16th Century
A Crown of Despair
I was rather surprised to find myself enjoying this novel, as it is written in the first-person present tense, with…
Roses Have Thorns
Elizabeth I is on the throne, and we see her from the point of view of young Elin von Snakenborg,…
His Dark Lady
Lucy Morgan, an exotic beauty of African descent and the ward of a spy in Sir Francis Walsingham’s employ, is…
Bristol House
Beverly Swerling’s latest work is a gripping dual-period novel that is partly a ghost story. Events in Tudor London affect…
Queen’s Gambit
1543. With her second husband Lord Latymer scarcely cold in his grave, Katherine Parr is summoned back to court by…
Shakespeare’s Rebel
We first find John Lawley sleeping off a binge of epic proportions in a down-at-heel tavern in Southwark, London. Throughout…
The Bookman’s Tale
Lovett’s enjoyable homage to books and bookishness opens, fittingly, in that literary magnet known as Hay-on-Wye in Wales. In 1995,…
The Chalice
Bilyeau’s first book, The Crown, brought us the determined but naïve Joanna Stafford, Dominican nun and daughter of a disgraced…
The Queen’s Promise
This is yet another book on the life of Anne Boleyn and her part in the reign of Henry VIII,…
The Roots of Betrayal
In the sequel to his novel Sacred Treason, James Forrester returns to the story of the Elizabethan herald, William Harley,…
About our Reviews
Over the last 15 years The Historical Novels Review (the society’s print magazine for our members) has published reviews of some 12,000 historical fiction books. We plan to upload them all and make them searchable here.
