Small press spotlight: new & upcoming historical novels from international publishers

And, for my final gallery of small press titles, here are a dozen new and forthcoming titles from small presses based outside the United States.  Putting this list together was both fun and challenging, since I aimed to include a variety of countries, publisher-wise, as well as historical settings.  And for American readers, many of these titles won't be as hard to obtain as you'd think: most have US distribution either in print or on Kindle.



An epic, multicultural love story set in the Middle East in 1914, a new direction from a prolific Welsh novelist best known for her sagas.  Accent Press (UK), August 2013.



A new time-slip novel about a star-crossed 18th-century romance linked to the present day through a portrait, written by the recent winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association RoNA award in the historical category.  Choc Lit (UK), February 2014.



Biographical fiction about Sofonisba Anguissola, renowned Italian portrait painter at the court of Spain's Philip II.  Inanna Publications (Canada), November 2013.



More lively social drama set in the countryside of Regency England; this is a sequel of sorts to The Death of Lyndon Wilder, which I reviewed last year.  Corsair (UK), May 2014.



A fictional biography of an Australian woman ("musician, octagenarian, junkie") who becomes a modernist theremin player as her performing career takes her from 1920s Perth to locations around the world.  Fremantle Press (Australia), 2013.



First in a series of historical thrillers set in Singapore in 1892 which follows a police detective as he tries to solve a visiting American's murder in Chinatown.  Monsoon Books (Singapore), October 2013.



This YA novel set in the WWI years features a teenaged orphan with precognitive abilities who, after her parents' deaths on the Titanic, is sent to India, a land rife with unrest and conspiracies.  Thistledown Press (Canada), March 2014.



Downton Abbey meets The Fugitive in post-WWI Western Australia: "An English heiress has just given birth and unleashed hell. Weakened and grieving, she realises her life is in danger, and flees into the desert with her Aboriginal maid. One of them is running from a murderer; the other is accused of murder."  Sounds like a wild ride.  Allen & Unwin (Australia), March 2014.


A historical novel set in 17th-century Hartford!  For some reason, historicals set in my home state of Connecticut are exceedingly rare.  Anne Yale Hopkins (a historical character) marries and hopes to settle happily into her new life only to have it turn out other than she envisioned.  Inanna Publications (Canada), November 2013.


The plight of Queen Charlotte and her daughters, beset from all sides when her husband, England's King George III, goes mad.  There are so few biographical novels about the Georgian kings and queens (aside from Jean Plaidy's, of course) that I'm eagerly awaiting this one; I'll be reviewing it later this year.  (Edited to add:  A previous version of this novel was titled God Save the King.)  Myrmidon Books (UK), June 2014.


The stories of a Welsh couple, trapped in war-torn Hong Kong in the 1940s as the Japanese overtake the city, intertwine with those of their Chinese servant and their young daughter.  Seren (Wales/UK), July 2013.


This literary work depicts the harmony between Muslims, Jews, and Christians that existed in old Cairo before the Arab-Israeli Wars, as seen through the eyes of a boy with a mixed religious background.  American University in Cairo Press (Egypt), September 2014.