Guide to historical novels for 2019 - Historical Novel Society (2024)

The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles set in the 1960s and earlier. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US & Canada) and Sarah Cuthbertson (UK), and are based on publisher descriptions.

Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries– thank you!

For newer titles, check out of lists of forthcoming adult historical novels for 2021 and for children and YA for 2021.

January 2019

Rosie Archer, The Bluebird Girls, Quercus (first in saga trilogy starring a WWII singing trio – the south coast’s answer to the Andrews Sisters)

Erin Bartels, We Hope for Better Things, Revell (a disgraced journalist discovers that the women in her family were testaments to love and courage in the face of war, persecution, and racism)

Stephanie Barron, That Churchill Woman, Ballantine (1880s-1890s England – captures the spirit of Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome)

Peter Volodja Boe, Out of the Holocaust, Elm Hill (recounts the plight of two Jewish-born orphans in Latvia and Germany during WWI – inspirational)

Alan Bradley, The Golden Tresses of the Dead, Delacorte US / Orion UK (latest mystery featuring Flavia de Luce, the adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth)

Jordanna Max Brodsky, The Wolf in the Whale, Orbit (young Inuit shaman’s epic quest for survival in the frozen lands of North America in AD 1000)

Elizabeth Brooks, The Orphan of Salt Winds, Tin House (England, 1939 ―a gothic, psychological mystery and coming-of-age story)

Deborah Burrows, Ambulance Girls at War, Ebury (saga set during the London Blitz in WWII)

James Charlesworth, The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill, Skyhorse (literary suspense and family saga migrating from the Great Depression to the age of corporate greed and terrorism)

Jerome Charyn, The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, Liveright (re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the NYC police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon- to-be 26th president)

Rory Clements, Nemesis, Zaffre (a race against time to unmask a Nazi spy)

Stephen Cox, Our Child of the Stars, Jo Fletcher (story of warmth, tenacity and generosity of spirit, set against the backdrop of the ever-changing decade of the 1960s)

Donna Douglas, A Nightingale Christmas Promise, Penguin Random House UK (a Nightingale nurses novel set during World War I)

Sophie Duffy, Betsy & Lilibet, Legend Times, (London, 1926: two baby girls are born just hours and miles apart. One you know as the Queen of England, but what of the other girl?)

Caroline Dunford, A Death at a Gentleman’s Club, Accent (murder mystery in 1913)

Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Fitzwilliam, Allison & Busby (1st in Victorian mystery series)

Jim Eldridge, Murder at the British Museum, Allison & Busby (2nd in Victorian museum mystery series)

Robert Fabbri, Emperor of Rome, Corvus (last in fictionalised life of Roman emperor Vespasian, 1st-c)

Lyndsay Faye, The Paragon Hotel, Putnam (historical thriller following a woman’s escape from Harlem to Oregon in 1921)

Katie Flynn, A Mother’s Love, Century (saga set in 1940 Liverpool)

Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman, Two Roads (story of Alva Smith from a destitute Southern family who married a Vanderbilt and transformed New York society in the Gilded Age)

Edgardo Franzosini, The Animal Gazer, Head of Zeus (story of Rembrandt Bugatti, the 20th century’s greatest animal sculptor, a sensitive artist destroyed by the cruelties of WWI and the brother of the famous builder of luxury sports cars)

Laura Frantz, A Bound Heart, Revell (a Scottish laird and a simple lass are forced to move to colonial Virginia as indentured servants)

Marius Gabriel, The Parisians, Lake Union (Paris 1940― three women learn the true price of their proximity to the enemy: for in the shadow of war, is anyone truly safe?)

Terry Gamble, The Eulogist, William Morrow (Ohio in the decades leading to Civil War- illuminates the immigrant experience, injustice of slavery, & the debts human beings owe to one another)

David R. Gillham, Annelies, Viking US / Fig Tree UK (alternate history; literary fiction imagining that Anne Frank survived the Holocaust)

Rosie Harris, Only Love Can Heal, Severn House (a post Great War romance)

Cora Harrison, Murder at the Queen’s Old Castle, Severn House (Reverend Mother, Bk 6)

Clarissa Harwood, Bear No Malice, Pegasus (story of love and lies, secrets and second chances in Edwardian England)

Emma Hornby, The Angel Makers, Transworld (19th-C historical saga set in Manchester)

Douglas Kennedy, The Great Wide Open, Hutchinson (reading a manuscript causes a 1980s book editor to delve into her past)

Kay Kenyon, Serpent in the Heather, Saga Press (England 1936―secret agent Kim Tavistock returns to solve another mystery— the case of a serial killer with deep Nazi ties)

Ayse Kulin (trans. Kenneth Dakan), Without a Country, Amazon Crossing (Germany 1930s onwards―based on true events as four generations of a family struggle to forge their destinies)

Gemma Liviero, The Road Beyond Ruin, Lake Union (1945 ― as an Italian POW heads home across a war-ravaged Germany, he encounters a young child beside his dead mother)

Catherine Lloyd, Death Comes to Bath, Kensington (newest in Kurland St. Mary mystery series, this one set in the spa town of Bath, England)

Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters, St. Martin’s Press (two estranged sisters, each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII)

Jennifer Macaire, The Soul of Time: The Time for Alexander, Book 6, Accent (Ashley and Alexander come face to face with the Thief of Souls – a druid with powers to stop time & change the future of the world)

David Mack, The Iron Codex, Tor (1954, Southeast Asia― the wizards of World War II become the sorcerers of the Cold War in this historical fantasy thriller)

Simon Mayo, Mad Blood Stirring, Pegasus (inspired by true events, novel recounts the story of the first ever all-black Shakespeare production, staged by segregated American prisoners of war)

Jess Montgomery, The Widows, Minotaur (Kinship, Ohio, 1924: inspired by the true story of Ohio’s first female sheriff)

Harold Nebenzal, Café Berlin, The Overlook Press (first published in 1991, Café Berlin offers a literary thriller of decadence and defiance during Nazi Germany’s rise to power)

Chris Nickson, The Hanging Psalm, Severn House (new historical mystery series set in Regency Leeds)

Jacqueline O’Mahony, A River in the Trees, Riverrun (modern Irish woman feels connection to female ancestor involved with a rebel soldier during the Irish independence war in 1919)

Alan Parks, February’s Son, Canongate (murder in 1970s Glasgow)

Tim Pears, The Redeemed, Bloomsbury (last in trilogy set in WWI West Country)

Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, Under the Midnight Sun: The Heart of Alaska, Book 3, Bethany House (historical romance set in 1929 Alaska)

Rosella Postorino, (trans. Leah Janeczko), At the Wolf’s Table, Flatiron (based on true story of a young woman who moved to a village near the Wolf’s Lair, and became one of Hitler’s food tasters)

Bill Pronzini, The Flimflam Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery, Forge (San Francisco, early 20th-century)

Audrey Reimann, A Daughter’s Shame, Ebury (saga of fatherless girl set in Macclesfield in WWII)

Suzanne Rindell, Eagle & Crane, Allison & Busby (two young men confront shocking truths and unlock long-held family secrets during the US internment of Japanese immigrants in World War II)

Candace Robb, A Murdered Peace, Pegasus (York, England, winter 1400― Kate Clifford finds herself working to prove the innocence of her long-time confidante)

Jennifer Robson, The Gown, William Morrow (an historical novel about Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it)

Ian Ross, Triumph in Dust, Head of Zeus (last in military adventure series set in the late Roman Empire)

Paula Saunders, The Distance Home, Picador (how the lives of two siblings in 1960s America are affected by their childhoods)

Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River, Transworld (mystery set in the 19thC around the Thames, brimming with folklore, suspense, science and romance)

Cathy Sharp, The Girl in the Ragged Shawl, HarperCollins (first in a new series: The Children of the Workhouse)

Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Blood and Sugar, Mantle (murder mystery set in 18thC London)

Alessandro Spina, (trans. André Naffis-Sahely), The Fourth Shore, Arcade (maps the transformation of Benghazi from a sleepy 1910s Ottoman backwater to the second capital of a 1960s oil-rich kingdom)

Magda Szabó, trans. Len Rix, Katalin Street, MacLehose (the lives of three closely linked families in pre-WWII Budapest are shattered by the German occupation)

Liz Trenow, The Dressmaker of Draper’s Lane, Pan (story set against the silk trade in London, 1760s)

Jen Turano, Flights of Fancy: American Heiresses #1, Bethany House (follows three American heiresses as they navigate the paths of love in 1880s New England high society)

Sonia Velton, Blackberry and Wild Rose, Quercus (Huguenot silk weaver rescues prostitute in 18th-C Spitalfields but the kindness has disastrous consequences)

Eric Vuillard, The Order of the Day, Picador (fictional account of the meetings and events that led up to WWII)

Mary Wood, The Forgotten Daughter, Pan (The Girls Who Went To War Trilogy Book #1)

Jaime Jo Wright, The Curse of Misty Wayfair, Bethany House (suspenseful multi-period novel taking place in Wisconsin, 1908, and a century later)

February 2019

Susana Aikin, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, Kensington (an Edwardian woman defies convention by fleeing to Russia with a theatre troupe)

Boris Akunin, The Coronation, The Mysterious Press (a tale of abduction and intrigue set during the build-up to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II)

V.S. Alexander, The Irishman’s Daughter, Kensington (Ireland 1845 – novel of strength and resilience set against the backdrop of the Irish famine)

Stephanie Allen, Tonic and Balm, Shade Mountain Press (set against a backdrop of rural poverty and a wave of anti-black violence, story examines the tenuous solidarity and shifting alliances of people on the fringes of society)

Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Duel (c1986), Glagoslav (historical thriller)

Lindsay Jayne Ashford, The Snow Gypsy, Lake Union (London, close of World War II―novel of two women—one determined to uncover the past and the other determined to escape it)

Yvonne Battle-Felton, Remembered, Dialogue (Philadelphia, 1910: Spring, an emancipated slave, is forced to relive a haunting past in order to lead her dying son home)

Paul Binding, The Stranger from the Sea, The Overlook Press (re-imagination of characters from Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, set against backdrop of a late 19th-c English town harboring many secrets)

Mike Blakely, A Sinister Splendor, Forge (1845― novel of the Mexican-American War)

Rhys Bowen, The Victory Garden, Lake Union (novel of a woman’s love and sacrifice during WWI)

T. C. Boyle, Outside Looking In, Bloomsbury (1960s Harvard. The world is changing, and Dr Timothy Leary is hosting clinical trials for a drug called LSD in his living room)

Alan Brennert, Daughter of Moloka’i, St. Martin’s Press (two women—different in some ways, similar in others—who never expected to meet, much less come to love one another)

Theodore Brun, Sacred Storm, Corvus (8th-C Viking epic)

Lyn Bushell, Painted Ladies, Sandstone (Paris 1917; one artist, two mistresses, one muse)

Mary Calvi, Dear George, Dear Mary, A Novel of George Washington’s First Love, St. Martin’s Press (novel about heiress Mary Philipse’s relationship with George Washington, based on historical accounts, letters, and personal journals)

Kristy Cambron, Castle on the Rise, Thomas Nelson (a storied castle; a band of rebels; a nation chasing a centuries-old dream of freedom and three women who rise above it all)

Elizabeth Camden, A Desperate Hope, Bethany House (historical romance in New York, 1908)

Christian Cameron, The New Achilles, Orion (first in new series set in Ancient Greece)

David Caringer, Decision at Fletcher’s Mill, Elm Hill (inspirational novel of the American Revolution set in South Carolina, 1871)

Christopher Castellani, Leading Men, Viking (story of desire, artistic ambition, and fidelity, set in the glamorous literary and film circles of 1950s Italy)

Mary Chamberlain, The Hidden, Point Blank (secrets kept by two people trapped on the Channel Islands under German occupation in WWII)

Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger, Flatiron US / Quercus UK (set in 1930s colonial Malaysia― coming of age of a boy and a girl, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible)

Clare Clark, In the Full Light of the Sun, Virago (follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in a devastating scandal of 1930s Germany)

Vivian Conroy, A Testament to Murder, Canelo (1920s murder mystery)

Nicola Cornick, The Woman in the Lake, Graydon House (London 1757, Swindon 2018― two couples separated by centuries are connected by a deadly shared obsession)

Pat Jeanne Davis, When Valleys Bloom Again,Elk Lake Publishing (WWII romance; after fleeing impending war in England, 19-year-old Abby Stapleton works to correct her stammer and to become a teacher in America, but runs into conflicts)

Margaret Dickinson, The Brooklands Girls, Pan (second title in the Maitland trilogy)

Sam Eastland, The Elegant Lie, Faber & Faber (Germany 1949 – undercover operation is mounted to infiltrate the largest post-war black market operation)

Sarah M. Eden, Healing Hearts, Shadow Mountain (story of a plucky young woman fighting for happiness in Wyoming Territory, 1876)

Donna Everhart, The Forgiving Kind, Kensington (story of a young heroine, & family love tested to the limits― set in 1950s North Carolina)

Colin Falconer, Loving Liberty Levine, Lake Union (New York, 1913― novel about finding the American Dream—and at what cost?)

Charles Finch, The Vanishing Man, Minotaur (a prequel to the Charles Lenox series)

Mick Finlay, The Murder Pit, MIRA (2nd in the Sherlockian detective series starring Holmes contemporary and competitor― Arrowood solves the gritty crimes that Sherlock can’t)

Eric Flint, Charles E. Gannon, 1636; The Vatican Sanction, Baen (graphic format historical series)

T. Frohock, Where Oblivion Lives, Harper Voyager (historical fantasy set in 1932 Spain & Germany)

Duo Ji Zhuo Ga, Love in No-Man’s Land, Head of Zeus (Tibet 1967: the Cultural Revolution is seeping across China into Tibet and Gongzha helps hide temple treasures from the Red Guard looters, an act that will have repercussions)

Marcus Galloway, Snake Oil: It All Comes Around, Five Star (1878 Dakota Territory; action adventure as law men and bounty hunters hunt a ‘snake oil’ salesman with a price on his head)

Laurent Gaude, trans. Alison Anderson, Hear Our Defeats, Europa (woven through two story lines are turning points in world history, showing a different facet of how nations & individuals face defeat)

Sulari Gentill, A Murder Unmentioned, Poisoned Pen (historical crime thriller set in 1930s and reflecting our own tumultuous times)

Mary Gibson, A Sister’s Struggle, Head of Zeus (saga set in 1935 London)

Natalia Ginzburg, The City and the House, Arcade (epistolary novel set against the background of Italy from 1939 to 1944)

Jocelyn Green, Between Two Shores, Bethany House (daughter of a Mohawk mother & French father in 1759, Montreal, Catherine Duval is caught between two worlds during the Seven Years’ War)

Molly Green, An Orphan’s Wish, Avon (third saga in Molly Green’s Dr Barnado’s series. A story of love, friendship and hope in the darkest of places)

Lisa Gornick, The Peaco*ck Feast, Sarah Crichton Books (opens at Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall, June 1916 – a historical saga about love, class, and the past we never escape)

Stacey Halls, The Familiars, MIRA (set against the frenzy of the 1612 Witch Trials of Pendle Hill―fate of a noblewoman and her unborn child rests on proving the innocence of her midwife)

Victoria Hamilton, A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Murder, Midnight Ink (murder mystery set in a hypocritical society where women, whether scullery maids or orphans, rarely get to make their own decisions)

Karen Harper, American duch*ess, William Morrow (1895 – a novel of Consuelo Vanderbilt)

Lindsay Harrel, The Secrets of Paper and Ink, Thomas Nelson (brought together by a charming bookstore in England, three women fight to defy expectations and dream new dreams)

Jane Healey, The Beantown Girls, Lake Union (1944― a novel of love, courage, and danger unfolds as World War II’s brightest heroines take on the front lines)

Leanna Renee Hieber, Miss Violet and the Great War: A Strangely Beautiful Novel, Tor (new stand-alone adventure in the series set during World War I)

Lancaster Hill, War Valley, Pinnacle (new series set in 1870s Texas―a Confederate veteran heads west to start a new life—and gets caught in the middle of a new kind of war…)

Charlotte Hinger, The Healer’s Daughter, Five Star (Kansas 1877; moving historical fiction about the settlement of free African-Americans in hostile territory)

Bonnie Hobbs, Mollyfar, Five Star (Texas 1886; novel follows the tempestuous love affair between a girl working in a brothel and a young cattle rancher)

Leanne Howe, Savage Conversations, Coffee House Press (novel links the hauntings of Mary Todd Lincoln in 1875 with the 1862 hangings of 38 Dakotas by President Lincoln)

Kristi Ann Hunter, A Return of Devotion: Haven Manor #2, Bethany House (Regency Romance set in early 1800s Britain)

Ed Ifkovic, Run Cold, Poisoned Pen (murder mystery thriller set in 1950s Alaska)

Graham Ison, Hardcastle’s Runaway, Severn House (Hardcastle and Marriott, Book 14)

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Random House (in first novel of Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, & history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child)

Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris, Park Row (Manhattan 1946―widow finds a suitcase belonging to a leader of a ring of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war)

Philip Kazan, The Phoenix of Florence, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in 15th-C Florence)

Jim Kelly, The Mathematical Bridge, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in Cambridge in 1940)

Mary Pat Kelly, Irish Above All, Forge (sequel to Of Irish Blood―Roaring 20s, Great Depression, WW II)

Crystal King, The Chef’s Secret, Touchstone (Renaissance Italy― details the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to several popes, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets )

Frank King, ed. Chris Ware & Jeet Heer, Walt and Skeezix 1933-1934: Book 7 City of Light, Drawn & Quarterly (lean economic climate motivates young Skeezix to find inventive ways to earn money )

Lisa Kleypas, Devil’s Daughter, HarperCollins (the Ravenels meet the Wallflowers in this latest romance)

Eleanor Kuhns, The Shaker Murders, Severn House (a peaceful Shaker community is rocked by a series of bizarre accidents, but is there more to them than first appears?)

Volker Kutscher, Goldstein: A Gereon Rath Mystery, Picador (mystery set in 1931 Berlin)

Soraya M. Lane, The Spitfire Girls, Lake Union (three skilled aviators are determined to help win the war)

Sue Lawrence, Down to the Sea, Saraband, (multi-period mystery set in 1981 and 1898)

Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman, Michael Joseph (glass figure features in murder mystery set in 17thC Iceland)

Elizabeth Letts, Finding Dorothy, Ballantine (Hollywood 1938, South Dakota early 1900s―tells the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book that inspired the iconic film)

Marc Levy, (trans. Chris Murray), The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury, Amazon Crossing (a witty novel about one woman’s unexpected journey to follow her destiny)

Frances Liardet, We Must Be Brave, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Dec 1940 Southampton -explores the fierce love that we feel for our children and the power of that love to endure)

Jonathan Lunn, The Name of Valour, Canelo (WW II military thriller, Malaya 1942)

George Mann, The Revenant Express: Newbury & Hobbes Investigation, Tor (fifth steampunk mystery ― Sir Maurice Newbury races against time to find a clockwork heart for his assistant, Veronica)

Patricia Marcantonio, Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit, Crooked Lane (amidst the heraldry of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, a string of brutal murders rocks Britain’s upper crust)

Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Wolves of Rome, Pan (historical thriller about two brothers and the betrayal of Teutoburg Forest that devastated the Roman Empire)

Alyssa Maxwell, A Murderous Marriage, Kensington (in post-WWI England, an elegant wedding turns deadly; 4th in Lady and Lady’s Maid mystery series)

Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway, Ecco (three generations of an unconventional New England family own and operate a candlepin bowling alley)

Rosie Meddon, A Wife’s War, Canelo (Woodicombe House Saga, part 2)

Mandy Mikulencak, Forgiveness Road, A John Scognamiglio Book (1970s Mississippi – lives of three generations of women are thrown in upheaval when a dark secret is exposed)

Mary Monroe, One House Over, Dafina (1930s rural Alabama – a portrait of two very different couples, whose fast friendship is no match for shattering betrayal)

Allison Pittman, The Seamstress, Tyndale (story breathes life into the cameo character from the classic novel A Tale of Two Cities)

Kate Quinn, The Huntress, William Morrow (a battle-haunted English journalist & a Russian female bomber pilot join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America)

Lucinda Riley, The Moon Sister, Atria (latest in the D’Aplièse sisters’ stories)

Bethan Roberts, Graceland, Chatto & Windus (novel about Elvis Presley)

Priscilla Royal, The Twice-Hanged Man, Poisoned Pen (A Medieval Mystery Book 15)

Patrice Sarath, Fog Season, Angry Robot (a web of secrets and hidden identities ensnare two sisters and their family, in this historical fantasy sequel to The Sisters Mederos)

Whitney Scharer, The Age of Light, Little, Brown US / Picador UK (novel about pioneering photographer Lee Miller and her affair with Man Ray in the 1930s)

Leife Shallcross, The Beast’s Heart, Ace (retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in an alternate seventeenth-century France—and told from the point of view of the Beast himself)

Sara Sheridan, England Expects: The Mirabelle Bevan Mystery Series, Kensington (dangers abound during England’s summer heatwave of 1953, as Mirabelle is drawn into another murder case)

Sharma Shields, The Cassandra, Henry Holt (follows a woman who goes to work in a top secret WW II research facility, only to be tormented by visions of what the mission will mean for humankind)

Sarah Sundin, The Sky Above Us, Revell (can a Red Cross volunteer help a top American fighter pilot to heal the wounds of the past?)

Charles Todd, The Black Ascot, William Morrow (an appalling murder takes place during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horserace honoring the late King Edward VII)

Brenda Rickman Vantrease, A Far Horizon, Severn House (as the English Civil War reaches its climax three women fight for survival. Conclusion to Broken Kingdom series)

Hilda Vaughan, Harvest Home (c1936), Honno (gothic tale of possession, madness and murder set in ‘Abercoran’ on the south-west coast of Wales during the reign of George III)

Ann Weisgarber, The Glovemaker, Pan UK / Skyhorse US (Utah Territory, winter of 1888―a stranger sets in motion a desperate chain of events for a Mormon wife)

Kaite Welsh, The Unquiet Heart, Pegasus (Edinburgh, 1893― set in moody fin de siecle Edinburgh, Sarah Gilchrist tries to prove her fiancé’s innocence in the midst of his murder trial)

G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King, Grove Press (a fantastical journey set at the height of the Spanish Inquisition; a story of love vs power, religion vs faith and freedom vs safety)

Snowden Wright, American Pop, William Morrow (epic saga of family, ambition, passion, & tragedy that brings to life a Southern dynasty—founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company)

Guzel Yakhina, trans. Lisa C. Hayden, Zuleikha, Oneworld (Russia 1930 – sent to a camp after the murder of her husband by communists, Zuleikha builds a new life far removed from the one she left behind)

Jin Yong, trans. Gigi Chan, A Bond Undone: Legends of the Condor Heroes Vol, 2, MacLehose (series set 3rd – c China, during Han Dynasty)

March 2019

Sara Ackerman, The Lieutenant’s Nurse, MIRA (WWII story of love, friendship and the resilient spirit of the heroic nurses of Pearl Harbor)

Merryn Allingham, A Tale of Two Sisters, Canelo (historical romance)

J.M. Alvey, Shadows of Athens, Orion (first in murder mystery series set in Ancient Greece, featuring Philocles, an aspiring comic playwright)

Mesu Andrews, Of Fire and Lions, Waterbrook (Old Testament book of Daniel comes to life in this novel)

Olivier Barde-Cabuçon, Casanova and the Faceless Woman, Pushkin Vertigo (mystery set amidst the glamour and squalor of pre- Revolutionary Paris)

Tania Bayard, In the Shadow of the Enemy, Severn House (14th-century France – Christine de Pizan Mystery, Book 2)

Steve Berry, The Malta Exchange, Minotaur (latest entry in the Cotton Malone series involves the Knights of Malta, papal conclave, and lost documents that could change history)

Joanne Bischof, Daughters of Northern Shores, Thomas Nelson (sequel to Sons of Blackbird Mountain – inspirational saga)

Kate Breslin, Far Side of the Sea, Bethany House (intrigue & romance at end of WW I)

Emily Brightwell, Mrs. Jeffries Delivers the Goods, Berkley (latest installment in Victorian mysteries)

Lynn Brittney, Murder in Belgravia, Crooked Lane (London, 1915 – a high-profile murder propels a unique crime-fighting team into the dark environs of London’s underworld – 1st in Mayfair 100 series)

Theodore Brun, A Mighty Dawn, Atlantic (8th-c Scandinavia; Wanderer Chronicles #1)

Amanda Cabot, A Tender Hope, Revell (when a Texas Ranger comes to town on a mission to capture his brother’s killers, he finds more than he expected)

Andrea Camilleri, trans. Stephen Sartarelli, The Sect of Angels, Europa (based on a true story of a turn-of-the-century Sicilian scandal. A portrait of the machinations of power and the difficult destiny of a local hero)

Jillian Cantor, In Another Time, Harper Perennial (1931― follows a young couple torn apart by circ*mstance leading up to WW II—& the family secret that may prove to be the means for survival)

Jonathan Carr, Make Me a City, Henry Holt (fictional account of the story of 19^th-c Chicago, tracing its rise from frontier settlement to industrial colossus)

Ray Celestin, The Mobster’s Lament, Mantle (latest in crime series set in 1947 New York)

Karen Charlton, Murder in Park Lane, Thomas & Mercer (Detective Lavender Mysteries #5)

Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (c. 1901), Belt Publishing (based on a historically accurate account of the 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina race riot)

P.F. Chisholm, A Suspicion of Silver, Head of Zeus (latest in Robert Carey Elizabethan mystery adventure series set in the Anglo-Scottish borderlands)

Zen Cho, The True Queen, Ace (Regency fantasy ―a young woman with no memories of her past finds herself embroiled in dangerous politics in England and the land of the fae)

Juliet Conlin, The Lives Before Us, Black and White (1939―story of survival, community and friendship in defiance of the worst threat to humanity the world has ever faced)

Mary Connealy, The Unexpected Champion, Bethany House (conclusion to the High Sierra Sweethearts trilogy in 1868)

Margaret Dickinson, The Brooklands Girls: The Maitland Trilogy #2, Pan (restless after the Great War Pips seeks excitement in the frenetic world of parties and balls in London)

Camille Di Maio, The Beautiful Strangers, Lake Union (1958― a legendary hotel on the Pacific coast becomes a haven where dreams, love, and a mystery come alive)

David Downing, The Dark Clouds Shining, Soho Crime (1921 Europe & Russia – 4^th installment of Jack McColl spy series)

Majorie Eccles, The Property of Lies, Severn House (Herbert Reardon, Bk. 4 – 1930s England)

R.J. Ellory, Three Bullets, Orion (conspiracy thriller set at time of Kennedy assassination in 1963)

Jennie Felton, The Sister’s Secret, Headline (new entry in the Families of Fairley Terrace saga)

Charles Fergus, A Stranger Here Below: A Gideon Stoltz Novel, Skyhorse (first in historical mystery series set in Western Pennsylvania in 1835)

LP Fergusson, A Dangerous Act of Kindness, Canelo (WW II love story)

Susan Fletcher, House of Glass, Virago (gothic ghost story set in Gloucestershire in 1914)

Christopher Fowler, The Lonely Hour, Transworld (latest in Bryant & May Peculiar Crimes Unit detective series set in 1960s)

Liz Freeland, Murder in Midtown, Kensington (1913, NYC – while the women’s suffrage movement gains momentum, still the thought of a woman joining the NY City police is downright radical)

Jean Giono, (trans. Alyson Waters), A King Without Diversion, NYRB Classics (literary psychological thriller set in a mid-nineteenth century mountain village)

Dolores Gordon-Smith, Forgotten Murder, Severn House (Jack Haldean Mystery, Bk 10)

John MacLachlan Gray, The White Angel, Douglas & McIntyre (based on cold case murder of Janet Smith in 1924, Vancouver)

Susanna Gregory, A Deadly Brew, Sphere (the Fourth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew)

Gina Marie Guadagnino, The Parting Glass, Touchstone (19th-c upstairs/downstairs tale examines sexuality, race, and social class)

Mandy Haggith, The Amber Seeker, Saraband (tale of loss, longing and revenge in 320 BC. Sequel to The Walrus Mutterer)

Amy Harmon, What the Wind Knows, Lake Union (historical time-slip back to Ireland, 1921)

Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Narrow Land, Atlantic (two young boys are befriended by artist Edward Hopper in Cape Cod, 1950)

Joris-Karl Huysmans, trans. Theo Cuffe, Against Nature, Riverrun (story of Jean des Esseintes, a nobleman who cuts himself off from polite society and dedicates himself to a life of decadence)

Roy Jacobsen, trans. Don Bartlett & Don Shaw, White Ocean, MacLehose (woman falls in love with a Russian POW on small island off Norway in 1944-5)

Dinah Jefferies, The Missing Sister, Penguin (1930s Rangoon: woman searches for baby sister who went missing 25 years earlier)

Meg and Tom Keneally, The Unmourned: A Monsarrat Mystery, Point Blank (2nd installment of the series set in an Australian penal colony)

Philip Kerr, Metropolis, Quercus (last Bernie Gunther thriller goes back to his beginnings in 1928 Berlin)

Jaan Kross, trans. Merike Lepasaar Beecher, A Book of Falsehoods, MacLehose (third in 16th-C trilogy set in Estonia)

Natasha Lester, Her Mother’s Secret, Sphere (a brave young woman chases her dream despite society’s disapproval in 1920s New York)

Valerie Fraser Luesse, Almost Home, Revell (as America enters WW II, the displaced & disenfranchised enter the boarding house of Dolly Chandler in Blackberry Springs, Alabama)

Greer Macallister, Woman 99, Sourcebooks Landmark (a historical thriller honoring the fierce women of the past, born into a world that denied them power but underestimated their strength)

A.J. Mackenzie, The Body in the Boat, Bonnier Zaffre (murder mystery set in 19th-c England)

Maggie Mason, Blackpool Evacuee, Sphere (Clara is forced to flee her home as the Nazis invade the beautiful island of Guernsey)

Susan Anne Mason, The Highest of Hopes: Canadian Crossings #2, Bethany House (historical romance set in early 20th-c Toronto)

Anna Jean Mayhew, Tomorrow’s Bread, Kensington (1961 Charlotte, NC – lyrical Southern-set novel that explores the conflicts of gentrification—a story of loss, love, and resilience)

Terrence McCauley, Dark Territory, Pinnacle (late 19^th-c Montana ― 2^nd in Sheriff Aaron Mackey western)

Susan Meissner, The Last Year of the War, Berkley (German American teenager’s life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II)

Carolyn Miller, A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh, Kregel (Regency Christian romance)

Mary Monroe, Over the Fence, Dafina (set in 1930s Alabama ―where home is not always a sanctuary, and two neighboring families let pleasantries mask increasing resentment)

Caroline Montague, An Italian Affair, Orion (love, and betrayal set in Tuscany in 1937)

Louisa Morgan, The Witch’s Kind, Redhook (tale of love, sacrifice, family ties, and magic, set in the Pacific Northwest in the aftermath of World War II)

Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes, Pegasus (Captain Sam Wyndham and his sidekick Surrender-Not Banerjee return in this historical crime story set in 1920s Calcutta)

Annie Murray, The Silversmith’s Daughter, Pan (second in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter series set in 1915)

Amy Myers, Death at the Wychbourne Follies, Severn House (1926, Kent, England- Nell Drury Mystery Book 2)

Niklas Natt och Dag, The Wolf and the Watchman, Atria Books US / John Murray UK (set in 18th-c Stockholm, a dying man searches among the city’s streets and its intriguing inhabitants to unmask a ruthless murderer)

Nuala O’Connor, Becoming Belle, Piatkus (in 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest daughter of a middle-class family but by 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty and a powerful member of the Irish aristocracy

Marcus Palliser, Matthew’s Prize, McBooks (adventure on the high seas; final decade of 17th-c)

April 2019

Guillermo Arriaga, trans. Jessie Mendez Sayer & Frank Wynne, The Wild One, Maclehose (novel of revenge and retribution set between Canada and 1960s Mexico City)

Elizabeth Bailey, The Mortal Blow, Sapere (England, 1791 – murder mystery series book 5)

Jane Bailey, Mad Joy, Constable (a tale displaced children, first love and the tragic secrets hidden behind so many respectable facades)

Martine Bailey, The Almanack, Severn House (1752― historical mystery in which a young woman is determined to avenge her mother’s death)

Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here, Bloomsbury (South Africa, 1901- novel uncovers a hidden colonial history & present-day darkness while exploring our capacity for cruelty & kindness

Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln, Algonquin (Illinois 1840s― young Abraham Lincoln and the two people who loved him best: a marriageable Mary Todd & Lincoln’s best friend, Joshua Speed)

Lisa T. Bergren, Verity: The Sugar Baron’s Daughters #2, Bethany House (adventure romance set in early-Revolutionary War American Colonies and in the Caribbean)

Robin Black, Rough Music, Severn House (18th-century Cragg and Fidelis Mystery, Book 5)

Emma Blair, Flower of Scotland and Goodnight Sweet Prince, Sphere (historical romances)

Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Return of Jack the Ripper, Pegasus (London, 1894 – further adventures in the mystery series featuring Wilde and Doyle)

Frances Brody, A Snapshot of Murder, Crooked Lane (a 1920s Kate Shackleton mystery)

J. C. Briggs, The Quickening and the Dead, Sapere (murder and mayhem in Victorian London)

Madeleine Bunting, Island Song, Granta (on Guernsey in 1940 Helene must carve out a life for herself on the island. In present day, her daughter stumbles upon a secret history of her mother’s life)

Susanna Calkins, Murder Knocks Twice, Minotaur (first in new series takes readers into the dark, dangerous, and glittering underworld of a 1920’s Chicago speakeasy)

Natasha Carthew, All Rivers Run Free, Quercus (a woman in a loveless marriage on the coast of Cornwall rescues a waif on the brink of death)

Javier Cercas, trans. Anne McLean, Lord Of All the Dead, MacLehose (Spanish Civil War novel about the life of the author’s ancestor, sequel to Soldiers of Salamis)

Chip Cheek, Cape May, Weidenfeld & Nicolson(debut novel explores the social and sexual mores of 1950s America through the eyes of a newly married couple from the genteel south)

Bruce Cinnamon, The Melting Queen, NeWest (mythological tale combines satire with compassion, based on the Edmonton tradition of crowning a queen when the ice breaks on the North Saskatchewan River)

Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Viking (1826 London: maid who began life as a slave on a Jamaican plantation is accused of murder)

Michelle Cox, A Veil Removed: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel, She Writes (mystery set in 1930s Chicago)

H. S. Cross, Grievous, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (1931 – St Stephen’s Academy, Yorkshire, is both a cozy refuge and a potential powder keg in this follow-up to Wilberforce)

Murielle Cyr, The Daughters’ Story, Baraka Books (World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the 1970 October crisis provide the backdrop to this family saga spanning some 60 years)

Lindsey Davis, A Capitol Death, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in Flavia Albia murder mystery series set in 1st-C Rome)

Jennifer Delamere, The Artful Match: London Beginnings #3, Bethany House (conclusion to the Victorian romance trilogy set in 1881 London)

Oscar de Muriel, Loch of the Dead, Pegasus (McGray & Frey face their most metaphysical mystery yet, as they investigate crimes surrounding the miraculous waters in the remote Loch Maree)

Paul Doherty, Dark Queen Rising, Severn House (May 1471―new mystery series featuring Margaret Beaufort, grandmother to Henry VIII)

Lara Elena Donnelly, Amnesty, Tor (Book 3 in the Amberlough Dossier spy trilogy)

Magdalen Dugan, Lift My Eyes, Elm Hill (portrays the life of celebrated feminist painter Matilda Lotz, the daughter of a Christian family of German immigrants)

Lissa Evans, Old Baggage, Harper Perennial (1928― timely portrait of a once pioneering suffragette trying to find her new passion in post-WW I-era London)

Juliette Fay, City of Flickering Light, Gallery (1921―transports us back to the Golden Age & Roaring Twenties, as three friends struggle to earn their place among the stars of the silent screen)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Little Boy, Faber & Faber (the story of one man’s extraordinary life and the madness of the century that witnessed it)

Eric Flint, 1637: The Polish Maelstrom, Baen (graphic format historical series)

Mariah Fredericks, Death of a New American, Minotaur (New York, 1912― follow-up to the debut A Death of No Importance, featuring series character, Jane Prescott)

Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls, Bloomsbury (summer 1940 – coming-of-age stitched across the fabric of a lost New York)

Elizabeth Gill, Orphan Boy, Quercus (a rags-to-riches tale of one man’s determination to succeed)

Myla Goldberg, Feast Your Eyes, Scribner (NYC, 1955―story about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood, a balancing act familiar to women of every generation)

Theodora Goss, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, Saga Press (Mary Jekyll & the daughters of mad scientists from literature embark on a mission to rescue another monstrous girl and stop the Alchemical Society’s plans once and for all)

Genevieve Graham, At the Mountain’s Edge, Simon & Schuster (a new historical novel of love, tragedy, and redemption set during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush)

Susanna Gregory, A Wicked Deed, Sphere (fifth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew)

David Hair, Cath Mayo, Oracle’s War, Canelo (Prince Odysseus is sent on a quest to recover his family honour. Second in series)

Barbara Hambly, Prisoner of Midnight, Severn House (a James Asher historical fantasy/mystery)

Isabella Hammad, The Parisian, Jonathan Cape (1914: young Palestinian goes to study in Paris and returns to find himself involved in conflicts in post-WWII British-ruled Palestine)

Jessica Handler, The Magnetic Girl, Hub City Press (set at a time when the emerging presence of electricity raised suspicions about the other-worldly gospel of Spiritualism, and when women’s desire for political, cultural, and sexual presence electrified the country)

C. S. Harris, Who Slays the Wicked, Berkley (1814 London – latest entry in Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries)

Rachel Hauck, The Memory House, Thomas Nelson (multi-period inspirational saga)

Victoria Hetherington, Mooncalves, Now Or Never (through its tale of buried crime in rural Quebec and the mechanism of cult leadership, novel explores the unshakable hold of first love, and the warped influence of unchecked ambition and sexual obsession)

Robert Hillman, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, G.P. Putnam’s Sons US (UK June 2019 Faber & Faber) (love & forgiveness in 1960s Australia, in which a farmer finds his life turned upside down by arrival of a vibrant librarian)

Evelyn Hood, Knowing Me, Sphere (family saga of two women’s search for their biological mother)

Anna Lee Huber, An Artless Demise, Berkley (artistic sleuth Lady Kiera Darby uses her talent for the macabre to bring murderers to justice in 19th-c Scotland)

Damien Hunter, The Legions of the Mist, Canelo (account of the final days of Rome’s forgotten legion, the Ninth Hispana)

Angela Huth, Once a Land Girl, Constable (post-war Manchester – Land Girl Prue misses the happiness in work that she experienced during the war)

Glyn Iliffe, Hero of Olympus, Canelo (final installment in Heracles Trilogy)

Graham Ison, Hardcastle’s Quandary, Severn House (England, 1927―Hardcastle book 15)

Easy Jackson, A Season in Hell, Pinnacle (19^th-c Texas―it’s hard to be a woman in the Wild West. And if that woman is wearing a badge and a six-shooter, it’s even harder)

Anna Jacobs, One Perfect Family, Hodder & Stoughton (final instalment in Lancashire-based Ellindale saga)

Zvi Jagendorf, Coming Soon: The Flood, Halban (alternative history set in Jerusalem early 1960s)

Francesca Jakobi, Bitter, W & N (London, 1969 – a novel about the decisions that define our lives, the fragility of love and the bond between mother and son)

Elizabeth Jeffrey, Cassie Jordan, Piatkus (romance set in Wynford, Essex)
Also:Gin and GingerbreadandStrangers’ Hall (English romances)

Jim Jones, The Lights of Cimarrón, Five Star (a rancher is murdered and the Sheriff suspects the rustlers are members of the vicious White Caps gang)

Biljana Jovanovic, (trans. John K. Cox), Dogs and Others, Istros Books (1970s Belgrade; coming-of-age of a rebellious, overtly feminist, lesbian and somewhat neurotic young woman)

Laura Kalpakian, The Great Pretenders, Berkley (story of an ambitious young agent’s daring fight to protect blacklisted writers in McCarthy-era Hollywood and her passionate relationship with an African American journalist)

Martha Hall Kelly, Lost Roses, Ballantine (epic prequel to Lilac Girls)

Kay Kenyon, Nest of the Monarch, Saga Press (Berlin 1936―Kim Tavistock, undercover in Berlin as the wife of a British diplomat, uncovers a conspiracy that could change the course of the war)

Christian Kiefer, Phantoms, Liveright (torn apart by war and bigotry, two families confront long-buried secrets in this novel of World War II and Vietnam)

Anna King, Fur Coat, No Knickers, Sphere (World War II saga)

Alanna Knight, The Dower House Mystery, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in York in 1907)

Robert Knott, Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Appaloosa, 1800s ― itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch pursue a vicious killer)

Sarah E. Ladd, The Governess of Penwythe Hall, Thomas Nelson (regency romance set in Cornwall, England in 1811)

Mary Lawrence, The Alchemist of Lost Souls, Kensington (Tudor London 1544 ― a dangerous element falls into the wrong hands, leading to a chain of multiple murders)

Jing-Jing Lee, How We Disappeared, Hanover Square (novel set in Singapore 1942, about a woman who survived the Japanese occupation and a man who thought he had lost everything)

Prue Leith, The Lost Son, Quercus (last in post-war family saga after The House at Chorlton and The Prodigal Daughter)

Rob Lofthouse, Trouble Ahead: The Battle for Crete, Quercus (May 1941 – a game-changing campaign that will become one of the most intense and horrific battles of the Second World War)

James Markert, Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel, Thomas Nelson (explores the mysteries of the mind, the truth behind lore, and the miracle of inspiration)

Maggie Mason, Blackpool Lass, Sphere (romance set in Blackpool, England, 1938)

Edward Massey, Fugitive Sheriff, Five Star (historical western adventure)

Beryl Matthews, Friends and Enemies, Allison & Busby (saga set in 1941 London)

Kathleen McGurl, The Drowned Village, HQ (multi-period – summer 1935 and present day)

Fiona McIntosh, The Pearl Thief, Penguin (explores whether love and hope can ever overpower atrocity in a time of war and hate)

Diane C. McPhail, The Abolitionist’s Daughter, A John Scognamiglio Book (debut novel explores a little-known aspect of Civil War history — the Southern Abolitionists)

Jon James Miller, Looking for Garbo, Blank Slate (unravels the story behind Greta Garbo’s attempt to end WWII, Hitler’s obsession with her & the premature end to her film career)

Cass Morris, From Unseen Fire, Daw (historical fantasy set in an alternate Roman empire, where mages must conceal their power to navigate the vast and complex politics of the Republic)

Ryohgo Narita, illus. Katsumi Enami, Baccano!, Vol. 10, Yen On (1934. In the depths of Alcatraz, Firo, Ladd, Leeza, and the others involved in the underground brawl, figure out their next moves)

Jay Parini, The Damascus Road, Doubleday (brings to life Paul of Tarsus, a fascinating and ever-controversial figure, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions)

Jacqueline Park, Gilbert Reid, Son of Two Fathers, Book 3, House of Anansi (historical novel set against the backdrop of the political unrest and intrigue of Renaissance Italy)

Michelle Paver, Wakenhyrst, Head of Zeus (ghost story set in the Fens in 1906)

Anne Perry, Triple Jeopardy, Ballantine (Edwardian London―young lawyer Daniel Pitt must defend a British diplomat who’s accused of a theft that may hide a deadly crime)

Jane Rawson, From The Wreck, Picador (survivor of a shipwreck off Australia in 1859 goes back into the past for answers about the disappearance of a fellow-survivor)

Anthony Riches, The Scorpion’s Strike, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in Roman military adventure series set in 2nd-C AD)

Renée Rosen, Park Avenue Summer, Berkley (New York City 1965 and Cosmopolitan magazine, where Helen Gurley Brown shocks America by daring to talk to women about all things off-limit)

Gareth Rubin, Liberation Square, Michael Joseph (alternative historical re-imagining of 1950s Britain as a Soviet police state wherein a wife tries to clear her husband’s name)

Chris Rush, The Light Years, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (defiant coming-of-age memoir set during turbulent times – illustrates slow slide from optimism of 1960s to darker & more sinister 1970s)

Kim Vogel Sawyer, A Silken Thread, Waterbrook (story of a young woman with a heavy burden; the International Cotton Exposition of 1881; and the pursuit of true love)

Simon Scarrow, T J Andrews, Pirata: Sea of Blood, Headline (fourth in the Roman pirate series)

John Burnham Schwartz, The Red Daughter, Random House (running from her father’s brutal legacy, Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allilyueva defects to the US in the 1960s)

Sofia Segovia, (trans. Simon Bruni), The Murmur of Bees, Lake Union (Mexican Revolution & influenza epidemic of 1918― a mysterious child has the power to change a family’s history)

Harry Sidebottom, The Lost Ten, Zaffre (historical thriller set in Roman times)

Alisa Smith, Doublespeak, Thomas Dunne (1945 – historical thriller finds protagonist Lieutenant Lena Stillman on a journey back to her past)

Helen Steadman, Sunwise, Impress Books (sequel to Widdershins ― cast of characters is drawn against the backdrop of tragic historical events, superstitions & traditions)

Maryla Szymiczkowa, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Mrs Mohr Goes Missing, Point Blank UK (US-June 19) (Agatha Christie style mystery series set in Cracow, Poland, 1893)

Christopher Tilghman, Thomas and Beal in the Midi, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (young interracial couple escapes from Maryland to France in 1894 to begin a new life as winemakers in the Languedoc)

Victoria Thompson, Murder on Trinity Place, Berkley (NY 1899― latest installment in the Gaslight Mystery crime series)

E. S. Thomson, The Blood, Constable (a Jem Flockhart murder mystery set in 1850s London)

Novoyu Rosa Tshuma, House of Stone, Atlantic (boy goes missing during upheavals of the death of Rhodesia and the birth of Zimbabwe)

Simon Turney, Commodus, Orion (latest in Damned Emperors series)

Jan Vantoortelboom, trans. Vivien D. Glass, His Name is David, World Editions (Flanders, 1915. David Verbocht stands before the firing squad and looks back on his short and turbulent life)

Kris Waldherr, The Lost History of Dreams, Touchstone (a post-mortem photographer unearths dark secrets of the past that may hold the key to his future, in this gothic tradition debut novel)

Mollie Walton, The Daughters of Ironbridge, Zaffre (saga set against an ironworks in 1830s Shropshir

Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet, Virago (follows the glittering career of Nan King – oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End ‘tom)

Martine Fournier Watson, The Dream Peddler, Penguin (1900s rural USA―a traveling salesman arrives to sell dreams to a town rocked by a child’s disappearance)

Sue Wilsher, The Tilbury Poppies, Sphere (saga set in Essex in 1916)

Iona Whishaw, Deceptive Devotion, Touchwood (newest entry in the Lane Winslow mystery series)

Ethan J. Wolfe, The Reckoning, Five Star (a Youngblood brothers western adventure)

Gwendolyn Womack, The Time Collector, Picador (magical thriller about a psychometrist who can relive memories across centuries and experience history first-hand)

James C. Work, Ranger McIntyre: Small Delightful Murders, Five Star (historical mystery)

David Young, Stasi 77, Zaffre (crime thriller set in East Germany moving between the devastating closing weeks of the Second World War and the Stasi-controlled 1970s)

Alexander Zvyagintsev, The Nuremberg Trials, Glagoslav (historical thriller)

May 2019

W.M. Akers, Westside, Harper Voyager (historical fantasy set on Manhattan’s Westside, 1921)

Kathleen Alcott, America Was Hard to Find, Ecco (in the wake of an affair, the lives of an astronaut and a radical are forever altered by the political fault lines of the 1960s)

Kitty Aldridge, The Wisdom of Bones, Corsair (story set in 19th-C London and 18th-C France)

Rachel Barenbaum, A Bend in the Stars, Grand Central (a journey across WWI-era Russia, and a race against Einstein to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe)

Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here, Bloomsbury (debut set in South Africa, 1901, that explores the strength of the human spirit—from the Boer War to a brutal present-day camp for teenage boys)

Susanna Bavin, The Poor Relation, Allison & Busby (saga set in Manchester in 1908)

Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz, Delacorte (based on real life of an American woman who secretly worked for the French Resistance during WW II, while playing hostess to the invading Germans at the Paris Ritz)

Sarah Blake, The Guest Book, Flatiron (beginning in 1935, novel looks at the racism and power that has been systemically embedded in the US for generations)

M.H. Boroson, The Girl with No Face, Talos (sequel to The Girl With Ghost Eyes; mystical, historical urban fantasy set in 19th-c San Francisco’s Chinatown)

Benet Brandreth, The Assassin of Verona, Pegasus (Venice, 1586― novel of intrigue, conspiracy, and wit that takes William Shakespeare into the deceit and deception of 16th-c Verona)

Bart Casey, The Vavasour Macbeth, Post Hill (blending fiction with little-known facts from history and research, novel ranges from the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts to modern-day England)

Jennifer Chiaverini, Resistance Women, HarperCollins (saga that brings to life one courageous, passionate American—Mildred Fish Harnack—and her circle of women friends who waged a clandestine battle against Hitler in Nazi Berlin)

Alys Clare, The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits, Severn House (new mystery series set in London 1880s―A World’s End Bureau Victorian mystery)

Georgina Clarke, Death and the Harlot, Canelo (1750s―historical crime drama)

Paul Colt, Friends Call Me Bat, Five Star (William “Bat” Masterson lived the West when the West was wild; as a buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, army scout, lawman, and gambler, but later lived out the last 20 years of his life as a sportswriter for a NY daily newspaper)

Elizabeth Cobbs, The Tubman Command, Arcade (South Carolina, 1863― brings to light the bravery and brilliance of American icon Harriet Tubman)

Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Harper (1826 London: maid who began life as a slave on a Jamaican plantation is accused of murder)

Sally Cooper, With My Back to the World, James Street North (stories of three women: Rudie, editing a documentary in Hamilton, 2010; artist Agnes Martin, who decides to begin painting again; and Ellen, a black woman burying her husband in 1870 on an Ontario homestead)

Cressida Connolly, After the Party, Pegasus (summer 1938 ― a portrait of a dark period of British history which has yet to be fully acknowledged)

Diney Costeloe, Children of the Siege, Head of Zeus (family caught up in aftermath of Siege of Paris in Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71)

Jocelyn Cullity, The Envy of Paradise, Inanna (fictional account of four people who played key roles during the 1857 uprising in Lucknow, one of the most significant resistances to English rule in India)

Didier Decoin, The Office of Gardens and Ponds, MacLehose (fable set in Japan 1000 years ago)

Paul Doherty, Devil’s Wolf, Headline (England 1311; Hugh Corbett Mysteries #19)

Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are, Bethany House (dual-time period story that takes place in post–WWII and present day, in a picturesque coastal Maine harbor town)

Kate Ellis, The Boy Who Lived With the Dead, Piatkus (1920s murder mystery set in 1920s Cheshire)

Elaine Everest, The Teashop Girls, Macmillan (WW II, 1940 – a wartime story of friendship and love)

Dianne Freeman, A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, Kensington (historical mystery debut set in Victorian England)

Ann H. Gabhart, The Refuge, Revell (story returns to the world of the Shakers in this exploration of the power of love and the bond of family)

Valentina Gal, Philipovna, Daughter of Sorrow, Guernica (based on the author’s mother’s survival of the Ukrainian Starvation in the early 1930s)

Craig Gallant, Rise of the Alchemist, Zmok Books (steampunk alternative history set in the US, 100 years after the failed revolution)

Caitlin Galway, Bonavere Howl, Guernica (New Orleans 1955 – Bonnie embarks on a journey to bring her missing sister home, venturing through fabled Red Honey Swamp, and the city’s vibrant and brutal history)

Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island, John Murray (from Kolkata to Venice to Sicily – a portrait of a man trying to understand the changing world around him)

Lawrence Goldstone, Assassin of Shadows, Pegasus (Sept 1901― historical thriller invites readers into the events surrounding the assassination of President William McKinley)

Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, Hodder & Stoughton (100-year-old Italian-American woman looks back on her tumultuous life & all the times she might have died)

Mark Haddon, The Porpoise, Chatto & Windus (tells of a contemporary story mirroring the ancient Greek legend of Antiochus)

Matthew Harffy, Warrior of Woden, Head of Zeus (latest of the Bernicia Chronicles set in Dark Age Britain: Pagan Penda of Mercia invades Christian Northumbria ruled by King Oswald)

Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships, Mantle (feminist retelling of Trojan War)

Victoria Hislop, Those Who Are Loved, Headline (set against the backdrop of the German occupation of Greece, the subsequent civil war and a military dictatorship, all of which left deep scars)

M J Holt, Confessions to Mr Roosevelt, Five Star (a contribution to our understanding of how the West was won)

Steven Hopstaken, Melissa Prusi, Stoker’s Wilde, Flame Tree (Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde must overcome their disdain for one another to battle a madman wielding supernatural forces to bend the British Empire to his will)

Aditya Iyengar, The Conqueror, Hachette India (1025 AD. A tale of the king who mastered the seas – Rajendra Cholai)

Anna Jacobs, One Special Village, Hodder & Stoughton (Lancashire 1938 – a story of family, love, friendship and loyalty)

Ana Johns, The Woman in the White Kimono, Park Row (interwoven stories of a young woman in 1950s Japan, forced to choose between her heart and her home, and an American journalist in modern America who discovers her father’s long-buried secrets)

Ben Kane, The Falling Sword, Orion (Romans v Macedonians as Roman army fights to conquer Greece – Clash of Empires, Book 2)

Serena Katt, Sunday’s Child, Jonathan Cape (graphic novel telling the story of the author’s grandfather’s childhood in Nazi Germany, including membership in Hitler Youth)

Guy Gavriel Kay, A Brightness Long Ago, Berkley (fantasy 15th-C Europe―drama about the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune’s wheel)

William M. Kelley, A Different Drummer (c.1962), Anchor (story of a young African American farmer who leads his people in a spontaneous exodus, in a fight for civil rights)

T E Kinsey, The Burning Issue of the Day, Thomas & Mercer (a Lady Hardcastle Mystery set in 1910)

Carolyn Kirby, The Conviction of Cora Burns, Dzanc Books (1880s Birmingham, England: a troubled young woman searches for her lost sister and the truth behind a grisly crime in this Victorian thriller)

Volker Kutscher, The Fatherland Files, Sandstone (a Gereon Rath mystery set in Berlin, 1932)

Dewey Lambdin, Much Ado About Lewrie, St Martin’s (25th naval adventure novel)

Jing-Jing Lee, How We Disappeared, Oneworld (novel set in Singapore 1942, about a woman who survived the Japanese occupation and a man who thought he had lost everything)

Kirsty Manning, The Song of the Jade Lily, Wm Morrow (1939 & 2016: multi-period story of friendship, motherhood, the price of love, and the power of hardship and courage that can shape us all)

Nadia Marks, Between the Orange Groves, Pan (an old man decides to share his painful memories with his daughter, transporting her back to Cyprus and a family scandal)

Nadia Marks, The Island of Promises, Pan (historical saga spanning decades in the lives of two families from different religions on the island of Cyprus)

Clara McKenna, Murder at Morrington Hall, Kensington (spring 1905―when a lively aspiring equine trainer tangles with British aristocracy, she meets her match—and a murderer)

Linda Lael Miller, The Yankee Widow, MIRA (Civil War era saga that focuses on the strong women and men of both sides and both races who sacrificed so much and loved so well)

Wayétu Moore, She Would Be King, Pushkin (debut reimagines the early years of Liberia through three unforgettable characters’ stories)

Tim Murphy, Correspondents, Grove (spanning the 20th century, a multi period story of an Irish-Lebanese family whose life and family history mirrors the story of America)

Sheila Newberry, The Forget-Me-Not Girl, Zaffre (family saga set in Norfolk and London)

Sandra Newman, The Heavens, Granta (time-slip novel- newly married Kate falls asleep in 2000 and wakes in London, 1593 as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman)

Varley O’Connor, The Welsh Fasting Girl, Bellevue (based on 12-yr-old Sarah Jacob’s life and premature death in Wales)

Patricia O’Reilly,The First Rose of Tralee, Poolbeg (love story between the nursery maid and the master, set in 1840s Ireland and India against a backdrop of political upheaval)

Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio, Knopf (occupied Europe ― based on the true story of Varian Fry’s attempt to save the work, and the lives, of Jewish artists fleeing the Holocaust)

Kenneth Orvis, The Damned and the Destroyed (c1962), Vehicule Press (set in 1954, the novel captures the dying days of Montreal’s reputation as one of the world’s great sin cities)

Cheryl A. Ossola, The Wild Impossibility, Regal House (a grieving ICU nurse is haunted by visions of a girl in a doomed love affair with a man in a WWII Japanese-American concentration camp)

Michael Parker, Prairie Fever, Algonquin (set in the 1920s in Oklahoma, Prairie Fever follows the relationship of two young women who fall in love with the same man)

Ralph Peters, Darkness at Chancellorsville, Forge (a novel of Stonewall Jackson and one of the most dramatic battles in American history)

Linda Quennec, Fishing for Birds, Inanna (set against the tropical beauty of 1920s Cuba & contemporary northwest coast, multi-period novel is told from perspectives of three narrators)

Amanda Quick, Tightrope, Berkley (California 1930s – an ex-trapeze artist is caught up in the mysterious circ*mstances surrounding the onstage death of an inventor)

Heather Redmond, A Tale of Two Murders, Kensington (a new British mystery series entitled A Dickens of a Crime)

Alex Reeve, The Anarchists’ Club, Raven (latest in Victorian crime series, with a transgender protagonist)

Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Sourcebooks Landmark (young outcast braves hardships of Kentucky’s Great Depression to bring magical objects to her people)

Roxana Robinson, Dawson’s Fall, Sarah Crighton (Charleston 1889 ― spans the life of Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the country’s new political, social, and moral landscape)

Michael Ross, Across the Great Divide, Elm Hill (Lexington, Kentucky, 1859 ― saga set during Civil War when members of families find themselves on opposing sides and questioning their faith in God)

Adam Ehrlich Sachs, The Organs of Sense, FSG (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz investigates an astronomer’s prediction which encompasses kings & princes, family squabbles, insanity, & the horrors of war)

Saskia Sarginson, How It Ends, Piatkus (1957: within a year of arriving at an American airbase in Suffolk, the loving, law-abiding Delaney family is destroyed. Did they know something they weren’t supposed to know?)

Simon Scarrow, T J Andrews, Pirata: The Pirate Chief, Headline (fifth in Roman pirate series)

Sarah R. Shaber, Louise’s Crossing, Severn House (WW II mystery)

Jill Eileen Smith, The Heart of a King, Revell (meet Solomon and four of the women he loved: Naamah the desert princess, Abishag the shepherdess, Siti the daughter of a pharaoh, and Nicaula the queen of Sheba)

Werner Sonne (trans. Steve Anderson), Where the Desert Meets the Sea, Amazon Crossing (Jerusalem, 1947: fates of two women & those they love in days surrounding founding of State of Israel)

S. M. Stirling, Theater of Spies, Ace (alternate history series during WW I, when President Teddy Roosevelt creates the Black Chamber, a spy organization that might be America’s best hope)

Christine Trent, A Murderous Malady, Crooked Lane (a Florence Nightingale Mystery)

Eugene Vodolazkin, trans. Lisa C. Hayden, Solovyov and Larionov, Oneworld (journey through a momentous period of Russian history, interweaving story of two men of different backgrounds that asks whether we can really understand the present without first understanding the past)

Jo Walton, Lent, Tor (re-imagining of Girolamo Savanarola who remade fifteenth-century Florence—in all its astonishing strangeness)

Katherine Webb, The Disappearance, Orion (search for missing boy during WWII Blitz on Bath leads to the discovery of the body of a girl who went missing before the war)

Alison Weir, Anna of Kleve, Queen of Secrets, Headline UK (Tudor England―tells the little-known story of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, as a grieving king chooses a bride sight unseen)

Alison Weir, Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait, Ballantine US

Jeri Westerson, The Traitor’s Codex, Severn House (Crispin Guest Mystery, Book 11)

Susan White, Fear of Drowning, Acorn (epic family saga set against the backdrop of two world wars, earthquakes, epidemics, prejudice, social injustice, greed and ambition)

Mary Wood, The Abandoned Daughter, Pan (second book in The Girls Who Went To War trilogy)

Andrea Wulf, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, John Murray (graphic novel about the 18th / 19th-c explorer)

June 2019

Milly Adams, Girls on the Home Front, Arrow (set in N. E. England during WW II follows the lives of three courageous women who work in a munitions factory)

Taylor Anderson, Pass of Fire, Ace (the crew of the WWII destroyer USS Walker is mysteriously transported to an alternate version of earth)

Willem Anker, trans. Michiel Heyns, Red Dog: A Novel of the African Frontier, Pushkin (set in 17th-c – an epic tale of Africa in a time before boundaries between cultures and peoples were fixed)

Rosie Archer, We’ll Meet Again, Quercus (second in WWII trilogy about singing trio)

C.H. Armstrong, The Edge of Nowhere, Central Avenue (a story of one woman’s courage in the face of overwhelming adversity and her absolute conviction to never stop fighting)

Jennifer Ashley, Death in Kew Gardens, Berkley (murder and stolen treasure lurk among the upper echelons of Victorian England)

Lucy Banks, The Hanged Man and the Fortune Teller, Amberjack (historical mystery and love story with a twist)

July 2019

Sara Aharoni, (trans. Yardenne Greenspan), The First Mrs Rothschild, Amazon Crossing (18th-c Frankfurt – passionate young lovers in a Jewish ghetto rise to become the foremost financial dynasty in the world)

Rosie Archer, The Narrowboat Girls, Quercus (two women take work on a canal boat in England)

David Baldacci, One Good Deed, Macmillan (1949, a young soldier arrives in Poca City, Oklahoma looking for a peaceful life after his wartime experiences. What he finds isn’t quite what he expected)

Mary Balogh, Someone to Honor, Berkley (Regency romance – Westcott novel 6)

Simon Beaufort, Watchers of the Dead, Severn House (an Alex Lonsdale Victorian mystery)

George Bellairs, Surfeit of Suspects, PPP (novel of small-town grudges with calamitous consequences)

Andrea Bobotis, The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, Sourcebooks Landmark (a spinster unravels the complicated secrets of her family– interweaves the present with flashbacks to 1929)

Ellin Carsta, (trans. Gerald Chapple), A Distant Hope, Amazon Crossing (Hamburg 1888: After thirty prosperous years, coffee importer Peter Hansen & Sons faces hard times—and certain bankruptcy—unless three brothers can make savvy moves to save the faltering business after their father’s untimely death)

Mary Collins, Ten Bells Street, Piatkus (a story of friendship in east end London, 1930)

Vivian Conroy, The Butterfly Conspiracy, Crooked Lane (a mysterious death unites two unlikely allies in a quest through Victorian London’s underbelly)

Vivian Conroy, Honeymoon With Death, Canelo (a 1920s cosy crime caper)

Connilyn Cossette, Until the Mountains Fall, Bethany House (Cities of Refuge #3 – prodigal daughter tale puts an Old Testament spin on an old parable)

Diney Costeloe, Children of the Siege, Head of Zeus (story of children and a family in deadly peril, taking place after Franco-Prussian war & the siege of 1870-71)

Rusty Davis, Rakeheart, Five Star (violence and murder in Rakeheart, Wyoming)

Patrick Flanery, Night For A Day, Atlantic (in McCarthy-era Hollywood, over the course of one day, two friends grapple with the moral & professional uncertainties of the escalating Communist witch-hunt)

Leah Fleming, In the Heart of the Garden, Head of Zeus (story of an ancient garden transformed from a Saxon clearing, to a monastery, to a Tudor dwelling, to the present-day garden)

Rachel Fordham, Yours Truly, Thomas, Revell (a prairie romance; a young woman finds love and belonging when a letter bound for someone else finds its way into her hands)

Hazel Gaynor, Heather Webb, Meet Me in Monaco, Wm Morrow (set in 1950s against backdrop of Grace Kelly’s glamourous wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco)

Martí Gironell, trans. Adrian Nathan West, Stars in His Eyes, Amazon Crossing (from the fascist Franco regime to Hollywood’s glamour—novel based on the meteoric rise of one of the world’s most celebrated restaurateurs)

Lois H. Gresh, Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations, Titan (second novel in Holmes vs. Cthulhu adventures)

Emily Gunnis, The Girl in the Letter, Headline (winter of 1956 pregnant young Ivy is sent in disgrace to St Margaret’s, a home for unmarried mothers in the south of England)

Cora Harrison, Season of Darkness, Severn House (a Victorian ‘Gaslight’ mystery)

John J. Healey, The Samurai’s Daughter, Arcade (sequel to The Samurai of Seville)

Arlene Hughes, The Girl from the Corner Shop, Head of Zeus (a heartbroken young widow joins the police force during WW II in Manchester)

Tara Johnson, Where Dandelions Bloom, Tyndale (escaping an abusive father, Cassie disguises herself as a man and enlists in the Union Army. Inspirational romance)

M.R.C. Kasasian, The Room of the Dead, Head of Zeus (WWII crime thriller―Inspector Betty Church finds herself on the trail of a cold-blooded killer in the sleepy Suffolk town of Sackwater)

Karen Kelly, Bethlehem, St Martin’s (told in alternating time frames, 1962 and the 1920’s; the story of what happens “when youthful joys fade and heartache takes hold….)

Meg Keneally, Fled, Arcade (based on the true story of Mary Bryant, an iconic figure in the foundation lore of Australia as Great Britain’s penal colony)

Julie Kibler, The Home for Erring and Outcast Girls, Crown (follows the lives of two women a century apart and connected by a home for ‘fallen’ girls. Inspired by true events)

Fiona Kidman, This Mortal Boy,Aardvark Bureau (based on the true story of a young Northern Irish man who changed the world of law and justice for ever)

Catherine King, A Mother’s Sacrifice, Sphere (family story of hardship, retribution and love)

Amanda Lee Koe, Delayed Rays of a Star, Nan A. Talese (debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women—cinema legends who lit up the twentieth century)

Luke Jerod Kummer, The Blue Period, Little A (the tragic romance that nearly destroyed a young Pablo Picasso—while granting him his first flight of creative genius)

Johanna Lindsey, Temptation’s Darling, Gallery (Regency-era novel in which a disastrous debutante becomes the toast of the town with a little help from a friend of the Prince Regent’s)

Laura Lippman, Lady in the Lake, Wm Morrow (1960s Baltimore; novel combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir―a middle-aged housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman)

S. G. Maclean, The Bear Pit, Quercus (new entry in Captain Damien Seeker series)

Susan Elia MacNeal, The Prisoner in the Castle, Bantam (World War II mystery series featuring Maggie Hope, American-born spy and code-breaker)

Karl Marlantes, Deep River, Atlantic (family saga about Finnish immigrants who settle and tame the Pacific NW; set against early labor movements, WW I, & upheaval of early 20th-c America)

David Marlett, American Red, Storyplant (historical legal thriller in early 20th-c American West,based on the extraordinary true story of one of the most deadly domestic terrorists in American history, and the detectives, lawyers, spies, and lovers who brought him down)

Owen Matthews, Black Sun, Doubleday (a chilling thriller set in 1961 in one of the most secretive locations in Soviet history)

Courtney Maum, Costalegre, Tin House (1937 – inspired by real-life relationship between heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter ―story of a privileged teenager who has everything a girl could wish for except for a mother who loves her back)

Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at Crossways, Kensington (A Gilded Newport Mystery)

Julie McElwain, Betrayal in Time, Pegasus (Feb, 1816― Kendra Donovan’s adventures in 19th-c England continue when she is called upon to investigate the murder of a spymaster)

Henrietta McKervey, Violet Hill, Hachette Ireland (in post-war London, Violet Hill, the only female private detective in the city, is hired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s business manager to uncover spiritual trickery)

Peter McLean, Priest of Lies, Ace (dark epic fantasy set in faux-Tudor industrial town)

Catriona McPherson, Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble, Hodder (a cosy Dandy Gilver mystery set in 1930s Scotland)

Pablo Medina, The Cuban Comedy, The Unnamed Press (love story steeped in political satire, poetry, and touches of magical realism – background 1960s Cuba)

Tom Miller, The Philosopher’s War, Simon & Schuster (2nd book in series finds Robert Canderelli Weekes as a rookie Rescue and Evacuation flier on the front lines of WWI, France)

Jean Moran, Tears of the Dragon, Head of Zeus (epic saga full of intrigue, exotic locations, the horrors of war, and its aftermath)

Chris Nickson, The Leaden Heart, Severn House (Leeds, England 1899; a Detective Superintendent Tom Harper mystery)

Marcus Palliser, To the Bitter End, McBooks (1708 and the English and the French are battling it out for control of Canada in the frozen waters off the coast of Newfoundland)

Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter, Headline (multi-period journey through decades and across continents, of love, devastating loss and courage against all odds)

Joanna Rees, The Runaway Daughter, Pan (London, 1926: Anna Darton is on the run from a terrible crime she was forced into committing. First in historical trilogy)

Martin Rosenstock (edit), Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of the Seven, Titan (collection of seven new novellas featuring the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes and his chronicler Dr John Watson)

Amanda Skenandore, The Undertaker’s Assistant, Kensington (set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans: a story of human resilience in the face of our darkest moments)

Laura L. Sullivan, Milady, Berkley (France 1620s; story of d’Artagnan’s nemesis, Milady de Winter)

Mary Ellen Taylor, Spring House, Montlake (lives of two women, a century apart, converge in this enthralling novel of love, mystery, memories, and secrets)

M. J. Tjia, A Necessary Murder, Legend (historical crime thriller where the twists and turns are as numerous and dark as the London streets which serve as their setting)

M.J. Trow, Black Death, Severn House (a Tudor mystery featuring Christopher Marlowe)

Harry Turtledove, Alpha and Omega, Del Rey (what would happen if the ancient prophecy of the End of Days came true? Alternative history)

Ludmila Ulitskaya, trans. Polly Gannon, Jacob’s Ladder, FSG (family saga spanning a century of Russian history)

Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Doubleday (two boys are sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida)

Beatriz Williams, The Golden Hour, Wm Morrow (Nassau, 1941― a hotbed of spies, traitors, and the most infamous couple of the age, the Duke and duch*ess of Windsor)

Abigail Wilson, Midnight on the River Grey, Thomas Nelson (Regency mystery-romance)

Andrew Wilson, Death in a Desert Land, Atria (Queen of Crime Agatha Christie returns to star in another stylish mystery)

Naomi Wood, The Hiding Game, Picador (story of Paul Brickman, exiled artist – begins in Weimar in 1923 through Hitler’s grab for power in 1933)

Kimberley Woodhouse, The Express Bride, Barbour (Daughters of the Mayflower series)

August 2019

Diane Allen, The Miner’s Wife, Pan (set in the Yorkshire Dales; a family saga follows a young woman who falls in love with a man who is not everything he seems)

Fiona Buckley, A Web of Silk, Severn House (Ursula’s quiet life on her Surrey estate is thrown into chaos by the arrival of a new neighbour)

Nancy Campbell Allen, The Lady in the Coppergate Tower, Shadow Mountain (a Proper Romance Steampunk novel)

Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes, Lake Union (in 1920s New York, the price of a woman’s independence can be exorbitant—even fatal)

Rhys Bowen, Love and Death Among the Cheetahs, Berkley (England 1930s – Royal Spyness Mystery #13)

Kay Brellend, A Lonely Heart, Piatkus (romance in Bittersweet Legacy)

Karen Brooks, The Chocolate Maker’s Wife, Wm Morrow (17th century London—story of the beautiful woman who is drawn into a world of riches, power, intrigue…and chocolate)

Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House, Grove (tells a hundred years of a family’s history and their relationship to home in a neglected area of New Orleans)

Barbara Cleverly, Invitation to Die, Soho Crime (Cambridge 1923; new entry in the Detective Inspector John Redfyre mystery series)

Vivian Conroy, Death Comes to Dartmoor, Crooked Lane (2nd Merula and Merriweather mystery)

Michael Crummey, The Innocents, Doubleday Canada (novel about an orphaned brother and sister living alone in an isolated cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline)

Sara Dahmen, Tinsmith 1865, Promontory Press (family saga about a Polish immigrant family who head West to the Dakota Territories where Marie picks up the tinsmith’s hammers)

Fiona Davis, The Chelsea Girls, Dutton (Spanning 1940s to 1960s, story pulls back the curtain on the political pressures of McCarthyism, & the siren call of the uninhibited Chelsea Hotel)

David Donachie, A Lawless Place, Alison & Busby (Contraband Shore book 2-nautical adventure)

Stuart Douglas, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader’s Curse, Titan (Holmes and Watson are invited to an auction at which an estate will be sold off)

Ceridwen Dovey, In the Garden of the Fugitives, Picador (tale of obsessive love, control, & identity, moving from Australia to the US via pre-and post-apartheid Cape Town and ancient Pompeii)

M Dressler, The Last to See Me, Skyhorse (over one hundred years ago, Emma Rose Finnis was born and died in the remote northern California town she now haunts)

Kelli Estes, Today We Go Home, Sourcebooks Landmark (two women, living centuries apart, fight for their country’s freedom and their own – present day Seattle and Indiana, 1861)

Cassie Fancher, Street of Widows, Green Writers (debut collection of stories of small town American women navigating grief and loss)

Carrie Hope Fletcher, When the Curtain Falls, Sphere (multi-period theatre ghost story of unrequited love and revenge)

Scott Gastineau, Tilman’s Bounty, Five Star (after the mining company he works for goes belly up, young Max Tillman has a chance encounter with a man who has a bounty on his head)

Elizabeth Gill, The Foundling School for Girls, Quercus (new series set in Victorian England about the lost orphans of Durham and the nuns who take them in)

Natalia Ginzburg, The Manzoni Family, Arcade (set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, novel recounts the story of Alessandro Manzoni)

Holly Green, Workhouse Nightingale, Ebury (Victorian family saga)

Andrew Gross, The Fifth Column, Macmillan UK (WWII thriller about a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who uncovers a secret Nazi spy ring planning an attack in the United States)

Minrose Gwin, The Accidentals, Wm Morrow (following the death of their mother, the McAlister daughters have to cope with ripple effect of this tragedy as they come of age in 1950s Mississippi)

Linnea Hartsuyker, The Golden Wolf, Harper (conclusion to the Golden Wolf trilogy recreates Viking-age Scandinavia —a world of brutality, loyalty and betrayal)

Lisa Howorth, Summerlings, Doubleday (a Cold War coming-of-age story in which three best friends confront their fears of the Bomb, Russian spies, girls, and their role in the tragic accident that ushers them into adulthood)

Angela Hunt, King’s Shadow, Bethany House (two women occupy a place in Herod’s court. The first, Salome, is the king’s only sister; the second is Zara, is a lowly handmaid who serves Salome)

Sarah Jio, All the Flowers in Paris, Ballantine (two women are connected across time by the city of Paris, a mysterious journal, and secrets, sweeping from WWII to the present)

Bill Jones, Black Camp 21, Birlinn (WWII espionage thriller)

Fiona Kidman, This Mortal Boy, Aardvark Bureau (fictionalised true crime murder mystery about Albert ‘Paddy’ Black, known as the ‘jukebox killer’. Aukland, 1955)

R. F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic, Harper Voyageur (fantasy combining the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters. Sequel to The Poppy War)

Sarah Lark, (trans. Kate Northrop), The Fire Blossom, Amazon Crossing (family saga of two women in 19th-century New Zealand and their epic journey to survive in a world of their own making)

Christine Leunens, Caging Skies, The Overlook Press (an avid member of the Hitler Youth in Vienna, Johannes Betzler discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl behind a false wall in their home)

E.C.R. Lorac, Murder in the Mill-Race, PPP (Chief Inspector Macdonald faces one of his most difficult cases in a village determined not to betray its dark secrets to a stranger)

Angus MacDonald, We Fought For Ardnish, Birlinn (a Lovat Scout falls in love with a French Canadian SOE agent at the outbreak of WWII)

Angus MacDonald, Ardnish Was Home, Birlinn (a wounded soldier in hospital in Galllipoli in 1916 falls in love with his nurse)

Julianne MacLean, A Fire Sparkling, Lake Union (1939 England – multi-generational saga about one woman’s love, loss, and courage during wartime)

Nathan Makaryk, Nottingham, Forge (historical epic retelling of the classic Robin Hood story set in 1191, England)

Alec Marsh, Rule Britannia, Accent (Drabble & Harris historical adventure series)

Shirley McKay, Black Drop, Polygon (Edinburgh, 1820s―a young clerk is drawn into a shape-shifting world where illusion turns to nightmare and glitter falls to dust with fatal results)

Angela Meyer, A Superior Spectre, Saraband (a Scottish Highland ghost story set in late 1860s)

Judith Miller, A Perfect Silhouette, Bethany House (in 1850, Mellicent “Mellie” Blanchard takes a job at a mill in Manchester, New Hampshire, to help support her family)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow, Del Rey (historical fantasy set during Jazz Age – the Mayan God of Death sends a young woman on a life-changing journey)

Alix Nathan, The Warlow Experiment, Doubleday (historical novel about an 18th-c experiment in personal isolation that yields unexpected and shatteringly human results)

Lillian Nattel, Girl at the Edge of Sky, Knopf Canada (based on the life and death of Lily Litvyak, a female Soviet flying ace and fighter pilot shot down behind German lines in WWII)

Patrice Nganang, When the Plums Are Ripe, FSG (2nd volume in trilogy; the story of Cameroon caught between empires during World War II)

Ambrose Parry, The Art of Dying, Canongate (second historical crime novel set in 19th-century Edinburgh)

Joanna Davidson Politano, Finding Lady Enderly, Revell (historical romance in Victorian England)

Adam O’Fallon Price, The Hotel Neversink, Tin House (portrait of a Jewish family in the Catskills over the course of a century)

Bill Pronzini, The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, Forge (Peaceful Valley, Montana is just that! Until mid-October 1914, when a theft sets off a crime wave)

C.S. Quinn, The Bastille Spy, Corvus (new historical crime series set in Paris, 1789)

Candace Robb, A Conspiracy of Wolves, Severn House (murder mystery set in 1374)

Mary Doria Russell, The Women of the Copper Country, Atria (inspiring novel about Annie Clements—the courageous woman who started a rebellion by leading a strike against the largest copper mining company in the world)

Kate Saunders, The Case of the Wandering Scholar, Bloomsbury (2nd in Laetitia Rodd mysteries set in 1850s England)

Bill Schutt, J. R. Finch, The Darwin Strain, Wm Morrow (though the fighting has stopped and Hitler is vanquished, a dangerous new war between America and the Soviet Union has begun)

Jack Serong, Preservation, Text Publishing (1797. On a beach not far from the isolated settlement of Sydney, a fishing boat picks up three men: shipwreck survivors, exhausted and terribly injured)

Ames Sheldon, Don’t Put the Boats Away, She Writes (character-driven story about the privileged Sutton family’s struggles with PTSD, alcoholism, divorce, and professional setbacks following WWII)

Lewis Shiner, Outside the Gates of Eden, Head of Zeus (using the music business as a window into the history of half a century, this is both epic and intimate, realistic and ultimately hopeful)

Dominic Smith, The Electric Hotel, Allen & Unwin (a film student interviews an aging producer about his lost masterpiece and his muse)

Lauraine Snelling, A Song of Joy, Bethany House (Under Northern Skies #4 – conclusion to pioneering series set in early 20th-c Minnesota)

A. M. Stuart, Singapore Sapphire, Berkley (Harriet Gordon stumbles into a murderous web of stolen gems and cutthroat thieves as she runs from her past in early 20th-century Singapore)

Joanne Sundell, A Slip on Golden Stairs: Wanted, Dead or Alive, Five Star (a frontier ghost story in gold-rush time, inspired by an actual EVP recording made in the Slide Cemetery, Dyea, Alaska)

Olga Tokarczuk, illus. Jennifer Croft, Flights, Riverhead (multi-period novel explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time)

L.C. Tyler, Fire, Constable (historical murder mystery set in London 1666)

Tian Veasna, Year of the Rabbit, Drawn & Quarterly (true story of one family’s struggle to survive the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia)

Heinrich von Kleis, (trans. Nicholas Jacobs), The Marquise of O―, Pushkin Vertigo (timeless classic – an ambiguously comic drama of sexuality and family respectability and unexpected pregnancy)

Éric Vuillard, (trans. Ann Jefferson), Sorrow of the Earth, Pushkin Vertigo (tells the little-known story of the Native Americans swallowed up by Buffalo Bill’s great entertainment machine)

Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved, Simon & Schuster (two young couples’ lives become intertwined when the husbands are appointed co-ministers of a New York City church in the 1960s)

Martin Walser, trans. David Dollenmayer, A Man in Love, Arcade (biographical fiction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Minette Walters, The Turn of Midnight, MIRA, (second in series set in West Country during the Black Death, 14th-c)

C M Wendelboe, The Man Who Hated Hickok, Five Star (1876 and Cheyenne–long a haven for thugs and thieves–has taken on an air of civility. Until Wild Bill Hickock comes to town)

September 2019

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft and Sherlock, Titan (the brothers investigate the death of a boy in an orphanage)
Also: Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage

Steve Anderson, The Preserve, Skyhorse (historical thriller set in Hawaii, 1948)

Jeffrey Archer, Nothing Ventured, St. Martin’s Press US / Macmillan UK (a Clifton Chronicles spinoff –not a detective story, but rather, a story about the making of a detective)

David Ashton, Shadow of the Serpent and Fall From Grace, Two Roads (19th-century murder mysteries)

RJ Baker, The Bone Ships, Orbit (a crew of condemned criminals embarks on a suicide mission to hunt the first sea dragon seen in centuries in first book of this historical fantasy trilogy)

Peter Brandvold, Blood on the Moon and Star, Five Star (a Bear Haskell and US Deputy Marshall frontier western)

James R. Benn, When Hell Struck Twelve, Soho Crime (14th Billy Boyle WWII mystery takes place in northern France in August, 1944)

Tracy Borman, The Devil’s Slave, Atlantic Monthly (2nd in trilogy set in early 1600s)

Rita Bradshaw, One Snowy Night, Pan (saga set in the years following the First World War)

Ada Bright, Cass Grafton, The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen, Canelo (when a time travelling Jane Austen gets stuck in modern-day Bath it’s up to avid Jane-ite Rose Wallace to save her)

Emily Brightwell, Mrs. Jeffries and the Alms of the Angel, Berkley (Victorian mystery series)

Jessie Burton, The Confession, Picador (story of three women and the complex connections they have shared across decades and continents)

Karen Campbell, The Sound of the Hours, Bloomsbury Circus (wartime historical novel about love, loss, and conflict in an occupied Italian town)

Ella Carey, Beyond the Horizon, Lake Union (a novel of friendship during World War II, fighting for the truth, and making peace with the past)

Jack Chambers, illus. Esteve Polls, D-Day, Osprey (graphic novel that tells the story of the Allied landing that changed the direction of World War II)

Tracy Chevalier, A Single Thread, Viking (1932 – a woman is drawn into a society of women who embroider kneelers for the Cathedral, carrying on a centuries-long tradition of bringing comfort to worshippers)

Meg Waite Clayton, The Last Train to London, Harper (pre-World War II-era story centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer, One World (a young slave with magical gifts enlists in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved)

Paul Fraser Collard, The Lost Outlaw, Headline (eighth Victorian military adventure featuring Jack Lark: soldier, leader, imposter)

Hervé Le Corre, trans. Sam Taylor, After the War, Europa (multi-layered tale of vengeance and retribution set in 1950s Bordeaux)

Angie Cruz, Dominicana, Flatiron (novel about a Dominican teenager’s arranged marriage and immigration to New York City, set in the 1960s)

Lynn Cullen, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Gallery (novel set in the Midwest during the Great Depression, about two sisters bound together by love, duty, and pain)

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, trans. Frank Wynne, Animalia, Grove Press (literary epic that retraces the history of a modest French peasant family over the 20th century as they develop their small plot of land into an industrial pig farm)

Marente De Moor, trans. David Doherty, The Dutch Maiden, World Editions (Germany, 1936 where Nazism is taking hold, a young Dutch girl, is sent to an embittered aristocrat to train as a fencer)

Melanie Dobson, Memories of Glass, Tyndale (multi-period novel draws from true accounts to shine a light on Holland’s darkest history and bravest heroes. Set in WWI Holland & present day Uganda)

Paul Doherty, Death’s Dark Valley, Headline (Hugh Corbett mystery series book 20)

Sara Donati, Where the Light Enters, Berkley (epic about two trailblazing female doctors in nineteenth-century New York and the transformative power of bravery and love)

Sarah M. Eden, The Lady and the Highwayman, Shadow Mountain (romance in 1830s Victorian London)

Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Ashmolean, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in 1895)

Bella Ellis, The Vanished Bride, Berkley (Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Bronte unravel mysteries together)

Anna Ellory, The Rabbit Girls, Lake Union (Berlin 1989 – Miriam Winter discovers concealed letters revealing the disturbing truth about young women experimented on at the Ravensbrück death camp)

Marina Endicott, The Difference, Knopf Canada (novel about two sisters who live aboard a merchant ship on a fateful voyage through the South Pacific in 1912)

David Field, Justice for the Cardinal, Sapere (following the unjust death of Cardinal Wolsey, his protégé Thomas Cromwell is determined to take his revenge on those he holds responsible)

Eric Flint, Iver Cooper, 1636: The China Venture, Baen (the United States of Europe are embroiled in international intrigue, as the uptimers attempt to establish an embassy in Ming Dynasty era China)

Hester Fox, The Widow of Pale Harbor, Graydon House (follow-up to The Witch of Willow Hall, set in Maine 1846)

Petina Gappah, Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Scribner (Zambia 1873 ― story of the loyal men and women who carried David Livingstone’s body from Zambia to Zanzibar so that his remains could be returned home to England)

Sofia Grant, Lies in White Dresses, Wm Morrow (two friends travel to Reno, Nevada in mid-20th century, to seek divorce)

Andrew Gross, The Fifth Column, Minotaur (WWII thriller about a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who uncovers a Nazi spy ring planning an attack in the US)

Matthew Harffy, Storm of Steel, Head of Zeus (AD 643. Anglo-Saxon Britain. Bernicia Chronicles VI)

Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Redhook (in the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book)

Max Hennessy, The Courtney Entry, Canelo (a huge cash prize awaits anyone who can make the perilous transatlantic flight between Paris and New York)

Max Hennessy, The Mustering of the Hawks, Canelo (novel of the First World War Flying Aces)

Max Hennessy, The Mercenaries, Canelo (a new conflict looms, at the very edge of the world)

Paddy Hirsch, Hudson’s Kill, Forge (New York in 1803 is seething with racial tension, as a mysterious provocateur pits the city’s black and Irish gangs against each other)

Alice Hoffman, The World That We Knew, Simon & Schuster (WW II, when men became monsters, children navigated a world without parents, and women were willing to sacrifice everything)

Jane Kirkpatrick, One More River to Cross, Revell (beset by storms, bad timing, and desperate decisions, 8 women, 17 children, and one man must outlast winter in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1844)

Julia Kristeva, (trans. Armine Kotin Mortimer), The Enchanted Clock, Columbia Univ Press (story built around a golden astronomical clock in the Palace of Versailles – multi time period)

William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land, Atria (an orphan’s life-changing adventure traveling down America’s great rivers during the Great Depression, seeking both a place to call home and a sense of purpose in a world sinking into despair)

Soraya M. Lane, The Girls of Pearl Harbor, Lake Union (four young nurses’ lives change forever in the wake of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor)

Lillah Lawson, Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree, Regal House (1929― a love story to the State of Georgia and the spirit of its people)

Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman, Harper (gothic historical novel set in late-17-century Iceland)

Sarah Leavitt, Agnes, Murderess, Freehand Books (graphic novel inspired by legend of Agnes McVee, a roadhouse owner, madam and serial killer in the Cariboo region of BC in the mid-19th century)

Ji-min Lee, The Starlet and the Spy, Harper (Seoul, 1954 – portrayal of unexpected kinship between two very different women, and of the surprising connections that can change, or even save, a life)

Robert S Levinson, Tap Dance, Five Star (the good, the bad, and the ugly infest this tall tale, as Swaney and McDukes roam the landscape west of the Rockies)

Erin Lindsey, A Golden Grave, Minotaur (second historical mystery follows Rose Gallagher as she tracks a killer through Gilded Age Manhattan)

Carol McGrath, The Silken Rose, Accent (1236―Alienor of Provence and her marriage to Henry III)

Suzanne Matson, Ultraviolet, Catapult (novel about three generations of women set largely in the American West during much of the twentieth century)

James Meek, To Calais, In Ordinary Time, Canongate (England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor returns to his monastery and a young ploughman is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais)

Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King, Pegasus (in 1935, orphaned servant Hirut struggles to adapt to her new household as Ethiopia faces Mussolini’s looming invasion)

Katy Moran, Wicked By Design, Head of Zeus (1819―from the windswept cliffs of Cornwall, to the glittering ballrooms of St Petersburg; a Regency romance with a twist)

Trudy J Morgan-Cole, A Roll of the Bones, Breakwater (1612―traces the journeys of three young people leave Bristol, England, for a life in a struggling Newfoundland community)

Annalee Newitz, The Future of Another Timeline, Tor (time-travel fantasy thriller)

Edna O’Brien, Lantern Slides (c.1990), Picador (newly reissued collection of stories)

Jeroen Olyslaegers, (trans. David Colmer) Will, Pushkin (an unsettling story of collaboration, resistance and the cowardice of neutrality in Nazi-occupied Antwerp)

Mary Paulson-Ellis, The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing, Mantle (an heir hunter pursues his dead client’s living relatives, tracing the family tree back to a mystery in 1918)

Andrea Penrose, Murder at Kensington Palace, Kensington (a Wexford and Sloane mystery)

Anne Perry, Death in Focus, Ballantine (all-new mystery series set in pre-World War II Europe)

Beth Piatote, The Beadworkers, Counterpoint (stories in the landscapes of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life)

Chase Pletts, The Loving Wrath of Eldon Quint, Inkshares (explores the turbulent relationship between young immigrant housemaid and a farmer as they navigate their personal traumas, and the hardships of life and love in the Old West)

Lara Prescott, The Secrets We Kept, Bond Street (the real-life story of the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts and minds of Soviet Russia with the greatest love story of the 20th century: Doctor Zhivago)

Steven Price, Lampedusa, FSG (1955― a man faces down the end of his life and struggles to make something of lasting worth, while there is still time)

Laura Purcell, Bone China, Bloomsbury (Victorian gothic thriller)

Tobias Roberts, The Revisionist, Dalkey Archive (outlines the lives and tragedies of the psychiatrist Isaac Himmelfarb and his wife, Sarah, whose marriage is strained by the grief of a miscarriage)

Maggie Robinson, Who’s Sorry Now?, PPP (2nd entry in Lady Adelaide cozy mystery series set in 1920s)

Michael Russell, The City in Flames, Constable (1940. A woman lands on the Scottish coast from a German flying boat and goes to ground, hunted by British Intelligence)

Wilbur Smith, Tidewater, Zaffre (next in series of the Courtney family)

Elizabeth Speller, The Hedge of Thorns, Pegasus (mysterious love story—set in the divided city of Berlin in 1968—evoking post-war themes of loss, identity, and betrayal)

Katherine Stansfield, The Mermaid’s Call, Alison & Busby (3rd in the Cornish mysteries series, set in 1845)

Peter Steiner, The Good Cop, Severn House (Munich 1920 – a detective has to grapple with how to uphold the law when the law has gone bad)

Amy Stewart, Kopp Sisters on the March, HMH (in this 5th installment the sisters get some military discipline drilled into them as the U.S. prepares to enter World War I)

D. E. Stockman, The Ship’s Carpenter, Fireship (a novel of love, war and a renowned frigate in mid 1700s)

Julian Stockwin, To the Eastern Seas, Hodder & Stoughton (Thomas Kydd naval series book #22)

Matteo Strukul, trans.Richard McKenna, Medici: Ascendancy, Head of Zeus (Florence 1429―first in a trilogy charting the rise of the Medici as they become Masters of Florence and progenitors of the Renaissance)

Faith Sullivan, Ruby and Roland, Milkweed (at a historical moment when young women are expected to be focused on courtship and marriage, the industrious Ruby looks to expand her horizons)

Deborah Swift, Entertaining Mr Pepys, Accent (3rd in series about the women in Pepys’ diary)

S. D. Sykes, The Bone Fire, Pegasus (Oswald de Lacy brings his family to a secluded island castle to escape the Black Death, but a murder within the household proves that even the strongest fortresses aren’t free from terror)

Stella Tillyard, The Great Level, Atria (spanning several decades in 17th-c Great Britain and America – a love story exploring the power of nature versus man and man versus woman)

Charles Todd, A Cruel Deception, Wm Morrow (Book 11 in series – in the aftermath of World War I, nurse Bess Crawford attempts to save a troubled former soldier from a mysterious killer)

Jen Turano, Diamond in the Rough, Bethany House (as part of a bargain with her grandmother, Poppy Garrison accepts an unusual proposition to participate in the New York social season)

Christopher Valen, Dan Cohen, City of Stones, Conquill Press (murder mystery set in 1950 Minneapolis)

Annette Valentine, Eastbound from Flagstaff, Morgan James (illumination of the human condition in its ideological indifference to God through a young man’s search for meaning in the 1920s)

Ashley Weaver, A Dangerous Engagement, Minotaur (mystery series, set in 1930s New York)

Karen Wills, All Too Human, Five Star ( 1905, Rebecca Bryan, the first woman to practice law in Kalispell, Montana, is sent by her senior partner to a remote hunting lodge near the Canadian border)

Jin Yong, trans. Anna Holmwood, A Hero Born, SMP (generational saga stretching from the Song Empire (1200 AD) to the appearance of the warlord Genghis Khan)

Jane Zinser, Fly Like a Bird, BQB Publishing (a young girl of the 1960s discovers her family and the people in her town are keeping secrets about the night a car crash killed her parents)

October 2019

David Ashton, Mistress of the Just Land, Two Roads (Victorian Edinburgh― Jean Brash brings her cool intelligence to solving a murder, a murder that took place in her own bawdy-hoose)

Mark Barr, Watershed, Hub City Press (set in 1937 in rural Tennessee, with the construction of a monumental dam serving as background—story of characters whose ambitions and yearnings threaten to overflow the banks of their time and place)

Lawrence Reid Bechtel, A Partial Sun, BQB Publishing (story of Isaac Granger, a formerly enslaved man who worked for the late Thomas Jefferson in the early 1790s)

Pamela Bell, Christmas at Emmerdale, Trapeze (August 1914, and a terrible war begins, one that will affect the lives of everyone in the village of Beckindale)

Gregory Benford, Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape, Saga Press (a history professor travels back to 1968 and becomes a successful Hollywood screenwriter)

R. William Bennett, The Last Man at the Inn, Ensign Peak (Simon, a spice merchant and a Jew without deeply felt religious beliefs, begins his lifelong journey as one of the first new Christians as his life intersects with Jesus)

Raymond Benson, Blues in the Dark, Skyhorse (a 1940s and present-day Hollywood crime drama that tackles racism, sexism, and murder)

Mireille Best, trans. Stephanie Schechner, Camille In October, Seagull Books (through Camille’s eyes, we embark on a fundamental and universal quest to balance where we come from with who we need to become)

Diana Biller, The Widow of Rose House, St. Martin’s Griffin (1875- a young widow restores a dilapidated mansion only to find the house is full of dangerous secrets)

John Blumenthal, The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird, Regal House (a lonely literature professor falls in love with a student whose passion for writing equals his own)

M.H. Boroson, The Girl With No Face, Talos (follow-up to the historical urban fantasy The Girl with Ghost Eyes)

Paula Brackston, Secrets of the Chocolate House, SMP (sequel to The Little Shop of Found Things)

Kristy Cambron, The Painted Castle, Thomas Nelson (multi-period novel set during the rapid change of Victorian England, WWII, and modern day)

Dale Carothers, Daniel DeVargas, illus. Esteve Polls, The Battle of Britain, Osprey (graphic novel follows the Royal Air Force as they defend the United Kingdom against the infamous German Luftwaffe)

Patrick Chamoiseau, Slave Old Man, The New Press (story of an escaped slave and the killer hound that pursues him)

Paul Christopher, Wisdom of the Bones, Canelo (Dallas, 1963: after being diagnosed with a terminal heart condition, homicide detective Ray Duval is trying to save one last life before he loses his own)

Paul Christopher, A Gathering of Saints, Canelo (novel drawn from true events in the dawn of World War II)

Cassandra Clark, Murder at Whitby Abbey, Severn House (Whitby Abbey 1389, Hildegard of Meaux is sent to purchase a priceless holy relic)

Jon Clinch, Marley, Atria (reimagining of Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol and an exploration of the twisted relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley)

Heather Cooper, Stealing Roses, Alison & Busby (1862, romance)

Bernard Cornwell, Sword of Kings, Harper (latest installment in the epic saga of warrior Uhtred of Bebbanburgh)

Iain Crichton-Smith, Consider the Lilies, W & N (captures the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community during the Highland Clearances)

Nadine Dorries, Snow Angels, Head of Zeus (in 1950s Liverpool, five very different girls begin their training at St Angelus Hospital)

Anton Du Beke, Moonlight Over Mayfair, Zaffre (2nd in series set in the exclusive Buckingham Hotel in 1930s)

Martin Edwards, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories, PPP (collection of Golden Age mysteries)

Mathias Énard, trans. Charlotte Mandell, Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants, New Directions (In 1506, Michelangelois invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn)

Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange, Tin House (mystery set in a dilapidate English country mansion in 1969)

Jean Fullerton, A Ration Book Childhood, Corvus (during the darkest days of the Blitz, family becomes more important than ever)

Rosie Goodwin, A Precious Gift, Zaffre (family saga series set in 1800s)

Theodora Goss, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, Saga Press (conclusion to the trilogy of Mary Jekyll and the Athena Club)

Susanna Gregory, The Sanctuary Murders, Sphere (24th chronicle of physician Matthew Bartholomew)

Elly Griffiths, Now You See Her, HMH (fifth in mystery series – DI Edgar Stephens & magician Max Mephisto help Edgar’s new wife investigate disappearance of one of their own in swinging 1960s)

Elizabeth Hand, Curious Toys, Mulholland (1915― the 15 year-old daughter of an amusem*nt park fortune teller, disguises herself as a boy to run with the teenage boys who thrive in the dregs of Chicago’s street scene)

Melissa Hardy, The Oracle of Cumae, Second Story (a young woman rescues their revered and ancient oracle from destruction)

Robert Harris, The Second Sleep, Knopf Canada (murder mystery and cautionary tale set in England 1468)

Olivia Hawker, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, Lake Union (Wyoming, 1870 – two resilient women must decide how to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear)

Susan Higginbotham, The First Lady and the Rebel, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel features Mary Lincoln and her Confederate half-sister, Emily Todd Helm)

Chip Jacobs, Arroyo, Rare Birds (multi-period―1913, as the Colorado Street Bridge suffers collapse during construction but opens in the fanfare of the automobile age anyway; and 1993, as the refurbished bridge commemorates its 80th birthday)

Helena Janeczek, trans. Ann Goldstein, The Girl With the Leica, Europa (a novel of the 1930s, economic depression, the rise of Nazism, the hostility towards refugees in France, warring ideologies and the ascendency of photography as the age’s quintessential art form by Gerda Taro)

Andrea Kane, The Black Diamond, Bonnie Meadow (Regency romance)

Raymond Khoury, Empire, Forge (multi period set in Istanbul in 1683 and present day Paris)

Mercedes Lackey, The Case of the Spellbound Child, DAW (alternate history series continues the reimagined adventures of Sherlock Holmes in an alternate 20th-century England)

Ola Larsmo, trans. Tiina Nunnally, Swede Hollow, Univ. of Minnesota Press (family saga immersed in the gritty, dark side of Swedish immigrant life in America in the early twentieth century)

Ben Lerner, The Topeka School, FSG (an expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century

Alison Littlewood, Mistletoe, Quercus (multi-period historical ghost story)

James Lovegrove, Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon, Titan (Holmes and Watson are visited by a new client who believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit)

Bonnie MacBird, The Devil’s Due: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, HarperCollins (3rd in series Holmes and Watson adventure)

Luigi Malerba, Douglas Grant Heise, trans. Emily Hauser, Ithaca Forever, Univ of California (novel portrays Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength)

Edward Marston, Fear on the Phantom Special, Alison & Busby (Railway Detective book 17, set in 1861)

Beryl Matthews, Friends and Enemies, Alison & Busby (1941- when her home is reduced to rubble in an air raid, a young woman is determined to join the war effort)

Alison McLennan, Ophelia’s War: Dangerous Mercy, Five Star (killing her uncle has always haunted Ophelia Oatman. More disturbing is finding out he’s still alive)

Melanie Metzenthin, (trans. Deborah Rachel Langton), A Fight in Silence, Lake Union (Germany, 1936. When Richard and Paula meet in bustling, cosmopolitan Hamburg, everything feels possible until the Nazis take power)

Nicholas Meyer, The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, Minotaur (January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes’ brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine investigation)

Richard C. Morais, The Man With No Borders, Little A (thru reminiscences of life beginning with a bucolic childhood in the 1950s, a father comes to terms with his mortality and secrets)

Heather Morris, Cilka’s Journey, St. Martin’s (sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz)

Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars, Pamela Dorman (set in Depression-era America, story of five women and their journey through the mountains of Kentucky―based on a true story)

Kate Murdoch, The Orange Grove, Regal House (1705 – in a society where status is a matter of life and death, Henriette must stay true to herself, her daughter, and her heart, while hiding a painful secret of her own)

Neil Olson, Before the Devil Fell, Hanover Square (novel about the intertwined families of a small New England town, and the history of witchcraft that binds them together)

Tracie Peterson, What Comes My Way, Bethany House (Ella and Phillip must learn to trust God even when the road they travel takes them in different directions)

Kate Quinn, Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, E. Knight, Ribbons of Scarlet, Wm Morrow (stories of six unforgettable women whose paths cross during the French Revolution)

Marco Rafalà, How Fires End, Little A (a dark secret born out of World War II lies at the heart of a Sicilian American family in this saga of guilt, revenge, and, ultimately, redemption)

Mike Ripley, Mr Campion’s Visit, Severn House (historical thriller set in Suffolk 1970)

Kinley Roby, Arapaho Summer, Five Star (1867, two Union veterans and two Arapaho women they rescue from a Lakota war party set off on the Oregon Trail)

W. C. Ryan, A House of Ghosts, Arcade (Devon, 1917 – big-house mystery haunted by the specters of World War One)

Regina Scott, A Distance Too Grand, Revell (a spunky photographer wrangles her way onto an 1871 survey crew of the Grand Canyon)

G S Singer, The Cobbler’s Daughter, Fireship (NYC 1872 – brave heroines and bold heroes, daring escapades, all set against a backdrop of period details)

Brad Smith, The Return of Kid Cooper, Arcade (1910 – tale of justice and revenge in the Wild West)

Luanne G. Smith, The Vine Witch, 47North (a young witch emerges from a curse to find her world upended in this fantasy of betrayal, vengeance, and self-discovery set in turn-of-the-century France)

Vanessa Tait, The Pharmacist’s Wife, Atlantic (a tale of love, desire and vengeance set in Victorian Edinburgh)

Patrick Taylor, An Irish Country Cottage, Forge (Irish Country series)

M J Tjia, The Death of Me, Legend (third instalment of the historical crime series)

Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Emerald Affair: The Raj Hotel, Book 1, Lake Union (20th-c historical romance)

Lynne Truss, The Man That Got Away, Bloomsbury (Brighton, 1957 – a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair)

Fiona Valpy, The Dressmaker’s Gift, Lake Union (in wartime, 1940, the three seamstresses face impossible choices when their secret activities put them in grave danger)

November 2019

Tasha Alexander, Buried Sins, Minotaur (Lady Emily and her husband Colin uncover a mystery in the ancient city of Pompeii)

David Ashton, A Trick of the Light, Two Roads (an Inspector McLevy mystery)

Georgia Ball, illus. Esteve Polls, Guadalcanal, Osprey (graphic novel detailing the struggle for control of the Solomon Islands during World War II)

Georgie Blalock, The Other Windsor Girl, Wm Morrow (captures the fascinating, fast-living Princess Margaret and her “set” as seen through the eyes of one of her ladies-in-waiting)

David Bowman, Big Bang, Back Bay (set in the 1950’s, epic novel presents an original take on the years leading up to the Kennedy assassination)

Melvyn Bragg, Love Without End, Arcade (told in alternating narratives that transcend centuries, story tells the timeless romance of Heloise and Abelard)

Kate Brellend, The Way Home, Piatkus (saga series set during WW2, based on the lives of the female factory workers at Barratt’s Sweet Factory)

Frances Brody, The Body on the Train, Crooked Lane (11th Kate Shackleton mystery set in London in 1929)

Theodore Brun, A Burning Sea, Corvus (third in Viking epic series The Wanderer Chronicles)

D.J. Butler, Aaron Michael Ritchey, The Cunning Man, Baen (1930s Depression-era US– alternate historical mash-up of fantasy and magic)

Carrie Callaghan, Salt the Snow, Amberjack (American journalist Milly Bennett has covered murders in San Francisco, fires in Hawaii, and a civil war in China, but 1930s Moscow presents her greatest challenge yet)

Patrick W. Carr, The End of the Magi, Bethany House (fleeing for his life after his adoptive father is put to death, a young magi acolyte begins an epic journey filled with peril)

Rosie Clarke, Christmas is for Children, Aria (historical saga set during the Depression)

Ann Howard Creel, Mercy Road, Lake Union (inspired by the true story of the WWI American Women’s Hospital―a novel about love, courage, and a female ambulance driver who risks everything)

Jodi Daynard, A Transcontinental Affair, Lake Union (May 1870 – tale of adventure and danger, innovation and corruption, rivalry and romance on America’s first transcontinental train trip)

David Donachie, Blood Will Out, Alison & Busby (Contraband Shore 3; nautical adventure)

Mark Ellis, Merlin Noir, Accent (WWII crime thriller; 4th in DCI Frank Merlin series)

Kimia Eslah, The Daughter Who Walked Away, Roseway Pub (explores the lives of three Iranian women, across three generations, as they struggle to love and be loved unconditionally)

Patricia Falvey, The Titanic Sisters, Corvus (family saga set in Ireland and America)

D. K. Fields, Widow’s Welcome, Head of Zeus (Gaslamp fantasy)

Eric Flint, Walter H. Hunt, The Sundering, Baen (the passage of Halley’s Comet in 1759 unleashes magical forces)

Sarah Hawkswood, Hostage to Fortune, Alison & Busby (mystery crime series, Bradcote & Catchpoll book 4)

Kristi Ann Hunter, A Pursuit of Home, Bethany House (inspirational fiction set in early 1800s England)

Diane Janes, The Missing Diamond Murder, Severn House (historical mystery set in 1930)

Michael Jecks, The Dead Don’t Wait, Severn House (mystery thriller set in 1555)

Jerry B. Jenkins, Dead Sea Conspiracy, Worthy Books (archeologist Nicole Berman is about to discover the key to unifying three major religions, but a dangerous and evil enemy is out to stop her)

Joseph Kanon, The Accomplice, Atria (espionage novel about a Nazi war criminal who was supposed to be dead, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and the beautiful woman connected to them both)

Rosa Liksom, trans. Lola Rogers, The Colonel’s Wife, Graywolf (in the final twilit moments of her life, an elderly woman looks back on her years in the thrall of fascism and Nazis)

Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Sire: Ovid Resung, FSG Originals (channels the textured voices of the women in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as they claim their stories and challenge the power of myth)

Catriona McPherson, A Step So Grave, Quercus (Dandy Gilver mystery set in 1930s Scotland)

Carolyn Milier, Misleading Miss Verity, Kregel (2nd in the Daughters of Aynsley series)

Shelley Noble, Tell Me No Lies, Forge (latest entry in Lady Dunbridge mystery series)

Claire North, The Pursuit of William Abbey, Orbit (South Africa 1880s― William Abbey, a young English doctor witnesses the lynching of a local boy by white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William)

Daniel José Older, The Book of Lost Saints, Imprint (multigenerational Cuban American family story of revolution, loss, violence, and family bonds)

Dexter Palmer, Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen, Pantheon (in 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits)

Heidi Perks, Come Back for Me, Gallery (novel deals with the scars left by tragedy and the possibilities for healing)

Anne Perry, A Christmas Gathering, Ballantine (1800s mystery in Kent, England)

Shannon Pufahl, Swift Horses, Riverhead (a lonely newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law follow divergent and dangerous paths through the postwar American West. LGBT)

Christiane Ritter (trans. Jane Degras), A Woman in the Polar Night, Pushkin (1934 – account of one woman’s year spent living in a remote hut in the Arctic)

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, The Revisioners, Counterpoint (multi-period novel explores the depths of women’s relationships)

Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, Back Bay (literature’s favorite gentleman and his gentleman’s personal gentleman become spies in service to the Crown)

Rachel Shihor, trans. Sara Tropper, Days of Peace, Seagull (from 1950s Jerusalem this novel is a layered portrait of a city, a newborn nation, and a young woman’s quest to find herself)

James D. Shipman, Task Force Baum, Kensington (based on the true story of General Patton’s clandestine unauthorized raid on a World War II POW camp)

Rosemary Simpson, Death Brings a Shadow, Kensington (1899-a Gilded Age mystery)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, (trans. Marian Schwartz), March 1917, Book 2, Univ of Notre Dame Press (shows a tsarist establishment utterly unable to do anything about the Petrograd revolution. The Emperor abdicates, not understanding that he is condemning Russia to the chaos that will follow)

Danielle Steel, Spy, Macmillan UK / Delacorte US (1939; story of one woman’s courage and bravery as an undercover agent in WWII)

June Tate, The Girl from Kingsland Market, Alison & Busby (romance set in Southampton 1920)

Patrick Taylor, An Irish Country Family, Forge (new entry in the Irish Country series)

Sarah Loudin Thomas, When Silence Sings, Bethany House (after the rival McLean clan guns down his cousin, Colman Harper chooses peace over seeking revenge with his family)

Will Thomas, Lethal Pursuit, Minotaur (London 1892—Cyrus Barker is brought into a game of international espionage by the Prime Minister himself)

Victoria Thompson, City of Scoundrels, Berkley (Counterfeit Lady Novel 3)

John Kennedy Toole, The Neon Bible, Grove (literary historical fiction)

Abdourahman A. Waberi, trans. David Ball and Nicole Ball, The Divine Song, Seagull (from Africa to Sammy’s ancestors’ arrival in the America; to concert halls of Paris and Berlin; to segregation, the civil rights movement, addiction, and jail—Sammy’s life encompasses the whole of the African American experience)

Wallace Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Atom Bomb and Other Stories, Fantagraphics (human battle tales from the Civil War to World War I to World War II to Korea)

December 2019

David Ashton, Nor Will He Sleep, Two Roads (Inspector McLevy mystery series)

Michelle Birkby, All Roads Lead to Whitechapel, Felony & Mayhem (Mrs. Hudson and Mary Watson set up a sleuthing shop of their own, operating out of the kitchen at 221B Baker Street)

Jeffrey Colvin, Africaville, Amistad (exploring notions of identity, passing, cross-racial relationships, the importance of place, and the meaning of home, novel tells the larger story of the black experience in parts of Canada and the United States)

Ralph Dutli, trans. Katharina Rout, Soutine’s Last Journey, Seagull (biographical novel about childhood, longing, friendship, bodily pain, and the wounds of exile; an exploration of language and the power of art)

Leah Fleming, Daughter of the Tide, Head of Zeus (1939: two children on the island of Phetray are bound together by a terrible tragedy)

Alan Furst, Under Occupation, Random House (novel about the heroic resistance fighters in 1942 occupied Paris is based on true events of Polish prisoners in Nazi Germany)

Iona Grey, The Glittering Hour, Thomas Dunne (spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches)

Regina Jennings, The Major’s Daughter, Bethany House (Caroline Adams returns to Indian Territory craving adventure after tiring of society life)

Julie Klassen, The Bridge to Belle Island, Bethany House (investigational evidence takes Benjamin to a remote Thames island where Isabelle is trapped by a recurring dream of a man’s death)

Karen Odden, A Trace of Deceit, Wm Morrow (2nd in Victorian mystery series)

D.M. Quincy, Murder at the Opera, Crooked Lane (London, 1815― a nobleman’s mistress is shot on the steps of the Covent Garden opera house)

Steve Robinson, The Penmaker’s Wife, Thomas & Mercer (no info)

Saskia Sarginson, The Wonderful, Flatiron (story about the anxieties of postwar Britain, where one strong and inspirational young woman looks to find her place, no matter the cost)

Kate Saunders, Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar, Bloomsbury (second in series sees the Victorian detective on the hunt for a missing Oxford academic)

Burt Solomon, The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt, Forge (historical thriller featuring Roosevelt’s near death…accident or assassination attempt)

Beatriz Williams, The Wicked Redhead, Wm Morrow (multi-period adventure featuring a redheaded flapper, the Prohibition agent who loves her, & a contemporary divorcee trying to remake her life)

Suzanne M. Wolfe, The Course of All Treasons, Crooked Lane (when a brutal murder threatens the sanctity of the Elizabethan court, it’s up to a hot-tempered spy to save the day)

Jaime Jo Wright, Echoes Among the Stones, Bethany House (two women, separated by time, vow to find answers . . . no matter the cost)

Seishi Yokomizo, (trans. Louise Heal Kawai), The Honjin Murders, Pushkin Vertigo (Japan’s greatest classic murder mystery set in winter 1937, translated into English for the first time)