Sarah Johnson
About me
Librarian, HNS book review editor, readers’ advisor, author of Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre and Historical Fiction II. I first joined the HNS in 1998 after seeing Richard Lee’s post about the Society on a Usenet group. Shortly thereafter I signed on as a US-based reviews editor and got the word out about the magazine to American readers and publishers. Now, over a dozen years later, I serve as the overall book review editor for the Historical Novels Review. I’ve been reading and collecting historical novels for many years and also review for Booklist, Choice, and Canada’s Globe & Mail. For my full-time job, I work as a reference and electronic resources librarian at Eastern Illinois University, which means I answer research questions, teach workshops, and do a lot of work with electronic journals and e-books. My husband and I share our home in rural Illinois with too many cats and about 10,000 books.
Find me online
Recent tweets
My gallery of new/upcoming historical novels about royalty and nobility: http://t.co/ATniOUuHwj #histnov
The Vulgar Tongue - a dictionary of slang by Francis Grose http://t.co/QkeLniocjC via @kescah
THE MEDICI: A TRUE DYNASTY THE VERY BEGINNINGS; A SERIES BEGINS http://t.co/G9hr9zXaRl via @DonnaRussoMorin
From my website
A Novel Bibliography: A Gallery of Royals and Nobles
I'm a longtime reader and collector of historical fiction with members of royal and noble families as major characters. It's not so much the pomp and pageantry I enjoy reading about (although check out the glamorous gowns in the covers below...) but seeing how each character deals with power and…
Book review: The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, by Charlie Lovett
Lovett’s enjoyable homage to books and bookishness opens, fittingly, in that literary magnet known as Hay-on-Wye in Wales. In 1995, Peter Byerly, an American book dealer, is living in Oxfordshire after the death of his beloved wife, Amanda. She had served as the link between her shy husband and the…
Nuns and Mothers: A guest post by Sarah Kennedy, author of the Altarpiece (plus giveaway)
Sarah Kennedy, author of The Altarpiece, is here at the blog today with a thoughtful essay about the concept of motherhood in Renaissance convents. Her main character, Catherine Havens, is a nun in remote northern Yorkshire during a perilous time: Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. Catherine and a fellow…