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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sisters of the East EndLivi Michael|authortitle=Helen BattenElizabeth and Ruth
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Katie Crisp had never intended to become ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is a nun. Raised by non-religious parentswork of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, best known for her family frowned upon organised religion and when Katie started secretly going to churchfirst novel Mary Barton (1848), they strongly disapproved. When Katie ran to a radical critique of the aid treatment of the working class published under a stroke victimpseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, she had a vision that changed her life. She saw herself dressed young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a nun with child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a large silver cross hanging from her neckdifficult and unjust hand at life. She decided to follow her calling Set in Manchester between 1839 and join 1842, the community of St John novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the Divine, a group of Anglican nuns dedicated extent to nursing and midwifery. She thus shed her old identity and became known as Sister Catherine Marywhich the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091951771</amazonuk>1784633682
}}
{{newreview|title=The LuminariesFrontpage|author=Eleanor CattonTananarive Due|ratingtitle=5|genre=Literary 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, 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>}} {{newreview|author=Alison MacLeod|title=UnexplodedReformatory
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Quaker girl Honor Bright Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is seeking escape 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 failed relationshipyoung age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Leaving quiet Dorset for AmericaEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a developing country about which she knows littleyoung boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, she hopes so that accompanying they don't find and kill her sister too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the US will mean notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a new start within the American Quaker communitycabin boy. But Honor She soon discovers finds herself in the differences between America thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and England – not just from there we are caught up in terms her rip roaring tale of weather and landscape, but also in life on the American culture of slave keepingocean waves.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>000735035X</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A World ElsewhereSarah Marsh|authortitle=Wayne JohnstonA Sign of Her Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Landish Druken is After a great hulk bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a man who lumbers through his hometown world of St John'ssilence, Newfoundlandeverything about her life changes. Although he thinks Living in a time when the use of himself sign language was seen as a writersomething only savages do, he has never written Ellen is sent to a word he didn't feel compelled school where she is taught to burnlip read, and everyone knows him as the wayward son of accomplished sealing captain Abram Drukenbut physically restrained from signing. Landish escaped to study literature at Princeton, where he met best friend Padgett 'Van' Vanderluyden From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the 'dud' son of an industrial tycoon deaf and using a rumoured homosexualsystem called Visible Speech. At the same time, but he broke his promise to join his father's sealing empire Bell is working on his return in 1893other inventions and ideas, and now lives Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in poverty and disgracea complicated tangle of espionage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572036</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C7J9D21B|title=Stay Where You Are And Then LeaveA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=John BoyneA J Lewis
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Life may be tough in the Missouri town where Alma grew up but When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he lives at least she has a jobThe House of Beautiful Swallows. She learns and experiences a lot Idyllic as maid to the wealthy Glencross familythis might sound, but many of the experiences arenit't the sort shes a bordello and Ettore'd like to relives mother died when he was born. To top it all offHe's not been short of mothers, though - but for someone of his background in 1929 the Arborlate-eighteenth-century Amalfi, a local dance club, explodes into flames killing 42 people including Almait's younger sister Rubydifficult to obtain decent employment. The cause remains a mystery as factions stint working with the preparation of anchovies didn't work out and bastards are blamed or viewed suspiciouslyconsidered bad luck on fishing boats. However Alma knows the truth, Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he had a truth that remains secret until decades later during successful business as a visit from her grandsonguide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444732838</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Graham ThomasEssie Fox|title=The Other Woman (The Roxy Compendium)Fascination
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=In The Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a setting for historical fiction (matched only, perhaps, by the first part of [[Hats Off To Brandenburg (The Roxy CompendiumSecond World War) by Graham Thomas|The Roxy Compendium]] we discovered that one of our heroes had had his heart broken by which has often led to more than a lady called Abigail Hardwoode and there were hints that this ladyfew writers mishandling it. There's history was rather unusual. Graham Thomas isn't one to leave us in suspense for ''too'' long and he takes us back more than such a quarter glut of a century to media set in the time when Abigail first met her beloved Benjamin Ananas. What she could not know was era that events in France involved a British Secret Agent when his family was kidnapped - and then Abigailthe hallmarks we's parents when they were tricked into undertaking a mission ve come to associate with it are familiar to rescue them which was off the bookspoint of being cliched, hackneyed even. When they were captured only one man, agent Hilary Weaver, believed them All this is simply to illustrate that it would be innocent and Abigail, snatched from her peaceful, high society lifean easy thing to do poorly. But despite that, headed to France to find them - something about it still grabs me – and broke her loversomething about this book's heartdescription did as well.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00E05A1J6</amazonuk>1914585526
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Nicole Jarvis
|title=A Portrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''I want all of Florence to 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=Rosemary GoringG K Holloway|title=After FloddenIn the Shadows of Castles
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Scotland 1513: Louise Brenier believes her family to be cursed. Her father dead, her elder sister dying during childbirth as We begin after the momentous battle in 1066 and on the result day of William of an affair with Normandy's coronation as King James IV of England. William's position is not secure and now her brother Benoit missing after the Battle of Floddennew king has many challenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. It would be easy And William is right to believe Benoit dead tooworry. While the previous king, butHarold, whatever state he's in, Louise must know what happened. This is what drives her on a journey across a land ravaged by wardead and the likelihood of more pitched battles is over, providing more challenges than answers the rebels are stirring and encounters with those for whom Flodden remains much of the country does not wish to recognise a recurring nightmarenew overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846972728</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.''
Maya is a young girl living in a hunter gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is occurring, the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into Maya's forest home, and food is becoming more and more scarce. What to do? Can the law givers in the federation of villages muster peaceful ways to cope? Can the Traveller, a spiritual figure who interprets the wisdom of All Life, provide solutions? }}{{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.
}}
{{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
}}
{{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:
}}
{{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
}}
{{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>
}}
{{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
}}
{{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>
}}
{{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 the revolutionary Le Sourdsso on. Their lives cross paths through It intrigued with the years subterranean voice a man hears in often unexpected ways and while ''Paris'' is an historical fiction novel, this is as much an epic story wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of families as it is about the history.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736795</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma Straub|title=Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures|rating=3mentioned, too.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Small town girl Ella Emerson loves acting - her father runs the Cherry County Playhouse, and she But you's always been captivated by ve seen the stage. She loves watching the actors performstar rating that comes with this review, and getting involved in shows where she can. Following a family tragedytell that if love was on these pages, though, she moves to Hollywood to marry an actor and reinvents herself as Laura Lamont. Quickly, she outshines her new husbandit was not actually caused by them. Can her success, and their relationship, last So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447203208</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick RennisonChristina Hammonds Reed|title=Carver's Quest|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=The year is 1870 and Adam Carver is at home in his lodgings in London’s Doughty Street when he is interrupted by an unexpected caller. This distraught and enigmatic young woman, Miss Emily Maitland, requests Carver’s help but disappears mysteriously before he can ascertain the details of her predicament. The days and weeks that follow her visit prove to be most eventful, pitching Carver and his assistant Quint into an investigation involving murder, a missing manuscript and a hidden treasure.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871791</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Ridpath|title=Traitor's GateBlack Kids
|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
}}