New Books In Historical Fiction

Inspired by the legends of Amazon women warriors told by ancient Greek historian Herodotus and evidenced by recent archaeological discoveries in Central Asia, Akmaral (Regal House Publishing, 2024) is the latest historical fiction novel by author Judith Lindbergh. Through the story of its eponymous main character, a nomadic warrior woman living in the Central Asian steppe in the 5th century BCE, Akmaral vividly brings to life the histories, cultures, and lifestyles of the ancient Sauromatae. In this episode, Judith joins me to talk about the Sauromatae, conducting historical research as a fiction writer, and what contemporary readers can learn about our current world through stories of the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Stella St. Vincent, a thirty-something copy editor in 1980s New York, has survived a relationship with her mother, Celia, so complicated that even the words “my daughter” give Stella pause. Celia lived life to the fullest, reinventing herself and discarding anything that no longer pleased her, including Stella’s father, whom Celia refused even to name. And when Stella rebelled by becoming the exact opposite of her mother—disciplined, buttoned-down, reliant on schedules to guarantee safety—Celia did her best to push her daughter out of that comfort zone before distancing herself from Stella as well. So the bequest in Celia’s will is no accident: Stella inherits $8,000, a ticket to Paris, and instructions to spend all the money before returning home. Stella resists until her employer forces her to take a leave of absence. Even then, Stella spends weeks in Paris scheduling every meal and sightseeing tour—until a strange shopkeeper intent on selling a beautiful dress designed by Yves St. Laurent sends Stella on a

In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonising decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal. Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realises the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure. Spanning three decades of the emotional and cultural aftershocks of disaster, Zhang Ling’s intimate epic Aftershock (Amazon Crossing, 2024) explores the damage of guilt, the healing pull of family, and the hop

When Samuel Fiddes and Hailey MacIntyre meet by chance in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1878, their worlds appear to be far distant from each other. Samuel lives with his little sister, Alison, in a tenement—the two of them scrabbling to keep themselves fed and clothed. Hailey enjoys a comfortable middle-class life, although the expectations placed on her as a young woman restrict her future not simply to marriage and motherhood but to a union with the “right” man, defined in terms of wealth and prestige. Despite this social gap, Samuel and Hailey form an instant bond after he rescues her younger brother from a near-fatal run-in with a careless carriage driver. Both know that Hailey’s parents disapprove of their friendship, never mind a budding romance, but a mix of attraction and teenage rebellion draws them together. Then fate intervenes. Financial disaster strikes the MacIntyre family just as things start to look up for Samuel and Alison. Hailey’s father decides to move his family to Washington Territory, where he

What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. In Wages of Sin (Caezik SF & Fantasy, 2024), by Dr. Harry Turtledove, a patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows how: it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples. While imperfect, such drastic actions do limit the spread of the disease. The ‘Wasting’ (HIV) has caused devastating destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognisable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of travelling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by both law and custom. This interview was conducted by Dr.

Kate Quinn and Janie Chang are independently acclaimed authors of historical fiction, both of whom have previously appeared on this podcast channel. Here they combine their skills to tell a story about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake from multiple points of view. One line follows the story of Alice Eastwood, a botanist whom we meet in London five years after the tragedy. Her perspective is contrasted with that of Gemma Garland, an aspiring opera star whose unique voice can’t quite compensate for the migraines that sideline her just as she’s about to make her mark on the world. The third narrator is a young Chinese-American named Feng Suling (“Susie” to the rich white customers who can’t be bothered to learn her name), with a gift for embroidery and a grand ambition: to escape the arranged marriage her uncle plans for her and reunite with Reggie, the love she has lost. How these three stories intersect and overlap, united by the Phoenix Crown and the man who owns it, I’ll leave for readers to discover. Each

Josie Belle Gore is only six years old when we meet her in 1908, yet her father has tied a rope around her waist and is lowering her into a dark well to retrieve a dead animal that is poisoning the water. The third daughter of a growing family, Josie has moved with her family from western Texas to Arizona, then eastward again, settling in the New Mexican desert region known as the Jornada del Muerto. Her father, a railroad engineer, spends much of his time away, and it is her mother who holds the family together through poverty, sickness, and drought. From an early age, Josie learns that her lot in life is to subsume her own interests to those of her family. Although she yearns to become a teacher, even mastering basic literacy is a challenge in a region where schools are few and far between, household chores never-ending, and such basic needs as food and water not always met. As her father falls prey to alcoholism, loses one job after another, and repeatedly uproots the family in search of a better future, J

Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat, Ulysses S. Grant is scratching out words, hour after hour, day after day. Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have some financial security and he some redemption, Grant journeys back in time. He had once been the savior of the Union, the general to whom Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a twice-elected president who fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and against the rising Ku Klux Klan, a plain farmer-turned-business magnate who lost everything to a Wall Street swindler, a devoted husband to his wife Julia, and a loving father to four children. In this gorgeously rendered and moving novel, Grant rises from the page in all of his contradictions and foibles, his failures and triumphs. Moving from blood-stained battlefields to Gilded Age New York, The General and Julia (Atria Books, 2023)explores how Grant's own views on race and Reconstruction changed over time. "A graceful, moving narrat

I’ve interviewed Andrea Penrose before about her mysteries set in the Regency period—most notably, her ongoing series starring the Earl of Wrexford and Lady Charlotte Sloane. In this latest novel, she takes a break from dead bodies and the complicated plots associated with them to tackle a real-life question: how did a supposedly sheltered nineteenth-century aristocrat defy all of society’s expectations that she marry to suit her family and instead craft a life that suited herself? The titular Diamond of this fictional biography is Lady Hester Stanhope, tagged even today with adjectives such as “notorious” and “eccentric.” After her politically radical and mentally unstable father threatens her with a knife, Lady Hester flees her country estate for London. There—with the help of the noted dandy Beau Brummell during a previous visit—she has already acquired a reputation as outspoken, passionate, and “different.” At twenty-four, she is also regarded as almost too old to wed, but her ties to the politically powe

Today I talked to Katherine Vaz about her new novel Above the Salt (Flatiron Books, 2023). In 1843-1846, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, five-year-old John Alves lived in jail and starved alongside his heretic mother, who was condemned to death for converting to Protestantism from Catholicism. Finally freed, John befriends young Mary Freitas, the adopted daughter of a wonderful botanist. Both families are forced to flee, and they end up in southern Illinois. John teaches signing to deaf children and Mary works as a gardener for a wealthy man who falls in love with her. She’s torn after she and John find each other again, but he’s off to fight in the Civil War. A mean-spirited trick keeps them away from each other and Mary accepts her boss’s marriage proposal. This is a rich and detailed love story based on the Portuguese community of Jacksonville, Illinois, historical characters, events, and flower cultivation, a courtship that took place in the home of rising politician Abraham Lincoln, and a sweeping v

Annie Fisk—an only child in Los Alamos, New Mexico—spends a lot of time investigating the treasure trove of objects at the back of her garden. Her father, with whom she is close, works long hours on the nuclear bomb project, her mother seems distant and preoccupied, and Annie has trouble making friends. But she is a gifted student, and she leaves home to major in physics and astronomy at a Texas college. At around the same time, she becomes romantically involved with Evelyn, an artist. Yet Annie’s sights are set on the stars—more specifically, NASA, where the Apollo Project is underway. She graduates in 1962 and, against Evelyn’s objections, heads for Houston, where she lands a job as a secretary—it’s the 1960s, after all, and that’s what women are expected to do. There she meets Norman Gale, a relationship that opens up her future both professionally and personally. But it’s Annie’s past, more than her present, that holds her back. And in this beautifully written debut novel, Isa Arsén ties all the disparate

Angus McDonald had to escape from Scotland or risk arrest. In 1838, he contracted with the Hudson Bay Company to trade in the Pacific Northwest. There he discovers majestic mountains, raging rivers, and buffalo. He meets and marries Catherine, who is related to Nez Perce royalty, and together they face competing claims of British fur traders and gold seekers, settlers and Native Americans who’ve lives for thousands of years in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The real Angus McDonald left essays and articles, and newspaper clippings and official letters that describe his friendships, horses, passion for his wife, his trajectory as a trader and interpreter, and the rise and fall of the people he’s come to love. The Shining Mountains (High Road Books, 2023) is a brilliant, fictional exploration of a family’s clash between colonial expansion and native culture, based on the author’s blended Scottish and Nez Pierce ancestors. Alix Christie, a direct descendant of Angus McDonald’s brother Duncan, grew up in Calif

Rivkah Milman is just one of the thousands of young women who fled their homes in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, looking for better prospects in New York—where the streets, people said, would be paved with gold. In Rivkah’s case, she is sixteen and pregnant, sailing to join her husband, who doesn’t even bother to meet her at the docks. Rivkah struggles, raising her daughter in a tenement and keeping that shoddy roof over their heads through endless hours of sewing piecework for a sweatshop. But tough as Rivkah’s life is, this is really the story of her daughter, Miriam, who through a colossal but familiar misjudgment falls under the spell of Frederick Winthrop, a rich and immoral playboy who seeks out underage girls. But with help from a family friend, Mimi succeeds in separating herself from her difficult childhood in pursuit of a better life. Miriam, who adopts the name Mimi to signal her break with the past, has always longed to become not just a seamstress but an haute couture designer. An

Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown by Annie Dawid, (Inkspot Publishing 2023), opens long after 917 people died by drinking cyanide or by lethal injection on November 18, 1978. It’s 2008, and one of the survivors, who made it out earlier that day, is speaking to a reporter on the 30th anniversary of the “Jonestown Massacre.” When Jim Jones and his wife Marceline found Peoples Temple in the 1950s, they wanted to give hope to the poor and disenfranchised of all colors. They wanted to live honest lives earning their bread from the earth. They dreamt of their followers coming together as equals, loving each other as sisters and brothers, and building a commune in the British Guyana jungle. As the years passed, Jim Jones became more autocratic, he bedded his followers and sired children, and although Marceline hated what their marriage had become, she still loved him. Even unto death. Annie Dawid writes and teaches online in very rural Colorado, where she also makes rugs and assemblages as well as plays tennis a

Today I talked to Kim Taylor Blakemore about her new book The Good Time Girls Get Famous (Sycamore Creek Press, 2023). Get ready for the latest rip-roaring "Good Time Girls" adventure with Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn, two accidental outlaws now on the run for too many crimes to count. As the silent film industry booms and Westerns steal the spotlight, a movie producer sees potential gold in Ruby and Pip's outlaw story. With their misdeeds now legendary, the duo is offered a chance to play themselves on the big screen. It's an opportunity for fame, fortune, and a safe getaway to Mexico once the film wraps. However, the world of filmmaking proves to be a turbulent ride, even for these seasoned outlaws. The law is hot on their heels, pursuing them from Kansas across the plains to the Rockies, determined to bring them to justice. The newspapers tell half-truths and tall tales of their exploits. To make matters worse, a feared foe from their past has resurfaced, putting the film troupe and Ruby's sister in grave da

Robert Stillman, an eighteen-year-old Londoner, has few expectations when he travels to Nottingham to study with the Reverend George Langstaff. Life has not treated Robbie well recently: his mother’s death has left him in the custody of an uncle who has neither the patience to deal with nor the ability to appreciate a young man whose greatest pleasure in life is to draw. The Reverend Langstaff, however, turns out to be exactly the kind of mentor Robbie needs: a wise and tolerant country parson on the brink of retirement, well able to foster his newest pupil’s strengths. When Robbie meets and falls madly in love with their neighbor, Anton Harrington, it would seem that his life is complete. But this is Edwardian England, and men who love men live at risk of arrest and imprisonment under the harshest conditions. Anton, who is older by more than a decade, knows this all too well. Although he loves Robbie in return, Anton has spent years covering up both his dangerous romantic inclinations and his socialist polit

Today I talked to Sherif Meleka about his novel Suleiman’s Ring (Hoopoe, 2023) An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political history Can one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation. Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Daoud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Daoud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Daoud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Daoud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When H

After a tumultuous journey across the Atlantic (detailed in last year’s Miss Aldridge Regrets), Lena Aldridge has reached New York City only to discover that the Broadway show that lured her away from London will not run. While waiting to board a ship home, she accepts an invitation to stay with the Linfields, longtime friends of Will Goodman, the musician Lena came to trust on the passage over. She hopes to learn more about Will and explore the possibilities of a warmer relationship—although his job on the Queen Mary means, Lena assumes, that they can never be together as a couple. She also seeks to find out more about her own father, who died less than a year before this novel opens in 1936 but originally hailed from New York—or so he told Lena. As this main narrative unfolds, it is interspersed with two others. One involves a woman who falls from a third-story window in Harlem eight days after Lena’s arrival. The second, set in 1908–1909, gradually reveals the events that convinced Lena’s father, Alfred, t

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.  Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

The Murder of Andrew Johnson (Forge, 2023) is the third in Burt Solomon’s John Hay Mystery trilogy. Our conversation explores the art and craft of writing historical fiction. What licenses are taken? Solomon invented the murder of Johnson, who assumed the presidency on Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, became America’s first impeached president and died in 1875 from an apparent stroke. But there are no invented characters: Protagonist John Hay, Solomon’s alter ego, truly was Lincoln’s private secretary, a diplomat and a journalist. As in this tale, historical fiction rewards when it reveals the lineaments of an era—the seamy Gilded Age presents bountiful possibilities for a research-driven writer like Solomon—and captivates with a tight plot. Our conversation wraps up on a salubrious note, with Solomon’s riff on the scene in which the vice president of the United States is taking his bath in the marble tubs in the crypt-like basement of the U.S. Capitol building. Did those bathtubs truly exist? You bet they di