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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|author=Kent WascomTananarive Due|title=The Blood Reformatory|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary= Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Reformatory. It's a place with a brutal and dark reputation. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations...|isbn=1803366532}} {{Frontpage|author=Katherine Howe|title=A True Account|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=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's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. 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 rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.|isbn=0861547438}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of HeavenHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=1799 in America and Angel Woolsack is the son After a bout of an itinerant preacherscarlet fever as a child, travelling around LouisianaEllen Lark loses her hearing. Life isn't easy as Angel is torn between the puritanical fire and brimstone upbringing Suddenly plunged into a world of Preacher-Father and his desire to be silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a normal young man within time when the confines use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a religious communityschool where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. Eventually Angel's desire to express himself leads to tragedy From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and, with his only friend Samuel Kemper for company, he is cast out by those he lovesusing a system called Visible Speech. Angel and Samuel decide to search for Samuel's elder brother, ReubenAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and thus begins the adventure that will take them to Floridaideas, bring Angel a feisty bride and provide Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a place in the history books for the Kemper brothers as they grapple for land against the Spanishcomplicated tangle of espionage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1611855713</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C7J9D21B|title=The Reluctant BrideA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=Beverly EikliA J Lewis
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Scarred soldier Major Angus McCartney cuts a lonely figure as When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he rides toward Micklen lives at The House bearing tragic newsof Beautiful Swallows. He knows that his presence will be unwelcome Idyllic as this might sound, it's a bordello and that the report Ettore's mother died when he must deliver will devastate the entire householdwas born. He's not been short of mothers, especially the beautiful, unobtainable daughter though - but for someone of the family whom he has secretly been his background in love with for many yearslate-eighteenth-century Amalfi, it's difficult to obtain decent employment. Surely she will forever associate him The stint working with the bombshell that brought her world crashing downpreparation of anchovies didn't work out and bastards are considered bad luck on fishing boats. There seems no way that she could ever love him the way that Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he loves herhad a successful business as a guide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781890862</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conn IgguldenEssie Fox|title=Wars of the Roses: Stormbird (Wars of the Roses 1)The Fascination|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=England in 1437: Henry VI The Victorian era is now old enough to take the throne after the untimely death of his father 15 years earlier. However 'The Lamb' incredibly over-romanticised as a setting for historical fiction (as young Henry is known) doesn't take after his robustmatched only, dominant father as enemies and allies alike are wont to mention. Religiously devoutperhaps, peace-loving and by the Second World War) which has often ill, Henry VI relies on his right-hand men led to take the load. While more than a privileged role for people like William de la Pole (Duke of Suffolk) and spymaster Derry Brewster, few writers mishandling it. There's also very dangerous. They're the final line such a glut of defence before media set in the King can be toppled and not all era that the malevolent powers hallmarks we've come to associate with it are beyond familiar to the English Channelpoint of being cliched, hackneyed even. A lot of hope All this is pinned on Henrysimply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to do poorly. But despite that, something about it still grabs me – and something about this book's marriage to Margaret of Anjou healing the rifts but unfortunately there are unforeseen effectsdescription did as well.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718159837</amazonuk>1914585526
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elaine Neil OrrNicole Jarvis|title=A Different Sun: A Novel of AfricaPortrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Emma Davis, daughter of a Georgian plantation owner has never been happy about the slave system. People just shouldn't be owned like merchandise. Whenever possible she slinks away to hear African stories from elderly slave Uncle Eli, sparking her imagination and love for a far off continent about which she's determined I want all of Florence to do more than dream. Emma is going to theological college and she know my name''will'' be a missionary out there. Her resolve pays off when she meets and marries Henry, clergyman and missionary to Yoruba. Once there Emma discovers a local culture richer and more rewarding than she imagined, but, then again, so is the cost.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425261301</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas D Lee
|title=Perilous Times
|rating=3
|genre= Fantasy
|summary= ''Hate is the path of least resistance''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Night FlowerG K Holloway|authortitle=Sarah StovellIn the Shadows of Castles|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Miriam Booth is a Romany gypsy from We begin after the Newcastle slums who, like momentous battle in 1066 and on the titular waif in [[:Category:Charles Dickens|Charles Dickens]]day of William of Normandy's coronation as King of England. William''Oliver Twist''s position is not secure and the new king has many challenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. And William is right to worry. While the previous king, Harold, is an orphan who lives by her wits but becomes drawn into a ring dead and the likelihood of house-breaking crime. In 1842 she more pitched battles is caught over, the rebels are stirring and sentenced to seven years' transportation much of the country does not wish to recognise a convict colony in Australianew overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906994218</amazonuk>1800422466
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colum McCann3949666079|title=TransAtlanticNoema|author=Dael Akkerman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for ''This is a lecture tour story about freedom and emancipation only some things that happened to discover heme about twelve thousand years ago.'s not preaching to the converted after all. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb into a rickety aircraft to fly the Atlantic and land in Limerick. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by a world that's about to see a miracle of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily and her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlantic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529125898|title=The LuminariesGodmersham Park|author=Eleanor CattonGill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Historical Fiction|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''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, If 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 were not for 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>}} {{newreview|author=Alison MacLeod|title=Unexploded|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear casual dereliction of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the worst happens, Evelynodd gentleman's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her and their young son Philip in the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and his favourite photo of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessityduty, she discovers that there's would no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she marriedwomen to teach well-bred daughters at all. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not in the way that either of them could envisage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A World ElsewhereMelissa Fu |authortitle=Wayne JohnstonPeach Blossom Spring
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Landish Druken I loved the prelude to Peach Blossom Spring, a short chapter entitled ''Origins''. Unfortunately it is a great hulk the only truly poetic part of a man who lumbers book that I expected more from. Covering Chinese history from 1938 to 2005 as viewed through his hometown of St Johnone family's, Newfoundlandperspective. Although he thinks of himself as a writerWhen their home city is set ablaze during the war with Japan, he has never written a word he didn't feel compelled to burn, young mother (Meilin) and everyone knows him as the wayward her four-year-old son of accomplished sealing captain Abram Druken(Renshu) are among those who flee. Landish escaped to study literature at PrincetonThe story follows them on their journey across China, where he met best friend Padgett 'Van' Vanderluyden, the 'dud' son of an industrial tycoon and a rumoured homosexual, but he broke his promise to join his fatherin Renshu's sealing empire on his return in 1893, and now lives in poverty and disgracecase eventually to America. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572036</amazonuk>1472277538
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1916072038|title=Stay Where You Are And Then LeaveThe House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=John BoyneAllie Cresswell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Life may be tough We meet part of the Talbot family in the Missouri town where Alma grew up but at least she has a jobYorkshire in November 1811. She learns Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and experiences a lot as maid her mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, to the wealthy Glencross family, but many of the experiences aren't the sort she'd like to relive. To top it all off, house in 1929 the Arbor, a local dance club, explodes into flames killing 42 people including Alma's younger sister Rubyhollow. The cause remains a mystery as factions two women are blamed or viewed suspiciously. However Alma knows the truth, a truth that remains secret until decades later during a visit from angry with each other and Jocelyn is well aware of her grandson.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444732838</amazonuk>}}mother's strengths and weaknesses:
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David GilmanAnnabel Abbs|title=Master The Language of WarFood
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Young Richard Blackstone Eliza Acton is accused of the rape and murder of a village girl and sentenced to hang. Protestations of innocence on his behalf mean nothing and the fact he's a deaf/mute means even less. His elder brother Thomas poet who has protected him as much as possible throughout their lives but can do nothing this time. However, help is at hand; Sir Gilbert Killbere ensures that never had the judge changes his mind and Richard is released but not completely. Richard and Thomas are excellent archers so they're rescued in order slightest inclination to join the army that the King is amassing. It's not boil an easy option: the year is 1346 and the conflict that history will call 'The Hundred Years War' is about to beginegg.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850100</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Sorrow of Angels|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first When tasked with writing a cookery book, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him thereshe recruits Ann Kirby, finding employmenta local woman with a troubled home life. Together, enjoying the literaturethey test, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''the boy'' might have latched on to stability for oncecraft, refine and replaced reshape the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environmentworld of domestic cookery, reinventing the recipe book and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite changing the harshness face of the surroundscookery writing forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>1398502227
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Heaven and HellFreya Marske|authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonA Marvellous Light
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Historical Fiction|summary=IcelandRobin Blyth is nudged into a job in the Civil Service, a hundred years agomuch to his chagrin. From a place There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that is the very definition streets of rural and remoteLondon are threaded with magic. Desperate to remove a curse that threatens to swallow him, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row Robin follows Edwin to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way outcountryside, where the hedgegrows bristle with incantations and five on the way backpeople shimmer with power. The deceased is There they uncover a sinister plot that threatens the best friend – or perhaps only friend – lives of all magicians in the main character, who is still young enough to merely be known as ''boy''British Isles. 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>1529080886
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title=She RisesFlights for Freedom|author=Kate WorsleySteven Burgauer|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Imagine, if you can, a lifelike eighteenth-century seafaring epic (something along It's the lines later stages of Carsten Jensen's [[We, World War I and the United States has just entered the Drowned by Carsten Jensen|We, conflict. Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and joined the Drowned]] or Carol Birch's [[Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch|Jamrach's Menagerie]]) crossed with Sarah Waters's ''Fingersmith''17 Aero Squadron. If you then added This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in touches of Charles Dickens's ''Bleak House''Canada, plus shades of the rest of first to be attached to the homoerotic Waters oeuvre (especially ''Night Watch'' RAF and ''Tipping the Velvet'')first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. But before that can happen, you would just about have Kate Worsley's debut novel, ''She Rises'', in a nutshellPetrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408835894</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Mistress of the SeaChristophe Medler|authortitle=Jenny BardenMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''Mistress Set against the backdrop of the Sea'' is an epic adventure involving piratesEnglish Civil War, stara secret plan (code-crossed lovers and named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642. As a lust for gold loyal servant of the King, and vengeance. The novel, set in Tudor timesHead of the Secret Service, it is based on the real-life events in Robert's duty to uncover the life details of Francis Drake, notably the raid at Nombre de Dios plan and follow the rout clues to uncover one of the English fleet at San Juan de Ulua. Barden weaves an exciting adventure/romance story against this backdrop, which results most guarded secrets in an immersive narrative that excites history—especially since the plot could affect the mind and sensesKing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009194922X</amazonuk>B095HY8SXQ
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham Thomas1471187179|title=Hats Off To Brandenburg (The Roxy Compendium)A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel Hore
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=It was London, 1815Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. George III was on The book is set in the throne although it was his son who was Regent1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, but it would be quite a while before those facts bothered produce children and spend the Roxy Playhouse Irregulars, who lived, loved rest of her days looking after her husband and had their being in the old Roxy Playhousehome. Money had always been in short supply as it tends to be when life is lived as a celebrationUnfortunately, but they were in debt this isn't what she wants to Richard Sheridan do at all and eventually forced neither does she want to strike continue working as a bargain with him: pay their debts within one month or he would take the Roxy Playhousesecretary. The Irregulars took As a result of a chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, working for the challenge secret service and put on effectively living a performance, only this was no threedouble life -act play on a stage. Their performance was a tightly choreographed heist which would relieve members of attempting to infiltrate the ton Communist Party of some of their more valuable trinketsGreat Britain. If you're thinking of Robin Hood then forget it Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - this was going to be far more complex and bloody and it was obvious that there was more at stake than a decrepit playhouselikes - whilst working for the Communist Party.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956742238</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Burnt NortonAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|authortitle=Caroline SandonKokoschka's Doll
|rating=2.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=After Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the death get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of his youngest son it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a terrible accident, Sir William Keyt starts to lose interest chapter whose number was in life. It takes meeting young Molly Johnsonthe 20, a bright and beautiful daughter of a local landlord000s, to rekindle a spark for him. He brings her into Norton House letters used as a maidservantnarrative form, where she quickly catches and so on. It intrigued with the eye subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of his bookish eldest sonit mentioned, Thomastoo. But Sir William wants Molly to be more than a maid to himyou've seen the star rating that comes with this review, and as a rich man and an MP is used to having his own waycan tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781850674</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruce MacbainChristina Hammonds Reed|title=The Bull SlayerBlack Kids|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionTeens |summary=Years after we left him in [[Roman Games (Plinius Secundus) by Bruce Macbain|Roman Games]], Pliny the Younger has become Roman Governor of Bithynia. Not Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the most hospitable backdrop of regions, its Greek residents regard the Romans with hatred; an emotion that, in many cases, is reciprocated by the Romans. No matter how bad this is though1992 Los Angeles riots, it gets worse when a high ranking official dies mysteriously. Could it have anything reaction to do with the religious sect absolution of Mithras? Possibly but it's not Pliny's only dilemma; at home his beloved young wife Calpurnia is acting somewhat oddly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850798</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Heneage|title=The Walls of Byzantium (The Mistra Chronicles)|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Luke Magoris is heading four police officers for disgrace which means beating a lot since he's black man, Rodney King, nearly to death. Told from the son perspective of a VarangianAshley Bennett, the Viking-originated elite guard novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of the Byzantine Emperor. Anna Lasaris daughter race, to a Byzantine court official woman finding her voice and, feisty but kind, is the opposite of the Archon's daughter Zoe. As politically adept as embracing her brother is inept, Zoe will do anything for status and money… anything. As the 14th century Byzantine Empire starts to crumble due to the relentless struggle with the Islamic Turks and Mistra becomes the only province left for the Turks to conquer, their paths will cross. They're all young but they'll soon discover that treachery can emanate from friendship as much as it can from warheritage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782061118</amazonuk>1471188191
}}