I got a little carried away with this post. So many covers, so many books! But over the past few months, I kept coming across historical novels I wanted to read, and so many of them were set to appear in April. It's not the cruellest month at all, not for historical fiction readers. The diversity of historical settings struck me as well. Take a look at the places they'll let us travel!
20th-c England ~ 1911 Russia ~ 1930s New Jersey
1845 Nantucket ~ Tudor England ~ 17th-century England
12th-c Constantinople ~ 1920s US & Europe ~ early 20th-c & modern Australia
Biblical times ~ an imagined Song Dynasty China ~ 19th-c New England
1960s small-town Minnesota ~ 1880 South Africa ~ 1940s England, France, India, Jamaica
1840s West Africa ~ 1920s Kenya ~ Paris through the ages
1890s California ~ Tudor and modern England ~ Restoration England
WWII England ~ 20th-c England and Kenya ~ Postwar Taiwan and U.S. West
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So excited to see the diversity of time and place!
ReplyDeleteSome of these look really good, but I am really intrigued by Palisades Park. I have heard so much about it from people who remember going there. Now it is just a bunch of [ugly] highrises.
ReplyDeleteSo many beautiful covers! It's TBR pile overload! As always, thanks for posting these great roundups. I love looking at them.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous spread!
ReplyDeleteSooo many of those are on my wish list, I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteI've read four of them already, and several others are pending review, courtesy of LibraryThing giveaways. I had a hard time resisting.
ReplyDeleteI have loved all of Rutherford's books so I'm sure Paris will be just as amazing. I've got a few of them in my TBR pile
ReplyDeleteJust got hold of an ARC copy of Paris. Haven't started it yet, too busy with Bitter Greens.
ReplyDeleteThose poor Fitzgeralds, both of them.
ReplyDeleteA writer's life is not easy.
What a great list! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteOh, I really liked Swerling's City of Dreams series -- will look forward to Bristol House!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments on the list. I should do these monthly roundups more often... they're fun to put together.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to Paris. Love the city, and I enjoyed Rutherfurd's The Princes of Ireland very much.
Swerling's City series was very entertaining. My favorite was City of Promise.
Therese Fowler's Z is one of the four I've read. Being a writer is hard enough, but having a literary career when married to F. Scott Fitzgerald? That must have been all-out impossible.
Well, my TBR pile has just grown again :-) I just finished reading Bristol House, which I enjoyed, although the majority of the story takes place in modern day.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to read Lighthouse Bay, Paris, A Spear of Summer Grass, The Fever Tree and The Ashford Affair.
Thanks for this post, Sarah!
Interesting departure for Vanora Bennett - first she wrote about Tudor England, then she went 50 years earlier (about the time Philippa Gregory announced she was going to start with the Wars of the Roses) and now she has moved forward to Revolutionary Russia. Trends, all . . . I will have to look for the US edition to purchase for the library.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed PARIS and it meant more to me now that I have actually visited it. I wish there had been a little more pre-1870, but the "high points" got covered - 1572, Henri IV, Louis XIV, the Revolution, Napoleon, the Commune . . . plus WWII, of course.
Sarah Other Librarian
You and me both, Melissa! I have Lighthouse Bay waiting to be read, Spear of Summer Grass on order, Fever Tree is a recent LibraryThing win (yeah!) and my review of Ashford Affair will be reposted here shortly.
ReplyDeleteThis one of Bennett's may not be published in the US, although I hope it is. Her previous The People's Queen never was, although this period in Russian history may be more familiar to readers than Alice Perrers is. She's one of the best royal fiction writers now, imho, based on my impressions of her first two.
I am hoping Rutherfurd's Paris will show me some of the 12th century, too, as well as Haussmann's renovations... which I got interested in via Tatiana de Rosnay's The House I Loved.
I just ordered Z and Life After Life! Definitely looking forward to reading those two, but now it seems I have some more to check out :)
ReplyDeleteSo excited for Paris! Loved his New York. So many good books! Thanks for this visual feast.
ReplyDeleteThere's always more to check out! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd after Z, there are two more books about Zelda to look forward to in May (Erika Robuck's Call Me Zelda and R. Clifton Spargo's Beautiful Fools). Supposedly they don't overlap.
The cover art for Paris is fabulous and so distinctive.
Oh my goodness, so many wonderful books to look forward to. I am especially looking forward to reading A murder at Rosamund's Gate, The Fever Tree and Paris!
ReplyDeleteI just received an unsolicited copy of Murder at Rosamund's Gate - nice, didn't expect that! Another one to add to the list.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is indeed a great list. Seems like 20th century American settings are on the rise. Some beautiful titles in this list, too: "A Movement of Stars," "The Sinners and the Sea."
ReplyDeleteGood point about the evocative, non-generic titles. Maybe we're moving away at last from styles like The X's Daughter or Z's wife?
ReplyDeleteSo many beautiful-looking books! I want to read nthem all. So many books, too little time - its the story of my life. Thanks so much for posting :)
ReplyDeleteHi Kate! Yes... the story of my life, too. The huge piles of books around my computer prove it. I think The Movement of Stars (2nd row) will be next up for me.
ReplyDeleteSigh... my TBR list just grew a lot. So many of these books look so good to me!!!
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see the change of focus for Vanora Bennett! I have The Fever Tree, the Raybourn, the Willig and a couple of the others to read soon.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that I heard almost nothing about Lighthouse Bay in blogging circles (except for a mention from Kate Forsyth - hi Kate!) until a few weeks ago when it started popping up on US blogs. Same thing happened with the author's earlier book which I ended up reading and enjoying!
That's interesting that Lighthouse Bay hasn't been getting as much attention from Australian blogs. I have a copy and will be reviewing it soon (and one of these days I'll get to Wildflower Hill, too). It looks like a good summer (or pre-summer) read.
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