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The Extraordinary Florence Stoker, Karen Brooks (HQ Fiction)
Release date: September 1
Biographical fiction about a Victorian woman who deserves to be better known: salon hostess, former fiancée of Oscar Wilde, wife of Dracula’s author, and fierce defender of her family’s rights and legacy. Many of Brooks’s previous historical novels had an American publisher, though it looks like this title from Australia (where it will be spring rather than fall in September) is available just as an ebook in North America and the UK currently.
The Pirate Queen, Ariel Lawhon (Doubleday)
Release date: September 8
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a major new novel about Grace (Gráinne) O’Malley, so-named Pirate Queen of 16th-century Ireland; her exploits were also dramatized by Morgan Llywelyn in her epic Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas (1986) and several others. Lawhon, who writes about daring real-life women, is heading further back into the past with this retelling about an Irish chieftain’s daughter who takes to the sea to defend her people against Queen Elizabeth’s invading English fleet. I’ve read and reviewed Lawhon’s previous three novels and am eagerly awaiting this one.
Silk and Sensibility, Mengxi Seeley (Shadow Mountain)
Release date: September 15
Re-imaginings and continuations of Jane Austen’s classic novels aren’t hard to find. Compared to Pride and Prejudice, her Sense and Sensibility hasn’t had as many spinoffs, and perhaps none as original in concept as this. Seeley sets her debut novel in Ming-dynasty China and focuses on two sisters of marriageable age who have different ideals about pursuing romance amid family and societal expectations.
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Doom Painting, A. K. Blakemore (Granta)
Release date: September 24
In late 14th-century England, the social order is beginning to erupt due to widespread social and economic inequality. Blakemore’s literary epic of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when a contingent of rebels from the countryside journeyed to London to demand redress from the child-king Richard II, spans nearly 600 pages. This is the author’s third novel. For North American readers, Scribner will publish it in April 2027.
Beneath a Fallen Sky, Scott Gould (Regal House)
Release date: September 29
In the southern Appalachians of northern Alabama in May 1910, the arrival of Halley’s Comet is imminent, which has local residents quaking that the world’s about to end. If so, how do they choose to approach what could be their last days? I’m interested to see the uncommon setting and how the characters react; plus, having worked at a planetarium/observatory during Halley’s Comet’s arrival in 1986, the topic is of personal interest.
The French Innkeeper’s Daughter, Diane McPhail (Kensington)
Release date: September 29
From rural Normandy to politically volatile early 18th-century Paris and the New World, McPhail’s latest Southern historical follows a bold woman on her travels via land and sea to become one of the earliest residents of the city of New Orleans.
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Istanbul Dreaming, Denise Derya Brandt (She Writes)
Release date: September 29
This debut, which comes with blurbs from Marjan Kamali and Nadia Hashimi, focuses on a young Turkish woman who lands in Istanbul in the 1950s to evade her arranged marriage with her abusive husband, and the additional complications that arise when she falls in love with an American man.
The Nurse at Baker Hospital, Jocelyn Cullity (Regal House)
Release date: October 6
Disturbing happenings are afoot at a hospital for cancer patients in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, something nurse Della King discovers when she arrives for what she hopes is a wonderful job opportunity. This caught my eye with its storyline about a woman uncovering medical fraud as well as the publisher itself; everything I’ve read from Regal House so far (five historical novels) has been top-notch.
Murder on 34th Street, Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
Release date: October 6
I enjoy Fredericks’ historical mysteries, both her Jane Prescott novels and her later standalone titles, like The Wharton Plot. New York City should be getting in the holiday spirit at the time of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but in 1932, someone’s threatening the life of the man who portrays Santa Claus. When tragedy strikes, the woman who organizes Macy’s operations behind the scenes is on the case to discover whodunit. Reader reports describe this as a cozy, nostalgic mystery.
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The Housekeeper, Rose Tremain (Harper)
Release Date: October 6
Origin stories of classic novels are perennially popular, and Tremain’s newest novel about the backstory to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca should ignite interest for multiple reasons. It centers on the forbidden affair between a housekeeper at a mansion on Cornwall’s coast and the visiting Du Maurier. A star-studded film version is already in production. Reading this one now.
The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Scribner)
Release date: October 6
In small-town Oklahoma in the 1920s, a wealthy moonshiner with an eye for the ladies is dead, and the four women he left behind become suspects in his murder. Which of their stories is the truth? The debut novel from the multi-award-winning author of the short story collection Heads of the Colored People.
Flyweight, Courtney Ellis (Blackstone)
Release date: October 20
A change of subject (though not era) for the third historical novel from Ellis, whose first two books were romantic family sagas centered on WWI and its aftermath. Flyweight, set in East London in the early 1920s, looks at two female pugilists – the owner of a boxing ring and a married woman who develops an unexpected talent for the sport – who risk societal disapproval if they pursue their interests.
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Royal Witch, Philippa Gregory (William Morrow)
Release date: October 20
Lately, Gregory’s novels have been hit or miss for me; I enjoyed her Fairmile series but passed on reading Boleyn Traitor, her retake (2025) on Jane Boleyn’s life. Royal Witch moves to a less familiar subject with its portrait of Eleanor Cobham, an English knight’s daughter who rose to become mistress, then wife, of the Duke of Gloucester, powerful uncle of the young Henry VI in the 15th century. Did she use necromancy to further her ambitions? We’re in prime Gregory territory here, and I’m intrigued.
Queen of Lombard Street, Lisa Kleypas (Avon)
Release date: October 20
I’ve been a library subject selector for Economics for 20+ years, so I look out for novels where my specialty and historical fiction overlap. There aren’t many (Hernan Diaz’s Trust is one). So I immediately grabbed an ARC of this upcoming work about a half-Spanish female economist with the ambition to build a bank for women, at a time and place (Victorian England) when women couldn’t open bank accounts of their own. Kleypas is best known for historical and contemporary romances; this is her first big mainstream historical.
The Stolen Women, Alysandra Dutton (Park Row)
Release date: October 27
Readers’ passion for classical myth retellings continues unabated, and this story is less familiar than many. Dutton’s debut novel, set just before Rome was founded, delves into the story of the Sabine women who vanished from their homes, a fact their fathers mysteriously deny, and an enterprising pair who want to locate and rescue them.
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The Lost Kingdom of Daughters, Weina Dai Randel (Lake Union)
Release date: November 1
The Moso people of remote, mountainous southwestern China are an ethnic minority whose society is based in matrilineal traditions. (This BBC article about them shows the region’s gorgeousness: China’s Kingdom of Women.) Randel, known for illuminating aspects of Chinese history, has written a new novel about a woman of the Moso who finds her affections divided by two American brothers who arrive as strangers to her land. The blurb promises a multigenerational saga starting in the 1950s.
The Unfinished Work, Jeff Shaara (St. Martin’s)
Release date: November 10
Shaara is especially known for his expertise on the American Civil War and his ability to turn its battles and personalities into realistic, page-turning narratives. In his latest, he focuses on Abraham Lincoln, examining his public and private personas from November 1860, as a first-time President, through his famed Gettysburg Address... venturing into moments infrequently covered in history books. Living here in the Land of Lincoln, this will be a must-read for me.
The Last Prince of Florence, Zoe Sivak (Berkley)
Release date: November 17
Based on historical figures, Sivak’s sophomore novel (after Mademoiselle Revolution) tells the story of Simonetta, the mother of Alessandro de’Medici, first duke of the Florentine Republic. As a dark-skinned woman of African descent, Simonetta has a liaison with a son of the powerful Medicis and strives desperately to see her illegitimate son as Florence’s ruler.
And if you missed my preview of spring and summer historicals for 2026, please feel free to visit the earlier post; most of the books included are available now.
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