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Newest Historical Fiction Reviews (view source)
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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->==Historical fiction== <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=E V ThompsonTananarive Due|title=The Dream TradersReformatory|rating=35
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=In the nineteenth century, when European nations are scrabbling to colonise as many territories as possibleGracetown, a young Englishman sails into Chinese waters seeking fame and fortuneFlorida. Unlike the rest of his countrymen however, Luke Trewarne refuses to get rich selling opium to the ChineseJune 1950. All very noble but the fact is that Luke is After a passenger on board scuffle with a ship laden with white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six months at the stuff and there are Chinese gunships on Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the horizonReformatory.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070908885X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Janet Mullany|title=Improper Relations|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Unlucky in love Charlotte Hayden has just lost her best friend and confidante Ann in marriage to the Earl of Beresford. At the wedding she encounters Lord Shadderly, BeresfordIt's best friend, a broodingly handsome man whom she takes an immediate dislike to. Before she knows it Charlotte is caught in place with a compromising situation with Shadderly brutal and he is forced to propose to her or risk both their reputationsdark reputation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755347803</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clare Clark|title=Savage Lands|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=The novel begins with one of But the central characters - Elisabeth - preparing to leave her home in France, and embark upon a ship to take her to America - to meet and marry a complete stranger. At this time there were literally only a few hundred settlers, so potential wives were shipped in along with other necessities! She segregated reformatory is very much in two minds about the entire venture - apprehensive, yet more than a little excited at the prospect chamber of her new life. The voyage doesn't begin particularly well for herhorrors, as she feels isolated from haunted by the other girlsboys that have died there. A voracious reader, she has packed her trunk with books as opposed In order to survive the more conventional linens school governor and this immediately sets her apart.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553512</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christi Phillips |title=The Devlin Diary|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It is 1672 and Hannah Devlinhis Funhouse, a young widow with a skill for (illegally) practicing medicine finds herself being all but kidnapped by King Charles IIRobert must enlist the help of the school's advisors and forced to use her skills to treat his mistress, Louise de Keroualleghosts – only they have their own motivations...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847393489</amazonuk>1803366532}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cathy Marie Buchanan Katherine Howe|title=The Day The Falls Stood StillA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=I imagined this title as Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy'Gone With s death at the Windhands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don' sort of novelt find and kill her too, a saga-esque historical romanceand then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, with dressing as a characterful heroine boy and page-turning story line that necessitates reading late into joining the nightnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. Well, I wasn't disappointed She soon finds herself in this paperback edition the thick of the hardbackthings when there is a mutiny on board, already a best-seller and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the U.Socean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091925967</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='As Western Europeans settled AlaskaAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunityEllen Lark loses her hearing. At the beginning Suddenly plunged into a world of the twentieth centurysilence, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from everything about her life changes. Living in a pandemic time when the use of measles, smallpox, and influenza. No community sign language was spared. In most casesseen as something only savages do, half of Ellen is sent to a village's population died within a week. In some casesschool where she is taught to lip read, there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to the dreadful period as the Great Deathbut physically restrained from signing.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842709194</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robyn Young |title=Requiem (Brethren Trilogy)|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's December 1295 From here, and the bedraggled remnants of the Third Crusade are returning home. Not all have given she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the dream of a Christian Jerusalem, deaf and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, is eager to find patrons to fund using a fresh invasionsystem called Visible Speech. But At the West has turned inwardsame time, Bell is working on other inventions andideas, with the Order's reason for existence vanished with the Crusader states, factions within both the English and French courts covet the wealth and military might Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of the Temple. With his homeland of Scotland under assault by his old rival Edward, and his position usurped by former comrades who wish to turn the Order to sinister ends, peace for series protagonist Will Campbell seems far awayespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340921420</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Freda Lightfoot B0C7J9D21B|title=House of AngelsA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=A J Lewis
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he lives at The novel focuses on the Angel family who live in the Lake District in the late 1900sHouse of Beautiful Swallows. Idyllic as this might sound, it's a bordello and Ettore's mother died when he was born. Josiah Angel is the head He's not been short of the family and appears to be a respectable business manmothers, bringing up his three daughters after the death though - but for someone of his wife. The family live background in a beautiful house and – to outsiders – the daughters seem to have everything – comfortlate-eighteenth-century Amalfi, money, beauty and an easy life, in great contrast it's difficult to obtain decent employment. The stint working with the poverty around them. Not far from Josiahpreparation of anchovies didn's department store t work out and bastards are the workhouse with its brutality considered bad luck on fishing boats. Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and the blocks of slum flats infested with ratsit was not long before he had a successful business as a guide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007125</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Faye L Booth Essie Fox|title=Trades of the FleshThe Fascination
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I read Trades of the Flesh in about 2 hoursThe Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a setting for historical fiction (matched only, speeding through itperhaps, and think I've spent about double that time figuring out how by the Second World War) which has often led to review it! Apart from anything else, more than a few writers mishandling it. There's taken me well over an hour to settle on such a genre (and I reserve glut of media set in the era that the right hallmarks we've come to associate with it are familiar to change that by the end point of the reviewbeing cliched, although if I hackneyed even. All this is simply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to do I guess I could just delete poorly. But despite that, something about it still grabs me – and something about this part…)book's description did as well.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230743412</amazonuk>1914585526
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith Nicole Jarvis|title=Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesA Portrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Prasad's first novel [[On Borrowed Wings by Chandra Prasad|On Borrowed Wings]] followed a young girl entering the male-dominated arena 'I want all of Yale in the 1930s. Her heroine took inspiration from the likes of Amelia Earhart (who has a walk-on part in the book), women who were finding their way in the world on their own terms and refusing Florence to let their womanhood get in the way of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1932279393</amazonuk>}}know my name''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas D Lee
|title=Perilous Times
|rating=3
|genre= Fantasy
|summary= ''Hate is the path of least resistance''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate FurnivallG K Holloway|title=The Concubine's SecretIn the Shadows of Castles|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=As a sequel to Kate FurnivallWe begin after the momentous battle in 1066 and on the day of William of Normandy's first book, ''The Russian Concubine'', The Concubinecoronation as King of England. William's Secret helps position is not secure and the new king has many challenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. And William is right to tie up some hanging storylines and in general provides an entertaining follow-upworry. In While the first bookprevious king, Harold, we watched Chang An Lo is dead and Lydia Ivanova fall in love against all the odds. Here, they must remain in love despite being separated by most likelihood of a continent. As you might expectmore pitched battles is over, the reader spends most rebels are stirring and much of the book hoping for them country does not wish to find recognise a way to finally be togethernew overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751540455</amazonuk>1800422466
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3949666079
|title=Noema
|author=Dael Akkerman
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This is a story about some things that happened to me about twelve thousand years ago.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Pullinger 1529125898|title=The Mistress of NothingGodmersham Park|author=Gill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon was a well-known figure in Victorian London when tuberculosis forced her to move to a hot climate. She travelled to Egypt, accompanied only by her Lady''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's Maid, Sally Naldrett and left her husband and children in Londonduty, not knowing if she there would ever see them againno women to teach well-bred daughters at all. Lady Duff Gordon's story is told in ''The Mistress of Nothing'' but it's Sally Naldrett who is the focus of the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687098</amazonuk>}}
}}
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=When Alan Dale I loved the prelude to Peach Blossom Spring, a short chapter entitled ''Origins''. Unfortunately it is caught stealing the only truly poetic part of a book that I expected more from a market stall in Nottingham he narrowly escapes with his life and limbs in tact. To protect him Covering Chinese history from the justice of Sir Ralph Murdac, Alan1938 to 2005 as viewed through one family's mother begs perspective. When their home city is set ablaze during the mercy of the great outlawwar with Japan, Robin Hooda young mother (Meilin) and her four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who flee. Robin agrees to take Alan into his protectionThe story follows them on their journey across China, and so begins Alanin Renshu's life as an outlawcase eventually to America. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751542083</amazonuk>1472277538
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Borodale 1916072038|title=The Book of FiresHouse in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Allie Cresswell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Agnes Trussel leaves her home to save her We meet part of the Talbot family from the disgrace of learning that she has been raped and is carrying an illegitimate childin Yorkshire in November 1811. With limited options Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in despair at her situation she takes money some discomfort from the their home of a neighbour to pay her way to London. Once thereat Ecklington, her life as assistant to the dour John Blacklock, a firework maker, gives her security and a sense of worth. But she is sure that all she values is likely to be lost once her pregnancy and her status as a thief becomes knownhouse in the hollow. The crux of her situation, two women are angry with each other and that of many women like her at the time, Jocelyn is well summarised in aware of her thoughtsmother's strengths and weaknesses: ''the child is almost all I have, I think. And its'' ''existence will ensure that anything else will be taken away from me.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007305729</amazonuk>}}
Hester is furious about Jocelyn''Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men. Feared by the bads refusal to do as she was asked,which has precipitated '' this violent and unexpected removal''loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.''
}}
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I used to have months when I would gorge on chick lit before I got married. I lived in London and would wile away the tedium of Eliza Acton is a poet who has never had the tube by escaping into easy, comforting reads of twenty-somethings who worried about shoes and shopping and men. It was reassuring slightest inclination to know that the girl, albeit after a series of highs and lows, would ultimately get the guyboil an egg. I'm When tasked with writing a different kind of person now, a stay at home mum more likely to be found playing in the park than shoe-shopping in London, and so it's been a while since I've felt like picking up a chick lit cookery book. Something about this one intrigued me though. From the back cover blurb it's hard to tell if it's a historical novel, or contemporary chick litshe recruits Ann Kirby, or perhaps some kind of mystery. I have a feeling that if you come to it local woman with any particular expectations of it fulfilling one of these genres you might be disappointeda troubled home life. But if you see it as a funTogether, excitingthey test, genre-less read thencraft, hopefullyrefine and reshape the world of domestic cookery, you won't be able to put it downreinventing the recipe book and changing the face of cookery writing forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0749007613</amazonuk>1398502227
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elaine di Rollo Freya Marske|title=A Proper Education for GirlsMarvellous Light
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''A Proper Education for Girls'' Robin Blyth is nudged into a knowing satire about Victorian attitudes towards women, focusing on job in the enduring bond between twin sistersCivil Service, Alice much to his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and Lillian Talbot. The novel opens with a description learns that the streets of their father, a man London are threaded with magic. Desperate to remove a very Victorian belief in Progress and a penchant for scientific experiment. He is obsessively devoted curse that threatens to his indiscriminate collection of 'interesting and useful artefacts' which has gradually subsumed their entire house. Mr. Talbot had expected his daughters swallow him, Robin follows Edwin to equal his enthusiasm the countryside, where the hedgegrows bristle with incantations and devote their entire lives to The Collection the people shimmer with only power. There they uncover a bunch sinister plot that threatens the lives of old ladies (their aunts) for company, but, it didn't quite work out that wayall magicians in the British Isles.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099513463</amazonuk>1529080886
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Wooldridge B09F4CTKJR|title=The Hidden Dance|rating=3.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=It is 1933, and the SS Etoile has just left Southampton harbour en route Flights for New York. On board is Lily Sutton, a timid, disturbed woman whose posh accent seems unsuited to her situation of travelling in steerage. Through a series of flashbacks to various years in Lily's life we learn why she is so frightened and what has brought her to make this secretive journey to New York. As well as learning about her romantic aspirations through the story we also see her stumble into a difficult situation on board ship that lends a crime mystery feel to the latter half of the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007419</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFreedom|author=Judith Lennox |title=The Heart of the NightSteven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=When Kay is hired as MirandaIt's companion, she the later stages of World War I and the United States has no idea what to expect; she just knows that she would like to leave behind her quiet life in entered the English countrysideconflict. She quickly befriends Miranda and becomes her partner in crime, evading Miranda's 'aunt', really her father's ex-mistress, and seeking out adventures in a variety of European cities. Trouble begins, however, when Miranda meets Olivier, Petrol Petronus is a young aspiring filmmaker American who believes that Miranda would has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be a stunning actress. Unsurprisingly, Miranda truly falls trained in love with OlivierCanada, which inadvertently leads the first to be attached to Kay's dismissal the RAF and return the first to Englandbe sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. Now separated, these best friends must find their way on their own throughout World War II. With Kay in England and Miranda in East PrussiaBut before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the women's lives are completely different, providing us with a huge backdrop in which to fall in love with these characters and become enchanted with their livesnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755344847</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Ryan Christophe Medler|title=Death on the IceMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating=54
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=In 1917Set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, Captain a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Falcon Scott's widow seeks to get Douse in the summer of 1642. As a book on the market to redress loyal servant of the balanceKing, to counter and Head of the rumour, public opinion and growing thought that not all was right with Scott and his exploits in Antarctica. Seemingly, in 2009Secret Service, it is Robert Ryan seeks 's duty to uncover the same. However his book is certainly not just concentrating on Scott - we get a lot details of Oates, Evans, the other Evans, plan and all follow the rest clues to uncover one of the fatal party - as well as Shackleton, Amundsen and moremost guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the King.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755348354</amazonuk>B095HY8SXQ
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti 1471187179|title=ImprimaturA Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel Hore
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=My history teacher at school would be stunned Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. The book is set in the 1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to see marry, produce children and spend the number rest of historical fiction books I've been reading recentlyher days looking after her husband and their home. He would be even more surprised Unfortunately, this isn't what she wants to do at all and neither does she want to discover that I've mostly enjoyed themcontinue working as a secretary. Whilst I've always loved readingAs a result of a chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, history was a subject working for which I showed great ineptitude the secret service and disinterest in my younger yearseffectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. How times change Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Party.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971055</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marion Urch Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Invitation to DanceKokoschka's Doll|rating=32.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=Lola Montez was an undeniably fascinating womanWell, this looked very much like a product of book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and producer flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of scandalit. Born Eliza Gilbert I found things to potentially delight me each time – a young Irish girl and an English junior officerweird section in the middle on darker stock paper, she spent her early childhood a chapter whose number was in India before being shuffled off to relations in Scotland the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and then school in Bathso on. This novel chronicles her life and career as It intrigued with the subterranean voice a Spanish dancerman hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, all over Europe of too. But you've seen the mid-nineteenth century star rating that comes with this review, and as far away as America and Australiacan tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0863223958</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eloisa James Christina Hammonds Reed|title=Duchess by NightThe Black Kids
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction Teens |summary=In this third instalment Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the backdrop of the ''Desperate Duchesses'' series the focus is on Harriet1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction to the Duchess absolution of Berrowfour police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, nearly to death. A widow Told from the perspective of two yearsAshley Bennett, Harriet manages the novel follows her vast estate, makes judgements in the local court (where the judge is only evolution from a drunken figurehead) and is generally settled into her life. But she feels unattractive, old and boring; ready to find another husband but doesn't attract too many dancers, never mind suitors, silent bystander when she turns up at a costume ball dressed as a dumpy Mother Goose (complete confronted with a stuffed bird). When her friend sets off on a visit to a permanent house party at a residence matters of a certain very disreputable Lord Strange (in order race, to create a scandal woman finding her voice and entice a husband she never met back to the country), Harriet decides to go with embracing her, but worried about the debauchery, she goes as a young man, a nephew of Duke Villiers who also accompanies the ladiesheritage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340961082</amazonuk>1471188191
}}