about Black-Ojibwe sculptor Edmonia Lewis, a woman whose artistic accomplishments and eventful life and travels deserve greater attention. In mid-February, Lewis was the subject of an article in the New York Times written as a lead-up to a new museum exhibition about her work.

Mrs. Benedict Arnold, Emma Parry (Zando)
Release date: April 28
Literary agent Parry investigates the inner life and motives of Peggy Shippen of Philadelphia, aka Mrs. Benedict Arnold, in a novel that asks how large a role she played in her husband’s treason. Having read and enjoyed Allison Pataki’s The Traitor’s Wife, I look forward to this new retelling.

A Founding Mother, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie (William Morrow)
Release date: May 5
A timely publication for the semiquincentennial (a word you’ll be seeing frequently this year) of America’s founding, Dray and Kamoie’s latest collaborative biographical novel focuses on Abigail Adams: wife and mother of presidents and a smart political voice in her own right.

Daughters of the Tide, Arianne James (HQ/HarperCollins Australia)
Release date: May 26
A gothic family mystery (and a debut) set in 1920s Tasmania, featuring a seaside mansion and eerie dreams of seals and selkies. It won’t be spring in Australia when it’s released, but it’s expected out in a few months wherever you’re located.

A Fortune of Sand, Ruta Sepetys (Ballantine)
Release date: May 26
The adult debut from an author celebrated for her YA historicals. During Prohibition, Marjorie Lennox, youngest daughter in an eccentric, wealthy family from the Detroit suburbs, stumbles into odd mysteries when she accepts an artistic residency. I’ve just finished this; all I’ll say for now is that I’m glad to have read it early, without having seen any spoilery reviews online.

Land, Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf/Tinder Press)
Release date: June 2
O’Farrell may be best known for Hamnet these days, but Land – her most ambitious novel – is different in scope and more personal. It covers, primarily, the decades after Ireland’s Great Hunger and centers on the uncanny aftermath of a quiet man’s mapmaking trip to western Ireland.

Children of the Wild, Kevin Powers (Harper)
Release date: June 9
WWII novels proliferate; there are noticeably fewer WWI novels. This work of literary fiction tells the story of three young people from the mountains of rural Virginia whose lives, overseas and at home, are altered with the world at war.

Daughters of the Sun and Moon, Lisa See (Scribner)
Release date: June 9
See writes gorgeous novels about women in Chinese and Chinese American history. Her new novel opens in Los Angeles in 1870, when anti-Chinese prejudice was pervasive, and follows three different women beginning new lives there.

Mrs. Dickens, Emily Howes (Phoenix/W&N UK)
Release date: June 11
Posterity hasn’t always been kind to Charles Dickens’ wife, Catherine (Kate), whom—after a loving start to their marriage and many children—he left for another woman and tried to have committed. Howes’ (The Painter’s Daughters) second novel illuminates Kate’s viewpoint as a wronged woman and cookbook author. Per the author’s website, recipes are included. No US edition that I could locate, though I’m happy to be corrected.

Consider the Ravens, Cressida Downing (No Exit Press)
Release date: July 16
This first in a new series set on Holy Island – Lindisfarne, off England’s northeast coast – in the late 15th century features a female scribe, her secret past, a monastery, and murder. Lindisfarne is a beautiful, memorable place that I’m eager to revisit via fiction.

The Story Keeper, Kelly Rimmer (MIRA)
Release date: July 21
Rimmer’s dual-period Australian gothic centers on a crumbling mansion called Wurimbirra, the modern art restorer who purchases her childhood home, a long-lost manuscript, and the family secrets it dredges up. Its title is The Midnight Estate in Australia and the UK. 

Runner, Ashton Lattimore (Ballantine)
Release date: July 28
Lattimore’s debut novel, All We Were Promised, was a fast-moving tale of Black women’s friendship in 1830s Philadelphia. In Runner, set during Prohibition, a young Black woman turns rumrunner along the northeastern seaboard, taking her father’s place after his suspicious death.

The Ladies Hall, Vanessa Miller (Thomas Nelson)
Release date: August 11
The origin story of three future civil rights leaders—Black women of different backgrounds who became classmates and friends while attending Oberlin College in the 1880s. Based on a true story. After reading the author’s previous novel The Filling Station, about two sisters in the aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, this one is on my list.

Back in Kansas, darkly: a review of Gordon McAlpine's After Oz

Sequels to classic literature can vary in quality. At one end is lightweight fan fiction that pales in comparison to the work it continues. On the other, we find clever gems that honor the originals while leading us in unconsidered directions … novels that affect what we take away from the stories they’re based upon.

Gordon McAlpine’s After Oz is one of the latter. It’s a grimly atmospheric tale, a rural noir that opens in one genre and spirals into another, thanks to the foresight of one of its main characters. Some of the twists it takes are unexpected, but its most surprising aspect may be that Dorothy Gale, the delightful eleven-year-old girl who was front and center in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and the movie adaptation), has little on-page time.

How would the residents of an insular Kansas settlement, circa 1896, react when an orphaned child raised by an elderly couple mysteriously reappears on a neighbor’s property, unharmed, four days after a destructive tornado swept through the prairie? McAlpine took this question for his premise and ran with it, crafting an edgy story about small-town prejudice and harmful delusions.

Dorothy doesn’t waver from her story of meeting talking animals and visiting an emerald city. She speaks of befriending a good witch and killing a wicked one, completely by accident, by throwing water at her. The girl’s nonsensical remarks have the townsfolk, especially the local reverend, concerned about her state of mind—especially when she proclaims, blasphemously, that “not all witches are bad.”

Things worsen after a reclusive spinster in her fifties—a crotchety woman nobody much liked—is found dead in her home. Hearing Dorothy’s comments about having “melted” a witch, the authorities get involved, and all’s not looking good for the young girl. Not only does she have visions they find demonic, but she may be a murderer.

The narration alternates between an unnamed resident of Sunbonnet, Kansas, who hardly emulates the Christian values he espouses—or maybe the collective voice of many such residents; it isn’t clear—and a 28-year-old psychologist from back East, Dr. Evelyn Grace Wilford. She arrives in town to interview Dorothy for her research after learning about her case from her cousin, a Chicago-based newspaper reporter. Readers of classic literature should recognize his name.

There are no chapter headings to distinguish their sections, but there’s really no trouble telling the two voices apart. With Dorothy’s Aunt Emily ill after a stroke, and her uncle taking to the bottle after his farm was obliterated, Evelyn realizes she’s the only person who can save Dorothy from permanent institutionalization—and the only way to do so is discover who killed poor Alvina Clough herself.

And so we find ourselves in a murder mystery with Evelyn as detective, sorting through whatever clues she can discern. Not a simple task as a woman and an outsider in an unfamiliar, close-knit place, but she willingly takes up the role she needs to play. Those with malign intent, of course, fail to recognize their villainy. Many villains don’t.

Part of the ending is a bit far-fetched and doesn’t feel necessary, but among literary sequels, this stands out for its complex plotting and originality. Sadly, the author passed away three years before his final novel, After Oz, was published.

Gordon McAlpine's After Oz appeared from Crooked Lane in 2024 (reviewed from a personal copy).

Gish Jen's genre-bending novel about her Chinese immigrant mother (and herself), Bad Bad Girl

As she details in the beginning of her fictionalized memoir, the author, Gish Jen, was constantly scapegoated by her mother, Agnes, who was born into a well-to-do banking family in Shanghai in 1925 and died in New York during Covid. Why did a woman treated so dismissively by her own mother, and who endured difficulties throughout her life, act so harshly toward Gish, her American-born daughter?

“Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk.” This refrain echoes from one generation to another, directed toward females too outspoken to be controlled.

Within this book, Jen performs an extraordinarily generous act, seeking to understand the circumstances that shaped Agnes and the origins of their troubled history. She invents storylines and motivations when needed, since her mother remained tight-lipped about much of her background.

Through Jen’s first-person voice, her mother’s story unfolds, interspersed with imagined conversations between them: Gish gently probing for explanations, and Agnes reacting to her writing choices— “tactful as a sledgehammer,” judgmental, and silently vulnerable in turn.

Named Loo Shu-hsin, her mother grows up knowing her sex is a disappointment. She adores books and receives an education at a modern Catholic school, where she’s renamed for St. Agnes. Her childhood nursemaid’s abrupt firing remains a traumatic memory.

She bravely boards a ship for America in her twenties, alone, to pursue a PhD, never returning to China; overwhelmed with childcare soon after her marriage, she also never finishes her doctorate, a constant regret. Abandoning her past isn’t easy, since letters from her family, wanting money and trapped during the Communist takeover, frequently arrive, using discreet language for their self-protection.

Some later sections, breezing through years at a stretch, read rather dry. But this unique account, which is pointed and unguardedly honest, shows how fiction can illuminate truths too complex and deep-rooted to be spoken.

I reviewed this novel originally for the Historical Novels Review.  You may be wondering about the original cover design. Having read the book, I think it perfectly captures the novel's themes: two individuals, intertwined with one another in a difficult relationship they can't escape. Yet both still exult in their own freedom of thought, as shown through the lines of a Tang Dynasty poem spoken by the novel's characters:

Goose, goose, goose!
You lift your neck to the sky and sing--
White down bobbing on the green water,

Red feet pedaling the clear waves.

Gish Jen's Bad Bad Girl was published by Knopf in October 2025. The UK publisher is Granta.

The historical fiction winners at ALA's Book & Media Awards for 2026, and more

At the end of January, the American Library Association and its RUSA (Reference & User Services Association) division announced the winners of their Book and Media Awards. I’ve posted about these awards annually. The judging is done by librarians, and many historical novels usually land in the winners’ circle. I haven’t participated on committees for these awards, but friends and colleagues have in the past.

The Reading List honors works of adult fiction within eight genre categories. The 2026 winner for Historical Fiction is These Heathens by Mia McKenzie (Random House). I loved this book (read my earlier review) and am excited to see it receiving this accolade. These Heathens is a coming-of-age story in which a Black seventeen-year-old girl from 1960s rural Georgia has her eyes opened to civil rights activism and the wide diversity of life experiences when she travels to Atlanta to seek an abortion.

At the time I posted my review last August, I’d added: “I haven't heard much about this novel in the online historical fiction community and wanted to highlight it.” This award should give the book some well-deserved attention.

On the shortlist for Historical Fiction on the Reading List are these four novels:

Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier (medieval France)
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (contemporary and late 19th-c North Carolina)
The Last Witch by C. J. Cooke (15th-century Austria)
The Pretender by Jo Harkin (late 15th-century England)

All five (!) were published by Random House imprints.

On ALA’s Notable Books list, among many other works, is Milo Todd’s The Lilac People (Counterpoint), focusing on the queer community in postwar Germany, people who were persecuted by the Nazis, and then, after the war, by the Allies.

The 2026 Sophie Brody Medal, which recognizes Jewish literature, was awarded to Allison Epstein’s Fagin the Thief (Doubleday), which reimagines Dickens’ Oliver Twist through the eyes of Jacob Fagin.

On the Listen List for excellence in audiobook narration is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S), narrated by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teale – a historical horror/vampire novel set on the Blackfeet reservation.

Congrats to all of the awardees!

Compared to previous years, fewer historical novels were among the winners for 2026, so I thought I’d use this space to highlight something else that’s RUSA-related. RUSA has a section called CODES (Collection Development and Evaluation Section), for issues related to collection development, readers' advisory, and publishing. Librarians love their acronyms.

For many years, RUSA CODES has had an annual award for book reviewing, the Louis Shores Award. (Which is slated for potential discontinuation due to ALA’s plans to streamline its operations for financial reasons, but that’s another sad story.) I’ve been involved with the Louis Shores Award at multiple levels: initially as a grateful recipient (2012), then later as a multi-year selection committee member (2019-21) and more.

Adding to his list of recognitions, Ron Charles, longtime book critic for the Washington Post, received the Louis Shores Award in 2018. The committee made an excellent choice. I’m a admirer of his witty, entertaining, and astute reviews, which I always enjoy even if some of the books reviewed wouldn’t ordinarily have matched my interests. As many in the literary community have learned, with shock and sorrow, he and the entire staff of the WaPo’s books section were laid off, along with 300 other journalists with the paper, on Wednesday morning. This is a big loss to literary culture; WaPo’s Book World and Ron Charles’s weekly Book Club newsletter are very highly regarded by so many readers, librarians, authors, publicists, and more. He’s making a new home at Substack, and I’ve subscribed there. He and other fine writers let go from the paper will be getting the support I once gave to my now-lapsed WaPo subscription. If you appreciate high-quality book reviews and commentary, I recommend his site. 

Are we ready for historical fiction set in the '80s?

Because publishers and many readers have already gone there.




In the last couple of weeks, a couple of emails about forthcoming books hit my inbox, prompting the subject of this post. I saw this novel, May Cobb’s All the Little Houses, on Readworthy from BookBub’s List of the Best Historical Mysteries for January:



The same day, Penguin Random House sent out a website link with their Most Anticipated Historical Fiction for 2026. The books offer an assortment of time periods and locales, including Colson Whitehead’s latest, due out in July.



Both are described as set in the 1980s.

A 50-year rule is often used to define historical fiction (that is to say, fiction set at least 50 years before the time of writing), but individual readers may prefer a shorter (or longer) window. The Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards have been working with a different definition for some time; while I don’t know exactly what their limits are, their Historical Fiction category winners and nominees have included books set in the ‘80s (Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere, 2025 winner) and even the ‘90s (Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise, 2025 nominee; Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto is Back, 2022 winner).

The people making those categorizations are probably from a younger generation than I am.

Technically, even if you do go by the 50-year rule, the 1980s are approaching fast in historical fiction’s rear-view mirror. The year 1976 was fifty years ago. At the same time, going by the comments on a post I’d written last summer about a current historical fiction trend, for some of those who lived through and remember the ‘60s, it can be hard to accept that that era now fits within the standard HF umbrella.

Along these lines, I read a recent post on Leigh Stein’s Attention Economy Substack with great interest. She writes how today’s readers are seeking escape (given current events from 2026, who can blame them?), and editors at publishing houses want to deliver. And their desire for when to escape to can be generational. To quote:

The historical fiction market is evolving. The next time you’re in Barnes and Noble, count how many historical novels you can find. The golden era of World War II novels with covers depicting women walking away with planes overhead is over […]

When I think of historical fiction, I am always thinking of the age of the reader, and whether she’s reading to understand the era that shaped her mother, or whether she’s reading for nostalgia. A baby boomer in 2015 picked up a World War II novel to read about a time when her parents were young adults. The younger boomers and the older Gen Xers are reading Lessons in Chemistry and Kristin Hannah’s The Women.

Aging millennials have Atmosphere (set in the 1980s, when our moms were our age!) and they are also experiencing the onset of nostalgia: see Deep Cuts, which opens in 2000. I know it’s painful to think of the 2000s as “historical” because you’re still twenty-seven in your heart, but as millennials proceed through their forties, we’re going to see more nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s.

For me, a solid Gen Xer, the 1980s would be my “nostalgia” decade. There are many disastrous events of national or international significance from that time; the '80s included the AIDS crisis, Chernobyl, and the Challenger explosion (sadly 40 years ago this week; I was one of many kids home from school that day who saw it live on TV). But when it comes to the pop culture that characterized the '80s, I can understand “nostalgia” better. We had mixtapes, MTV, great movies, video games that seem so rudimentary compared to what we have now, the freedom to play outside unsupervised as long as we were home by dinner (my friends and I rode our bikes for miles), Flashdance-style sweatshirts and leg warmers, the days of BITNET (a precursor to the web) when everything was text-based and took forever but was still fun since it was so new. The big hair, shoulder pads, and peer pressure are things I kind of hated, but they’re hallmarks of the time for me, like it or not.

(One reason the '80s will never die is because of all the hair spray holding them in place.)

I can understand the appeal of reading novels set in the '80s even though, mixed in with all the fashion excesses and pop culture, fiction for adults—rather than the YA I was back then—tends to deal with more complex topics. Like the bigger political and social events mentioned above. Plus we have the winding down of the Cold War, which caused widespread optimism at the end of the '80s; the ups and downs of yuppie culture; the early '80s recession; and women gaining political power.  Back then, Roe v. Wade was still in effect, we had little to no digital presence to be constantly tracked, and we weren't glued to our cell phones.  In short, times were very different.

A few months ago, I’d reviewed a novel, Tamar Shapiro’s Restitution, that moved between the 1950s, 1989, and the early 2000s, about a family both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was eye-opening to see that middle period – which I lived through but didn’t impact me personally – through a new lens.

This is all worth considering when envisioning the factors that drive trends in historical fiction. Even if they don’t seem all that long ago, the ‘80s are coming for readers, and they’ve already started to land. Do you feel ready?