Four excellent historical novels I read in 2022 but haven't reviewed here yet

Happy New Year to all this blog's readers!

For my first post of the year, I thought I'd go back through the titles I'd tracked through Goodreads that I'd greatly enjoyed, but which I haven't mentioned here before.  In all, I read 85 books in 2022 and reviewed 50 of them.  I don't end up reviewing everything because deadlines for other projects don't always allow me enough time to do so. Occasionally I give them a shout-out on my Instagram instead.  Plus, sometimes my brain needs a break and I want to read something just for myself.

Here are four works of historical fiction I did want to mention, though, and highly recommend. Plus at the end, I've listed two contemporary novels with historical elements and crossover appeal.

These first three novels I read in print, something I've been doing increasingly rarely.  Nearly everything I read now is via my iPad's Kindle app (something I never would've predicted a decade ago). These were personal purchases from Book Depository.

Elizabeth Chadwick's A Marriage of Lions focuses on Joanna de Munchensy of Swanscombe, a granddaughter of William Marshal. She is a woman of minor importance for 13th-century England until she becomes an unexpected heiress. She marries William de Valence, half-brother to Henry III, in a match that becomes a strong and loving partnership. The novel is set against the backdrop of civil war as nobleman Simon de Montfort leads a rebellion against the rule of King Henry (his brother-in-law).  A sweeping tale of loyalty (and the price it extracts), family, love, and politics that brings the little-known Joanna out of the shadows of history. If you've read Sharon Kay Penman's Falls the Shadow, about the same time period, this shows events from the opposite viewpoint.

The Bookseller of Inverness is a stand-alone historical thriller by S. G. MacLean, set in the Scottish city of Inverness in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, the final defeat of the Jacobite army. In 1752, six years later, bookseller Iain MacGillivray, who was wounded at Culloden, finds a murdered man in his shop, with indications that someone is settling old scores. Iain's sedate life suddenly gets much more complicated. A wide-ranging, atmospheric, and twisty conspiracy thriller with an excellent sense of place and time.

Caroline Scott is the author of one of my favorite WWI novels, The Photographer of the Lost (US title The Poppy Wife). While not mysteries by genre, her books have a compelling mystery at their core. The Visitors is her third novel, and while it doesn't quite measure up to her debut (due to uneven pacing in places), it's still very good. In 1923, Esme Nicholls, a housekeeper and war widow who desperately misses her late husband, Alec, experiences life-changing events during a summer in Cornwall, where she and her employer, Mrs. Pickering, are staying as guests of Mrs. Pickering's brother. Alec was also from Cornwall, and Esme hopes to learn more about his origins. When two visitors arrive at the house, the revelations they bring throw Esme's world into disarray. The story has a beautifully rendered postwar setting, and the descriptions of Cornwall's natural wonders are immersive. (If you think the heroine's name is familiar, by coincidence the main character of Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words is Esme Nicoll, quite similar.)

This fourth book I read from a library copy via Libby. I don't read much historical fiction set during my lifetime, but after reading about Jessica Anya Blau's Mary Jane, about a 14-year-old's wild summer babysitting for the young daughter of an eccentric family (and their rock star houseguests) in 1975 Baltimore, I decided to give it a go. This fast-paced coming-of-age novel is full of sharp visuals and sounds, like zippy tunes emanating from a record player and everyone dancing along to their own beat. Great fun, and a nostalgic trip back in time.

And two other novels I'd recommend, both contemporary novels with historical elements:  Liz Michalski's Darling Girl is a dark spin on the Peter Pan story focusing on Wendy Darling's fictional granddaughter; and in Lauren Belfer's Ashton Hall, an American woman and her son reconstruct the life story of a mysterious Elizabethan-era woman during their stay at an old manor house outside Cambridge, England.  I reviewed both of these for Booklist.

Thanks so much for reading my posts.  I hope 2023 will be good to you and bring you lots of wonderful reads!