Renaissance
Madame Serpent
The first volume of Jean Plaidy’s Catherine de Medici trilogy, this story begins with her unfortunate childhood as an orphan…
Thirst
Venice in 1613 can be a brutal place. Captain Lorenzo Contarini witnesses a prime example when he sees a newborn…
Raphael: A Passionate Life
Raphael Santi was the painter who did the most to bring art forward from its mediaeval traditions into the glories…
I, Iago
Editors' choice
How do you take one of literature’s most vile villains and make your readers like him? Nicole Galland begins in…
The Borgia Mistress
Rome, 1593. Francesca Giordano, a young woman of dark passions and even darker talents, is the court poisoner to Pope…
The King’s Agent
No task is too difficult or dangerous for Battista della Palla, Florentine art dealer, handsome thief, and agent to François…
Thorn
Thorn is a fictional account of a friendship between the philosopher Baruch Spinoza and Rembrandt Van Rijn, the great Dutch…
The Book of Madness and Cures
Editors' choice
That this is a book of madness is immediately obvious; Doctor Ernesto Mondini has become unhinged. His final letter arrives…
Iago
Iago, Shakespeare’s famous villain, has escaped from Cyprus, leaving a trail of corpses behind him. He falls into the hands…
A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos
In mid-16th-century Poland, Nicolaus Copernicus, a reclusive canon of the Catholic Church, had labored for decades over an astronomical treatise…
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.
