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Newest Historical Fiction Reviews (view source)
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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Night FlowerTananarive Due|authortitle=Sarah StovellThe Reformatory|rating=45
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Miriam Booth Robbie Stephens Jr is a Romany gypsy from sentenced to six months at the Newcastle slums whoGracetown School for Boys, like otherwise known as the titular waif in [[:Category:Charles Dickens|Charles Dickens]]Reformatory. It's ''Oliver Twist'', a place with a brutal and dark reputation. But the segregated reformatory is an orphan who lives by her wits but becomes drawn into a ring chamber of house-breaking crimehorrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In 1842 she is caught order to survive the school governor and sentenced to seven yearshis Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school' transportation to a convict colony in Australias ghosts – only they have their own motivations...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906994218</amazonuk>1803366532}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colum McCannKatherine Howe|title=TransAtlanticA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slaveHannah Masury is living in Boston, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for having been sent to live with a lecture tour about freedom family who run an inn, and emancipation only being made to discover he's not preaching work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the converted after alltown, she decides to go and watch. In 1919 Alcock Enthralled and Brown climb into horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a rickety aircraft to fly young boy's death at the Atlantic and land in Limerickhands of two vicious pirates. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to Ireland watched by escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a world thatboy and joining the notorious Ned Low's about to see pirate ship as a miracle of negotiationcabin boy. Meanwhile through it all Lily She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it rip roaring tale of life on both sides of the Atlanticocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>0861547438
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sisters of the East EndSarah Marsh|authortitle=Helen BattenA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Katie Crisp had never intended to become After a bout of scarlet fever as a nun. Raised by non-religious parentschild, Ellen Lark loses her family frowned upon organised religion and when Katie started secretly going to church, they strongly disapprovedhearing. When Katie ran to the aid Suddenly plunged into a world of a stroke victimsilence, she had a vision that changed everything about her lifechanges. She saw herself dressed Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a nun with a large silver cross hanging school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from her necksigning. She decided to follow her calling From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and join using a system called Visible Speech. At the community of St John the Divinesame time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a group complicated tangle of Anglican nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery. She thus shed her old identity and became known as Sister Catherine Maryespionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091951771</amazonuk>1035401614
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesClaire North|authortitle=Eleanor CattonHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'What could matter more than love?'The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for you.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C7J9D21B|title=The Last RunawayA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=Tracy ChevalierA J Lewis|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Quaker girl Honor Bright When we first meet our hero, his name is seeking escape from a failed relationshipEttore and he lives at The House of Beautiful Swallows. Leaving quiet Dorset for AmericaIdyllic as this might sound, it's a developing country about which she knows little, she hopes that accompanying her sister to the US will mean a new start within the American Quaker communitybordello and Ettore's mother died when he was born. But Honor soon discovers the differences between America and England – He's not just in terms been short of weather and landscapemothers, though - but also for someone of his background in late-eighteenth-century Amalfi, it's difficult to obtain decent employment. The stint working with the American culture preparation of slave keepinganchovies didn't work out and bastards are considered bad luck on fishing boats. Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he had a successful business as a guide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000735035X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A World ElsewhereEssie Fox|authortitle=Wayne JohnstonThe Fascination|rating=3.54
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Landish Druken The Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a great hulk of setting for historical fiction (matched only, perhaps, by the Second World War) which has often led to more than a man who lumbers through his hometown of St Johnfew writers mishandling it. There's, Newfoundland. Although he thinks such a glut of himself as a writer, he has never written a word he didnmedia set in the era that the hallmarks we't feel compelled ve come to associate with it are familiar to burn, and everyone knows him as the wayward son point of accomplished sealing captain Abram Drukenbeing cliched, hackneyed even. Landish escaped All this is simply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to study literature at Princeton, where he met best friend Padgett 'Van' Vanderluydendo poorly. But despite that, the 'dud' son of an industrial tycoon something about it still grabs me – and a rumoured homosexual, but he broke his promise to join his fathersomething about this book's sealing empire on his return in 1893, and now lives in poverty and disgracedescription did as well. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572036</amazonuk>1914585526
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Stay Where You Are And Then LeaveNicole Jarvis|authortitle=John BoyneA Portrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Life may be tough in the Missouri town where Alma grew up but at least she has a job. She learns and experiences a lot as maid to the wealthy Glencross family, but many of the experiences aren't the sort she'd like I want all of Florence to relive. To top it all off, in 1929 the Arbor, a local dance club, explodes into flames killing 42 people including Almaknow my name''s younger sister Ruby. The cause remains a mystery as factions are blamed or viewed suspiciously. However Alma knows the truth, a truth that remains secret until decades later during a visit from her grandson.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444732838</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas D Lee
|title=Perilous Times
|rating=3
|genre= Fantasy
|summary= ''Hate is the path of least resistance''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elisabeth GiffordG K Holloway|title=Secrets In the Shadows of the Sea HouseCastles|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Ruth has been raised We begin after the momentous battle in children1066 and on the day of William of Normandy's homes after losing her mother coronation as a young childKing of England. Her mother always told her that she was a Selkie, one of the seal people William's position is not secure and eventually her mother would return to the seanew king has many challenges. Ruth prefers this version Imposing authority through a coronation is important. And William is right to worry. While the official death certificates: suicide by drowning. As an adultprevious king, Harold, Ruth returns with husband Michael to her mother's native Hebrides. This is a new start for them both in an old manse they're renovating. However during dead and the works they make a gruesome discovery: the buried remains likelihood of a special child. This body has been there for more pitched battles is over a century, since Rev Alexander Ferguson's time the rebels are stirring and, as much of the years roll back country does not wish to reveal its origins Ruth realises this isn't the only surprise awaiting herrecognise a new overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782391118</amazonuk>1800422466
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{{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=David Gilman1529125898|title=Master of WarGodmersham Park|author=Gill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Young Richard Blackstone is accused ''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the rape and murder odd gentleman's duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of a village girl and sentenced governess to hangtwelve-year-old Fanny Austen. Protestations She had no experience of innocence on his behalf mean nothing and the fact he's a deaf/mute means even less. His elder brother Thomas has protected him as much as possible throughout their lives teaching but can do nothing this timewas a case of necessity. HoweverUntil the death of her mother, help is at hand; Sir Gilbert Killbere ensures that Anne had a comfortable life and was loved by both parents although her father was frequently absent from the judge changes his mind and Richard is released but not completelyhousehold. Richard When her mother died, her father cast her off and Thomas are excellent archers so they're rescued in order would have nothing more to join the army that the King is amassingdo with her. It's not No explanation was offered but she would receive an easy option: the annuity of £35 a year is 1346 and the conflict that history will call 'The Hundred Years War' is about to begin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850100</amazonuk> Her maid, Agnes, would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in by some neighbours.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sorrow of AngelsMelissa Fu |authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonPeach Blossom Spring
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Historical Fiction|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at I loved the café for three weeks nowprelude to Peach Blossom Spring, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]a short chapter entitled ''Origins''. After Unfortunately it is the tragedy and soul-searching only truly poetic part of that first a book, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him there, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female bodyI expected more from. The man who is still young enough Covering Chinese history from 1938 to be known only 2005 as viewed through one family''s perspective. When their home city is set ablaze during the boy'' might have latched on to stability for oncewar with Japan, a young mother (Meilin) and replaced the family and best friend he had losther four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who flee. But everything is restless in this environmentThe story follows them on their journey across China, and once again he might just be tempted in Renshu's case eventually to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surroundsAmerica. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>1472277538
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Heaven and Hell1916072038|authortitle=Jon Kalman Stefansson|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Iceland, a hundred years ago. From a place that is The House in the very definition of rural and remote, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way out, and five on the way back. Hollow (The deceased is the best friend – or perhaps only friend – of the main character, who is still young enough to merely be known as ''boy''. When he returns to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life is an answer, and for what, after the tragedy he has witnessed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=She RisesTalbot Saga)|author=Kate WorsleyAllie Cresswell|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Imagine, if you can, a lifelike eighteenth-century seafaring epic (something along the lines We meet part of Carsten Jensen's [[We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen|We, the Drowned]] or Carol Birch's [[Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch|Jamrach's Menagerie]]) crossed with Sarah Waters's ''Fingersmith''Talbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. If you then added Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in touches of Charles Dickens's ''Bleak House''some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, plus shades of to the rest of house in the homoerotic Waters oeuvre (especially ''Night Watch'' hollow. The two women are angry with each other and ''Tipping the Velvet''), you would just about have Kate WorsleyJocelyn is well aware of her mother's debut novel, ''She Rises'', in a nutshell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408835894</amazonuk>}}strengths and weaknesses:
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruce MacbainAnnabel Abbs|title=The Bull SlayerLanguage of Food
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Years after we left him in [[Roman Games (Plinius Secundus) by Bruce Macbain|Roman Games]], Pliny Eliza Acton is a poet who has never had the Younger has become Roman Governor of Bithyniaslightest inclination to boil an egg. Not the most hospitable of regionsWhen tasked with writing a cookery book, she recruits Ann Kirby, its Greek residents regard the Romans a local woman with hatred; an emotion thata troubled home life. Together, they test, in many casescraft, is reciprocated by refine and reshape the Romans. No matter how bad this is thoughworld of domestic cookery, it gets worse when a high ranking official dies mysteriously. Could it have anything to do with reinventing the recipe book and changing the religious sect face of Mithras? Possibly but it's not Pliny's only dilemma; at home his beloved young wife Calpurnia is acting somewhat oddlycookery writing forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781850798</amazonuk>1398502227
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James HeneageFreya Marske|title=The Walls of Byzantium (The Mistra Chronicles)A Marvellous Light
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Luke Magoris Robin Blyth is heading for disgrace which means nudged into a lot since he's job in the son of a VarangianCivil Service, much to his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that the Viking-originated elite guard streets of the Byzantine EmperorLondon are threaded with magic. Anna Lasaris daughter Desperate to remove a Byzantine court official andcurse that threatens to swallow him, feisty but kind, is the opposite of Robin follows Edwin to the Archon's daughter Zoe. As politically adept as her brother is ineptcountryside, Zoe will do anything for status and money… anything. As the 14th century Byzantine Empire starts to crumble due to where the relentless struggle hedgegrows bristle with the Islamic Turks incantations and Mistra becomes the only province left for the Turks to conquer, their paths will crosspeople shimmer with power. They're all young but There they'll soon discover uncover a sinister plot that treachery can emanate from friendship as much as it can from warthreatens the lives of all magicians in the British Isles. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782061118</amazonuk>1529080886
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title=Beautiful LiesFlights for Freedom|author=Claire ClarkSteven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Clare ClarkIt's ''Beautiful Lies'' takes in Royal jubilees, London riots, newspaper editors overstepping the bounds on personal vendettas later stages of World War I and political sex scandals - all set in the late 1880s showing how little United States has changed. There are even early instances and questions over photographic manipulationjust entered the conflict. Maribel, apparently Petrol Petronus is a Chilean heiress young American who has signed up and wife of radical, socialist politician Edward Campbell Lowe, has a past which she has tries to keep buriedjoined the 17 Aero Squadron. If it were This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be revealedtrained in Canada, both her the first to be attached to the RAF and her husband would the first to be ruined by sent into the scandalskies to fight the Germans in active combat. Making enemies of an unscrupulous and hypocritical newspaper editor might not be But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the best move thennotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570467</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=All Woman and SpringtimeChristophe Medler|authortitle=B W JonesMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating=3.54
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=GyongSet against the backdrop of the English Civil War, a secret plan (code-Ho named Madrigal) is a seamstressdiscovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642. That's not a euphemism. She works at a machine in As a garment factory, with a bullying supervisor, invalided out loyal servant of the glorious Chochun armyKing, limping around and terrifying the girls only slightly more than the picture Head of Kim Jong-il on the walls. GiSecret Service, a nickname sheit is Robert'll acquire because s duty to uncover the details of her stammering attempts the plan and follow the clues to get her own name out (Gi-Gi-Gyong) strives truly hard to be worthy uncover one of the Dear Leader. She has learned most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the hard way, what happens if someone somewhere for some obscure reason decides that you're notKing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780222912</amazonuk>B095HY8SXQ
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1471187179|title=The AsylumA Beautiful Spy|author=John HarwoodRachel Hore|rating=3.54
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=A woman wakes up Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in an unfamiliar rooma leafy provincial suburb. She doesn’t know where she The book is set in the 1930s and Minnie isexpected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, produce children and spend the rest of her days looking after her husband and their home. Unfortunately, or how this isn't what she wants to do at all and neither does she got therewant to continue working as a secretary. As a result of a chance meeting, but at least she knows who finds herself drawn into espionage, working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she is: perceives as her name is Georgina Ferrars duty and the friends she lives with her uncle in Gresham’s Yard, Londonhas made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Party.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224097415</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edward RutherfurdAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=ParisKokoschka's Doll|rating=2.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Taking four familiesWell, this looked very much like a book I could love from different social positionsthe get-go, Edward Rutherfurd weaves these family histories into the history which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of Paris and Franceit. We encounter I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the noble de Cygnesmiddle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the bourgeois Blanchards20,000s, letters used as narrative form, the lower class Gascons and so on. It intrigued with the revolutionary Le Sourdssubterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, too. Their lives cross paths through But you've seen the years in often unexpected ways star rating that comes with this review, and while ''Paris'' is an historical fiction novelcan tell that if love was on these pages, this is as much an epic story of families as it is about the historywas not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444736795</amazonuk>1529402697
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical FictionTeens |summary= Oxford-educated Englishman Conrad de Lancey Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is haunted by set against the brutality backdrop of the Spanish Civil War1992 Los Angeles riots, his ideals laying in a reaction to the dust along with the cause absolution of four police officers for which he fought. Thereforebeating a black man, Rodney King, on a visit nearly to his mother's German homeland, Conrad shies away death. Told from involvement in any resistance to the rise perspective of Ashley Bennett, the National Socialist Party. However, he will soon have little choice as tragic events drag him into novel follows her evolution from a world silent bystander when confronted with matters of espionagerace, brutality to a woman finding her voice and fear, culminating in a conspiracy to kill Hitler himselfembracing her heritage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781851808</amazonuk>1471188191
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