A historical fiction bestseller that lives up to the buzz: Tayari Jones's Kin

“The road Vernice is walking is paved different from yours,” Annie’s grandmother tells her towards the beginning of Jones’s remarkable novel. “It ain’t fair, but that’s the way life takes us.”

Annie and Vernice (Niecy) grow up as “cradle friends” in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, their bond closer than sisters. Both lost their mothers young, Niecy to murder and Annie to abandonment, and the relatives who take in the girls can’t make up for the emotional loss. Niecy’s Aunt Irene raises her as a young lady, saving coins to send her to Spelman College in Atlanta.

Annie’s path to escaping Honeysuckle is more sudden and chaotic, but escape she does, in an old Packard with her intended boyfriend and two others, heading to Memphis where she’s heard her mama lives. Her path to the big city and in life is far from smooth, but neither is Niecy’s, who navigates the challenges of color and class, and her nascent sexuality, with the friendship of other female students.

Niecy and Annie switch off narrating, their distinct voices full of personality and casual wit, but progressively diverging in tone and vocabulary as their lives stretch further apart. The historical atmosphere is first-rate, with unobtrusive details on growing up Black and female in the 1950s Jim Crow South and all that entails: segregated movie theaters, rooming houses “vouched for by the Green Book,” and the compromises that social elevation demands.

There are so many extraordinary characters that it feels like the novel could shift focus to any one of them and tell an equally fascinating story. Jones’s ability to unfold a tale is just marvelous—there’s always something going on, but the plot never feels unrealistic. A fierce, occasionally wrenching novel about the meaning of family: those rare beings who see you as you truly are.

Tayari Jones’s Kin was published by Knopf in February. In the UK, the publisher is Oneworld, and it appeared from Viking in Canada. I reviewed it initially for the Historical Novel Society. It’s been a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club pick and has had rave reviews in numerous publications. One can’t say this novel is flying under the radar. The attention and acclaim are well-deserved. It’s already appeared on one “best books of the year so far” list, and will undoubtedly land on others in the coming months.

The first few times I heard about this book, I didn’t realize it was a historical novel. The publisher’s blurb doesn’t list the era, although it didn’t quite sound contemporary either. I think it was a NetGalley widget sent to me that clued me in to the timeframe. In a Q&A on her publisher’s website with Tia Guerrier, Jones explains how she came to write it:

I have to give you a little backstory. This was not the novel I was contracted to write. I was supposed to write a novel about gentrification in modern Atlanta. I tried, but it just wasn’t happening. My students would say, “The book was not booking.”

So I went old school. Pencil and paper. And I met Annie and Vernice, and I saw they were living in the ’50s. And I thought, no, I don’t contain a historical novel. That’s not what I do. But I had to follow it. It became clear to me that this is what I was being called to write.

Who else has read it? I enjoyed it so much I may read it again sometime down the road.

Interview with historical novelist Elisabeth Storrs about her latest book, Fables & Lies

With her new novel, Elisabeth Storrs moves from her familiar ground of long-ago Rome and Etruria, setting for her Tales of Ancient Rome trilogy, to WWII Germany—and her enthusiasm for the archaeology of the ancient world is carried forward here. Fables & Lies (The Book Guild, Apr. 28, 2026) centers on a woman from an ordinary German family, Freyja Bremer, who takes part in efforts to save invaluable museum artifacts housed in Berlin: a plotline based on a true story. Even more gripping is the deep dive into Freyja’s viewpoint as she gradually penetrates the fog of propaganda instilled into Germans for years by the cruel Nazi regime and awakens to a new and courageous purpose, one that involves considerable risk.

Emotionally involving and morally complex, Fables & Lies doesn’t hold back on its realistic view of the period, including Freyja’s family members’ individual stances toward the Nazis. It also demonstrates how deeply the regime infiltrated the archaeological field in an attempt to distort the historical record toward their racial ideology. I haven’t read another WWII novel like it. My thanks to Elisabeth for answering my questions in such depth!

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What inspired you to write about the ancient artifacts known as Priam’s Treasure, specifically during the WWII years?

I am a great lover of the ancient world. In my reading, I came across the story of the archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, who not only proved Troy existed but also discovered a fabulous cache of gold there known as Priam’s Treasure.

Sophia Schliemann, wife of Heinrich Schliemann, wearing “Helen’s jewels”

During WW2, the treasure was kept in the Pre and Early History Museum situated next door to Gestapo Headquarters and SS House in Berlin. I was intrigued with the journey of this priceless trove which was smuggled out of Turkey then “bequeathed” to the German people by Schliemann. Now it is held by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Its ownership remains hotly debated by all three countries.

When researching the Trojan gold, I discovered the little-known story of German museum curators who protected their nation’s (and the world’s) treasures from constant aerial bombardment. As such, I wanted to tell their tale, which contrasts with the Nazis plundering both private and public collections across Europe.

Priam’s Treasure, in the Pushkin Museum

There are many WWII novels out there, yet I haven’t read a story like this one, one that spans from the beginning of WWII to the fall of Berlin, seen from the viewpoint of a German woman. Can you reveal more about your writing process: how you worked to create this intimately detailed storyline across the length of the war?

The book is very much about the experience of ‘ordinary’ Berliners rather than battles and acts of great heroism. Instead, I show courage can be found in the smallest acts of defiance. My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is a museum assistant who works for Direktor Wilhelm Unverzagt. However, Unverzagt is also a Nazi and an archeologist for Himmler’s SS Ahnenerbe Ancestral Heritage Research Institute. As such, the novel has two major plotlines: the mission of the German museum curators; and the work of the SS Ahnenerbe to promulgate the “Aryan Myth” and conduct racial studies to justify conquest, dispossession and murder.

Sustaining a narrative spanning nearly six years was difficult but necessary if I was to convincingly combine the two plots. The spine of the novel follows Freyja’s love affair with Darien Lessing, an archaeologist who shows her the rot beneath the Regime’s lies as they strive to protect the museum’s collections. Intertwined is Freyja’s forced marriage to Kaspar Voigt, one of the Ahnenerbe’s racial studies scholars, and her quest to discover what her husband’s research entails.

To structure the novel, I identified various highpoints in the history of the safekeeping work and the Ahnenerbe’s activities to act as anchors in the narrative. I then placed these against major events in Berlin such as the RAF’s saturation bombing, American daylight raids, and the Soviet advance on the city and its collapse. The broader events of the war stay in the background with news of key invasions filtering through via rumors or Goebbels' propaganda.

When we first meet Freyja, she’s 21, working in Berlin’s Pre and Early History Museum in 1939, and she’s been inculcated in Nazi propaganda, including the pseudoscience related to Aryan race myths. It’s clear, though, that she has her own mind, and her conversations with Darien have her questioning so many things she’s been taught. How do you strike a balance between creating a sympathetic character and giving her a realistic perspective for a young woman living in this place and time?

Good question! It was a huge challenge to write the book from the perspective of a “child of the Reich” who goes on a journey to enlightenment. Hitler understood the importance of indoctrinating children. The education system was immediately attacked in 1933 with only Nazi teachers employed. The curriculum was limited, with physical fitness a priority. Girls were destined to be wives and mothers, boys to be soldiers. Between the age of 10-18, boys and girls were also required to attend programs run by the Hitler Youth or the League of German Maidens. Nazis worked hard to alienate children from parents who may have harbored anti-fascist sentiment, actively encouraging them to inform on them.

There was a seductive element to teaching children they were superior due to the “Aryan Myth” which asserted they were part of the “Master Race” who were “bearers of culture” compared to “sub-humans” who “destroyed culture,” i.e., Romani, Slavs, People of Colour and, most particularly, Jews.

Knowing this, I could not ignore Freyja’s indoctrination as many novels do when depicting “good” German protagonists. However, there are ameliorating factors in Freyja’s life that allows her to listen to the heretical views of an outsider like Darien Lessing. At 21, she represents a cohort that was exposed to liberal education before falling under the domination of Nazi dogma in their impressionable teens. Freyja also has the benefit of living with her father who acts as a moral compass due to his Christian beliefs. She shows integrity in remaining silent about her father’s resistance activities, and subsequently allows herself to be trapped in marriage to an SS scholar in order to protect him. In doing so, I hopefully show early on Freyja is innately caring and unwilling to betray those whom she loves.

Nevertheless, to reveal the operations of the SS Ahnenerbe, I was faced with the ethical dilemma of first marrying the brainwashed Freyja to the ethnologist, Kaspar Voigt, who sees her as the ideal Aryan wife. I saw it as the only credible plot device to reveal his despicable actions. It was disturbing to write the earlier scenes where Freyja is enthralled by Kaspar, who is a famous explorer when they first meet. I knew I was spouting dangerous rhetoric but, in doing so, I also reveal how persuasive esoteric Nazi beliefs were to those cocooned within its realm. As Primo Levi said: ‘When understanding is impossible, knowing is necessary.’

When I first encountered him in the novel, I hadn’t realized Wilhelm Unverzagt, director of the museum where Freyja works, was a historical figure. He certainly left a divided and controversial legacy, as is initially hinted when he advises Darien to move his academic focus to “a Germanic perspective of prehistory” for better career opportunities. You’ve brought considerable complexity to his portrayal. How did you develop your interpretation of him?

I struggled greatly in understanding the true nature of Wilhelm Unverzagt. Was he a true believer or simply a pragmatic opportunist who was prepared to make a deal with the devil? He certainly showed physical courage when protecting his beloved museum. I read many German journal articles about his life to glean insight into his character. And I was lucky enough to gain access to his day journals from 1944-46, together with some personal correspondence and a detailed account written by his wife post war.

Unverzagt was an example of one of the many classical historians “Römlinge” who made a Faustian Bargain to advance their careers by switching their focus to German prehistory. Wounded in WWI, he was clearly embittered by Germany ceding Polish territory. In the early 1930s, he was persecuted by an academic rival who leveled accusations that Unverzagt was part Jewish resulting in the loss of his professorship. In response, he sought the protection of the SS Ahnenerbe and the patronage of both Himmler and Göring.

Unverzagt was in no way involved in the more heinous activities of the Ahnenerbe’s racial studies program. However, despite his considerable international reputation, he was prepared to twist history to serve power by propagating the theory the first Indo-Europeans i.e. “Indo-Aryans” originated in Scandinavia and spread civilization throughout Europe. This underpinned Nazi propaganda the Master Race was entitled to reclaim “ancestral lands” lost through the Treaty of Versailles. In the end, I concluded he was a charismatic, amoral chameleon who managed to succeed under whichever regime he lived. He died lauded for his work reconstituting the Pre and Early History Museum in East Berlin, which included exhibits looted and then returned by Russia – but, alas, not Priam’s Treasure.

I hadn’t been familiar beforehand with the astonishing history of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital, and the heroism of both halves of interfaith couples during the war. How did you decide to include these details within the novel?

The Jewish Hospital certainly was a hidden gem which I chanced upon in researching the history of Berlin’s Jews. There was a brief mention in one text about Jewish doctors working there who were married to Gentile “Aryan” women thereby giving them “privileged” status which provided a limited degree of protection. The hospital became the only place that provided medical treatment to Jews, perversely healing them before sending them to the camps. Ultimately, it became the last transit camp in Berlin and then a refuge in the final Soviet assault. Finding reference to the hospital was a moment of serendipity as it provided the inspiration for a sub-plot exploring the persecution of “mixed race” couples. The hospital doctors faced terrible ethical choices under threat of deportation. And the pressure placed on their Gentile wives to divorce them thereby condemning their husbands to certain death was sustained and cruel. To tell their stories I created the characters of Darien’s sister, Parisa, who is married to Dr Leon Epstein. Freyja’s encounter with the couple opens her eyes to the true plight of the Jews and leads her to resistance.

What were some useful or especially interesting discoveries you made during your research in Germany?

“Walking the ground” upon which an historical novel is set is invaluable. I retained an expert guide who escorted me on an extensive personalised walking tour of Berlin over two days. This included the eerie experience of donning a hardhat and head torch to enter the pitch-black interior of the ruins of the Humboldthain Flak Tower, the only remaining example of three such “Flakturm” built during the war. These fortresses boasted three-meter-thick concrete walls and housed thousands of people during air raids. They also had huge cannons on their rooves to bring down enemy aircraft. The exhibits from various museums were stored in the tower erected near the Zoo. The tour (run by a speleology society) certainly gave me a taste of what it would have been like to shelter in one of these goliaths as Freyja did during the Soviet siege.

author Elisabeth Storrs

As you shared in your author’s note, the manuscript that became Fables & Lies had a very long gestation period. What kept you going, and what continued leading you back to it?

Ask my husband and he’ll tell you I am very persistent! I love escaping into both research and my imagination. The genesis for Fables & Lies was a contemporary novel I finished in 1994 after becoming fascinated with Schliemann’s life. At that time mystery shrouded the disappearance of Priam’s Treasure after the Soviets insisted it was lost in transit in the chaotic aftermath of the war. Various theories were postulated as to its whereabouts or destruction – including my rather improbable plot of locating it in suburban Sydney. Imagine my dismay (and delight) when I read in the newspaper the Russians admitted they’d hidden the treasure for nearly 50 years. My mystery became redundant and the manuscript was relegated to the bottom drawer.

Over the next ten or so years, I became obsessed with the Etruscans, which led to writing the three books in the A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. When those novels were finished, I was drawn yet again to Priam’s Treasure. How had it come to be in the Pushkin Museum? Why had the Russians lied about possessing it? I dusted off the manuscript to rewrite it as an historical novel covering the true story of the Trojan gold during WW2.

Researching a novel 30 years ago was a vastly different experience than now. Previously, I’d been limited to books in my local library. Now I had access via the internet to numerous German sources. Historians included the Axis viewpoint rather than presenting the war purely from the Western Allies’ perspective. I planned a simple plot featuring two female protagonists – a German woman (Freyja) striving to protect the treasure, and a Soviet Trophy Brigade Major whose mission was to steal it. However, when I learned about the SS Ahnenerbe, I was drawn to tell a more complex story exploring Himmler’s Master Plan. But I’m currently writing The Pinocchio Door which will finally reveal the Soviet side of the tale!

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Elisabeth Storrs has a great love for history and myths. She is the award-winning author of A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy which was endorsed by Ursula Le Guin, Kate Quinn and Ben Kane. Now her obsession lies with Trojan treasure and twisted Germanic prehistory in her new release, Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel. Elisabeth is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the $155,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize. She lives in Sydney with her husband in a house surrounded by jacarandas.

Connect with Elisabeth through her website or Triclinium blog. You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Bookbub. Subscribe to her newsletter for monthly inspirational interviews.

Bits and pieces of historical fiction news

Writing frequent pieces about books, brief reviews included, involves a lot of multitasking. At any given time, I’m typically reading one novel for review, finalizing the content for another before turning it in by the deadline, and serving as the editor for others’ reviews. Within the last few weeks, in addition to finishing up three reviews myself, I’ve been developing questions and working on intros for two upcoming author Q&As.

On top of that, I completed my service as a 2nd round judge for the Historical Novel Society’s 2026 First Chapters competition, which covered scoring and providing constructive feedback for fifteen entries, and wrapped up editorial work on the May issue of Historical Novels Review (plus my full-time librarian job). It has been an interesting but dizzying experience, shifting among multiple assignments within a short period of time. I have two more reviews to do by the end of April, so I’m not quite done yet with this reading marathon.

In other news:

My starred review of Maggie O’Farrell’s Land (Knopf, June) is out in Booklist’s April issue. I enjoyed her Hamnet and loved The Marriage Portrait, yet Land is even better. Opening on an isolated peninsula in western Ireland in 1865, and focusing on one family’s endurance of the tragic legacy of the Great Hunger and their deeply engrained, quasi-mystical relationship with their homeland, it feels like the novel she was born to write, and one only she could have written. One of her main characters is based on an ancestor who created maps for Britain’s Ordnance Survey in Ireland.

 

The Walter Scott Prize shortlist for 2026 has been announced, with five historical novels in contention for the £25,000 prize:

The Pretender by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury, UK/Knopf, US) - a pretender to the English throne during the Wars of the Roses
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury UK/US) - a nonspeaking young woman with autism in 1930s Vienna
Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon, UK; Biblioasis, Can/US) - the aftermath of murders in remote 19th-century Scotland
Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert (Virago, UK; no US edition) - secrets pervade a refugee camp in 1945 northern Germany
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking, UK; Scribner, US) - an unusual guest arrives in coastal northern England in the early ‘60s

All five are written by British authors, and the winner will be announced on June 12. This is a prestigious and well-funded prize. I haven’t read any of the five yet. In the past, I’ve had mixed luck with reading the winners and finalists; some I found superb (Hilary Mantel), while others felt too self-consciously literary for me.

I read Colin Mustful’s (publisher, History Through Fiction) Substack about the cost of running a historical fiction conference with interest. The first HTF conference, which was promoted as a small, intimate event, recently took place in Beverly, Massachusetts, and virtually. As the volunteer who handled finances and registration for the first four Historical Novel Society North American conferences (2005-11), I recognize many of the sentiments expressed in the post: a lot of hope that “if you build it, they will come!” plus a big initial learning curve, significant coordination and planning, and a diverse set of expenses. I’ve read many positive reports from attendees.

The New York Times has a feature article on Titanic fiction (gift link) by novelist Donna Jones Alward, whose latest, Ship of Dreams, fits the category. I remember a mini-trend of Titanic novels appearing in 2012, alongside the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, and the subject continues to grab readers’ attention. Among the ones on her list, I’ve read The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club, about a quirky mélange of individuals in pre-WWI Paris who have the distinction and good luck to have missed boarding the fatal voyage, and can recommend it.

And also from the NYT, an interview with Nelio Biedermann (gift link), whose debut novel Lázár (Summit/S&S, 2026) is a saga about an aristocratic Hungarian family. The author is a 22-year-old Swiss undergraduate student, and I hope to read the book in due course.

A woman's adventures in Gold Rush California: Mary Smathers' Unfamiliar Territory

Reinvention is the name of the game in Smathers’ fabulous epic of Gold Rush California, which sees her heroine, Juanita Castro de la Cruz, forced to reboot her life repeatedly while her forebears’ homeland changes before her eyes.

It’s 1850, and Juanita, proud daughter of a family of Californios (Hispanic settlers), flees the Monterey rancho previously owned by generations of Castros. Deciding she can no longer act as manager for her former lover, the yanqui who bought her late parents’ holdings, she heads on horseback toward her married sister’s home. Juanita’s goal: locate her teenage son, Joaquin, who she’d sent away before his resemblance to his Irish father became obvious to his father’s wife.

Her sister and brother-in-law are troubled. With the recent US invasion of California, they need to prove ownership of their land. They think she’s crazy for seeking Joaquin in the goldfields, so after translating some legal documents, Juanita steals her sister’s old dresses and silverware to sell and travels through a multicultural land whose future feels unsettled. “We were no longer Mexico, nor Spain,” she cogently explains later, “and that, in itself, was a terrifying mystery.”

Juanita’s inner strength seems designed for adventure, something this impeccably paced novel offers in plenty. From driving a mule train into the muddy chaos of mining towns to running a Sonoma boardinghouse, through mishaps and terrible danger, Juanita picks herself up again and again while accumulating a motley assortment of friends, including a would-be high-society San Francisco madam.

Every time Juanita visits the city, the changes are dramatic. Will she find Joaquin? Will she ever pay her sister back? While Juanita sometimes gets derailed, she never forgets her objectives. Full of color and incident, this on-the-ground view of early California through a brave woman’s eyes is a thoroughly entertaining trip.

Unfamiliar Territory was published in 2025 by the author’s own imprint, mks publishing, and I reviewed it initially for the Historical Novel Society. While it’s described as a sequel to In This Land of Plenty (2020), it reads fine on its own. I haven’t yet read the first book, which is a multigenerational novel opening in 2018 and focusing on a modern woman learning about her ancestry, after which a saga about California’s history unfolds. I plan on getting myself a copy. Juanita is listed on the family tree of that novel’s opening pages. The author, Mary Smathers, is a California native and bilingual writer who has also written children’s picture books in English and Spanish. I enjoyed reading her profile in Canvas Rebel, speaking about her background, perspectives on writing about historic California, and approach to writing and publishing. She also has a launch interview with the Historical Novel Society that posted today.

For readers in search of other recent novels about the courageous, independent women who populated the landscapes of the American and Canadian West, I recommend scanning through the website of Women Writing the West, which also offers an annual WILLA Literary Award in the historical fiction category. Indie-published and small press novels are well represented here, as they are in the winners and finalists of the Spur Awards from Western Writers of America.

Twenty years of Reading the Past: some highlights and reflections

I started posting regularly at Reading the Past twenty years ago this week, in late March 2006. This was during the heyday of blogging. The historical fiction blogosphere was a vibrant place, with new reviews going up daily and avid discussions taking place online across the globe.

The publishing industry didn’t know what to do with book bloggers, these so-called amateur reviewers who set their own rules and didn’t answer to an outside authority. Newspapers’ book sections were being eliminated (sound familiar?), and so the groundswell of individual, enthusiastic online voices could no longer be ignored. We had several hugely popular BookBloggerCons in NYC, held just before BookExpo at the Javits Center, as well as meet-and-greet opportunities where I met reviewers and publicists I’m still in touch with today. The book blogging community is awesome.

In some circles, though, bloggers weren’t exactly seen as respectable. Even by (especially by) many literary authors with new books out.

Writer Richard Ford, famously, had strong opinions about bloggers. To quote from the NYT article linked above (“Are Book Reviewers Out of Print,” Motoko Rich, May 2, 2007):

Of course literary bloggers argue that they do provide a multiplicity of voices. But some authors distrust those voices. Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. “Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,” Mr. Ford said, “in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.”

Living here in the Midwest, on the outskirts of a small university town 45 miles west of Terre Haute, this was starting to feel personal, but these comments were more galvanizing than discouraging. Reviewing skill isn’t based around geography. Bloggers continued to write and review as we’d always done.

A corner of my bookish basement in the rural Midwest. It’s not a bad place to be.

And now, a couple decades later, as publishers continue to adjust to the myriad ways books are being discussed and discovered, individual voices have become more important than ever.

Book blogs still exist, of course, though the terminology and format have adapted to reader preferences. I remember the first time, a few years ago, I got an email from someone saying she enjoyed my historical fiction newsletter. It hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that my blog had become a newsletter, but the posts did go out over email, so a newsletter it now was. I’m happy with that.

For this major anniversary, I decided to dig through the archive and highlight 20-odd posts that felt significant or memorable in some way, or at least representative of the different types of content I’d been writing. These are in no particular order. For longtime readers of this site, some may be familiar, but hopefully recaps from these older posts will draw your attention to interesting books you haven’t read before.

In 2010, I interviewed author Sarah Dunant about her novel Sacred Hearts, historical fiction about a reluctant new arrival to a convent in 16th-century Ferrara. This was pre-Zoom. For this low-tech interview, I phoned her at her hotel room on one of her US book tours (arranged through her publicist), and I scribbled things down as fast as I could.

Years ago, I wrote up a series of posts called “Reviews of Obscure Books,” covering novels that were super rare, long-forgotten, or both. I may revive it someday. Diana Norman’s witty and profound King of the Last Days, set during the reign of England’s Henry II, is a book I wish would be brought back into print. For a time it had been reissued as an ebook, I believe, but I can’t find it anymore. Her Adelia Aguilar medieval mysteries written as Ariana Franklin, set during the same era, are easier to find.

A favorite review, from 2007, for Jude Morgan’s The Taste of Sorrow, about the Brontë sisters. Loved this book! The US title of this novel is Charlotte and Emily (poor Anne, always getting left out).

All the historical novel titles you could ever need. Are we sensing a trend in book naming conventions here? This started with All the Light We Cannot See and went absolutely crazy.

In 2013, I took part in the online historical fiction course called Plagues, Witches, and War run by professor and historical novelist Bruce Holsinger from the University of Virginia. It was on the Coursera MOOC platform. This course is still free and still running, so if you’re in search of deeper background on the genre, its history, and its practitioners, I recommend it. As one of the course assignments, we were asked to describe a primary source we’d found in an archive and write about it. I found an interesting one housed at the Library of Congress website, but deeper investigation led me down an unexpected path. Read more at A Puritan Maiden’s Diary: The Early American Primary Source That Wasn’t. The title gives away my conclusion, and the research was fascinating. I emailed the LC afterward about the supposed primary source, and they removed it from their archive.

Sharyn McCrumb’s The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, set in the Blue Ridge Mountains during the Depression, is based on a real-life court case. I enjoy reading McCrumb’s novels not only because of her beautiful settings, but because they offer plenty to talk about, even if not everything works for me. Her The Ballad of Tom Dooley, based on a traditional Appalachian folk ballad, is another such.

Reading lists covering trends and other popular topics: women in science and math, Jewish historical fiction, women and WWII, the Tudor era, and books with memorable cover designs.

Unintentional travel-by-novel. I have a habit of doing this, visiting a place and discovering afterward that I’d recently bought a novel set there. Such was the case with Chris Nickson’s The Crooked Spire, set in medieval Chesterfield, England, and with Elizabeth St.John’s The Lady of the Tower, set partly at the Lydiard Park estate in Wiltshire. In the instance of Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, I visited Bletchley Park over a year before reading the novel, and memories of the trip definitely enhanced the reading experience.

Just because these are really good books: Lynn Cullen’s Twain’s End (about Samuel Clemens’ relationship with his secretary Isabel Lyon); Maryse Condé’s re-creation of her grandmother’s life, My Mother’s Mother; Sujata Massey’s The Widows of Malabar Hill, a mystery of 1920s Bombay (which now has many sequels); and Sally Gunning’s The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, one of the author’s winning historicals of colonial Massachusetts.

And to wrap things up, some more recommendations, all set in the agricultural regions and towns of the Midwest: Laird Hunt’s Zorrie, a woman’s ordinary yet uncommon life across 20th-century Indiana and Illinois; Laurie Loewenstein’s Unmentionables, in which a progressive female lecturer finds herself stuck in small-town Illinois in 1917; Michelle Hoover’s The Quickening, about women’s lives in the farming region of early 20th-century western Iowa; my interview with Rosslyn Elliott about Fairer than Morning, her inspirational romance set in Rushville, Ohio in the 1820s; The Island of Doves by Kelly O’Connor McNees, set on Mackinac Island (Michigan) in the 1830s; and Evergreen by Rebecca Rasmussen, who pairs her offbeat characters with a setting of the northern Minnesota backwoods in the late 1930s. If you think of this region as “flyover country,” read these novels to get a glimpse of the cultural history and fascinating stories found in smaller places.

Whether you’ve been visiting this site for twenty years or only the last twenty minutes, or something in between, thanks very much for reading.

A problem like Medea: Natalie Haynes and her new Greek myth retelling, No Friend to This House

Unless you’ve been chained to a rock off the Mediterranean coast for the past decade, you’ll likely have seen the growing cluster of new novels reinterpreting the lives of women (goddesses included!) from classical mythology. They look at the ancient tales through a female lens, allowing us into the perspectives of unfairly sidelined characters or those not granted sufficient voice by their original male authors. Andromeda, Circe, Ariadne, Aphrodite, Phaedra, Hera… they’ve all had their turn, some more than one.

The story of Medea poses a conundrum for a feminist reboot. The daughter of King Aietes of Colchis, she gave vital, magical help to Greek adventurer Jason after he and his Argonauts set sail to steal the golden fleece from her royal father. She also fell in love with Jason and wed him. Considered an barbarian foreigner after the couple moved back to Jason’s homeland, he abandoned her to pursue marriage with a princess of Corinth – after which Medea took drastic, violent revenge against him via their sons.

Medea is an infamous example of a bad mother. How do you rehabilitate that?

Enter Natalie Haynes: broadcaster, classicist, and experienced chronicler of other mythological lives via novels such as Stone Blind (2023), about the tragedy of Medusa, and A Thousand Ships, about the Trojan War’s women. No Friend to This House, a polyphonic tale like its predecessors, doesn’t so much reinvent Medea and other female figures from Euripides’ original text as much as bring them to the forefront and explore their actions and motivations. In doing so, she offers much to think about.

Haynes follows the myth’s standard outline, beginning with Jason’s sea voyage to distant Colchis, on the Black Sea. Departing from tradition, nearly all the viewpoints are female, and they switch off with each chapter. Those familiar with the source material are best equipped to follow the narrative thread through this labyrinth of stories. They all connect to Jason’s trip, not always to each other, so the uninitiated may find the telling a bit choppy – at least until Medea makes her first appearance, around halfway through.

With the men’s quest decentered, this approach allows for the discovery of interesting, previously tangential characters. Among them are the murderous women of Lemnos and the odd backstory to their crime. With deep grief and anger, a woman named Theophane shares a lament for her son, imprinting her forgotten existence (and his) on the reader’s memory:

No one speaks of the golden ram, they prefer to focus on what was important to Jason and his Argonauts: the golden fleece. Such a simple shift in emphasis, you scarcely notice a living creature becoming the remnant of a dead one. And perhaps you also don’t notice the small slip of the tongue, either? Because fleece is not the right word to use … [Jason] was on a quest to find the skin of the creature who wore it, a mythical creature, who was mine, my child, taken from me when he was still so new.

The dove sent to test the Argo’s passage between clashing rocks observes what she sees, as does the goddess who caused Medea’s terrible lovesickness for Jason. Likewise the river Phyllis, Medea’s sister Chalciope, and even the Argo herself. And many more.

As for Jason – the man Medea loves who so cruelly betrays her – he returns to Greece in valiant triumph, but as the years pass, he finds life as a former hero confusing and difficult. His ego is hungry, so he looks for people to feed it. It’s his fate to have his story seen through the female gaze in this revamped version, and the novel’s core tragedy ultimately turns on his actions.

You may be curious how Haynes handles the act that transformed Medea, in the popular mindset, from a sympathetic witch into a murderous one. No spoilers here, but the novel’s nail-biting finale fits with Haynes’s portrayal of this multifaceted and complex woman.

No Friend to This House was published by Harper (US/Canada) in March 2026, and by Mantle (UK) last September. This review is an expansion and substantial reworking of a much shorter review I’d written for Booklist which appeared in their February 1, 2026 issue.

Self-discovery in Tudor England, times two: Wendy J. Dunn's Shades of Yellow

If you love reading author’s notes in historical novels, learning about the background to writers’ research processes and the factors affecting their choices, Wendy J. Dunn’s Shades of Yellow will be an ideal choice for your TBR pile.

This uniquely constructed multi-period novel opens in 2010. Lucy Ellis is nearly done with the manuscript for her first novel, a work of biographical fiction about Amy Robsart, the heiress wife of English nobleman Robert Dudley. Amy’s shocking death and the resulting scandal – she was found with a broken neck at the bottom of a short staircase at her residence, Cumnor Place, in 1560 – put an end to his future marriage prospects with her rival for his affections, Queen Elizabeth I.

Dunn sets up interesting equivalences between her modern heroine and her 16th-century subject. Lucy is a breast cancer survivor, a disease Amy may have suffered from herself, and they were both betrayed by their husbands (Lucy’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Ben, cheated on her with her good friend). Lucy feels these similarities give her unique insight into Amy’s mindset, though she’s self-aware enough to question how much of herself she’s putting into her depiction of Amy.

A consummate researcher dedicated to historical accuracy (in other words, she’s a writer after our own heart), Lucy insists on flying from Australia to England for a six-week trip. She knows a firsthand view of Amy’s former haunts will add color and depth to her story, and she hopes to make it easier to visualize Amy living there in her own time.

But Lucy arrives across the globe under a cloud of worry. She has a small brain tumor, meaning her cancer may have returned, and her headaches are worsening. After they learn the truth, her friends and family are distraught that Lucy’s delaying her biopsy.

Readers may find Lucy’s choice unwise at best, but she’s a determined woman. Lucy presses on with her novel regardless, perhaps sensing it may be too late if she doesn’t seize every moment to complete it. At the same time, Lucy faces memories from her own past, including that of a long-ago teenage romance, and persistent emails from her estranged husband.

The stakes are high in both accounts, as the two women strive to take control of their lives as best they're able. In recounting the parallel journeys of both Lucy and Amy, Shades of Yellow doesn’t use the story-within-a-story structure we’re most familiar with, but something more original and effective in showing how a historical novel comes to be.

The scenes involving Amy don’t always occur in chronological order but arise organically via Lucy’s writing journey and as she reads parts of her manuscript to family members, including her English grandfather, himself a writer.

We see Amy in the afterlife, speaking with her Angel, desperate for a word from her husband now that he’s also passed into the beyond. As Lucy visits Amy’s burial site, we see Amy kneeling in church, desperate and frightened, while Lucy tunes into the emotions she senses from that mental image and gains new understanding about her subject. Amy as an adolescent, during her first bloom of love with her Rob. Amy on her last day of life, sending her servants away. And in the modern strand, Lucy revises her book, pens new chapters, considers new angles, adjusts her timeline, fills in “these vast gaps of unknowing with her imagination.” 

It all gets wonderfully meta. Lucy’s grandfather questions why Amy’s guardian angel needs to be included (“So, you’re certain you want to write a more experimental historical novel?”), and Lucy ponders a suggestion from her grandfather’s literary agent, who spurs her to consider adding a witchcraft thread to attract an editor. “How on Earth do I weave these witches into my story without having to pull everything apart?” she thinks.

Walking through Tudor England on two levels, both firsthand and via the stories revealed later through its artifacts, is an affecting, multi-dimensional experience. Not all answers are forthcoming, which seems appropriate for a novel presenting the ways that people come to grips with the unknown.

Shades of Yellow was published by Other Terrain Press (Australia) in September 2025.

A passionate woman's pursuit of love and art: Orange Wine

For Inés Camargo de Scala, a young wife and mother in early 20th-century Colombia, certain things have always come easy. The youngest daughter of five in a blended family, she’s beautiful and artistically talented and has no problem attracting men.

She has more trouble maintaining relationships, like with her ordinary-looking sisters and with her romantic partners. She also runs afoul of the Catholic church, even though her path into a “sinful” life was caused by someone else. Married to a handsome guitar player who soon reveals himself as a hot-tempered slacker, Inés struggles to balance her pursuit of love with societal expectations.

Described by the author as inspired by her grandparents, Inés’s story takes place mostly in the small town of Paipa (“located in a part of Colombia that few people visit more than once”) and the capital of Bogotá, intermingled with whirlwind trips to Europe.

From the opening pages, in which Inés leaves her bed after childbirth to discover her husband, Alessandro, has run off with her sister, it feels we’ve entered an Isabel Allende-style generational saga of women’s self-actualization, complete with family ghosts and claims of second sight.

The style here, however, sets it apart. Inés’s narration is unpretentious and brisk, reading like an idiosyncratic memoir. She dwells much on her emotions, but it’s hard to feel the impact of pivotal life events when they’re skimmed over in a few paragraphs. Inés’s children get little opportunity to show personality; likewise for her unmarried sisters, who work for a living while Inés inherits the family mansion.

The sense of place is strong, creating appeal for readers who enjoy uncommon settings, but the timeframe feels indistinct. More fleshed-out situations and characterizations—and more showing instead of telling—would have lent the novel more weight. That said, it holds one’s attention well and makes eloquent points about gender-based double standards.

Orange Wine (Bindery Books, Sept. 2025) is the author's debut novel, and I'd reviewed it originally for the Historical Novel Society. The author is a native of Bogotá, Colombia and now lives in the US.

The press has a publishing model that's been gaining attention. Bindery Books, based in San Francisco, incorporates online influencers (called "tastemakers") into key roles in the acquisitions and marketing process. In addition to hosting a membership platform for bookish communities and content discovery, they've offered tastemakers with significant followings the power to create their own branded imprints, with support from the press. Their site lists 12 such imprints, and Orange Wine is published under the Mareas imprint, which has published five books so far. Alongside traditional marketing and publicity from the press (I discovered this book on NetGalley), the tastemaker promotes their books to their social media followers.  

Read more at an article from the Los Angeles Times from Feb. 18th: Malia Mendez, "This publisher enlists 'bookfluencers' to choose its titles. Is it working?"  The press aims to support underrepresented voices through this model, and unlike with many publishers, the authors aren't expected to shoulder any marketing load. I imagine many will find this a refreshing change.

Orange Wine was an agented submission to the press, as are two-thirds of all submissions, per the LA Times article. With the strong Gen Z involvement and vibe, fantasy (including historical fantasy and romantasy), SF, gothics, and contemporary fiction are well-represented in their list, mainstream historical fiction not so much, aside from this one example.  Even though aspects of this book didn't work for me, I'm interested to see what the press does next and am midway through watching a fascinating video from Marines, the tastemaker who chose Orange Wine, who speaks about her selection process and what she's learned about the industry.

A preview of spring & summer 2026 in historical fiction

It’s already been a long winter. The weather here in east central Illinois has perked up a bit recently, which has me looking forward to spring and summer. (My commiserations with those back east who are still digging out from the huge snowstorm; winter isn’t over here yet either.) In terms of historical fiction, the coming months offer a good variety of upcoming novels. Below are sixteen that looked especially enticing. Usually for these previews I feature either ten or twelve books, but I had trouble limiting myself. They’re in order by publication date. I’ve read three of them so far.

The Lost Girl of Craven County, Emily Matchar (Putnam)
Release date: April 14
New Bern, North Carolina, has had a small Jewish community for centuries; I appreciate learning about lesser-known Jewish history via fiction. Set during the Depression, Matchar’s second novel (after In the Shadow of the Greenbrier) is a historical mystery about a young woman from New Bern’s Little Jerusalem and a shocking discovery she makes.

Margery & Me, Maryka Biaggio (Regal House)
Release date: April 21
Biaggio writes historical novels based on real people (see her earlier guest posts on this site: The Risks of Writing about Real Historical Figures and Fidelity to the Truth in Biographical Fiction). Her latest should interest anyone fascinated by the spiritualist movement in 1920s America, as it looks closely at psychic medium Margery Crandon, a woman previously unfamiliar to me, and Harry Houdini’s determination to debunk her.

The House of Boleyn, Tracy Borman (Hodder & Stoughton/Atlantic Monthly)
Release date: April 23 (UK); August 4 (US) 

Have you been noticing a mini-Tudor renaissance in fiction? In a decades-spanning generational saga, historian Borman zooms in on Anne Boleyn’s family story, starting when her determined father arrives at Henry VIII’s court in 1509.

Edmonia, Brianne Baker (Dafina/Kensington)
Release date: April 28
Baker’s debut is biographical fiction about Black-Ojibwe sculptor Edmonia Lewis, a woman whose artistic accomplishments and eventful life and travels deserve greater attention. In mid-February, Lewis was the subject of an article in the New York Times written as a lead-up to a new museum exhibition about her work.

Mrs. Benedict Arnold, Emma Parry (Zando)
Release date: April 28
Literary agent Parry investigates the inner life and motives of Peggy Shippen of Philadelphia, aka Mrs. Benedict Arnold, in a novel that asks how large a role she played in her husband’s treason. Having read and enjoyed Allison Pataki’s The Traitor’s Wife, I look forward to this new retelling.

A Founding Mother, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie (William Morrow)
Release date: May 5
A timely publication for the semiquincentennial (a word you’ll be seeing frequently this year) of America’s founding, Dray and Kamoie’s latest collaborative biographical novel focuses on Abigail Adams: wife and mother of presidents and a smart political voice in her own right.

Daughters of the Tide, Arianne James (HQ/HarperCollins Australia)
Release date: May 26
A gothic family mystery (and a debut) set in 1920s Tasmania, featuring a seaside mansion and eerie dreams of seals and selkies. It won’t be spring in Australia when it’s released, but it’s expected out in a few months wherever you’re located.

A Fortune of Sand, Ruta Sepetys (Ballantine)
Release date: May 26
The adult debut from an author celebrated for her YA historicals. During Prohibition, Marjorie Lennox, youngest daughter in an eccentric, wealthy family from the Detroit suburbs, stumbles into odd mysteries when she accepts an artistic residency. I’ve just finished this; all I’ll say for now is that I’m glad to have read it early, without having seen any spoilery reviews online.

Land, Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf/Tinder Press)
Release date: June 2
O’Farrell may be best known for Hamnet these days, but Land – her most ambitious novel – is different in scope and more personal. It covers, primarily, the decades after Ireland’s Great Hunger and centers on the uncanny aftermath of a quiet man’s mapmaking trip to western Ireland.

Children of the Wild, Kevin Powers (Harper)
Release date: June 9
WWII novels proliferate; there are noticeably fewer WWI novels. This work of literary fiction tells the story of three young people from the mountains of rural Virginia whose lives, overseas and at home, are altered with the world at war.

Daughters of the Sun and Moon, Lisa See (Scribner)
Release date: June 9
See writes gorgeous novels about women in Chinese and Chinese American history. Her new novel opens in Los Angeles in 1870, when anti-Chinese prejudice was pervasive, and follows three different women beginning new lives there.

Mrs. Dickens, Emily Howes (Phoenix/W&N UK)
Release date: June 11
Posterity hasn’t always been kind to Charles Dickens’ wife, Catherine (Kate), whom—after a loving start to their marriage and many children—he left for another woman and tried to have committed. Howes’ (The Painter’s Daughters) second novel illuminates Kate’s viewpoint as a wronged woman and cookbook author. Per the author’s website, recipes are included. No US edition that I could locate, though I’m happy to be corrected.

Consider the Ravens, Cressida Downing (No Exit Press)
Release date: July 16
This first in a new series set on Holy Island – Lindisfarne, off England’s northeast coast – in the late 15th century features a female scribe, her secret past, a monastery, and murder. Lindisfarne is a beautiful, memorable place that I’m eager to revisit via fiction.

The Story Keeper, Kelly Rimmer (MIRA)
Release date: July 21
Rimmer’s dual-period Australian gothic centers on a crumbling mansion called Wurimbirra, the modern art restorer who purchases her childhood home, a long-lost manuscript, and the family secrets it dredges up. Its title is The Midnight Estate in Australia and the UK. 

Runner, Ashton Lattimore (Ballantine)
Release date: July 28
Lattimore’s debut novel, All We Were Promised, was a fast-moving tale of Black women’s friendship in 1830s Philadelphia. In Runner, set during Prohibition, a young Black woman turns rumrunner along the northeastern seaboard, taking her father’s place after his suspicious death.

The Ladies Hall, Vanessa Miller (Thomas Nelson)
Release date: August 11
The origin story of three future civil rights leaders—Black women of different backgrounds who became classmates and friends while attending Oberlin College in the 1880s. Based on a true story. After reading the author’s previous novel The Filling Station, about two sisters in the aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, this one is on my list.

Back in Kansas, darkly: a review of Gordon McAlpine's After Oz

Sequels to classic literature can vary in quality. At one end is lightweight fan fiction that pales in comparison to the work it continues. On the other, we find clever gems that honor the originals while leading us in unconsidered directions … novels that affect what we take away from the stories they’re based upon.

Gordon McAlpine’s After Oz is one of the latter. It’s a grimly atmospheric tale, a rural noir that opens in one genre and spirals into another, thanks to the foresight of one of its main characters. Some of the twists it takes are unexpected, but its most surprising aspect may be that Dorothy Gale, the delightful eleven-year-old girl who was front and center in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and the movie adaptation), has little on-page time.

How would the residents of an insular Kansas settlement, circa 1896, react when an orphaned child raised by an elderly couple mysteriously reappears on a neighbor’s property, unharmed, four days after a destructive tornado swept through the prairie? McAlpine took this question for his premise and ran with it, crafting an edgy story about small-town prejudice and harmful delusions.

Dorothy doesn’t waver from her story of meeting talking animals and visiting an emerald city. She speaks of befriending a good witch and killing a wicked one, completely by accident, by throwing water at her. The girl’s nonsensical remarks have the townsfolk, especially the local reverend, concerned about her state of mind—especially when she proclaims, blasphemously, that “not all witches are bad.”

Things worsen after a reclusive spinster in her fifties—a crotchety woman nobody much liked—is found dead in her home. Hearing Dorothy’s comments about having “melted” a witch, the authorities get involved, and all’s not looking good for the young girl. Not only does she have visions they find demonic, but she may be a murderer.

The narration alternates between an unnamed resident of Sunbonnet, Kansas, who hardly emulates the Christian values he espouses—or maybe the collective voice of many such residents; it isn’t clear—and a 28-year-old psychologist from back East, Dr. Evelyn Grace Wilford. She arrives in town to interview Dorothy for her research after learning about her case from her cousin, a Chicago-based newspaper reporter. Readers of classic literature should recognize his name.

There are no chapter headings to distinguish their sections, but there’s really no trouble telling the two voices apart. With Dorothy’s Aunt Emily ill after a stroke, and her uncle taking to the bottle after his farm was obliterated, Evelyn realizes she’s the only person who can save Dorothy from permanent institutionalization—and the only way to do so is discover who killed poor Alvina Clough herself.

And so we find ourselves in a murder mystery with Evelyn as detective, sorting through whatever clues she can discern. Not a simple task as a woman and an outsider in an unfamiliar, close-knit place, but she willingly takes up the role she needs to play. Those with malign intent, of course, fail to recognize their villainy. Many villains don’t.

Part of the ending is a bit far-fetched and doesn’t feel necessary, but among literary sequels, this stands out for its complex plotting and originality. Sadly, the author passed away three years before his final novel, After Oz, was published.

Gordon McAlpine's After Oz appeared from Crooked Lane in 2024 (reviewed from a personal copy).

Gish Jen's genre-bending novel about her Chinese immigrant mother (and herself), Bad Bad Girl

As she details in the beginning of her fictionalized memoir, the author, Gish Jen, was constantly scapegoated by her mother, Agnes, who was born into a well-to-do banking family in Shanghai in 1925 and died in New York during Covid. Why did a woman treated so dismissively by her own mother, and who endured difficulties throughout her life, act so harshly toward Gish, her American-born daughter?

“Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk.” This refrain echoes from one generation to another, directed toward females too outspoken to be controlled.

Within this book, Jen performs an extraordinarily generous act, seeking to understand the circumstances that shaped Agnes and the origins of their troubled history. She invents storylines and motivations when needed, since her mother remained tight-lipped about much of her background.

Through Jen’s first-person voice, her mother’s story unfolds, interspersed with imagined conversations between them: Gish gently probing for explanations, and Agnes reacting to her writing choices— “tactful as a sledgehammer,” judgmental, and silently vulnerable in turn.

Named Loo Shu-hsin, her mother grows up knowing her sex is a disappointment. She adores books and receives an education at a modern Catholic school, where she’s renamed for St. Agnes. Her childhood nursemaid’s abrupt firing remains a traumatic memory.

She bravely boards a ship for America in her twenties, alone, to pursue a PhD, never returning to China; overwhelmed with childcare soon after her marriage, she also never finishes her doctorate, a constant regret. Abandoning her past isn’t easy, since letters from her family, wanting money and trapped during the Communist takeover, frequently arrive, using discreet language for their self-protection.

Some later sections, breezing through years at a stretch, read rather dry. But this unique account, which is pointed and unguardedly honest, shows how fiction can illuminate truths too complex and deep-rooted to be spoken.

I reviewed this novel originally for the Historical Novels Review.  You may be wondering about the original cover design. Having read the book, I think it perfectly captures the novel's themes: two individuals, intertwined with one another in a difficult relationship they can't escape. Yet both still exult in their own freedom of thought, as shown through the lines of a Tang Dynasty poem spoken by the novel's characters:

Goose, goose, goose!
You lift your neck to the sky and sing--
White down bobbing on the green water,

Red feet pedaling the clear waves.

Gish Jen's Bad Bad Girl was published by Knopf in October 2025. The UK publisher is Granta.

The historical fiction winners at ALA's Book & Media Awards for 2026, and more

At the end of January, the American Library Association and its RUSA (Reference & User Services Association) division announced the winners of their Book and Media Awards. I’ve posted about these awards annually. The judging is done by librarians, and many historical novels usually land in the winners’ circle. I haven’t participated on committees for these awards, but friends and colleagues have in the past.

The Reading List honors works of adult fiction within eight genre categories. The 2026 winner for Historical Fiction is These Heathens by Mia McKenzie (Random House). I loved this book (read my earlier review) and am excited to see it receiving this accolade. These Heathens is a coming-of-age story in which a Black seventeen-year-old girl from 1960s rural Georgia has her eyes opened to civil rights activism and the wide diversity of life experiences when she travels to Atlanta to seek an abortion.

At the time I posted my review last August, I’d added: “I haven't heard much about this novel in the online historical fiction community and wanted to highlight it.” This award should give the book some well-deserved attention.

On the shortlist for Historical Fiction on the Reading List are these four novels:

Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier (medieval France)
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (contemporary and late 19th-c North Carolina)
The Last Witch by C. J. Cooke (15th-century Austria)
The Pretender by Jo Harkin (late 15th-century England)

All five (!) were published by Random House imprints.

On ALA’s Notable Books list, among many other works, is Milo Todd’s The Lilac People (Counterpoint), focusing on the queer community in postwar Germany, people who were persecuted by the Nazis, and then, after the war, by the Allies.

The 2026 Sophie Brody Medal, which recognizes Jewish literature, was awarded to Allison Epstein’s Fagin the Thief (Doubleday), which reimagines Dickens’ Oliver Twist through the eyes of Jacob Fagin.

On the Listen List for excellence in audiobook narration is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (S&S), narrated by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, and Owen Teale – a historical horror/vampire novel set on the Blackfeet reservation.

Congrats to all of the awardees!

Compared to previous years, fewer historical novels were among the winners for 2026, so I thought I’d use this space to highlight something else that’s RUSA-related. RUSA has a section called CODES (Collection Development and Evaluation Section), for issues related to collection development, readers' advisory, and publishing. Librarians love their acronyms.

For many years, RUSA CODES has had an annual award for book reviewing, the Louis Shores Award. (Which is slated for potential discontinuation due to ALA’s plans to streamline its operations for financial reasons, but that’s another sad story.) I’ve been involved with the Louis Shores Award at multiple levels: initially as a grateful recipient (2012), then later as a multi-year selection committee member (2019-21) and more.

Adding to his list of recognitions, Ron Charles, longtime book critic for the Washington Post, received the Louis Shores Award in 2018. The committee made an excellent choice. I’m a admirer of his witty, entertaining, and astute reviews, which I always enjoy even if some of the books reviewed wouldn’t ordinarily have matched my interests. As many in the literary community have learned, with shock and sorrow, he and the entire staff of the WaPo’s books section were laid off, along with 300 other journalists with the paper, on Wednesday morning. This is a big loss to literary culture; WaPo’s Book World and Ron Charles’s weekly Book Club newsletter are very highly regarded by so many readers, librarians, authors, publicists, and more. He’s making a new home at Substack, and I’ve subscribed there. He and other fine writers let go from the paper will be getting the support I once gave to my now-lapsed WaPo subscription. If you appreciate high-quality book reviews and commentary, I recommend his site. 

Are we ready for historical fiction set in the '80s?

Because publishers and many readers have already gone there.




In the last couple of weeks, a couple of emails about forthcoming books hit my inbox, prompting the subject of this post. I saw this novel, May Cobb’s All the Little Houses, on Readworthy from BookBub’s List of the Best Historical Mysteries for January:



The same day, Penguin Random House sent out a website link with their Most Anticipated Historical Fiction for 2026. The books offer an assortment of time periods and locales, including Colson Whitehead’s latest, due out in July.



Both are described as set in the 1980s.

A 50-year rule is often used to define historical fiction (that is to say, fiction set at least 50 years before the time of writing), but individual readers may prefer a shorter (or longer) window. The Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards have been working with a different definition for some time; while I don’t know exactly what their limits are, their Historical Fiction category winners and nominees have included books set in the ‘80s (Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere, 2025 winner) and even the ‘90s (Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise, 2025 nominee; Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto is Back, 2022 winner).

The people making those categorizations are probably from a younger generation than I am.

Technically, even if you do go by the 50-year rule, the 1980s are approaching fast in historical fiction’s rear-view mirror. The year 1976 was fifty years ago. At the same time, going by the comments on a post I’d written last summer about a current historical fiction trend, for some of those who lived through and remember the ‘60s, it can be hard to accept that that era now fits within the standard HF umbrella.

Along these lines, I read a recent post on Leigh Stein’s Attention Economy Substack with great interest. She writes how today’s readers are seeking escape (given current events from 2026, who can blame them?), and editors at publishing houses want to deliver. And their desire for when to escape to can be generational. To quote:

The historical fiction market is evolving. The next time you’re in Barnes and Noble, count how many historical novels you can find. The golden era of World War II novels with covers depicting women walking away with planes overhead is over […]

When I think of historical fiction, I am always thinking of the age of the reader, and whether she’s reading to understand the era that shaped her mother, or whether she’s reading for nostalgia. A baby boomer in 2015 picked up a World War II novel to read about a time when her parents were young adults. The younger boomers and the older Gen Xers are reading Lessons in Chemistry and Kristin Hannah’s The Women.

Aging millennials have Atmosphere (set in the 1980s, when our moms were our age!) and they are also experiencing the onset of nostalgia: see Deep Cuts, which opens in 2000. I know it’s painful to think of the 2000s as “historical” because you’re still twenty-seven in your heart, but as millennials proceed through their forties, we’re going to see more nostalgia for the 2000s and 2010s.

For me, a solid Gen Xer, the 1980s would be my “nostalgia” decade. There are many disastrous events of national or international significance from that time; the '80s included the AIDS crisis, Chernobyl, and the Challenger explosion (sadly 40 years ago this week; I was one of many kids home from school that day who saw it live on TV). But when it comes to the pop culture that characterized the '80s, I can understand “nostalgia” better. We had mixtapes, MTV, great movies, video games that seem so rudimentary compared to what we have now, the freedom to play outside unsupervised as long as we were home by dinner (my friends and I rode our bikes for miles), Flashdance-style sweatshirts and leg warmers, the days of BITNET (a precursor to the web) when everything was text-based and took forever but was still fun since it was so new. The big hair, shoulder pads, and peer pressure are things I kind of hated, but they’re hallmarks of the time for me, like it or not.

(One reason the '80s will never die is because of all the hair spray holding them in place.)

I can understand the appeal of reading novels set in the '80s even though, mixed in with all the fashion excesses and pop culture, fiction for adults—rather than the YA I was back then—tends to deal with more complex topics. Like the bigger political and social events mentioned above. Plus we have the winding down of the Cold War, which caused widespread optimism at the end of the '80s; the ups and downs of yuppie culture; the early '80s recession; and women gaining political power.  Back then, Roe v. Wade was still in effect, we had little to no digital presence to be constantly tracked, and we weren't glued to our cell phones.  In short, times were very different.

A few months ago, I’d reviewed a novel, Tamar Shapiro’s Restitution, that moved between the 1950s, 1989, and the early 2000s, about a family both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was eye-opening to see that middle period – which I lived through but didn’t impact me personally – through a new lens.

This is all worth considering when envisioning the factors that drive trends in historical fiction. Even if they don’t seem all that long ago, the ‘80s are coming for readers, and they’ve already started to land. Do you feel ready?