A cornucopia of historical fiction reads for fall 2024, all set before the 19th century

For those seeking to spend the next few months immersed in earlier corners of the past, here are fourteen new and upcoming reads, from publishers large and small.

Alice Kyteler, a businesswoman in 13th-century Ireland with an eye-opening marital history, attracts attention of the wrong sort and is eventually accused of witchcraft. But this novel is primarily a portrait of her earlier life as an ambitious woman in a patriarchal world. Viking, Aug. 2024.

The author of Tsarina and The Tsarina's Daughter returns with the story of Gytha Godwinson, daughter of England's Harold II, whose life takes dramatic turns after her family's loss during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Independently published, Nov. 2024. 

Berman adds to the popular theme of art-focused historical fiction with a biographical novel about Angelica Kauffman, Neoclassical artist in 18th-century Italy and London. She Writes, Oct. 2024.

Costanza Piccolomini, a young wife in 1630s Rome, becomes entranced with celebrity sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which leads to undesired fame and a terrible act.  Renegade Books, Aug. 2024.

Jeanette of Kent, English royal cousin, enters into a clandestine marriage with the knight she loves during the Hundred Years' War, but political and family pressures conspire against them. Sphere, Sept. 2024.

The orphaned Anna Maria della Pietà, the most gifted pupil of Antonio Vivaldi, stops at nothing to achieve her career goals in 18th-century Venice. Simon & Schuster US/Bloomsbury UK, Sept. 2024.

   

A gifted young healer strives to balance her competing desires after the Black Death lands in Avignon, in 14th-century Provence. Dutton, Oct 2024.

In this dual-period narrative, the author's debut, a modern college student discovers the long-lost history of a rhino named Clara who traveled Europe with her keeper in the 18th century, attracting fascinated crowds as well as danger. History Through Fiction, Oct. 2024.

Ordinary Devotion is also a multi-period novel. The story of a twelve-year-old girl walled up with an anchoress in an English abbey intertwines with a modern academic researcher, revealing themes of  faith, freedom, and women's agency over their own bodies. Monkfish, Nov. 2024.

The third in Justice's Theodosian Women series follows a young woman called Athenais, a pagan of Greek heritage, who in an unexpected twist of circumstances comes to marry Theodosius II, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. I enjoyed the author's Dawn Empress and look forward to this one. Raggedy Moon, Aug. 2024.

The final days of Christopher Marlowe are depicted as a thriller, as the celebrated Elizabethan-era playwright, an ex-spy with many secrets and enemies, runs up against blackmail and sinister individuals seeking to eliminate him. Pegasus, Oct. 2024.

Like Eleanore of Avignon above, Rasche's debut is set during the time of the Black Death, but in Florence, Italy, as a young woman with uncanny healing talents is called to help the populace. Park Row, Oct. 2024.

Author Tracey writes her second historical novel about one of her ancestors from colonial Massachusetts. Silence Marsh, a woman in mourning who's forced into silence for blasphemy in her Puritan community, is then asked to testify in a witchcraft trial. Sibylline, Oct. 2024.

A skilled seamstress in 16th-century Bologna who dreams of being a tailor, a trade forbidden to women, runs into numerous roadblocks. The author won the Jenny Brown Associates Debut Writers Over 50 Award in 2023. I would love to read the shortlisted entries too!  Allison & Busby, Nov. 2024.

Galina Vromen's Hill of Secrets shows the human story within Los Alamos, New Mexico, during WWII

What happens when varied people, all with their own personal troubles, converge in an unfamiliar location for a hidden purpose, especially when the government imposes a frustrating code of silence? In Vromen’s twisty, infectiously readable debut, secrets are simmering within Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1943, and the Manhattan Project’s development is just one of them.

An art restorer with a chemistry background, Christine Sharp is a trailing spouse who feels sidelined and neglected after relocating to support her PhD scientist husband. Seeking distraction, she befriends 16-year-old ingenue Gertie Koppel, the daughter of German Jewish refugees.

While Gertie’s physicist father, Kurt, loyally serves America in Los Alamos’ Tech Area, his wife Sarah, a movingly three-dimensional character, ruminates on difficult memories.

With young love, a clandestine affair, intense guilt, and suppressed yearnings circulating in this high-pressure environment, the storyline is highly dramatic, and some aspects are far-fetched. Still, the novel offers more than soap opera fare for Oppenheimer fans. By the sobering conclusion, readers will be left pondering the characters’ ethical dilemmas, which defy easy answers.

Hill of Secrets will be published by Amazon Publishing's Lake Union in October. Amazon Prime members can grab it for free on Kindle during September as one of the month's First Reads picks. I wrote this review for Booklist's June 1 issue.

Daphne du Maurier's The Glass-Blowers showcases new facets of the French Revolution

Daphne du Maurier’s The Glass-Blowers is one of her lesser-known historical novels. Having greatly enjoyed Rebecca, Mary Anne, The House on the Strand, and My Cousin Rachel years ago, somehow The Glass-Blowers fell off my radar until I found it again this week: a vintage 1963 paperback with an unassuming cover that represents its subject well.

Set in the Sarthe département of northwestern France, the story follows one family – the author’s paternal ancestors – through the turbulence of the French Revolution and after. Du Maurier acknowledges the help of numerous researchers, and the information must have been fascinating to uncover. So much fiction about this era takes place in Paris that it’s refreshing to envision it from a new viewpoint.

The Bussons are master glass-blowers, a talented, proud, and self-contained community, so much so that when outsider Magdelaine Labbé, a bailiff’s daughter, comes to marry glassmaker Mathurin Busson, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. But Magdelaine is strong and wise, insisting on a place for herself in the firm and raising a large family of five surviving children – each of whose actions during the French Revolution naturally reflect different facets and reactions to ongoing events.

The way Du Maurier frames her novel grabbed me immediately. Aged 80 in 1844, Sophie (Busson) Duval, daughter of Magdelaine, writes a long letter to tell her long-lost nephew the truth about his father, Robert, who was Sophie’s eldest brother. Robert Busson – who later called himself “Busson du Maurier” after the supposed château (really a farmhouse) where he was born – was a carefree dandy who fled France for England during the Revolution to avoid creditors. Robert’s English-born children grew up thinking he had aristocratic origins, and Sophie wants to set the record straight.

As others on Goodreads have pointed out, Du Maurier’s choice of Sophie as narrator has flaws. All her siblings have more striking personalities, and Sophie feels more like a convenient vehicle through which their stories unfold. She speaks fondly of her beloved brother Robert, though we see more of his fecklessness than his supposed charm as he aims high, gambles, and loses again and again. Growing up in a rented château, Robert adores the trappings of wealth and soon latches onto the coattails of the Duc d’Orléans, later Philippe-Égalité. The Glass-Blowers is most powerful when we see firsthand how rumblings from the capital spread throughout the country and catch fire, but weaker when historical facts are presented as reportage: the classic adage of “show, don’t tell.”

cover of Little, Brown
ebook edition (2013)

I especially relished Sophie’s reflections on the seismic changes that ripped society apart: “My brothers, my husband, even Edmé, my little sister, belonged to this moment, had waited for it, even, welcoming change as something they could themselves shape and possess, just as they moulded glass to a new form. What they had been taught as children did not matter any more… Why, then, did I lag behind?” While Sophie supports greater equality, she hates the suffering and unbridled violence perpetrated as if they’re the end goals – including by her own family members.

The story also gets dense in places. While not the masterpiece that some of her other novels have become, The Glass-Blowers remains a valuable read for Du Maurier fans and anyone wanting to see a near-century of French history through a new lens.