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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cover of Little, Brown
ebook edition (2013)

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

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

Circumnavigating Svalbard: My Love Affair with the Arctic, an essay by Cynthia Reeves

Thanks to Cynthia Reeves, author of The Last Whaler (Regal House, Sept. 3), for contributing the following essay about her research. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did.

~

Circumnavigating Svalbard: My Love Affair with the Arctic

by Cynthia Reeves

Imagine this: You land by Zodiac at a remote beach on the southern shore of Van Keulenfjorden in the Svalbard archipelago, the site of an old beluga whaling station called Bamsebu, unprepared for what’s preserved there. Stretching to the horizon are whale bones, piles and piles of bleached beluga bones bearing silent testimony to the slaughter that occurred there in the 1930s. How is it, you wonder, that no one has been moved to incorporate this tableau into a story?

Piles of Beluga bones (photo by author)

I was inspired to write The Last Whaler when I came upon this sight during my 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice residency aboard the barquentine Antigua. Prior to this encounter, my love affair with the Arctic was satisfied only through books, starting in childhood reading tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This early interest later merged with concern for the impact of climate change on the Arctic’s fragile eco-system. Flying over the vast, undulating white terrain leading into Svalbard’s airport at Longyearbyen feels like entering another world—a frozen landscape riven with fissured glaciers spilling down into the ice-pocked waters of the archipelago. That this magnificent spectacle might one day vanish spurred me to commit Svalbard’s beauty to my writings in hopes of helping raising awareness of what could be lost.

The Last Whaler is the most ambitious of these works. The story centers around Astrid Handeland, a botanist who travels to Svalbard in 1937 with her whaler husband, Tor, hoping the sojourn will enable her to move on from the devastating death of their son Birk and to reconnect with her passion for Arctic flora. Instead, she discovers the reality of the challenges imposed by the unforgiving environment and her growing unease with her husband’s industry harvesting belugas. Ten years on, in the devastating aftermath of World War II, Tor returns to Svalbard to come to terms both with his wife’s death and his role in damaging the abandoned station’s once-pristine shores.

Research shaped The Last Whaler, above all because I had little familiarity with Svalbard and Norwegian history prior to my Arctic Circle expedition. In the two years following the expedition, I spent several months living in Longyearbyen and exploring the surrounding area to gain a sense of the unusual environment, from the days of perpetual sunlight to the nights of utter polar darkness. Aside from allowing me to absorb the physical landscape, these residencies also provided unique historical insights into Svalbard and Norway of the 1930s and 40s. For example, the former art gallery, Galleri Svalbard, housed a library of rare documents—including an original copy of the Norwegian botanist and environmental activist Hanna Resvoll-Holmsen’s Svalbards flora. Also contained in the library were journals, newspaper articles, memoirs, and other documents—often in Norwegian and unavailable elsewhere—that offered background into the lives of those who lived on Svalbard and in Norway during that time. I was especially captivated by the women who survived and even flourished in the Arctic. In addition to Resvoll-Holmsen, the novel features such real-life heroines as Christiane Ritter, whose memoir A Woman in the Polar Night details her year in 1935-36 on Svalbard with her hunter husband, Hermann; and Helfrid Nøis, who spent years carving a life as the “Arctic housewife” of the famous hunter Hilmar Nøis.

Moreover, the history of Norway in World War II required substantial research in order to assess its impact on Tor’s changing views on war, whaling, and women’s roles. Of particular interest were the heroism, and cowardice, exhibited by Norwegians during the war. Remarkable acts of bravery include the almost-mythical journey of Jan Baalsrud, who together with eleven other Resistance fighters sailed from Scotland to Bardufoss in northern Norway to sabotage a German airfield control tower. Baalsrud alone escaped capture and endured a harrowing trek across Norway to freedom in Sweden with the help of sympathetic Norwegians. Conversely, Lebensborn, the Nazi program of using Norwegian women to give birth to “perfect” Aryan children, plays a role in Tor’s life as he tries to protect his teenaged daughter from the predations of Nazi soldiers.

Pages from Charlier scrapbook, v.2t

The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England, was also an invaluable source of Arctic history. There, I scoured rare documents, focusing on the biographies of polar explorers as well as ordinary people whose lives intersected with those more famous. One such story involved Anna Charlier, the fiancée of Nils Strindberg, one of the three occupants of S. A. Andrée’s hot-air balloon during its ill-fated attempt to sail over the North Pole. Quite by chance, I discovered among the artifacts five enormous, leather-bound volumes of newspaper clippings and other mementoes preserved by Charlier from the time of the balloon’s disappearance in 1897 through and after the discovery of the men’s bodies on Kvitøya in 1930. Her obsession culminated in asking her husband to bury her heart next to Strindberg’s grave in Stockholm, a request her husband honored after her death in 1949.

Charlier’s story is not only embedded in The Last Whaler but also the centerpiece of my next project. Again I will travel to Svalbard to circumnavigate the archipelago aboard the 2024 Arctic Circle Summer Alumni Expedition. On this trip—ice conditions permitting—I hope to explore the eastern side of the islands and get a glimpse of Kvitøya, an inhospitable spit of land that does not lend itself to landings. I’m curious about the kinds of obsessions that would drive Andrée and his companions to undertake their courageous (or foolish, depending on whose history you read) journey and that would illuminate Charlier’s eternal passion for Strindberg.

~

author Cynthia Reeves (credit: 5L Photography)

Cynthia Reeves is the author of three books of fiction: the novel The Last Whaler (Regal House Publishing, 2024); the novel in stories Falling through the New World (Gold Wake Press, 2024), which was awarded Gold Wake’s Spring 2023 Fiction Prize; and the novella Badlands (Miami University Press, 2007), which won Miami University Press’s Novella Prize. Cynthia’s short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared widely. She has been awarded residencies to the Arctic Circle’s 2017 Summer Solstice and 2024 Alumni Expeditions, Hawthornden Castle, Galleri Svalbard, Art & Science in the Field, and Vermont Studio Center. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA program, she taught in Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program and Rosemont College’s MFA program as well as at conferences nationwide. She lives with her husband in Camden, Maine. Find out more at her website cynthiareeveswriter.com.

All the World Beside explores queer history in 1700s Massachusetts

Conley’s debut novel brings us to a small Massachusetts town—the symbolically-named Cana—while dramatizing an affair between two married Puritan men and its fallout.

In 1730, Nathaniel Whitfield is a charismatic minister whose powerful words on the pulpit had brought about a religious awakening and persuaded 200 souls to follow him to a new settlement. Physician Arthur Lyman and his family, recent arrivals from Boston, weren’t part of the original chosen group and are made to feel like continual outsiders. The two men are close friends and something more, which fills Nathaniel with intense guilt, while Arthur finds ways to draw closer to his lover.

Their secret, however, doesn’t remain so. After viewing the pair’s late-night meeting in the forest, in a scene reminiscent of Hawthorne, Nathaniel’s daughter Sarah gets firsthand evidence of problems within her family. Gradually, Nathaniel’s depressive wife Catherine realizes the truth, and so does Arthur’s forthright wife, Anne.

The two families’ unwitting complicity and silence, preferring not to voice a relationship they can hardly explain, ring true for the era. Even more, Nathaniel’s role comes with high expectations for another Christian revival, but his longings for men make him feel completely unworthy.

Conley confidently acknowledges the reality that queer people lived and loved in all past eras, one of his admitted goals, while imbuing his story with considerable depth about how religion can simultaneously exalt and constrain us. Notably, he looks beyond the core relationship to show its repercussions on family members, especially Sarah and her young brother, Ezekiel. (Actually, the later sections focus so much on others that the plot feels a bit diffuse.)

In a particularly intriguing subplot, Sarah gets held back by her gender after discovering a surprising talent. This novel has a lot going on, and it mostly works, all evoked in thoughtful language bordering on mystical at times.

All the World Beside was published by Riverhead in March; I reviewed it for August's Historical Novels Review. The author's first book, Boy Erased, was a memoir recounting his life with a fundamentalist Christian family that pressured him to enroll in gay conversion therapy.

Short takes on three female-centered historical novels I haven't reviewed here before

I managed to get in some good reading this summer!  Here are short takes on three novels I definitely recommend.

Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder fictionalizes the life story of her grandmother, born in 1881 in rural New South Wales, Australia. She depicts Dolly as a complicated woman who endured disappointments and crushed ambitions but rose to make a financial success of her life – yet whose experiences hardened her character. Dolly’s daughter and granddaughter found her cold and domineering, and yet she broke open new paths for them with her persistence and drive. By the end, you may find Dolly’s personality difficult to like, but what she accomplishes with her life is undeniably admirable. It’s an insightful character portrait, told matter-of-factly and with clear-eyed understanding. Published in the US and UK by Canongate, Restless Dolly Maunder was shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction.  I read it from a Libby copy.

I found Gill Paul’s Scandalous Women irresistibly dishy from start to finish as it depicted the public lives and private worries of Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, who steamed up the bestseller lists with their bold, unabashedly sexy, female-centered novels. They received backlash (and worse) from snooty, chauvinistic book critics and feminists alike but sold millions while opening doors for other female authors. Their journeys to success are fascinating, and I especially loved the insider scoop on the state of publishing in the 1960s and ‘70s. Paul intertwines their stories by seamlessly slipping in a fictional character, Nancy White, a recent college grad seeking entrée into the competitive, highly sexist New York publishing industry. Nancy’s story from naïve hopeful to groundbreaking feminist editor more than holds its own in this hugely entertaining tale about women’s empowerment, the supportive friends (male and female) that nurture them, and the importance of great storytelling. Scandalous Women was published last week by William Morrow, and I read it from a personal copy.

Continuing with the theme of women struggling against the repressive patriarchy, we have Paulette Kennedy’s The Devil and Mrs. Davenport, in which a housewife and mother in small-town Missouri in 1955 begins seeing visions and hearing voices from the beyond. I'd thought the author's first novel, Parting the Veil, was very good, and this one is even better.  While unnerved by her sudden paranormal talents, Loretta Davenport hopes to use them for good when she gets glimpses of a female murder victim’s final moments. But her husband Pete, a minister and professor at a local Christian university, is horrified and embarrassed, believing she’s delusional and that her behavior will derail his tenure pursuit. The combination of marital conflict, crime thriller, and paranormal mystery brings out the best of the author’s talents in character development and plotting. The more Loretta pursues answers, turning to a caring parapsychologist for help and understanding, the more controlling Pete becomes. The novel feels accurate in in its quaint mid-century household details, yet the overriding theme makes it clear that this era isn’t one that women should look back on with nostalgia. The Devil and Mrs. Davenport was published earlier this year by Lake Union, and I'd purchased a copy on Kindle.

A royal visit to 1922 Bangalore brings danger in Harini Nagendra's A Nest of Vipers

Offering an even twistier and broader-scope plot than the first two books in Nagendra’s series, A Nest of Vipers is dominated by the Prince of Wales’s impending visit to Bangalore in January 1922, and the British colonial government’s determination to quell potential violence by supporters of the Indian independence movement.

For the moment, Kaveri Murthy and her doctor husband, Ramu, plan to enjoy a VIP evening out at the circus with their friend Anandi to celebrate Kaveri’s matriculation certificate in mathematics. But events take several unusual turns.

After their backstage invitation from master magician Das and his teenage son, Suman, who are eager to meet the famous “lady detective,” Kaveri grows startled at reports of local burglaries. The magician’s act is high-risk even without its underlying message of freedom from British oppression, and ultimately his performance erupts into chaos. When Das vanishes, and Anandi’s abusive estranged husband is found stabbed, the couple know they must protect her, since she’s bound to be accused of his murder.

The dynamics in this volume are changing in intriguing ways, which distress Kaveri to no end. Her policeman ally, Mr. Ismail, has turned cold, telling her to back off the case, and Anandi also asks to be left alone.

With her firm moral compass, Kaveri pushes ahead anyway, despite the pain of going against her friends’ wishes. Her desire for a purpose in life feels very relatable. Ramu supports her implicitly, but as a woman in British India, her academic studies can only progress so far, and she’s not content to sit at home.

Besides the incisive character portraits, we have a complicated mystery grounded in its milieu, in which Indians wanting to escape colonial rule are divided on how best to achieve their goal: ahimsa (nonviolence) or brutal force. Definitely recommended, though start with book one (The Bangalore Detectives Club) for maximum appreciation.

A Nest of Vipers was published by Pegasus Crime in May, and I'd reviewed it for May's Historical Novels Review initially. Constable published it in the UK and in India. See also reviews of the first and second books: The Bangalore Detectives Club and Murder Under a Red Moon.

Scandinavian gothic has a feminine focus in Anna Noyes' The Blue Maiden

For the residents of Sweden’s Berggrund Island in 1825, the Blue Maiden is a fearful place. An uninhabited neighboring isle, its appearance shifts in dense fog and in morning light, showing itself changeable and untrustworthy—as typical of women, in their view.

The island’s perceived gender is no coincidence. It’s rumored that witches fly to a secret realm there, called Blockula, to conduct dark Sabbaths. Five generations earlier, over two dozen women were put to death by Berggrund’s men for purported witchcraft, an event that lingers in everyone’s minds, especially anyone born female.

Noyes’ bleak and poetic novel ripples throughout with this atmosphere of internalized misogyny. It’s a difficult environment for two motherless girls to grow up in. Beata and Ulrika are daughters of the island’s priest, misfits in this isolated place; their 17th-century ancestor was an accused witch who was only saved from burning due to her pregnancy. With only the village healer willing to speak of their late mother—the beautiful but mysterious Angelique, who died at Bea’s birth—the sisters grow obsessed with learning more about her.

Over time, the young women’s contrasting personalities become apparent. When a middle-aged mainlander arrives on the island to take up an inherited property, long-suppressed truths about the sisters’ family begin spilling out.

The Blue Maiden takes time to catch hold; Bea and Ulrika, although sympathetic due to their outcast status, are kept at an emotional distance. Bea proves to be the protagonist, but this doesn’t become obvious until past the midway point.

Those with an aversion to literary fiction should probably steer clear, but the beautifully described island scenery and rural customs have a compelling draw, combined with the women’s struggle to liberate themselves from patriarchal prejudice. The ultimate reveal is a shocking surprise that will reward patient readers of this moody Scandinavian gothic.

The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes appeared from Grove Press in May; thanks to the publisher for approving my NetGalley access for review purposes in the Historical Novels Review.

A visual preview of the winter 2025 season in historical fiction

For this post, I'm looking way ahead to see what's on the horizon for historical fiction this coming winter.  These dozen books have publication dates in the US between January and March 2025.  I may yet do a different post with autumn 2024 releases, but advance publicity for fiction seems to be starting earlier and earlier, and there are so many intriguing-sounding titles here, so let's go...

Five female crime writers unite to (guess what?) solve a challenging murder. You'll recognize the names of these now-famous Golden Age mystery novelists; reportedly this story was inspired by an incident in Dorothy Sayers' life. St. Martin's, January 2025.

To say I've been anticipating this one is an understatement! It also has a terrific tagline. Casati's second novel focuses on Semiramis, reigning queen in ancient Assyria, and her unlikely rise to power. The interest in mythological retellings seems to be encouraging additional novels set in the distant past, which is welcome news. Sourcebooks, January 2025.

Drastic changes on an Alabama plantation in the pre-Civil War years summon the appearance of the ghost of a young enslaved woman's older sister. Speculative historical fiction with themes of freedom, coming of age, and unexpected romance. Ballantine, February 2025.

Nicole Galland's latest takes inspiration from a historical figure, Alexander Cooke, who was a "boy player" of female roles in Shakespearean London, intertwining his story with an intellectual female friend of his, plus philosopher Francis Bacon. A theatrical, gender-swapping plot with political drama. (For another take on Cooke, see Jinny Webber's Bedtrick.)  William Morrow, February 2025.

In 1940s St. Louis, at the time of Jim Crow, a powerhouse upper-class Black couple confronts a sudden tragedy; a debut based on the family history of the author, who happens to be a former diplomat.  Grand Central, February 2025.

Moving between the 1920s and 1950s, Henry's latest women's fiction/mystery novel centers on a daughter seeking answers about her author mother's disappearance, as well as about the manuscript her mother left behind, one written in a language she'd invented as a child. Atria, March 2025.

In 1931, a young Indian man is sent by Gandhi to England, where he's meant to get a legal education to help his country's independence movement, but he risks losing sight of his mission; a novel of colonialism and the desire for belonging.  Crown, January 2025.

Kearsley's novels are always worth waiting for. The latest by this Canadian author focuses on political subterfuge in Scotland in Jacobean times, and centering on a royal messenger with second sight, a sense of integrity, and a duty he'd rather not fulfill. Sourcebooks Landmark, March 2025.

Judith Shakespeare, the title character from Tiffany's earlier My Father Had a Daughter (the twin sister of Hamnet, who died at age 11), returns in a new story; here she's sixty-one, forced out of her hometown of Stratford when she's accused of witchcraft. And thumbs up to fiction featuring older historical heroines. Harper, February 2025.

Alice Marble was an American champion tennis player. She also served as an editor for the Wonder Woman comics; as if that wasn't enough, she was asked to spy for the US on a mission overseas during WWII. Walsh brings her incredible story back into public view. Harper Muse, January 2025.

Another work of biographical fiction, this time about Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, renowned Black American opera singer in the mid-19th century and her surprising, risky, and triumphant career path. William Morrow, January 2025.

The complicated relationship between two young women in 19th-century China, as a handmaiden joining the household of a wealthy family arouses feelings of jealousy and resentment due to her exquisite embroidery skills and bound feet.  Park Row, January 2025.

Michelle Moran's Maria looks for the real story behind The Sound of Music's complicated heroine

Michelle Moran’s gripping new novel Maria (whose subject, Maria von Trapp, will be recognizable from the beautiful cover) left me pondering the reasons why people choose to tell the stories they do. In 1959, as Oscar Hammerstein is finalizing the lyrics for a Broadway musical about her life, Maria writes him a letter requesting a meeting. She doesn’t like the way her family is being depicted in the play, especially how her late husband, Georg, is shown as a strict disciplinarian.

Hammerstein sends his assistant, Fran Connelly (a fictional character), to meet with Maria and hopefully assuage her concerns, plus prevent any potential bad press. Maria’s tale then unfolds in the first person, beginning when she, as a postulant at Nonnberg Abbey, was sent to tutor one of the daughters of Baron Georg von Trapp, a war hero and widower. Maria re-introduces his seven children to music and the simple joys of playtime. This aspect doesn’t diverge far from the play and film, but later parts of Maria’s life are a different story.

The Christmas holidays in the von Trapp household are recreated in such idyllic scenes that even the nonreligious will be tempted to book a trip to Salzburg next winter! But the real Maria was a complicated woman, shown here with considerable complexity, who endured physical abuse by a relative as a child. While her ambitions for the family’s singing careers may have saved them, her domineering behavior caused mental anguish for her own children.

Readers will grasp the amusing irony that this is a novel about a woman who resisted being fictionalized.  Yet Maria succeeds in presenting a well-rounded, nuanced portrait that draws its information from multiple sources, since no one account (not even Maria’s autobiographies) presents a complete image of her character. It’s a must-read for anyone who loves biographical fiction, and it provides understanding about why The Sound of Music took the fictional liberties that it did.

Maria will be published by Dell on July 30th. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy.

Libbie Hawker's Mercer Girls brings three determined women to frontier Seattle

Libbie Hawker’s Mercer Girls takes its name from a group of enterprising young women from around Lowell, Massachusetts, who were recruited by Asa Mercer in the 1860s to travel to Washington Territory, which suffered from a major gender imbalance. They journeyed via ship from New York via Panama and up the Pacific coast to Seattle, debarking at a grimy, half-built frontier town where they – educated women of respectable backgrounds – found their reputations challenged by a society who believed only females with low morals would leave their homes behind as they did.

Hawker smoothly shifts the viewpoints among three main characters, each of whom has different reasons for wanting a fresh start: thirtyish Josephine, fleeing a secret past; impoverished mill owner’s daughter Dovey, whose combined naivete and uncontrollable ambitions prove dangerous; and prim Sophronia, whose Christian uprightness is off-putting. Each is uniquely sympathetic yet flawed, and their personalities realistically transform over time.

This isn’t a standard heartwarming story of female cooperation during adversity, since Jo, Dovey, and Sophronia frequently clash (especially the latter two). Despite expectations they find husbands asap, the women forge their own paths. The historical background will attract fans of Western heroines and, especially, those who enjoyed Robin Oliveira’s recent A Wild and Heavenly Place, set amid the gorgeous but rough landscape of Washington Territory a bit later.

The plot unfolds with details on the early suffrage fight (this bogs down the story at the end), prostitution (seen as a lucrative career choice), and the process of tax collection (more interesting than it sounds). Overall, it’s a fast-moving portrait of the scrappiness needed for survival on the frontier, and how three “Mercer girls” found it within themselves.

I read Mercer Girls (Lake Union, 2016) from a NetGalley copy I'd left unread for too long. Read more about the original "Mercer girls" via the New England Historical Society.

Tropical glamour and gothic suspense in Chanel Cleeton's The House on Biscayne Bay

Cleeton’s dual-period mystery intermixes tropical heat and gothic chills in a satisfying way as two women, decades apart, face up to shocking truths. The glamour factor is high as Anna Barnes and Carmen Acosta each arrive at Marbrisa, a palatial Miami showpiece, but despite its ornate furnishings and beautifully manicured grounds, neither finds their new home comfortable at all.

Just after the Great War, Anna’s longtime husband, Robert, a wealthy businessman, whisks her from New York to Florida and presents her with Marbrisa as a birthday gift. Anna is a shy woman with subdued tastes; the architect notes her dismay and tries adapting it to her preferences, but just when she’s getting accustomed to her new residence, a young woman attending the Barneses’ glitzy evening gala is discovered drowned. 

In 1941, eighteen-year-old Carmen moves from Cuba after her parents’ deaths to live with her older sister Carolina and brother-in-law Asher Wyatt, Marbrisa’s new owners. Carolina, to whom Carmen was never close, seems unnaturally guarded and may be having an affair. With nowhere else to go, and Asher overseeing her inheritance, Carmen doesn’t know who to trust.

How well do we really know the people we love? This important question guides the novel’s suspense. To Anna, Robert has always been a devoted partner, but does he have secrets? Who is causing disturbances at Marbrisa in the ´40s, and how do they relate to the reasons why the house was abandoned and believed cursed?

The action moves fast, and Cleeton proves a daring writer as the plot twists unexpectedly. Alongside deadly alligators, shrieking peacocks, and fierce winds whipping off the bay, the uneasy atmosphere suits the historical backdrop, with rich northerners swooping in on undeveloped Florida land, and locals eyeing the rich interlopers with curious envy and resentment. The ending is perfect, too.

The House on Biscayne Bay was published in April by Berkley. This is the 2nd novel by Cleeton that I've read, the first being The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba.

New reader survey emphasizing historical fiction: invitation to participate

Please excuse the recent delay with new posts, as I've been out of town.

M.K. (Mary) Tod, a friend from the historical fiction community who writes in the genre and compiles the A Writer of History blog, has come out with a 5th survey taking a look at reading habits and preferences. This year's survey asks questions about book formats, social media interactions, and how you as a reader find out about books. There's a special focus on historical fiction, so you'll get to weigh in on your time period preferences, what genres you enjoy most, and more.

Take the survey here:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LSYVTG7
 

The survey is likely to remain open through late July.  For the results of earlier surveys (2012 through 2018), see A Writer of History.

The first volume of Conn Iggulden's Nero trilogy dramatizes the survival instinct and bold ambition of his mother, Agrippina

After an excursion to ancient Greece, most recently in Empire (2023), Iggulden circles back to Rome, the setting for his original Emperor series, as he begins a new trilogy about the forces that shaped Emperor Nero’s life.

Nero is still a child when this novel wraps up with the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE, so his mother, Empress Agrippina, is the focal point here. Using her considerable wiles and attractiveness, Agrippina conceives a plan for maneuvering her son into the position of imperial heir and does whatever it takes to succeed.

Spanning the paranoid finale of Tiberius’ reign through Caligula’s madness and the accession of the scholarly Claudius, ruthless in his own way, the story illustrates the era’s political infighting, depravity, and bloody viciousness using full-color imagery and eloquent language that sings with vigor. “Life was violence,” Agrippina comes to believe, “If you survived, you walked away to heal and plot your revenge.” Honor exists, but is rarely rewarded.

Iggulden acknowledges taking some historical liberties to streamline his tale, which zips along with great energy.

Nero was published by Pegasus in the US last month, and I wrote this review for Booklist's historical fiction issue, which came out on May 15. Michael Joseph is the UK publisher for Nero, and that edition has a very similar cover.  This is the third of Iggulden's novels I've reviewed for Booklist, the others being The Gates of Athens and Protector, set in ancient Greece, both of which I enjoyed thoroughly. 

Nero is actually called Lucius in this book; his name at birth was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. He received his new name following adoption by his stepfather (and great-uncle) Claudius some years later. It will be interesting to compare this new series with Margaret George's duology about Nero as it continues: those books are The Confessions of Young Nero and The Splendor Before the Dark. 

All We Were Promised portrays three Black women's friendship and hopes for freedom in 1830s Philadelphia

Lattimore’s debut exudes originality in its characters, plot situations, and especially in its well-chosen setting of 1830s Philadelphia, “the self-proclaimed cradle of liberty,” a landmark American city whose grand ideals of freedom and brotherly love fall short for its Black residents. The opening scene makes plain this philosophical struggle. As Charlotte Walker and Nell Gardner attend a speech by prominent abolitionist Robert Purvis in Washington Square Park, white men’s resentment agitates a violent mob.

The young women’s worlds rarely intersect; their friendship is an exception. Nell’s family are well-to-do Black elites who have been free for generations, while Charlotte had escaped a Maryland plantation with her father four years earlier, a fact she keeps hidden. Charlotte is forced to serve as housemaid to her ambitious father while he passes for white and establishes an upscale woodworking business.

Charlotte gradually opens Nell’s eyes to the hypocritical limitations of the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society that Nell belongs to, since it hesitates to take action to help runaway slaves, even as these needs become immediate. Charlotte had left her younger friend Evie behind when she fled Maryland, and when Evie arrives in Philadelphia with her enslaver, the self-absorbed Missus Kate, Charlotte risks having her cover blown.

The viewpoint nimbly switches among the three lead characters, and pre-Civil War Philadelphia arises fully formed on the page with its diverse residential neighborhoods, public spaces, and a moral edifice whose structure is continually tested. The storyline keeps readers guessing on how everyone’s relationships will evolve under the weight of secrets: not just the women’s friendships, but also Nell’s potential romance with a family friend and Charlotte’s strained bond with her father/boss, who refuses to acknowledge their past. A few too-modern word choices stand out (“slow-walked”), but this is an altogether absorbing, thought-provoking story.

Ashton Lattimore's All We Were Promised was published by Ballantine in April; I reviewed it initially for May's Historical Novels Review.

These 24 novels showcase the popularity, diversity, and vibrancy of today's Gothic historical fiction

Gothic historical fiction has exploded in popularity, a trend I couldn’t be happier about. I’ve been reading gothic novels since grade school, with favorites including Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Katheryn Kimbrough, and Barbara Michaels. In the standard plotline, a sheltered young woman arrives at a mansion in a remote corner of England, often to work as a governess, and finds herself engulfed in secrets and danger, ones revolving around the forbiddingly handsome master of the house. 

In the 1970s and '80s, "gothic” was often synonymous with “romantic suspense,” but while the secretive atmosphere and mystery subplots remain, today’s gothics may or may not have happily-ever-after endings. What you’re more likely to find, along with a strong message of feminine agency, are women who find the strength to save themselves. In terms of characters and settings, the offerings today are considerably more diverse than those of yesteryear. To add unpredictability and additional suspense, their writers switch up the standard gothic tropes in intriguing ways. Key titles in this subgenre include Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Kate Morton’s sagas, Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, and Sarah Penner’s feminist gothic mysteries.

Below are two dozen gothic historicals appearing in 2024. I started out with a list of twelve and kept finding more, and I’m sure there are plenty I’ve left out.  Which ones will be added to your wishlist?

Jess Armstrong’s The Secret of the Three Fates (Minotaur, Dec.) introduces American Ruby Vaughn, in her second fiction outing, to seances along the Scottish border after WWI. The Book of Witching by C. J. Cooke (HarperCollins UK, Oct.) offers another original Gothic setting in its tale of two imperiled women in the present day and the 16th-century Orkney Islands. Moving ahead to the 1930s, Polly Crosby’s gothic mystery The House of Fever (HQ, Aug.) is set in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Pandora author Susan Stokes-Chapman’s second novel The Shadow Key (Harper Perennial, Sept; also Harvill Secker, Apr.) features a male protagonist, a physician encountering secrets on a remote estate in rural 18th-century Wales. Lizzie Pook’s Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge (Picador, Feb.) has a woman investigating her sister’s Arctic disappearance in Victorian London, while religious repression and sexism intermingle in Paulette Kennedy’s The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (Lake Union, Mar.), with a housewife in 1950s Missouri unexpectedly receiving messages from beyond the grave.

The title of Anna Noyes’ The Blue Maiden (Grove, Apr.) refers to an uninhabited Scandinavian island, one reputed to be the site of devil worshippers; a family on a neighboring island in the 19th century, descended from an accused witch, remains haunted by its legacy. Laura Purcell’s name should be familiar to fans of gothics; Moonstone (Magpie, May), her first YA, is a supernatural romance with LGBTQ rep set in the early 19th century. Del Sandeen’s fiction debut This Cursed House (Berkley, Oct), described as Southern gothic horror, has a Black woman from 1960s Chicago relocating to New Orleans to work for a family that’s been cursed. Kuchenga Shenjé’s The Library Thief (Hanover Square, May; also Sphere, Apr.) another debut, follows a Jamaican-born young woman in Victorian England who uncovers secrets in an estate’s private collection of rare books. Heading back to 16th-century Hungary, Sonia Velton’s The Nightingale’s Castle (Harper Perennial, July; also Abacus, May), looks into the notorious legend of “Blood Countess” Erzsébet Báthory. James Wade’s Hollow Out the Dark (Blackstone, Aug.), described as gothic adventure set in Depression-era Texas, has a WWI vet diving into dangerous situations and secrets.

Traditional gothic plots are infused with unique twists in all of these novels. In Kelsey James’ Secrets of Rose Briar Hall (Kensington, June), set in Gilded Age New York, a wealthy young wife awakens to a mystery and amnesia the night after a large society party. Nineteenth-century Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) follows Amara, a demon-priest’s daughter, as she tries to clear her father’s name in the dark supernatural tale Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley, Feb.). In 1860s Paris, two estranged sisters stage a haunting to scam a secretive family and pay their bills, but their attempted fraud backfires in Carmella Lowkis’s Spitting Gold (Atria, May). Elizabeth Macneal’s The Burial Plot (Picador UK, June), set in early Victorian England, also focuses on a pair of fraudsters, one of whom flees a risky situation by posing as a lady’s maid in a house full of secrets.  Hester Musson’s The Beholders (Fourth Estate, Jan.), her debut, involves a maid in Victorian England who unearths secrets about the mysterious household residents. In Regency-era Nova Scotia, Emeline, the protagonist in B. R. Myers’ The Third Wife of Faraday House (William Morrow, Aug.), discovers a surprise when she arrives at her prospective husband’s seaside manor: her predecessor is still alive.

Some more terrific settings in this batch! House of Shades by Lianne Dillsworth (Harper, July; also Hutchinson Heinemann, May) has the title character, a Black woman doctor, on a risky mission in 1830s London that threatens to reveal long-held mysteries. Chanel Cleeton takes a gothic turn in her latest, The House on Biscayne Bay (Berkley, Apr.), following two women decades apart who live at a glamorous mansion in south Florida. Donyae Coles’ debut, Midnight Rooms (Amistad, July), sees orphaned mixed-race heroine Orabella marrying a wealthy man she barely knows in 1840 England.  The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins (William Morrow, Aug.; also The Borough Press, May), best known for The Binding, is multi-period suspense about surprising discoveries made on a Greek island in the 1820s. Secrets and spirits from the Russian Revolution percolate into the 1920s in Olesya Salnikova Gilmore’s second novel, The Haunting of Moscow House (Berkley, Sept.), while Barbara Havelocke’s Estella’s Revenge (Canelo Hera, May) retells Great Expectations from the viewpoint of Miss Havisham’s daughter.

Secrets abound in 1920s London in Marty Wingate's newest cozy mystery

Kudos to Marty Wingate for writing an engaging cozy mystery whose solution is a clever and unpredictable puzzle. A Body at the Dance Hall is third in a series featuring the perky, adventurous Miss Mabel Canning, who takes assignments with the Useful Women agency in 1922 London – private investigation is her specialty – while quietly investigating murders.

When Mabel gets approached about a posh gig as companion to a wealthy young American woman newly arrived in London, she looks forward to livening up her dull January by showing her charge around town. But Roxanne Arkwright, eighteen-year-old daughter of a British industrialist and his Chicago-based first wife, appears to be a high-maintenance handful.

Then, on the pair’s evening out at the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, Mabel garbed in slinky knee-length blue chiffon velvet, our sleuth gets locked in the hall’s larder by a fellow detective hired by the Arkwrights to watch Roxanne. An hour later, after Mabel is freed by an old contact at Scotland Yard, she finds the young man lying dead, and Roxanne frantic with worry about her.

The mystery plot gets deliciously complicated as it changes from having no real suspects at all, since the motive for the crime isn’t clear, to nearly everyone being a suspect. Secrets are afoot! Wingate scatters red herrings hither and thither until the perpetrator comes into surprising focus, and the book’s revelations don’t end there.

This volume stands alone perfectly, with only light allusions to Mabel’s two previous outings. The fashions and hairstyles are fabulous, the historical atmosphere lively, and the characters a fun mix, including Gladys, the friendly terrier owned by Mabel’s beau, Park Winstone. (Better naming consistency would be great; he’s called Park and Winstone equally frequently.) But let’s see more of Mabel and her fellow Useful Women, please.

A Body at the Dance Hall was published by Bookouture in April, and I'd reviewed it from NetGalley for May's Historical Novels Review. The two previous books are A Body on the Doorstep and A Body at the Séance, but you don't need to read them first.  I wish more historical mystery authors would make the effort to have their books stand alone, since it makes it so much easier for new readers. And since there weren't any spoilers, I went back and got copies of the first two.

The Passionate Tudor by Alison Weir depicts the complicated, ultimately tragic life of Queen Mary I

Mary I, England’s first true queen regnant, isn’t generally recognized for her admirable steadfastness, like her mother Catherine of Aragon, or her canny survival instinct, like her half-sister, Elizabeth I, although she exhibited both these qualities. Instead, due to her zealous persecution of Protestants, the sobriquet "Bloody Mary" clings to her. Her actions make her a challenging fiction subject, but Tudor expert Weir (The King’s Pleasure, 2023) dexterously humanizes this polarizing figure.

Following a cosseted childhood as Henry VIII’s elder daughter, Mary gets sidelined during her father’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn and break with Rome. Mary’s health suffers during many stressful years, and Weir casts a sympathetic light on Mary as she endures demotion and disinheritance, relying on her supporters and Catholic faith. But following her triumphant coronation, her marriage to Philip of Spain and cruel religious intolerance make her extremely unpopular.

Weir aptly demonstrates how politics and personal relationships intermix via Elizabeth’s transformation, in Mary’s eyes, from beloved sister to dangerous rival. Mary’s passionate spirit, which is stubbornly and tragically misdirected, comes alive via Weir’s thorough approach.

The Passionate Tudor was published by Ballantine (US/Canada) this week, and by Hodder Headline in the UK on May 9, under the title Mary I: Queen of Sorrows.  I wrote this review for the April 15th issue of Booklist.

This is the third novel in a loose trilogy following three generations of Tudors: Henry VIII (The King's Pleasure) and his mother (The Last White Rose) and eldest daughter. Other historical novelists have written about Mary I, but none very recently.  Suzannah Dunn's The Queen's Sorrow appeared in 2009, likewise Julianne Lee's Her Mother's Daughter, both at a time when Tudor fiction was in vogue. Having finished this series, I'm curious to see what Alison Weir will write next.

Historical fiction trendspotting: Sail the world with these recent and upcoming pirate novels

Ahoy there! Has anyone else noticed the number of historical fiction about pirates appearing lately? There are enough of them to warrant some notice. Besides the exciting storylines, another attractive angle to these books is that they're anchored in historical settings you don't often see.  Many of them deal with female pirates: some completely fictional, others based in legend. Below are eight that came out in the past year or so.  Looking ahead to the future, you'll see more, including Ariel Lawhon's next novel The Pirate Queen, about 16th-century Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley; and Rachel Rueckert's The Determined, about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, which is out from Kensington in 2025.

Briony Cameron's debut novel is based on the legend of Jacquotte Delahaye, a biracial woman of color from Saint-Domingue who reportedly became a pirate captain in the 17th-century Caribbean.  Atria, June 2024.

Immerse yourself in the political and cultural world of the Indian Ocean in the 12th century, full of bustling international trade and dangerous threats, in Chakraborty's historical fantasy novel. First in a series, it sees the title character—a widow, mother, and former pirate—tempted into one more adventure at sea.  Harper Voyager, February 2023.

The South China Sea in the 19th century is the setting for this debut about a pirate queen of legend, Shek Yeung, and the risks she takes to solidify power in a patriarchal world. Bloomsbury, May 2023.

De Tores (who also writes as Francesca Haig) dives into the life story of Mary Read, who recounts her adventurous life, from her childhood, when she was raised as a boy, through her later years as a notorious pirate.  Bloomsbury UK, April 2024.

Howe (The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane) writes an exciting tale about Hannah Masury, an indentured servant who flees 18th-century Boston and dons a disguise as a cabin boy about a pirate ship. In a parallel timeline, a 1930s-era researcher uncovers Hannah's story. Henry Holt, November 2023.

Part three in her Joubert Family Chronicles, Mosse's The Ghost Ship tells a story about a vessel of secrets, romance, and piracy that moves from Europe to the Barbary Coast in the 1620s. Minotaur, July 2023.

The swashbuckling tale of Anne (Coleman) Bonny, a young woman from Ireland's County Cork who  immigrates to America in the early 18th century with her family and turns to a life of the sea on a quest for freedom and adventure. New Island Books, April 2024.

Based on the legend of pirate Samuel Bellamy, Rueckert's debut is an adventurous star-crossed love story about Sam, an orphaned sailor from Cape Cod, and the woman he loves, Maria Brown, whose affluent family refuses to entertain Sam as a suitor for her. Kensington, March 2024.

Restoration-era intrigue and sisterhood in Nicola Cornick's multi-period The Other Gwyn Girl

Raise your hand if you realized royal mistress Nell Gwyn had an older sister. If not, you’re not alone. Nicola Cornick has a knack for taking interesting women from history’s sidelines, digging into the limited facts on their lives, and weaving them into compelling dual-narrative plots.

In this highly diverting romantic caper, Rose Gwyn has gotten herself in a muddle. It’s 1671, and she’s been languishing in London’s grimy Marshalsea Prison for six weeks after being arrested as an accessory to her highwayman husband John’s theft of the crown jewels. Pregnant and despondent – and illiterate – Rose asks her jailer to scribe a note to her sister Nell, theatrical darling and Charles II’s beloved, begging to be freed. Nell comes to her rescue but has motives beyond sibling affection. Perpetually worried about money after the sisters’ impoverished childhood, Nell had plans for the stolen jewels herself, but they have mysteriously disappeared.

The parallel narrative, set today, involves librarian Jess Yates, forced to relaunch her life after her fraudster ex-boyfriend’s deceptions. She lands in rural Berkshire, working as housekeeper for her sister Tavy, a celebrity influencer whose latest reality TV series follows the restoration of “Fortune Hall,” a manor where legends about the Gwyn family still circulate.

Compared with Rose’s Restoration-era tale of dangerous conspiracies and betrayals, Jess’s story could have felt lightweight and ignorable, and it’s to Cornick’s credit that it isn’t. With the help of Ethan, a historic building consultant, Jess begins exploring the house’s shadowy centuries-old history; fans of Lauren Belfer’s Ashton Hall will enjoy her research journey. One of the novel’s love stories develops too fast, a small flaw in a well-constructed tale of two independent women and the complexities of sisterhood. This story stands alone, but the author’s fans will note cameos of characters and places from her earlier novels.

The Other Gwyn Girl was published by the UK's Boldwood Books in March; I reviewed it initially for May's Historical Novels Review. For US readers, I just noticed that the book is 99 cents on Kindle (not sure how long this will last!), and Amazon Prime members can read it for free in their Prime library.

The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez unites a diverse cast of people during the Panama Canal's construction

The Great Divide is the epic novel of the Panama Canal’s construction you didn’t know you’d been missing. This major engineering feat of the early 20th century linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, making international shipping more efficient, but its excavation caused untold hardships for Panama’s people. With this event as a backdrop, Henríquez brings together a large cast whose lives are transformed by it.

Among them are Ada Bunting, an enterprising young Barbadian woman who stows away aboard a steamer to Panama, hoping to earn enough money there to pay for surgery for her ill sister back home. Omar Aquino, a fisherman’s son, seeks adventure and community in signing on as a laborer for the canal, but his decision provokes his father, who hates seeing his country torn up by outsiders, to give him the silent treatment. A caring woman with botanical expertise, Marian Oswald has accompanied her scientist husband, John, from Tennessee in support of his dream of eradicating malaria but finds herself isolated and lonely.

The viewpoint is deliberately inclusive and moves from familiar perspectives to new ones with ease, introducing characters like Ada’s proudly independent mother in Barbados; the fishmonger Joaquín and wife Valentina, whose childhood home at Gatún is the rumored site of a proposed dam; and the Oswalds’ cook, Antoinette, who sends funds back to her children in Antigua.

Henríquez’s style resembles Ken Follett’s in its smoothness and approachability, though her cast is more culturally diverse, the scope not as sprawling, and she avoids crazy coincidences in gathering the different threads together. The novel is a stellar example of how historical novels can bring lesser-known voices to the surface, emphasizing how every person has a story worth listening to.

The Great Divide appeared from Ecco/HarperCollins in March, and I'd reviewed it from an Edelweiss copy for the Historical Novels Review's May issue.  Fourth Estate is the UK publisher. The novel was a Read with Jenna book club pick. A Spanish-language edition, Entre Dos Aguas, translated by  Martha Celis-Mendoza, will be out in August.