The countess and her protégée: Royal Witch by Philippa Gregory

In Royal Witch, Philippa Gregory—an advocate for revivifying lesser-known historical women’s lives—presents a female character deserving of prominent attention for her courage, unerring confidence in her position’s righteousness, and determination to pursue justice for herself in a male world. She was an English royal duchess by marriage, an alliance designed to bolster her strength against her enemies.

The story of Jacqueline, Countess of Hainault, is a revelation, a treasure trove for any novelist¹, and Gregory recounts it smartly and with nuance.

Jacqueline is not, however, the novel’s protagonist, a role given to the woman who becomes her lady-in-waiting, protégée, and eventual replacement as wife to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in the 15th century.

Pub. by William Morrow (US/Can), HarperCollins (UK)

Eleanor Cobham² is likewise sterling material for fiction, given her remarkable rise from relative obscurity to second lady of the realm during the Hundred Years’ War. Then, following accusations of treasonable necromancy (!) against the king, she swiftly fell into disgrace and out of public view. In Gregory’s interpretation, the book’s title is apt and accurate.

The prolific Gregory, of course, has featured witchy women before, including in an early novel, The Wise Woman (1992)³. In her author’s note⁴ for Royal Witch, she shares her longtime interest in Cobham and that she’d persuaded her friend, historian David Baldwin, to pen Cobham’s biography, which was left unfinished at his death. Gregory inherited his manuscript and, expressing gratitude to him, explains that she incorporated the material into what she calls “one of my most fictional novels.”⁵

Jacqueline and Eleanor: their tales are inextricably entwined. Their interpersonal dynamics shed light on who they are, and their linked stories create a novel that’s refreshingly new in parts, weighted with tropes in others.

Eleanor’s narration begins promisingly, as a young woman who craftily engineers a way out of a future in a convent. In 1421, she travels to Henry V’s royal court with the goal of catching a noble husband. She attaches herself to Countess Jacqueline, who’s in London seeking a champion. The heiress to her late father’s lands in the Low Countries and what’s now northern France, Jacqueline sees her rightful inheritance challenged by her estranged husband and her cousin, the Duke of Burgundy. The situation is complex: England’s at war with France, with Burgundy as England’s ally, making Jacqueline’s demands inconvenient.

Then an unexpected death throws England into turmoil. Gregory steers through the political maze with precision and clarity. Humphrey of Gloucester, King Henry’s youngest brother, takes up Jacqueline’s cause out of chivalry (or so Eleanor initially perceives) and later marries her—an act of questionable legality.

Through Eleanor’s first-person narrative, we follow her, Jacqueline, Humphrey, and his English army across the channel, their travels strikingly illustrated via scenes of the land’s cities and towns. Their varied customs are a pleasure to discover. Seeing Jacqueline’s pride in her own leadership and her elegant palace at Le Quesnoy, Eleanor swells with ambition, envisioning a model for what she herself could be. But Jacqueline’s strong, single-minded manner—it’s unwomanly—causes her husband to take offense. This grants Eleanor an opening.

She laughs shortly. ‘How many people does he need to fuss over him?’
I smile. ‘He’s a prince,” I remind her. “He needs a court full of people fussing over him.’
‘Yes, do,” she says. “You remember the wifely things I can’t be bothered with.’

Back in England, Eleanor takes advantage of her position by maneuvering her way to high levels of power, a status beyond her wildest hopes. Yet her objectives turn dark and viciously spiteful after a perceived personal betrayal, a motive that's purely fictional. The herbalist Margery Jourdemayne, an enjoyable character, is one of many drawn into her evil web. Meanwhile, a secret relationship that later gives rise to the Tudor dynasty unfolds in a well-conceived subplot.

It’s one thing to depict Eleanor’s transformation from ambitious naivete to cold shrewdness, a progression that Gregory handles well. But it’s another to have her heroine devolve into stereotype, with lines like: “This is the moment I have waited for and the time to make my move” and “I want you to make dark magic… the darkest of the magic.”

The author’s distracting tendency to repeat words for emphasis, fortunately absent early on, emerges as the plot continues. One example paragraph has six sentences beginning with “She says.” In the end, with the reader trapped within Eleanor’s malignant delusions for much too long, the final chapters arrive with a sense of relief.

Gregory is very capable at writing power-hungry women, even malicious ones, with greater levels of shading than this. Despite the less-than-subtle approach, this will be a vital read for Gregory's fans—particularly since this precedes her other Plantagenet novels—plus anyone wishing to step into unfamiliar royal territory. But don’t be surprised if tolerance for Eleanor runs out before the novel’s pages do.

Royal Witch was published on Oct. 20 by William Morrow/HarperCollins (US/Can) and HarperCollins (UK).

~   

Notes:

1. Some years ago I bought a copy of Hilda Lewis’ I, Jacqueline (1957), a biographical novel about her. It was rare at the time, so I was excited to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, I found it so dull that I barely read half of it. It was republished in 2008.

2. Eleanor Cobham figures as a main character in Jean Plaidy’s Epitaph for Three Women (1983), which I vaguely remember reading decades ago, and in Tony Riches’ The Secret Diary of Eleanor Cobham (2014), which I haven’t yet read.

3. See my earlier review of The Wise Woman (reissued 2008), about a novice-turned-dark witch in Tudor England; there are many similarities in plot and character to this one.

4. In the eARC I read from Edelweiss, the author’s note is at the beginning of the book. The final published version appears to include it at the end, based on the Amazon snippet.

5. I’d love to have read Baldwin’s nonfiction manuscript, to glean the facts without the heavy fictional embellishments.

Three historical mysteries sweep readers to colonial Fiji, medieval Lindisfarne, and 1908 New England

“King Devil” is also known as hawkweed, an invasive flowering plant with tall, fuzzy stalks. In Charlotte MacLeod’s standalone mystery (first published 1978), it also refers to a nasty old man who disappeared from the rural New England village of Dalby, leaving heaps of trouble behind him.

In 1908, having recently graduated from finishing school, 18-year-old Lavinia Tabard arrives to stay with her father’s cousin Zilpha and her live-in companion (and lover, though that word remains unspoken), the spiteful and jealous Tetsy Mull. Lavinia knows she’s considered an unwanted poor relation but decides to make the best of things, ambling through the region and using her schooling to assist two young architects with their typewriting.

On her explorations, Lavinia makes a rubbing of a centuries-old gravestone and notes that the man’s original death date, obscured by the leaves of many King Devil plants, was overwritten in slate with a more later one. Curious. The man whose body occupies the plot, Jonah Josiah Jenks, has the same name as his descendant, the one who’d vanished and who was the previous owner of Zilpha Tabard’s house. Also curious.

Between an ongoing inheritance dispute, Tetsy’s bitterness, less-than-neighborly tensions, and questions about Jenks’s whereabouts, the plot has plenty to keep a reader occupied. The period details are deliciously quaint, from the bone hairpins Lavinia uses to secure her waist-length tresses in an updo to people’s verbal expressions to the bumpy travels of Zilpha’s automobile in the hands of a too-careless driver. Then there are the characters’ own names, an eccentric patchwork of period charm. Some people, alas, show derogatory attitudes toward a young man we’d now call neurodivergent; the terminology sadly feels period-accurate though may come as a shock today.

The mystery unfolds at a steady pace, and while Lavinia is far from what you’d call a detective, she does unravel a surprisingly complex web of happenings. I found King Devil as a recent BookBub deal and discovered I already owned a copy, likely having purchased it during a previous promotion. (Reprinted by Mysterious Press/Open Road, 2017.)

~  

Historical fiction fans seek novels that will let them feel the distinct fabric of an unfamiliar time and place. Nilima Rao’s A Disappearance in Fiji achieves this splendidly. It’s the first in a mystery series that follows Sergeant Akal Singh, a Punjabi Sikh from India, on his investigations during his time in Fiji, a career direction he approaches with sad resignation. During his initial posting to Hong Kong, he had numerous crime-solving successes but was transferred away following a disgraceful error, a situation that Rao deftly reveals midway through.

For now, it’s 1914, and Akal aims to keep his head above water as a police sergeant for the Fijian Constabulary in the capital, Suva. The British colonial government employs many Indian and Fijian officers but, unless they have important ties, like Akal’s friend Taviti, nephew of an important chief, their presence is merely tolerated… until they’re found useful for one reason or other.

At his superior’s request, Akal gets pulled away from a dull “night prowler” case and assigned to travel to the Parkins sugar plantation in Nakavu in pursuit of a missing woman, an indentured worker from India. A newspaper reporter had declared that she’d been kidnapped, based on a Catholic missionary’s statement. Although the inspector-general, Akal’s boss, suspects she ran away, he has a visiting Indian delegation there to review the indentured servitude program and doesn’t want them upset—since the sugar cane industry relies on its Indian workers.

Rao creates a psychologically complex portrait of Akal, who, at only twenty-five, is still adjusting to his changing environment. Out at the plantation, the pretty and patronizing Mrs. Parkins looks upon him with disdain, and Akal is horrified to see the buildings his indentured fellow countrymen are forced to live in. The workers themselves endure backbreaking labor under terrible conditions—if they work less than a full day, it doesn’t count against their term of indenture—but are proud people who’ve created their own community.

Between the Parkinses’ sour and racist attitudes toward him (even though he sees himself as of higher status than the workers), varied accounts of the missing woman (whose name he learns is Kunti), and external pressure to make the case go away, Akal’s got his hands full, and the novel weaves all these elements into a completely fascinating mystery. It has a sequel, A Shipwreck in Fiji, which I’ll be reading soon. (Published by Soho Press, 2023, and by Zaffre Press in the UK.)

~

In Cressida Downing’s Consider the Ravens, it's 1494, the tenth year of Henry VII’s reign. A young woman named Linnet arrives on Lindisfarne, Holy Island, off England’s northeast coast, having walked there during low tide. It's meant to be a place of safety. A trained scribe, she offers her services to Prior Richard while ostensibly waiting for her father, a traveling Obituary Roll-Bearer who’d brought her for visits there as a child. Her old friend Tom, a fisherman with a gambling problem, greets her warmly.

But Linnet has a dubious past, one she dares not reveal to the Prior, his monks, or anyone else. Having fled a fearful man named Guy, she intends to take refuge at Lindisfarne and lie low. Then one man dies in odd circumstances, and another, and Linnet suspects they were murdered.

The plot feels somewhat nebulous until Linnet’s backstory is established, about 20% in. With this aspect revealed, satisfyingly so, more questions remain. Who’s doing the killing, and why? And will Linnet’s secrets be uncovered?

This historical crime novel has sedate pacing that suits a remote island monastery, and both mysteries have equal emphasis. There’s also ample internal tension. The monks aren’t thrilled at having an educated woman around the priory; an inspector for the Bishop of Durham is nosing into everyone’s business for his report. Linnet’s principal ally is a half-feral girl with an irksome pet raven. Linnet doesn’t believe the gossip that Isabelle is a witch’s brat, but the bird does act awfully… familiar.

Meanwhile, the rhythms and rituals at Lindisfarne continue, and Downing describes these scenes marvelously: “The Priory Church itself was radiant, the lights from the monks’ candles spilling out into the darkness while their plainsong rose up into the still cold sky.” The novel gets better with each chapter, and it has multiple openings for potential sequels. Available now in the UK, it was recently acquired by Minotaur Books, who will publish it in the US and Canada in July 2027. (Published by No Exit Press/Bedford Square, 2026.)

A gift of clairvoyance: River of Dreams by Robin Blackburn McBride

Annabelle Avery Conlon, the appealing heroine of Canadian writer Robin Blackburn McBride’s newest novel, has a richly developed interior life, letting her thoughts flow with utter honesty as she narrates her out-of-the-ordinary path. Her inward focus is partly personality-driven, partly a logical consequence of events that change her.

If you developed the sudden ability to experience visions following a life-threatening accident, you’d probably be hesitant to speak of it.  Especially in a time and place like early 20th-century Toronto, where young Avery sees firsthand how girls and women are stifled if they depart from societal norms.

Pub. by Guernica Editions (Oct. 2026)

“When I look at you, Jennie, I see a baby. Does that mean anything to you?”

In the prologue, set in 1923, we view Avery in action as a nurse in a grim institution for the mentally ill. She later realizes her patient isn’t insane, but consumed by anguish, and tries to help Jennie work her way to recovery. Throughout this unusual novel, a blend of historical fiction with the supernatural, Avery’s decisions on how and when to use her newfound abilities instill the story with a feeling of compassion and hope.

As a child, hope is a quality Avery clings to in a world she learns is full of lies. When she’s just twelve, in 1914, her brother is born, and she overhears an odd comment from the midwife that makes her question her own parentage. Her mind filled with frustration and anger, a winter accident on the Don River leads to a near-death experience under the ice, complete with shimmery glimpses of a mysterious “River Boy” and scenes from her past, including a woman with blonde hair and silvery rings who held her as a baby.

As she grows, her desire to find her birth mother—if that’s indeed who she saw in her vision—drives Avery forward, as does her determination to use her gift to help vulnerable women at the lowest point in their lives, her healing process surpassing the abilities of traditional medicine. A potential romance, however, has her wondering how far she can trust her partner with knowledge of her secret intuition.

The writing is warm and fluid as it moves between Avery’s experiences and her personal journey of self-discovery against a period-appropriate background of “windsilvered water” and childhood fairy-tale books, of grisly wartime images and the dankness of an asylum’s forgotten basement. Wonder and dread, intertwined, and Avery must bravely steer her own course through it all.

Her expressions of amazement (“Holy cow,” “Hell’s bells”) and frequent habit of posing internal questions bring out her personality, but fewer examples of these would have been more effective. Still, Avery remains intriguing company through her everlasting pursuit of greater understanding and truth.

River of Dreams was published by Guernica Editions, an Ontario-based press, on October 1 ($18.00 / CAN $24.95, 250pp).

The Runaway Bride: The Real Stakes Behind Ayten’s Choice in 1958 Turkey, a guest post by Denise Derya Brandt

Thanks to author Denise Derya Brandt for contributing this essay for Reading the Past. Her debut novel, Istanbul Dreaming, was included on my historical fiction preview for fall, and I’m glad to share her post about the historical backdrop for her main character’s story. 

~

The Runaway Bride: The Real Stakes Behind Ayten’s Choice in 1958 Turkey

Denise Derya Brandt

Even before I was born, my mother was making and buying things for my hope chest, or çeyiz, as it’s called in Turkish. A crochet tablecloth, embroidered pillowcases, lace-trimmed curtains, all of it beautiful, none of it my style. As I got older and lived on my own, I bought my own things, in my own taste. And by the time I actually got married, I didn’t have a çeyiz at all. Somewhere between my mother’s generation and mine, the entire tradition fell away.

While I was writing my debut novel, Istanbul Dreaming, I thought about that half-built hope chest a lot, and about my protagonist Ayten’s marriage and wedding night. I never gave Ayten a çeyiz! An oversight on my part. What I gave her instead was a marriage forced on her as punishment for her small act of rebellion, and a wedding night that becomes the reason she flees.

Pub. by She Writes Press (Sept. 2026)

But before I could write that terrible night honestly, I needed to understand what a young woman in 1958 Turkey actually risked by fleeing a marriage like that one. So I went looking for the answer, and it surprised me. Turkish women of Ayten’s generation had rights their grandmothers never had.

***

In 1926, years before women in much of Europe could vote, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's new republic replaced Ottoman religious law with a civil code modeled on Switzerland’s. Polygamy was abolished, inheritance shares between sons and daughters were equalized, and divorce, which under Ottoman religious law had overwhelmingly favored the husband, became something a wife could seek through the courts on the same terms as her husband. And crucially for Ayten’s story, the law required both the groom and bride, not her father (wali), to directly and freely consent to marriage or it would not be valid. On paper. In practice, a daughter’s consent was incidental. A father’s decision still carried more weight than anything, because refusing him meant running into social and cultural walls, and in 1958, especially outside the largest cities, the social and cultural walls were the ones that mattered most.

Ayten’s marriage to Salih is exactly that kind of wall. When her father learns she snuck off to Istanbul for a night of dancing, he treats it as a betrayal and disgrace to namus, family honor, something that is linked to a woman’s body and behavior. And before she can do something “stupid to embarrass the family,” her father informs her he has arranged her marriage to Salih, a relative who bullied her as a child, and someone, it turns out, her father had promised her to years before.

What sends Ayten into this marriage is one unchaperoned night out. What her father is actually afraid of isn’t what Ayten did. It’s what people might say she did and what that says about the family. In a city like Bursa, such gossip could do real damage to a family’s reputation, and as Ayten’s father always says, his “reputation is worth more than gold.”

Ayten is devastated but eventually resigns herself to her fate. She marries Salih in a religious ceremony performed at their home by the local imam rather than by a state marriage officer, which means it has no legal standing under the civil code, no matter how many relatives witness it. Ayten becomes Salih’s wife in the eyes of her family and God, but she does not become his wife in the eyes of the Turkish state. Then Salih assaults Ayten on their wedding night. She waits until he’s asleep, slips out before the first call to prayer, takes a taxi to the bus station, and buys a one-way ticket to Istanbul to stay with her best friend. When her father finds her and drags her home days later to confront Salih, Ayten leaves a second time, this time for good, leaving her family behind and returning to Istanbul with nothing. Imagine the courage that takes! But I don’t want readers to mistake Ayten’s courage for melodrama. The truth of her situation is dramatic enough without embellishing it.

Respectable work for an unmarried woman with no money and no connections was hard to come by in 1958, and without a man willing to vouch for her, a woman often had shockingly little standing of her own. But Ayten was lucky because she had work and friends. She was not alone.

***

I love historical fiction that sheds light on women’s stories, stories that are too often lost to history. The 1926 code can tell you consent for marriage was required, but it can’t tell you what it felt like to lie awake next to a man you’d been forced to marry, planning your escape before dawn. But fiction can, and good fiction can make you feel as if you’re living the story yourself. Ayten’s situation and wedding night is fiction, but what she’s facing is real for many women of her generation. And for some women today, it still is.

Ayten never gets a hope chest moment in the novel. There’s no crochet tablecloth waiting for her because her wedding is a punishment, not a beginning. Maybe that is the truer inheritance I gave her. Not a chest full of things collected in hope, but the courage to leave everything behind and start again with nothing. Freeing herself is bittersweet.

Sources & Further Reading

For readers who want to go deeper into the legal and social history of marriage in modern Turkey, check out Turkish sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti’s research on gender and the Turkish state, and Pınar İlkkaracan’s work on marriage practices and women’s rights in Turkey. Another resource is Women in Islam: From Medieval to Modern Times by Wiebke Walther. I also reviewed the 1926 Turkish Civil Code itself, along with scholarship on the gap between that law and how marriage actually worked in practice, including how common imam nikah marriages with no civil standing continue to be.

About the Author:

Denise Derya Brandt is a debut author whose writing is inspired by her life and the lives of the people she met while working for more than twenty years in international development, leading life-saving women's health projects in Afghanistan, Liberia, and Myanmar (with shorter stints in other interesting places).

author Denise Derya Brandt (credit: Tonya Bolton)

She's a graduate of The Book Incubator writing program, was a 2024 finalist for the Women's Fiction Writers Association Rising Star Award, and was a 2025 Poets & Writers Get the Word Out publicity incubator fellow. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Arizona State University and a master's degree in development management from The London School of Economics.

After graduate school, Denise lived in Istanbul, where she worked as an Associate Publisher for Turkish Business World, an English-language business magazine. As a Turkish-American with moderate Turkish language skills, she claims she can fool tourists but not taxi drivers! Originally from Arizona, Denise now lives in Northern Kentucky with her husband.

Her debut novel, Istanbul Dreaming, is forthcoming from She Writes Press on September 29, 2026 and is currently available for preorder.

Links:

• LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/denisederyabrandt
• Website: www.denisederyabrandt.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeniseDBrandt
• Instagram and Threads: @DeniseDeryaBrandt
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/denise-derya-brandt-30788124
• Substack: http://substack.com/@denisebrandt

A librarian of mystery: Emily Dunlay's The Library of Leaving - plus other historical fiction news

The most affecting espionage novels offer high stakes with political and emotional consequences, both, and Emily Dunlay’s second novel (after Teddy) belongs among them.

Pub. by Harper (Sept. 2026). The UK publisher is Fourth Estate/HarperCollins.

Helen Fox is a woman of secrets. In 1926, she works alone at the American Library of Geneva and lives a tranquil life in its attic apartment. The library receives shipments of books from American expats in Switzerland who died intestate, and she loves exploring the new arrivals.

Then she opens an airmail envelope containing the first chapter of an unpublished novel by a former lover, bestselling author August Hegland. Helen had met him in 1916, when she had served as a volunteer nurse at a hotel-turned-hospital for wounded POWs in the small Alpine town of Saint-Hubert-des-Arbres. Seeing herself in the manuscript’s pages, thinly disguised as “Nurse Pandora,” Helen fears exposure of her wartime activities.

After arranging for a new passport, Helen seeks distraction and accepts an invitation to the opera from her current and former protector, Austrian baron Leo von Lamberg. His past entanglements with Helen and August, and with the writer of a WWI-era diary of an arms manufacturer from Singapore, are among the mysteries this story of lost romance and betrayal carefully unfolds.

Appropriate to the milieu, the writing is sophisticated and full of Old-World elegance, augmented with literary references and the furtive atmosphere of wartime in a neutral country where agents on both sides are laying ground for their plans. Anyone dreading a stereotypical depiction about the wild past of a conservative librarian can breathe a sigh of relief; Helen is enigmatic and multifaceted throughout.

What choices did she make, and why? Is she the villain of August’s story, or of her own? Dunlay keeps these questions open up to the end of her scintillating novel.

I chose this book for the Historical Novels Review since it’s about libraries and literature, naturally, and because of the WWI setting, which is becoming a new favorite. Fortunately, this novel avoided the tired tropes about librarians I see all too often in the media.

The title of this book comes from a place nickname that’s discussed by the characters, one related to the novel’s Alpine setting, Saint-Hubert-des-Arbres (aka Saint Hubert of the Trees; he was the patron saint of forests).  Trees → Leaves → Leaving. Too much of a stretch? But it does make for an evocative title.

Other recommended works of historical fiction about libraries and librarians:

Addison Armstrong, The War Librarian, about the courageous American librarians who served in WWI.

Nancy Bilyeau, The Ghost of Madison Avenue, an atmospheric novella (and ghost story) set in NYC’s Morgan Library in late 1912.

Janie Chang, The Library of Legends, a literary novel and road adventure about people’s rescue of their priceless cultural heritage, set in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Madeline Martin, The Librarian Spy, with two women battling Nazi oppression in WWII-era Lisbon, Portugal and Lyon, France.

Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars, a novel of friendship and determination, following the resilient Kentucky women of the WPA’s Pack Horse Library during the Depression.

~

Also, I’ve been meaning to write about HF-related news that caught my attention in the last week. It’s literary award season, so there’s a fair bit to include.

Pub. by Oneworld (UK), 2025, in paperback.
Flatiron/Macmillan is the publisher in the US and Canada.

The 2026 winner of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize was announced on Friday. Congratulations to Ruthvika Rao for The Fertile Earth, described as “a sweeping story of forbidden love, of friendship and betrayal, power and revenge, set against the tumultuous political landscape of post-Independence India.” The £10k prize celebrates “outstanding adventure fiction of today” and is open to novels written in English, by authors of any nationality, published in paperback in the UK.

The longlists are out for the 2026 ARA Historical Novel Prize from the Historical Novel Society Australasia, in partnership with the ARA Group. From the press release: “The chosen books span millennia, from Ancient Egypt through to the 1975 Dismissal, with captivating yarns of jewel heists, bushrangers and gold fever, powerful stories that shine a light on overlooked LGBTQI history, and bewitching tales of sea myths and folklore that centre strong female perspectives.” The longlists include two categories: adult and children/young adult. Shortlists will be announced on September 23.

The Historical Writers Association (HWA) also posted the longlists for the 2026 HWA Crown Awards, “celebrating the best in historical writing,” with 12 books in each category: fiction, debut fiction, and nonfiction. The HWA website has the full list of 36 books and short descriptions. Plenty of subgenre variety here.

The Christy Award finalists for 2026, for excellence in Christian fiction, are also out. They have categories for historical fiction and historical romance, and you’ll also find historical novels in the First Novel, Mystery, and Speculative categories.

At Jane Friedman’s blog, Ashli O’Connell has an essay about How a Debut Self-Published Novel Earned Five Figures in 10 Weeks Without Kindle Unlimited, focusing on her historical novel, Emmaline, about a young Englishwoman and her family’s pioneer journey to a Mormon settlement in Utah.

Kate Mosse has announced her next novel, Borderlands, out next August, a time-slip historical thriller inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and the mysterious woman named in it: Aelfgiva. On this subject, this visually stunning New York Times article (gift link) by Jason Farago gets up close with the Bayeux Tapestry during its visit to the British Museum, which extends through July 2027. I was fortunate to have seen the tapestry in person during a high school trip to France in the ‘80s and would love to view it again.

From the “this is very cool” department, Dolly Parton wrote and recorded 15 original songs inspired by Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (which fits in with the main subject of this post, as it’s about the Kentucky Pack Horse librarians) and gifted them to the author as an amazing surprise. From the article at KFVS: “The songs have never been released publicly. Parton gave Richardson permission to use the music however she wanted, but she’s keep them preserved since she received the songs four years ago. However, even before Parton’s passing, Richardson said it was in the works for the public to hear those songs soon.”

Why historical fiction is a genre

Periodically I’ll come across a discussion on social media about whether historical fiction is a legitimate genre.

The argument against it goes as follows. The “historical fiction” label serves only to indicate a book’s setting. This is because novels in recognized genres incorporate plot patterns that let readers know what they’ll be getting. In romances, you have a central romantic relationship and an optimistic, “happily ever after” (or “happy for now”) ending. With mysteries, you get a crime, investigation, or other type of puzzle that’s resolved by the end, often by a detective figuring out where the clues lead. Psychological suspense novels offer creepy atmosphere, a heightened sense of disturbance, and complex plots with startling twists. With historical fiction, though, there are no story conventions to adhere to. Plus the plots and writing styles are too diverse to fit under a single category. Therefore, it’s not a genre at all, just a collective term to refer to novels set in the past.

I can understand the reasoning. But as a librarian who’s written two lengthy tomes whose titles make my opinion on the matter kind of obvious, I have some thoughts I wanted to put out there for consideration. 

 

Pub. by Bloomsbury/Libraries Unlimited (2005 and 2009)

This post is based on concepts mentioned in the books and expands upon subsequent comments I've made in Facebook discussions. The books are, admittedly, expensive at list price, but your library may have one or both, or can get you copies via interlibrary loan.

In short: it’s true that historical fiction isn’t a genre in the same way that romance, mystery, and psychological suspense novels are genres.

But it is still a genre, one with its own writing conventions and reader expectations, though these aren’t based around plot.

There’s an area within librarianship called readers’ advisory (RA for short), which concerns itself with connecting readers with books. The term is most often used with respect to leisure reading, which covers both fiction and nonfiction. Readers’ advisory librarians—I count myself among them—use our knowledge of books’ genres and subgenres, as well as other factors, to help readers find their perfect literary match.

Among writers, genres can have a negative connotation if they’re thought of as restrictive barriers. But within RA, the idea behind genres isn’t to pigeonhole books into rigid categories but to group them according to elements that appeal to readers and make it easier for them to find more books they enjoy. Novels can fit into multiple genres, too. “Genre-blends” are most definitely a thing, a very popular one. Ever heard of romantasy?

For anyone interested in this topic, I’d suggest checking out The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction by librarians Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks, now out in its 3rd edition (ALA Editions, 2019). It’s a classic text in the field, with chapters organized around the different fiction genres. Joyce was one of my editors when I wrote for NoveList (a RA database for libraries) years ago, and I’ve worked with Neal in the past in various capacities related to RA work; they know their stuff.

Within this book, fantasy, westerns, and historical fiction are termed “landscape genres.” Genres don’t have to be based around common plot patterns, although some of them are. The landscape genres are defined based on a different type of content: their settings, the type of worldbuilding and background detail the author uses, and the resulting experience for their readers (like, for historical fiction, immersion into an earlier time).

Intricately described settings, real or imaginary, create realms and set readers within them. This is the hallmark of the Landscape genres. Worldbuilding reigns here in novels rich with evocative landscapes, sumptuously realized settings, and fascinating framing detail … These novels turn readers into literary tourists, whisking them away to different locales and time periods, providing context and detail to new worlds and histories. (Wyatt and Saricks, p.121)

It’s interesting to note that I haven’t seen the same “not a genre!” arguments around fantasy and westerns that exist around historical fiction, even though these novels are similarly varied in terms of plot structure, writing styles, characters, and pacing. Science fiction is another; it has its tropes, as historical fiction does, but no single overarching story arc.

All genres have parameters, and those for historical fiction are often debated. For example, how far back should a novel be set for it to qualify? But historical novels— regardless of the subgenre they fall into—do share many commonalities, like their authors’ attempts to reimagine a past time and place, including the physical setting, character mindsets, customs, beliefs, and more, in a way that integrates these details smoothly into an engaging story.

Exceptions test the boundaries of the genre definition and prove that these boundaries exist. Romance readers will cry “not a romance” if a love story were to end tragically. Fans of horror fiction won’t be satisfied if a book labeled as such lacked a dark, dread-inducing atmosphere. And historical novels with insufficient historical ambience, too many anachronisms, or inconsistent worldbuilding, or those set too close to the present day, will elicit “this isn’t really historical fiction” type comments.

It’s within the subgenres that we can see marked diversity in terms of plot structures and writing styles. Historical mystery, historical romance, sagas, historical adventure, etc., all have loyal fans, some of whom prefer to remain within that smaller focus. Other readers are genre omnivores (like me) and prefer to branch out across most or all of them.

The subgenre (and setting and era) diversity of historical fiction on display!

The Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook group, which has over 700,000 members, has semi-regular posts debating the genre definition but seems, nonetheless, to understand the scope of its large umbrella. Recent posts have recommended Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife (literary historical), Ilima Todd’s A Song for the Stars (inspirational/romance/biographical historical), Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January (historical fantasy), Irina Shapiro’s The Lovers (timeslip/historical romance), Rosamunde Pilcher’s September (saga), Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory (historical horror), Ken Follett’s Hornet Flight (historical thriller) and Sheila Williams’ No Better Time (a traditional historical novel).

One genre, many facets, and a large and wonderfully diverse assortment of stories. All with historical settings designed for readers to dive right into.

The extraordinary story of Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) was a neoclassical sculptor of Black-Indigenous parentage who gained international renown in the late 19th century yet fell into obscurity decades later. Alongside a recent artistic revival, her life and work should get a deserving boost through Baker’s eloquent biographical novel.

Pub. by Dafina/Kensington, April 2026 (288pp)

Her imagined first-person voice makes a statement. With cool, deliberate pacing and an exalted vocabulary, Edmonia reveals her extraordinary story, from her childhood in northern New York, where she wove baskets with her Ojibwe aunts for tourists, through the height of professional achievement in Rome, where she settled after tiring of racist treatment in her birth country.

Much about Lewis remains shadowy even today. And so, while anchored in the historical record, Baker’s tale includes fictional episodes for dramatic purposes and to fill in gaps.

The most unusual events in the narrative really did happen. After attending New York Central College through the financial support of anti-slavery Baptists, the teenager then known as Mary enrolls at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she endures sniffy racial attitudes and is brought to trial for poisoning two female students. Baker’s explanations for this shocking accusation make logical sense, as does Mary’s decision to use the middle name she was given in baptism, Edmonia, after moving to Boston to start afresh.

Edmonia Lewis, ca. 1870. By Henry Rocher
Adam Cuerden - National Portrait Gallery (United States)

A detailed author’s note would have been beneficial, but one could hazard a guess that some secondary characters and unlikely coincidences involving them were invented. What feels entirely real, though, is Edmonia’s strength of will. She is bold, uncompromising, occasionally prickly (even with her benefactors), confident in her abilities, and determined to elevate and showcase the humanity of her people by sculpting them in marble. What a force she must have been. Edmonia brings to life a woman who refused to be defined by anyone but herself.

This review, cross-posted to the Historical Novel Society website, was based on my reading of a NetGalley copy. I had included Edmonia in my preview of spring/summer 2026 novels, and it didn’t disappoint in the least. The novel has only a few dozen Amazon reviews, so it seems to be flying under the radar (I would contribute one myself, but Amazon doesn’t seem to like me posting reviews there).

Edmonia Lewis was the focus of an exhibition at the Peabody-Essex Museum that ran from Feb-June 2026, and an interview with the curator (on YouTube) is still posted at the PEM website. The exhibition has since traveled to the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, so if you’re in the vicinity of Athens (Georgia, that is) between now and next January, it looks very much worth checking out. Many photos of Lewis’s sculptures are posted at the museum website.