Stephanie Cowell's The Man in the Stone Cottage reflects on the creative life of the Brontë sisters

Stephanie Cowell’s latest novel to explore the inner lives of artistic people from the past reveals the passions of the Brontë sisters, primarily Emily and Charlotte. These talented siblings have figured in many unique works of fiction. They all died tragically young, and the best literary interpretations grant us the wish that they might live again on the page. As this one does.

Mystery surrounds the title character. In 1846, on one of her regular walks through the moorlands of west Yorkshire, Emily meets a shepherd from the Outer Hebrides living in a stone cottage which had previously been in ruins. Affable and kind, he doesn’t much resemble Heathcliff, the brooding, mercurial hero she invents later on, though has his own bittersweet story of loneliness and exile that has the air of a Celtic legend.

Their meetings are at first infrequent, but memorable, and Emily holds them secret. Is he real, or did she wish him into being? Years after Emily’s death, having long suspected there was a man in her sister’s life, Charlotte find traces of their relationship and seeks out the truth. The shepherd remains secondary to the main story of the sisters’ lives, but his presence is emblematic of the novel’s themes.

The characters are vividly drawn, and their emotional depth, combined with judicious choices on which scenes to depict over the novel’s nine-year span, gives this fairly short novel (260pp) considerable dimension. We follow Charlotte from her heartbreak over unrequited love through years of poverty at the Haworth parsonage, the Brontës’ beloved home, and her unexpected fame when her authorship of Jane Eyre becomes known. Emily is intensely private, a wild spirit who loves roaming outdoors, though she doesn’t neglect her domestic chores.

Their brother Branwell’s self-destruction over romantic failure and the weight of self-imposed expectations troubles Emily greatly due to their closeness. Anne Brontë describes Branwell aptly in a letter, saying of him that “he wants to step into greatness as if he opened a tower door.” With their stubborn father nearly blind from cataracts, refusing help, and in denial about their penury, Charlotte knows it’s up to her and her sisters to support their family.

The small village of Haworth and its environs are beautiful and bleak, an atmospheric character in itself, and one with great influence. “She took the dull brown of the moor in winter and the endless loneliness of the exiled and dead and blended them in ink and paper,” we learn about Emily, seeing how her characters preoccupy her mind wherever she is. Here and elsewhere in this immersive biographical novel, the creative power of the imagination continues to echo.

The Man in the Stone Cottage will be out from Regal House next week.

When the Lights Came On: Cinema, Class, and the Stories We Cling To, a guest post by RJ Verity

Welcome to author RJ Verity, who's here today with a post about the role of the cinema in early 20th-century society: the background to her debut historical novel.

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When the Lights Came On: Cinema, Class,
and the Stories We Cling To

by RJ Verity

For many working-class families in the early 20th century, the cinema wasn’t just an escape. It was the first place they saw lives larger than their own reflected back at them—the flicker of possibility projected onto a fragile strip of celluloid.

In Britain, by the 1920s nearly every industrial city and mining town had its own picture house. A visit to the cinema was a ritual, a highlight of the week. The historian A. J. P. Taylor once described interwar cinema-going as “the essential social habit of the age,” and it’s easy to see why. The bioscope halls and “electric palaces” that sprang up across the country became not just entertainment venues, but communal spaces where hopes, fears, and identities could be rehearsed in the dark.

Across the Atlantic, Americans were making similar weekly pilgrimages. In the 1900s and 1910s, nickelodeons—five-cent picture houses packed with immigrant and working-class audiences—sprang up in cities and coal towns alike. By the 1920s, they gave way to the great “movie palaces,” which promised marble foyers, chandeliers, and velvet seats. Yet crucially, ticket prices stayed low enough for miners, millworkers, and shop assistants to keep attending. Palaces blurred class lines: for a dime or two, ordinary people could step into surroundings as sumptuous as any opera house. The geography differed, but the impulse was the same—to sit together in the dark and dream.

Writers have long recognised this dual role of cinema—as both escape and mirror. Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921) gave audiences the bittersweet spectacle of resilience born out of poverty. Greta Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1930), was advertised with the tagline “Garbo talks!”—a reminder that cinema was forever reinventing itself, just as its audiences dreamed of doing.

Literary fiction, too, has mined the emotional charge of movie-going. Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show (1966), set in a fading Texas town, captures the poignancy of a cinema on the brink of closure, its light dimming along with the community’s prospects. Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions (2002) meditates on the mystery of a vanished silent film star and the haunting power of moving images to outlive their makers. Julian Barnes, in The Noise of Time (2016), turns to music and totalitarianism rather than film, yet wrestles with the same question: how art survives when lives are precarious.

Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933) and A. J. Cronin’s The Stars Look Down (1935) were later adapted for the screen, bringing industrial hardship and working-class lives directly into cinemas. These adaptations remind us that film was never only about fantasy—it was also about recognition.

Children in front of movie theatre, Alpine, Texas (public domain)

Virginia Woolf, in her 1926 essay The Cinema, caught something of this strange alchemy. “We are beholding a world which has gone beneath the waves,” she wrote, marvelling at how moving pictures created visions both intimate and uncanny. Woolf sensed that cinema could show truths not easily told in words: how communities fracture and endure, how individuals imagine themselves anew.

That imaginative leap is what fascinates me as a novelist. My debut historical novel, Poole of Light (September 2025), begins in 1913 with a boy from a colliery town who comes across his first picture house. For Jem, the cinema is revelation: a doorway into stories that feel both impossibly distant and tantalisingly close. Across the decades that follow—through world wars, new technologies, and his own battles with identity—the cinema offers him not just escape, but a way of piecing together who he might become.

"Where the boys spend their money" (photo of St. Louis, Missouri; public domain)

 
I don’t think Jem’s story is unique to fiction. For countless people in Britain and America, the weekly trip to the pictures was about more than amusement. It was a way of locating oneself in a rapidly changing world. Sitting in the dark, you might imagine being someone else; you might imagine your town, your family, your class differently. The silver screen shimmered with reinvention.

That’s why early cinema continues to draw me back as both writer and reader. It’s not only nostalgia for the glamour of Chaplin or Garbo, but the recognition that behind the laughter and tears sat working people from every walk of life, grasping for meaning. Stories were sustenance. And the cinema, in its golden age, was where light itself became a form of survival.

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Short Bio

RJ Verity is the author of Poole of Light, her debut historical novel set against the rise of cinema in early 20th-century England, and the first in The Poole Legacy series. Her writing explores memory, class, and the stories that shape us.

Poole of Light launches across all Amazon marketplaces on 16 September 2025, with the eBook available now for pre-order: https://mybook.to/poole-of-light

Discover more at https://www.rjverity.com.

The Gatsby Gambit takes a fun alternative history/mystery spin on Fitzgerald's classic novel

At the outset of Anderson-Wheeler’s freshly imagined debut, all the principals of The Great Gatsby are alive and well, years after their initial gathering. With their house under renovation, Daisy and Tom Buchanan are bunking at Jay Gatsby’s West Egg mansion on Long Island, along with Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker. Under her boorish husband’s nose, Daisy and Gatsby are still secretly carrying on. Their marriage in tatters, the Wilsons have moved out to New Jersey. Wait, what?

Everyone’s personalities fit the expected mold, but this is clearly an alternate history spinoff to Fitzgerald’s classic. My choice to pick up this novel soon after a Gatsby reread probably wasn’t well-timed. Once I reoriented myself, the plot became an enjoyable “what if” mystery that whipped up new scenarios for familiar characters. 

published by Viking, 2025

In this version, Greta Gatsby, Jay’s younger sibling, returns home to West Egg after graduating from finishing school, hoping for a relaxing summer, only to find her beloved home overcrowded with her wealthy brother’s socialite friends. One of the maids sees a mysterious figure lurking around, and the next morning, a body is found on Gatsby’s boat, an apparent suicide.

Considerable shock ensues, but only the victim’s mother seems upset. The police inspector considers it an open-and-shut case. Greta feels something’s amiss, and her sleuthing proves fertile. She also develops a firmer spine while interviewing servants and seeking clues in the seedy Bowery neighborhood, a place no properly raised young lady should go. 

For readers who adore Fitzgerald’s subtle style, a novel where Daisy explains her feelings may be too much. If you can set aside the comparisons and the occasional off-note Britishisms, you may appreciate this cheeky homage as a fun Jazz Age escape with a pointed look at wealth and class advantages.

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The Gatsby Gambit was published by Viking in April in the US and Canada; Renegade Books is the UK publisher.  I reviewed it originally for the Historical Novel Society.

I'd reread The Great Gatsby over the summer, after seeing countless articles about the book's centenary. Then I got an email about the "author's edition" being on Kindle sale.  First time I'd read it in full since 9th-grade English class, and I dare say I didn't appreciate the high quality of the writing back then.

The novel's been in the public domain since 2021, and there are several other recent sequels, spinoffs, and reimaginings appearing this year.  The Great Mann by Kyra Davis Lurie (Crown, June) is a Gatsby retelling amidst the Black elite in postwar L.A., and Allyson Reedy's Mrs. Wilson's Affair (Union Square, Oct.) switches the viewpoint to Tom Buchanan's mistress. For more in this vein, Goodreads has a list of retellings, sequels, and prequels, and I just added the three abovementioned books to it.  Finally, I didn't realize this until after I'd finished the book, but "Greta" is a clever anagram.

On Isabella Street takes a Canadian perspective on the social turmoil of the late '60s and the Vietnam War

In May 1967, Toronto pulses with activity fueled by the counterculture movement, and Sassy Rankin soaks it up while attending the massive love-in at Queen’s Park. A talented singer with natural confidence, Sassy hasn’t fully squared her love for the hippie life with her father’s status as a successful realtor (who pays for her apartment) and her brother Joey’s unfathomable decision to “fight another country’s war” alongside U.S. Marines in Vietnam.

Dr. Marion Hart, a psychiatrist at the Ontario Hospital, observes the streetside excitement from a safe distance. She worries about her patients’ fate, foreseeing they’ll become homeless or violent after they’re released into the community as deinstitutionalization policies take effect. Over time, she comes to care especially for one of them, Daniel Neumann, puzzled why a man haunted by his Vietnam memories could long to rejoin his fellow soldiers “in country.”

Sassy and Marion live in the same building at 105 Isabella Street and aren’t much alike, but through in-depth conversations, they become close as sisters. On Isabella Street is a warm, authentic portrait of their unusual friendship, and so much more.

In this well-paced novel, Graham handles an array of social issues with exceptional clarity and appropriate depth: workplace sexism, family expectations, the presence of American war resisters, urban gentrification, and how returning Vietnam veterans test the city’s emotional fabric. She creates realistic links between the Greatest Generation and their children, showing how WWII’s effects still linger.

Through Daniel, Marion comes to understand the concept of wartime brotherhood while her admiration for him increases, while Sassy, carefree yet immature, learns responsibility and finds new application for her people skills.

Despite occasionally overused slang, the story carefully balances its nostalgic period vibe with the raw truth about war. As the plot takes unforeseen turns, the characters surprise both the reader and themselves with their growth and resilience.

On Isabella Street was published by Simon & Schuster in Canada and the US in April. This review was written originally for the Historical Novel Society.  This is the first novel of Genevieve Graham's that I've read, and I'm looking forward to reading others.  Most of her novels (this is the 13th) focus on various aspects of Canadian history. The publisher recommends it to fans of Kristin Hannah's The Women, and I agree.

Tatiana de Rosnay's The House I Loved evokes a 19th-century French city's transformation and trauma

Can a novel make us nostalgic for a place we've never been? With her third English-language release, an uncomplicated story brimming with homespun details, Tatiana de Rosnay presents a convincing case. Nearly every sentence evokes the appeal of mid-19th-century Paris, the city she clearly loves, and her empathy for the citizens whose homes and dreams were obliterated by the march of progress.

The premise of The House I Loved is laid out in stark black lines before the first page is turned. The map on the endpapers depicts the colossal transformation Paris underwent in the 1850s and '60s, the new superimposed upon the old. Under the aegis of Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III's Prefect of the Seine, its narrow alleys and crowded medieval buildings were razed to make way for a sanitary, safe and modern metropolis.

These changes were called "embellishments," a horribly inappropriate term in the mind of de Rosnay's angry, strong-minded heroine.

St. Martin's Press (2012)

Rose Bazelet, an aging widow, is distraught that her beloved home on the rue Childebert sits on the planned route for the boulevard Saint-Germain – and she intends to take a stand. Hiding in her freezing basement long after her neighbours have moved away, she stays put, dependent on the provisions a rag-picker scavenges and brings her. In these pathetic conditions, she writes a long letter to her adored late husband, Armand. Interspersed are notes addressed to her by friends and family.

The epistolary form can be a forced kind of storytelling, with the writer telling the recipient things he already knows for the reader's benefit, but Rose's touching account is as much confession as love letter; she wants to unburden herself of long-held secrets.

Charles Marville, Haussmann's official photographer, recorded her district and others for posterity before they were demolished, but Rose describes images much more vibrant than any black-and-white photos can provide. Her mind's eye roams around her close-knit neighbourhood and through every room, and she expresses her remembrances in lavish detail: the enticing smells of the market; the green-fringed chair of her kindly mother-in-law, Odette; the elegant flower shop run by her renter, Alexandrine, her closest friend.

Rose sees her home as a refuge from a difficult childhood, and it also shelters her during street riots against the Bourbon monarchy; her tale explains her understandable loyalty to it and her fury at the men who enforce its destruction.

De Rosnay has said that she wrote in longhand, by candlelight, to capture the rhythms of yesteryear. Her technique seems to have worked. Rose's leisurely paced world is one our technology-based society wouldn't recognize, a time when ordinary Parisians passed winter evenings stitching embroidery and playing dominoes, and she illustrates it with care.

But: "I know that bringing back the past is never a peaceful process," Rose writes, and she also endured many sorrows, including Armand's early-onset dementia. She rarely has a kind word for her grown daughter – which shows her least sympathetic side – and she hints at a decades-old tragedy involving her "little one."

This episode is teased out to the ultimate degree. While somewhat easy to guess, the devastating reveal goes far in explaining Rose's decision (and state of mind, it should be added). In the end, whether her stubbornness is admirable or pitiable – or both – is left for us to interpret.

De Rosnay's Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept, international bestsellers both, tell of painful secrets from the past re-emerging in the present. While incorporating this same theme, The House I Loved also shows the past and the future in a violent clash, a city's trauma made deeply personal. Unlike the author's earlier books, it is more domestic than dramatic, but this slim and perceptive diversion has an unhurried charm of its own.

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This review was originally written for the Globe & Mail.  It hasn't appeared on the blog before, and the online version is paywalled.  My initial idea was to post it here for Women in Translation month, but I've since remembered that De Rosnay, who was born in Paris and is of Franco-British parentage, wrote this novel in English!  Still a good book worth highlighting, though. In a recent (June 2025) essay for LitHub, she discusses how she decides to choose one language over another, and the weirdness of reading someone else's French translation of her English-language novel, since she wasn't permitted to adapt it herself even though she's bilingual.  Her latest historical novel is Blonde Dust, about the unusual friendship between Marilyn Monroe and a chambermaid at her Reno hotel.

Between 2010 and 2012, I wrote eight book reviews for the newspaper, and having a platform that large was a unique and eye-opening experience. I got emails from almost everyone I knew in Canada when my first review ran in print.  I also got emails from a few cranky people I didn't know who felt compelled to tell me how wrong my opinion was, but it was good to see readers engaging with them. I'm not Canadian (though have family there and am descended from Canadians!) but decided to keep the Canadian spellings in the review above.

Francesca Giannone's The Letter Carrier (trans. from Italian by Elettra Pauletto) reveals a singular woman

It’s the rare woman in 1930s southern Italy who lives by her beliefs and refuses to downplay her intelligence, but Anna Allavena fits this description.

When Anna arrives with her husband, Carlo Greco, from up north to live in his picturesque hometown of Lizzanello with their young son, Roberto, the villagers find her directness off-putting. They call her “outlander,” which sticks over the decades.

Published by Crown (July 2025).  

Anna discusses literature with Carlo’s older brother, Antonio, who can’t help but notice her beauty—to his wife Agata’s dismay. Over the years, as the couples’ children grow up and Carlo opens a prosperous winery, Anna retains her self-possession, and when she takes the post as Lizzanello’s official letter carrier, tongues wag even more.

The admirable character of Anna remains at the center of Francesca Giannone’s saga, an Italian bestseller based on her great-grandmother’s life, and Elettra Pauletto’s English translation makes the words skip along with fluidity. Spanning through 1961, the story is full of characters you’ll feel you know well, plus their fiery affairs, destructive secrets, and love no less deep when it remains unacknowledged.

Carlo’s former paramour, Carmela the seamstress, snubs Anna, blaming her for her own unhappy married life. Anna and her niece Lorenza, Antonio’s daughter, form a close bond, and Antonio remains protective of brother Carlo even as he watches Anna from afar.

Anna is quite an interesting mix of the traditional and unconventional. She loves her husband and cooks scrumptious recipes while she makes connections through her work and befriends others in need—even helping a lonely, illiterate woman correspond with her secret lover, a priest.

In a smart move, Giannone jumps over the war years, though we see the growth of Mussolini’s fascism and the postwar recovery. The storytelling carries you easily, and the vineyard country of southern Italy makes for a lovely backdrop.

The Letter Carrier, an international bestseller, was published in the US by Crown in July.  The UK publisher is Headline Review. I reviewed it originally for the Historical Novel Society.

Historical novels to read in August for Women in Translation Month

For over a decade, August has been celebrated as Women in Translation Month, an observance dedicated to addressing the gender imbalance in world literature selected for translation. Skilled translators can open up new worlds of experiences to an English-language readership, and within historical fiction, translations add global diversity into a genre too often focused on a narrow range of geographic locales. In recent years, it does feel that fewer female-authored historical novels are being translated into English... just my impression.

Here are some novels in translation that I'd reviewed previously, plus some others, that I can recommend.

From Polish: Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob (trans. Jennifer Croft), her magnum opus about Jacob Frank, an 18th-century Jewish messianic figure who courted controversy wherever he went. 

From Spanish: Return to Your Skin by Luz Gabás (trans. Noel Hughes), a time-slip novel set in the Spanish Pyrenees in the present day and the late 16th century. 

Also from Spanish: My Name Is Emilia Del Valle and Violeta (trans. Frances Riddle) and A Long Petal of the Sea (trans. Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson), all by Isabel Allende.  Set, respectively, during the Chilean Civil War, a century of South American life, and the Spanish Civil War (and, later, in Chile).

From French: The Exchange of Princesses by Chantal Thomas (trans. John Cullen), about two lesser-known 18th-century European princesses.

Also from French: Victoire: My Mother's Mother by Maryse Condé (trans. Richard Philcox), which imagines the life of the author's maternal grandmother in late 19th-century Guadaloupe.

From Hebrew: Sarit Yishai-Levi's The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem (trans. Anthony Berris), an early 20th-century saga about the women of a Sephardic Jewish family.  Made into a wonderful Netflix miniseries!

From Russian: Jacob's Ladder by Ludmila Ulitskaya (trans. Polly Gannon), a lengthy epic of Russian-Soviet history.

From Korean: The Court Dancer by Kyung-Sook Shin (trans. Anton Hur), set in 19th-century Korea and Paris.

From Italian: The Florios of Sicily by Stefania Auci (trans. Katherine Gregor) and its sequel The Triumph of the Lions (trans. Katherine Gregor and Howard Curtis), following an entrepreneurial family that rose to power in 19th and 20th-century Sicily. Made into an Italian TV series which I haven't yet seen.

From Norwegian: I haven't formally reviewed this one, but Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter (trans. Tiina Nunnally) is a classic trilogy about a woman's eventful life in 14th-century Norway.

From Dutch: Another classic is Hella Haasse's In a Dark Wood Wandering (trans. Lewis Kaplan), a novel of European power struggles during the Hundred Years' War, based on historical figures.

I welcome suggestions of other titles to read, and will have one or two posts about newer novels in this category in the upcoming weeks.

These Heathens is a unique coming-of-age novel set in Civil Rights-era Atlanta

The narrator’s voice grabs hold immediately, and what a tale she has to tell! In small-town Georgia in 1960, Doris Steele, a Black seventeen-year-old, had dropped out of school two years ago to care for her family after her Ma got sick. She’s pregnant and can’t support a baby, but the local midwives who perform abortions know her parents, so she turns to her former teacher, Mrs. Lucas, for help.

Mrs. Lucas has a rich childhood friend in Atlanta who offers to arrange for the procedure, and what Doris sees there takes this Bible-raised teenager way out of her comfort zone.

At Mrs. Sylvia Broussard’s home, Doris hardly knows what to think. Mrs. Broussard wears pants and red lipstick and talks frankly about sex. She’s also an atheist. Mrs. Lucas appears to be a non-believer, too, which Doris can’t fathom; Doris knows she goes to church!

Speaking with honesty and cheeky humor – she crafts witty phrases she jots in a notebook – Doris is irresistibly appealing. She’s not wholly innocent, but not worldly either, and over the course of one whirlwind weekend, she socializes with Mrs. Broussard’s friends (including Coretta Scott King and her cousin Julia, a famous singer) and attends a student workshop on nonviolent activism.

With her medical appointment weighing on her mind, Doris gets introduced to a secret community of queer women, and although she’s not gay, she has many curious questions about how that all works. She also starts pondering her relationship with God, who created a more interesting world than she ever realized, and how much she owes to her upbringing versus her own desires.

With its well-crafted historical atmosphere that emphasizes Black women’s choices in the Civil Rights-era South and the importance of joyful spaces in a repressive world, this is a winning coming-of-age story full of personality and zing.

These Heathens was published by Random House in June, and I reviewed it for the Historical Novel Society.  I haven't heard much about this novel in the online historical fiction community and wanted to highlight it. It's very funny in places (something the genre doesn't see enough of), and the strong narrative voice carries you along.

From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century: a guest post by Nancy Hayes Kilgore

Nancy Hayes Kilgore is here today with a short essay about shifting to a new historical era, and what happens when a potential story idea just won't let you go.

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From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century

Nancy Hayes Kilgore

Four years ago I was immersed in the 17th-century world of Isobel Gowdie. The most famous of the Scottish women tried for witchcraft, Isobel lived in a world of drudgery and fantasy. Or was it fantasy? A peasant on the land of a Scottish laird, she used herbs and magic to cure diseases and to spite her enemies, and she could fly in the “Otherworld” of fairies and elves, where she had great powers and consorted with the Devil.

Milford House Press (2021)

The Scottish Reformation was a time of social change, religious wars, and changing belief systems. The reforming Presbyterians wanted to eradicate what was then a widespread belief in that “Otherworld” and in magic, which in their minds included Catholicism as well as folk religion. Heading towards a rational theology and the Age of Reason, which was of course controlled by “the rational sex,” men, they targeted the powerful women who used magic and herbal cures (and curses). They named them witches, tortured and killed them.

Isobel Gowdie’s life and trial took place in this fierce, violent, and passionate milieu. And I, who had been a lackluster history student in school, became fascinated with the era, as well as with Isobel’s story. Differing beliefs, clashing and intersecting, and an amazing cast of characters, held me, a feminist, yogi, Presbyterian minister, and therapist, in thrall and provided continual fodder for the multi-layered novel that became Bitter Magic.

I finished Bitter Magic and launched it into the world. Phew! I thought. Enough novel writing.

But then I started sorting through a trove of letters from my grandmother in the 1910s. I became intrigued with the life of Florence, this grandmother I never knew. A young woman with tuberculosis, she was feisty and ambitious, a staunch feminist, a budding concert pianist, and her letters to my grandfather, her “comrade” but not yet a suitor, burgeoned with tantalizing elements for a novel – her adventures at a ranch in New Mexico, her train journeys, her music, and her paramours.

Sunbury Press (Sept. 2025)

When I began writing the story of Florence, another question, another dimension emerged: my mother’s life as a young woman in the 1940s. My mother, Flossie, never knew her own mother, Florence, who died of tuberculosis when she was born. How did the two lives interrelate?

I’d long been attracted to the idea of a dual-timeline novel, and here it was. After lots of research about those two time periods and lots of drafts, Pennsylvania Love Song emerged.

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Nancy Hayes Kilgore is the author of four novels: Pennsylvania Love Song, Bitter Magic, Wild Mountain, and Sea Level. Awards include the Vermont Writers Prize and a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year.

An ordained minister and pastoral psychotherapist, Nancy leads workshops on writing and spirituality. She lives in Vermont with her husband, dog and cat. 

From Ford's Theater to Victorian England, M. J. Trow's The Blue and the Grey is a creative Civil War-era thriller

The spelling in the title of M. J. Trow’s historical thriller The Blue and the Grey hints that this novel set just after the US Civil War has a British angle. So does its subtitle, “A Grand & Batchelor Victorian Mystery.”

It opens with a deadly night of drama at Ford’s Theater (or Theatre, as it’s written here) in Washington, DC. Captain Matthew Grand, uniformed as a member of the Third Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, sits in the audience with his fiancée when President Lincoln is shot. Dashing into the alleyway after John Wilkes Booth, Grand has a violent encounter with one of Booth's burly accomplices, who sports an English accent.

Over in London, fresh after discovering the body of a strangled prostitute and nearly being accused of her murder, novice journalist James Batchelor gets canned from his dreary job at the Telegraph after refusing to invent copy for a prospective interview.

After being secretly recruited to track down Booth’s fellow conspirator, Grand travels to England, where – following many almost-too-coincidental-to-be-real events that put them in each other’s company – he and Batchelor compare notes and suspect the two crimes are connected.

The writing is economical and smart, demonstrating an impressively wide vocabulary, and Trow demonstrates his ease with the mid-19th century on both sides of the pond. Much is made of Grand’s unexpected culture shock overseas, which creates some funny moments, and so does a British bandleader’s poor choices at a gala to honor the visiting American. The frequent viewpoint switches among the large cast makes the experience feel kaleidoscopic, which works splendidly amidst the shocking chaos at Ford’s Theater, but less effectively in the middle sections of the book.

The plot takes many detours, which Trow seems to jokingly acknowledge to the reader via one man’s remarks. A few of the side characters (the cleverly proactive Inspector Tanner and the real-life magician known as The Great Maskelyne, to name two) feel like they’d gladly take more on-page time if Trow would let them get away with it. This is the first in a series, so maybe they’ll have their chance.

The Blue and the Grey was published by Severn House way back in 2015, meaning it took me ten years (I'm ashamed to say) to review this novel via NetGalley.  I'm still working through my NetGalley list until I hit the elusive review ratio of 90%.  Slowly getting to that goal, but adding more books to my queue hasn't been helping. 

A Daughter's Place by Martha Bátiz reveals the stories of the Cervantes women

Moving from an upscale Madrid household to Valladolid’s chaotic streets and back to the capital, this debut illustrates Golden Age Spain from the viewpoints of the women in Miguel de Cervantes’s family – whose lives were as eventful as any work of fiction. With a scholarly background in her subject, Mexican-Canadian writer Bátiz has the knowledge and storytelling prowess to make her novel vibrant.

The title character is Isabel, who speaks of her shock upon learning, at 15, that her birth father is the celebrated writer and war hero. After her aunt Magdalena collects her from her late mother’s tavern to reside with the Cervantes family, Isabel finds it hard to adjust. She must share a bed with her resentful cousin Constanza and pretend to outsiders that she’s their maid while despairing of her new status as a “bastarda… a daughter of sin.”

Living separately in Esquivias, Miguel’s devoted wife Catalina, who begins her sections with fervent prayers, wants nothing more than to bear his child, not realizing he already has one.

House of Anansi (2025)

The era’s Catholic morality permeates the setting, which doesn’t prevent the strong-minded Cervantes women from exercising their will. Financial security is a critical motivator, too. They work as seamstresses to support themselves after having gathered a fortune to ransom Miguel from captivity in Algiers and unstintingly obey his wishes despite his frequent absences. The reason why eventually comes to dramatic light.

As Miguel conceptualizes and publishes Don Quixote, the story winds through their house relocations, the women’s love affairs past and present, and Isabel’s ongoing quest to shed the stain of illegitimacy. The shifts in perspective are mostly smooth, with a couple of instances where scene climaxes vexingly happen off-page. Bátiz movingly develops the family’s relationships across two decades, making this more than the exceptional “women behind a famous man” novel that it is.

A Daughter's Place was published by House of Anansi in Canada and the US in May, and I reviewed it from an Edelweiss copy for the Historical Novel Society.  This is the author's debut novel; she has also published short story collections and an award-winning novella, Boca de lobo / Damiana's Reprieve. The painting on the cover is Two Women at a Window by 17th-century Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

A historical fiction preview for autumn 2025

Fall is always a big season for fiction, and here are 14 upcoming novels that caught my interest. Distinctive settings across the board, with a mix of big-name publishers and smaller presses from both the US and UK.

I've been curious about this one ever since I read the original publishing deal. The story of the artistic collaboration and clandestine romantic relationship between two painters in 1930s Scotland: Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, who first meet at the Glasgow School of Art. Canongate, September 2025.

A story of feminine courage and the pursuit of literacy in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1920s, when rebellious sentiment against the Japanese burns underground in Seoul.  Simon & Schuster, September 2025.

Coventry (a retired physician who has also written a YA historical novel and Regency romance) brings little-known history back into the spotlight in her literary biographical novel of 19th-century American surgeon William Stewart Halsted, the pursuit of new formulas for anesthesia, the pain of addiction, and how this impacts Halsted's wife, Caroline. Regal House, November 2025.

I'm always up for a new novel about the Brontë family, and Cowell's new novel intermingles the historical and mystical in a story about Emily's encounters with a Scottish shepherd living in a stone cottage on the Yorkshire moorland: a man nobody else has seen.  Regal House, September 2025.

Set in Provence during the early Renaissance, Echols' second historical novel (after A Tale of Two Maidens, set in France at the time of Joan of Arc) centers on an apprentice surgeon from Barcelona, his romance with a mentally troubled young woman, and its effect on his approach to medicine.  She Writes, September 2025.

A debut novel about faith, belonging, envy, betrayal, and women's communities set in late 13th-century Flanders as an unorthodox young woman hungers to become closer to God.  Spiegel & Grau, September 2025.

As in her previous The Wharton Plot (which I had the pleasure of interviewing the author about), Fredericks weaves a novel around a little-remembered historical crime: the shooting death in 1920 of society figure Joseph Elwell.  Zelda Fitzgerald, looking for distraction during her husband's current writing project, gets curious about what really happened. Plus, an amazing cover. Minotaur, September 2025.

I loved Elodie Harper's The Wolf Den, set during Pompeii's last days, and really ought to get back to that series!  Her Boudicca's Daughter is a standalone, giving a name (Solina) to the warrior queen's eldest daughter, starting during the time before Boudicca led the Iceni people to rebel against the might of Rome. Union Square, September 2025; the UK edition comes out in late August from Head of Zeus.

Gill Hornby's historical novels about Jane Austen's family have received increased attention after the recent TV adaptation of her Miss Austen (I recommend both the novel and the series). The Elopement looks ahead one generation to two young people brought together after their parents get married, and the scandal that ensues when they themselves fall in love.  Pegasus, October 2025.

Lorena Hughes' novels are addictive reads with such interesting concepts. In 1950s Ecuador, two journalists sift through the tragic fallout from the radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which was broadcast in their country in 1949, determined to learn the truth about their families. Kensington, September 2025.

First in a series about medieval queens of Portugal, Inês reveals the tumultuous forbidden love between Pedro, Prince of Portugal, and the woman his father refuses to let him marry: noblewoman Inês de Castro. Their story, as described by the author, is "a tale of jealousy and revenge most bloody and tragic."  Histria, October 2025.

Having worked in academic libraries, I'd been familiar with Harvard's famed Widener Library, but until recently, I hadn't known its backstory: that it was built to honor Harry Elkins Widener, a Harvard alum, book collector, and Titanic victim. Richman's latest is a ghost story about Harry and a modern-day student working in the building bearing his name.  Union Square, October 2025.

Secrets pervade a small Ohio town in this novel spanning the postwar era to contemporary times. This generational saga set in the US Midwest has been receiving considerable advance praise. (Ohio's known as the Buckeye State.  So are graduates of Ohio State, of whom I'm one.)  Random House, September 2025.  

Gothic historical fiction set in early 20th-century Omaha, Nebraska. A medium's presence in the home of a high-society woman stirs up restless spirits.  Lake Union, November 2025.

Agony in Amethyst by A. M. Stuart unfolds an exciting mystery in 1911 Singapore

This fifth and last volume in the Harriet Gordon series, set in colonial Singapore in 1911, is the most excitingly constructed mystery I’ve read for some time. The title refers to the shocking death of a fifteen-year-old girl who sang at a ball at Government House held to celebrate the arrival of the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Henry Cunningham. Her body, oddly clad in an ill-fitting amethyst dress rather than her school uniform, had clearly fallen from the gallery windows above, and signs point to murder.

Harriet Gordon, quickly on the scene in her gray evening gown, is a doctor’s widow and teacher with a controversial past as a London suffragette. Her beau, Robert Curran of the Straits Settlements Police Force, has recently returned from extended business in Kuala Lumpur only to lose a promotion to his former Scotland Yard rival.

Even worse, Cunningham’s presence in the country irritates Curran, since they were both associated with a case back in Britain which Curran was forced to abandon. Solving the present crime takes a two-pronged approach, both amateur (Harriet) and professional (Curran), which heightens tension when they’re not working in sync. As they investigate, their planned future gets complicated by secrets and betrayal.

Stuart continues adding new angles to the mystery while keeping tight control of the impeccably paced plot and its many players—I never felt lost. Harriet and Curran are well-rounded individuals with realistic flaws and a strong sense of integrity. The blend of cultures in Singapore is primarily background detail, with the focus being life and political administration in the British colony. There are a few apparent spoilers for previous events, as some characters are working through fallout from earlier books, but the author succeeds in weaving in sufficient backstory to make this novel stand alone.

Agony in Amethyst was published by Oportet Publishing in 2024; I reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review initially.  The first three books in the series, beginning with Singapore Sapphire, were published by Berkley/Penguin Random House, and the author moved to her own imprint for the last two books.

I haven't read others in the series yet, but plan to do so, once enough time has passed so the plot of this latest one isn't so fresh in my mind!  The author, who is Australian, also writes as Alison Stuart. According to her newsletter, she'll be continuing the story of Harriet and Curran, starting with a novella sometime later this year.

Interview with India Edghill about her new epic of 1870s India, A Tiger in the Garden

India Edghill’s latest novel A Tiger in the Garden is a sweeping epic set in the isolated Indian hills in the Victorian era. At its heart is the intricate battle of wills – and transforming relationship – between Lily Shawcross, a dark-haired English girl of just sixteen, and Sherdil, Rajah of the independent Indian state of Sherabagh.  Both become victims of the schemes of the same woman, Princess Lilavati of Sherabagh – who is Sherdil’s cousin and Lily’s old schoolfriend from England. Duped into taking Lilavati’s place as Sherdil’s would-be bride upon her arrival in Bombay, Lily is furious and wants to find a way back to her relatives in India.  For his part, Sherdil desperately needs Lily to continue the deception, since if any of the British discover an English girl was kidnapped into his hands, consequences would be severe both for him and for Sherabagh’s independence.

There are good reasons why others accept that Lily is really Lilavati; you'll have to read the book!

From a ride within a jeweled howdah atop an elephant to the luxurious zenana (secluded women’s quarters) of the Tiger Palace in Sherabagh, the novel is exquisitely detailed. Lily’s emotional maturity over the course of the story makes for a compelling journey, as does the slow-burning chemistry between her and Sherdil. As in her previous works of Biblical historical fiction, India Edghill brings to life the rivalries and friendships between women. Similar to M. M. Kaye's historical novels about India, this is a lengthy, involving read that lets you get to know the characters very well and vicariously spend time amid the novel's locale and culture.

When I’d interviewed India about Queenmaker: A Novel of King David’s Queen way back in 2001, she’d spoken about her novel-in-progress, A Tiger in the Garden, which I’m delighted to have had the chance to read in published form at last.  Thanks to the author for answering my interview questions.

It was over 20 years ago you’d told me you were working on A Tiger in the Garden, which you’d called “an epic novel of romance and adventure set in India in 1879.” I remember looking forward to reading it, back then, and was so happy to hear the news that the novel was done and about to be published! I’m always interested in learning how historical novels were conceptualized. What can you share about the origin story for this one?

The genesis for Tiger was actually very simple: I wanted to tell a “switched identities” story in which the main characters knew about the switch – yet it made no difference to how the action unfolded. It wound up taking me years of work and thousands of words to achieve what turned out to be quite a different story. (Similarly, Margaret Mitchell said of Gone With the Wind that she wanted to tell the story of a violent marriage – that of Scarlett and Rhett; it took her hundreds of pages to actually get to that story.)

It’s hard to believe that Tiger’s been in process for twenty years! Of course, much of that time was spent in research, and some of it on writing projects for St. Martin’s. And when I say “research,” I mean I fell deeply into the sheer joy of learning about people, places, and events I hadn’t known existed. When I started Tiger, the only way to acquire the books and articles I needed was by a combination of interlibrary loan and sheer luck. For instance, I happened upon a copy of General Roberts’ memoirs in a secondhand bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, which was pure luck. As time went on, new venues for acquiring research materials opened up, and I took full advantage of them. It was delightful to be able to find what I needed by typing in a title or author and clicking a search button! I admit I may have overdone it just a bit – my India library wound up being nearly 500 volumes.

Talitho Press (2025)

So I have to confess I went overboard on research. But research is such fun! And India is a treasure-trove of amazing facts. I kept finding more and more interesting and sometimes just plain bizarre information. When I discovered there was a Hindu tribe in the Himalayas that actually ate beef, I admit I was flabbergasted. Discovering that white leopards existed was just plain delightful, and I promptly bestowed some upon my heroine.

Some research was more difficult than anticipated. On of the back-story characters is a freelance European adventurer in the early 1700s. For him, I needed information about 1690s Poland – which turned out to be amazingly hard to sift through. Thanks to the Internet and the kindness of strangers, I was able to find the information, but I was surprised at how difficult it was to discover.

As time went on, the story grew in all directions. Although it doesn’t necessarily make it into the novel, I wound up knowing all about even minor characters and incidents, including who the wound up eventually marrying. In one instance, that of the child Moti’s mother, who is just a walk-on, I realized she had brought her daughter north to escape the horrendous famine of 1876-78. This has nothing to do with the main story!

And as time went on, it grew harder and harder to let the story go; I loved all the characters so much! Eventually I had to force myself to declare it done and hand it over to my agent. But letting it go was a wrench. 

The décor within the zenana at Sherabagh is beyond sumptuous and decadent. I can imagine how much fun it was to imagine such a place into existence (at least in a fictional sense). What was this experience like? How did you recreate and design a plan for the Tiger Palace?

Oh, yes, that was great fun. I spent a lot of time immersed in books about India’s royal architecture, especially books with full-color illustrations. I modeled the Sherabagh palace and zenana on the older Indian palaces; places that grew and adapted over the course of centuries. The Sherabagh palace dates back a very long way; into the mists of semi-history, and was added to until it sprawled over a hillside and became a veritable labyrinth. Some portions of it are now deserted, and have become a habitation of various kinds of wildlife – as is seen in Lily’s war with the monkeys when she tries to tidy up the Old Palace.

Unlike (for example) Simla, which features in many historical novels, Sherabagh’s an independent state, and Sherdil naturally wants to avoid its being overtaken by the British. You get a good sense of the political climate in the novel, and the reader’s always aware of it in the background. How did you decide how much of the politics to weave into the story?

That was a tough one; the politics is vital to the story, but the story has to come first. And different characters view the politics of the time very differently. I tried to provide enough political information for the reader without overwhelming them with detail. And I tried to show how a historical incident can be seen through different eyes; Sherdil and his brother-in-law Kishore are both Indian rulers, but they view British politics and policies quite differently.

Lily is expecting to have a grand, exotic adventure when she comes to India, but she’s so young and sheltered that she has little experience with life and even less with men. How did her character develop during the writing process?

Originally Lily was your basic “I know everything about India” English character who was going to Learn A Lesson About Reality. But as time and writing went on, she developed into a more fully-rounded person, one who learns and grows, yes but who does that from a position of intelligence and good will. She changes from a well-meaning child to an adult woman, one who, as one reader put it, “releases the queen within.” I found it very hard to stop writing about her and release her into her happy future.

What made you decide to include shorter stories from earlier points in time (usually cross-cultural love stories) within the larger novel? Did you write them first, fit them in later, or some of both?

The “What’s Past is Prologue” stories were part of the novel from its inception. Each examines a relationship of both love and politics; some happily, others not. I wanted to explore how people could adjust and compromise to create a viable future for themselves; the stories echo that of Lily and Sherdil, the happiest story of adjustment and accommodation. I love all of the characters dearly – although I admit to being frustrated by Alice and Nataraj, who throw over everything for passionate love, but who are incapable of developing that into a true and enduring love.

You’ve mentioned that you’re a big M. M. Kaye fan. How does her work inspire you?

Oh, she’s marvelous! She was born in and lived for many years in India, a place she dearly loved, and that love radiates through her epic novels The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon. Her descriptions are deeply evocative and her characters are deeply felt. I re-read her books often, and The Far Pavilions was my guiding star during the years I was writing A Tiger in the Garden.

And even better, while researching Kaye I met someone who s now a good friend of mine: Michael Kourtoulou, whose website www.mmkaye.com is a comprehensive survey of Kaye’s work. Thanks to Michael I was able to see The Far Pavilions musical in London in 2005, and he’s been a staunch supporter of Tiger.

What led you back to independent publishing with A Tiger in the Garden? Was your original indie publishing experience (with Queenmaker, before it was picked up by St. Martin’s) helpful at all with the process?

I do seem to have come full circle, don’t I? Well, first I handed Tiger over to my agent, and she loved it. But alas, editors, while personally liking the book, decided it was not a time period and setting (India 1878) that was marketable, and that it was way too long. (Oddly enough, “not a time period and setting that was marketable” is what was said about Queenmaker back in the 90s, which is why I wound up self-publishing it. Then The Red Tent hit big and suddenly Biblical women fiction was in demand and St. Martin’s bought it. Publishing is one crazy ride!)

My previous experience with indie publishing was so long ago that the entire playing field has changed. Now I was able to publish Tiger for free using Amazon’s publishing platform. While it cost me a month of struggling with formatting, it was basically pretty easy – and I was very pleased to be able to keep the cost down to $2.99 for the Kindle edition and $16.95 for the trade paperback.

And while I miss interacting with them on a daily basis, I’m glad to have Lily and Sherdil’s story out in the world at last.

~

Visit India Edghill's website to learn more about A Tiger in the Garden and her other historical novels.

Janet Wertman's Nothing Proved offers a new look at the future Elizabeth I

Everyone familiar with the Tudors knows that Elizabeth I became queen after the death of her older half-sister, Mary I, giving her name to the era considered England’s Golden Age.

Though it may seem to have been a natural choice, Janet Wertman’s latest novel makes plain that Elizabeth’s succession to the throne was never a sure thing until just before it happened. Nothing Proved explores an extraordinary coming-of-age story, one fraught with uncertainty and minefields galore, as navigated by a sharp yet vulnerable young woman.

Following a prologue featuring Elizabeth, her royal relatives, and other noble children in the schoolroom, chatting about issues that will shape their fates, the plot spans just over a decade: from fourteen-year-old Elizabeth’s unwitting participation in a scandal involving her stepmother’s husband through the shining moment she and her allies sometimes doubted would ever arrive.

In between, she must face up to her supposed illegitimacy while giving no cause for anyone to remember the (again, supposed) shameful behavior that her mother, Anne Boleyn, had engaged in. Elizabeth must hold fast to her determination never to marry even as major political players push her into it, either to make alliances for their benefit or to force her out of the picture.

During Mary I’s troubled reign, Elizabeth also acts as her sister’s most loyal subject and appears to practice Catholicism so convincingly that her devotion could never be doubted… all the while weighing who’s worthy of her trust. She does this so well that by the time she ascends the throne, she knows who her true friends are, which is depicted movingly as a silent moment of triumph. In addition to her loyal women, among them are William Cecil, whose own path of survival unfolds alongside Elizabeth’s, and her good childhood friend Robert Dudley.

The title of the book comes from the time Elizabeth spends as Mary’s prisoner (“Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be,” she wrote), and Wertman illustrates Elizabeth’s strength of will, refusing to admit wrongdoing despite immense pressure to implicate herself. Her story unfolds in a sequential collection of scenes, with the dates signaled up front. While this feels episodic in the beginning, the narrative does hit the key moments in Elizabeth’s younger life.

Her character emerges through her self-reflections and her interactions with others. Particularly notable in this vein are Elizabeth’s deliberately calm, wise responses to Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s attempts to break her, and the witty conversations between her and her sister’s husband, Philip of Spain, as they size up one another during their walks at court.

Her story is well worth reading, even for those who've read earlier novels about Elizabeth I.

Nothing Proved was published in May; my thanks to the author for the eARC.

Conn Iggulden's epic Roman novel Tyrant shows young Emperor Nero asserting his power

At the start of Iggulden’s smartly executed second novel in a trilogy—following Nero (2024)—our main character, Nero, is a willful, occasionally cruel adolescent who gets adopted by his stepfather, Emperor Claudius, to the delight of his beautiful, scheming mother, Agrippina.

The story rotates through multiple perspectives, including that of Agrippina, Nero’s two mentors, and Nero himself as he carouses with friends and learns about administering justice, which he does with his own personal spin.

With various conspiracies afoot, one can admire Agrippina’s quick reactions and guile while deploring her terrible actions. Her son absorbs her lessons all too well, disdaining her control after being proclaimed emperor at just 16.

Iggulden crafts characters and historical atmosphere with finesse. In scenes simultaneously exhibiting the might, extravagance, violence, and utter alienness of first-century Rome, captive Britons are forced to fight mock sea battles in an immense arena for entertainment purposes until one surviving crew member remains. “They liked to see aggression . . . aggression and blood,” thinks one participant, and the novel offers plenty of both in a vivid, exhilarating plot.

Conn Iggulden's Tyrant was published by Pegasus in the US in May; the UK publisher is Michael Joseph, and that cover is very close to the one above (with different endorsements). I reviewed it for Booklist in April. Nero plays a larger role in this novel than he did in the first, where he was a child, but his mother, Agrippina, is a character you can't look away from. I think she's Iggulden's most memorable character yet.

The mock sea battle was called a naumachia, which you can read about online in the Encyclopedia Romana, hosted at the University of Chicago. Spanish painter Ulpiano Checa imagined it onto canvas in a work from 1894. The spectacle in the novel is seen from the viewpoint of Caractacus, a chieftain of the British Catuvellauni people who was captured and brought to Rome for entertainment... and who's forced to fight for his freedom.

Ulpiano Checa, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The case of the spoilery prologue

A few months ago, another historical fiction reader and I were exchanging thoughts via email about prologues. Such as: why do so many books have them? Are they that helpful in hooking readers into a story? A special case is when (gasp) the prologue reveals the ending.

The novel she’d just read was A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp, which is biographical fiction about Giulia Tofana, an herbalist and professional poisoner in 17th-century Rome billed as (per the novel) perhaps “the first female serial killer in history.”

Pub. by Union Square (Feb. 2025). The UK publisher is Penguin.

 
“This novel is an example of what I call to myself a prologue giveaway,” she told me, explaining how she isn't keen on prologues in general, especially when they reveal the ending, but enjoyed the novel as a whole very much. “In the case of A Poisoner’s Tale," she wondered, "why do you think Kemp used a prologue telling the ending of the story?”

In the very first sentence of the book, which opens in Rome in 1659, it’s clear that our heroine’s story won’t end happily.

At first, I thought this would annoy me, knowing in advance how Giulia’s story would conclude; I had heard of her before, but hadn't read much about her life. Then I got to thinking about it more.

After the prologue, we jump back to the year 1632 in Palermo, as Giulia, just thirteen, is introduced to her lethal trade by her mother, who dispenses poisons to women of the city desperate to free themselves from horrible physical abuse and potential death at the hands of men in their lives.

This discussion also called to mind an older novel I’d come across while putting together my first Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre twenty years ago. I’d skimmed the book for the purpose of summarizing it and remember glancing through the final pages and author’s note. At the time I was aghast to learn that the heroine died at the end. What a disappointment to spend 300 pages invested in her life only to see her killed off. There was no hint about this beforehand. The novel was loosely based in history/legend, and the main character was fictional. And I never did go back and read it in full, even though the setting had intrigued me.

I won’t mention the title or author so as not to spoil the experience for anyone who picks up the book!

But if I had known in advance that that heroine’s tale would end tragically? I may not have minded the finale so much, since it wouldn’t have come as a shock. Hmmm.

Which brings us back to A Poisoner’s Tale. The author’s decision to add a spoilery prologue, which addresses Giulia’s final fate, provokes a shift in the reader’s focus. Knowing how it ends, the overall story then becomes a deep dive into character development, motive, and unthinkable choices. What spurred Giulia to take the risks she did? What obstacles did she encounter and overcome, and what circumstances led her to that ultimate point?

Even more, the novel serves to grant a much-maligned character (a historical figure) a voice, exploring the complex moral questions she must have faced. I’m partway through reading it, and don’t think the prologue hindered the reading experience in any way.

Giulia Tofana's story is a mix of history and legend.  Other novelists have interpreted it differently, so if you'd prefer an alternate version, there are other choices out there (see this article from Deborah Swift at Aspects of History about the background to her own novels about her). 

In addition, look at all the historical fiction about Anne Boleyn, whose fate is hardly a secret.

While I was conceptualizing this post in recent weeks, a post from Martha Jean Johnson’s Substack dropped into my inbox, and it covered similar ground. I recommend checking it out! Her protagonist is Tudor musician Mark Smeaton, and if you know Anne Boleyn’s history, you’ll recognize his name. One good point Johnson makes among many is that “the outline isn’t the story.”

Having pondered these authorial decisions, would I go back now and read that older novel, now that I know how it ends? Maybe I would.