The Historical Novel Society lists a comprehensive range of titles from mainstream and small press publishers for novels set from ancient times to the mid-1970s.
Titles are listed alphabetically by author last name within their expected publishing month (see links below) and cover all historical fiction sub genres.
Details are pulled from publisher catalogues and websites; Amazon; NetGalley; Edelweiss US & Canada Trade and BNCCatalist Canada Trade.
Information is compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
Emma R. Alban, Like in Love With You, Avon (sapphic romance set in 1817)
Deepa Anappara, The Last of Earth, Random House (novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empiren and an English “lady” explorer as they venture into a forbidden kingdom)
Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Watching Over Her, Simon & Schuster (a star-crossed love story following a dwarf and skilled sculptor as he recounts the moments in his life that inspired his powerful masterpiece)
Jenny Ashcroft, Secrets of the Watch House, HQ Fiction (1934; when a wealthy widower offers Violet employment, she journeys to his home on the remote Cornish island of Aoife’s Bay, where mysteries await)
Mary Balogh, Remember That Day, Berkley (a Ravenswood novel in which soldier and a pacifist make the unlikeliest of pairs, but there’s nothing that can prevent their love from igniting)
Julian Barnes, Departure(s), Random House Canada/Jonathan Cape/Knopf (a love story between two friends who a writer named Julian met at university in the 1960s, and once played matchmaker to)
A.D. Bell, The Bookbinder’s Secret, St. Martin’s (a story of mystery and romance set in Oxford, 1901)
Danny Ben-Moshe, The Watchmaker’s War, Harper Collins AU (high-stakes tale of Nazi hunters in Australia and the war criminals they pursued)
Nancy Bernhard, The Double Standard Sporting House, She Writes (debut historical fiction about a brothel nurse 19th-century New York City who fights brutality in the sex trade and pioneers treatments for survivors)
Graham Brack, Nun Shall Sleep, Sapere (Master Mercurius Mysteries, book 9 tells of another complex murder investigation in 1689)
Kay Brellend, The Match Factory Girls, Boldwood (sag in which one woman must fight for her future and her child’s, in the shadows of 1887 London)
Julie Brooks, A Haunting at Venus Bay, Headline Review (two women, decades apart, and a house that brings them together. Setting – Victoria, Australia)
Elizabeth Camden, Beyond the Clouds, Bethany House (a tale of love, sacrifice, and redemption set against the backdrop of World War I)
Clay Cane, Burn Down Master’s House, Dafina (inspired by the true stories of the men and women who dared to fight back against the barbarism of the Civil War era)
Anna Canic, Sophia and Cassius, Histria (a novel of fantasy, time travel, reincarnation, war, and romance in an ancient historical setting)
Francesca Capaldi, Celebrations at the Beach Hotel, Hera (WWI romantic saga)
Steven Carroll, The Afterlife of Harry Playford, 4th Estate AU (Victoria 1951; second in a new series of post-war literary crime novels featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter)
Jennifer Chevalier, The Winter Witch, Simon & Schuster (two sisters set sail on a bride ship from Normandy hoping to leave a curse behind them and find better lives in the wilds of 17th-century Quebec)
Rosie Clark, Tears and Fears on Blackberry Farm, Boldwood (in Cambridgeshire 1944, Pam and Artie hold down the fort as the war continues)
Ryan Collett, George Falls Through Time, William Morrow (genre-exploding love story about a man who time travels to the year 1300s . . . where his modern problems are replaced by medieval brutalities)
Dilly Court, The Wild Rose, HarperCollins (new romance saga of love, loyalty and the strength of a fearless heart)
Karla Cruise, The Water Lilies of Mishipeshu, HTF (a hidden botanical manuscript sparks a centuries-long battle between profit and preservation, leaving a trail of murder, madness and encounters with the supernatural)
Lynn Cullen, When We Were Brilliant, Berkley (novel in which Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold make a deal that will change their lives)
Siobhan Curham, The Secret Sewing Society, Bookouture (in Occupied Ukraine, 1940, seamstresses sew vital secret messages for the resistance into embroidered shirts)
Kim Curran, Brigid, Michael Joseph (reimagining of Ireland’s most beloved saint, in the story of a woman who could never be caged by men or by gods)
Siobhan Daiko, The Girl from Lake Maggiore, Boldwood (WWII story of resistance, resilience set at a quiet hotel by Lake Maggiore, Northern Italy, 1943)
Martin Davies, Mrs Hudson and the Belladonna Inheritance, Allison & Busby (next installment in the Holmes & Hudson series)
Paul Doherty, The Meadows of Murder, Severn House (twenty-fourth Brother Athelstan medieval mystery sees the friar-sleuth investigate a series of ominous murders)
Madeleine Dunnigan, Jean, W. W. Norton (seventeen–year–old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with “problems.”)
Loretta Ellsworth, The Jilted Countess, Harper Perennial (in the aftermath of World War II, a young Hungarian émigré persuades a Midwestern newspaper editor to help her find an American husband)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Vicar’s Daughter at the Lodging House, Bookouture (London, 1940; story of a young woman’s search for her sister)
Donna Everhart, Women of a Promiscuous Nature, Kensington (accused of promiscuity in 1930s North Carolina, a young woman, unjustly incarcerated decides to fight back)
Rebecca Ferrier, The Salt Bind (UK) / A Spell for Drowning (US), Alcove Press/Renegade (Cornwall, 1779; historical fantasy explores a world of forgotten sirens, sea gods and the alchemy of the Old Ways)
Sharon Lynn Fisher, Tea & Alchemy, 47North (a tea leaf reader in nineteenth-century England falls in love with a reclusive alchemist)
Harriet Fox, The Women in the Shadows, HQ Digital (London, 1888; world’s most famous serial killer story, told from the perspective of a gang of women)
Laura Frantz, The Belle of Chatham, Revell (in the midst of the American revolution, two sisters find their loyalties divided as war reaches their home)
Sandra Freels, Anneke Jans in the New World, She Writes (a young mother faces the unknowns of 17th-century New Amsterdam after fleeing the Old World in search of a better life)
Rosza Gaston, The Queen’s Maid, Sapere (second book in series features Anne Boleyn in France)
Olivia Gavoyannis, The Second Mrs Wallace, Embla (Switzerland, 1963; intrigue and suspense, and old-world glamour, mark this story of obsession, betrayal, and the dark truths behind romance)
Allan Gaw, The Silent House of Sleep, Mysterious Press (a pathologist, haunted by his service during WWI, investigates two murders in post-war London. Book 2 of the Jack Cuthbert Murder Mysteries)
Nicole Glover, The Starseekers, Harper Voyager (1960s; further adventures of the Rhodes family, who have been using magic to aid their community and solve mysteries since before the Civil War)
Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle, Grove Black Cat (1843; built on the bones of Moby-Dick, novel is a feminist exploration of human nature, gender, man’s place among the animals, and the nature of home)
Janice Hadlow, Rules of the Heart, Henry Holt (a married woman of high social standing in 18th century England tries to hide from the judging eyes of her elite circle)
Catherine Hokin, The Girl Who Told the Truth, Bookouture (Germany, 1946; a secretary at the Nuremberg Trials has to decide between two choices to reveal family secrets, or tell what she knows about a Nazi)
Evelyn Hood, A Mother’s Honour, Boldwood (Scotland 1906; start of a new Scottish family saga series)
Theresa Howes, An American Scandal, HQ Digital (a Gilded Age romance with a brother and sister both determined to put their pasts behind them; set in Newport, New York, 1895)
Isabel Ibañez, Graceless Heart, Hodderscape (fantasy romance about Renaissance art and forbidden magic, set in Italy)
Avery Irons, Belonging to the Air, Univ. Press of Kentucky-Screen Door (imagines stories of resilience among Black Queer folks during the early 20th century)
Toni Ann Johnson, But Where’s Home?, Univ. Press of Kentucky-Screen Door (collection of linked stories set in 1963 Monroe, New York, following a Black family that buys a house in an all-white neighborhood)
Jeff Jones, Islands of Mist, Sapere (the third installment of the Legion of the Damned Roman Thrillers set in Britannia, AD61)
Roberta Kagan, Until We Meet Again, Storm (based on true events during the Nazi occupation of Paris, a story of impossible choices and unexpected courage; Mimi’s Journey #2)
Heather Kaufman, On Living Stone, Bethany House (Salome’s story of faith, redemption, and transforming love, set in 1st-century)
Suzanne Kelman, The Secret Twins of Paris, Bookouture (dual timeline WWII and present-day story in which Lily pieces together long-buried family secrets from the war)
Cathryn Kemp, They Can’t Burn Us All, Bantam (Iceland, 1655; when a land of ice and fire is swept into the Protestant Reformation, a witch-hunting craze begins, not of women, but of respectable men of learning)
Vaseem Khan, The Edge of Darkness, Hodder & Stoughton (sixth thriller in the Malabar House novels set in India, 1951)
Dean Koontz, The Friend of the Family, Thomas & Mercer (a girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose in Depression-era America)
R. J. Koreto, Winter’s Season, Histria (in 1817 London, Captain Winter must tread carefully to unmask a killer, navigate a web of secrets and lies, and in the process, save his own soul)
Tom Kratman, For the Eternal Glory of Rome, Baen (time-travel alternate history where aliens transport the XIIXth legion four centuries into the future)
Poppy Kuroki, Passage to Tokyo, Harper Perennial (Ancestor Memories historical fantasy series, book 2; where a young woman finds herself back in 1920s Tokyo as Japan enters a new and dangerous era)
Paula Lafferty, The Once and Future Queen, Hodderscape (historical fantasy set in present & 7th century AD, Glastonbury & Camelot after a woman jumps through a time portal)
K. Lang-Slattery, Ashes and Ruins: Love, War, and the Home Front, Pacific Bookworks (from Nazi Germany to Blitz-torn London, a mother and daughter fight for love, safety, and resilience in WW2)
Lizzie Lane, Bad Company on Coronation Close, Boldwood (Bristol 1942 WWII saga of friendship and love)
Pam Lecky, The Carver Affair, Storm (in Lucy Lawrence series book 5, in Dublin, 1894, the search for a missing girl becomes a hunt for a killer)
Amy Licence, His True Wife, Sapere (book 5 in The Marwood Family Tudor Saga, set in 1529, Queen Catherine awaits the start of the Legatine Court)
Howard Linskey, Muse of Fire, Canelo (in next in William Shakespeare Mysteries, Will is once again caught between two powerful foes and must choose a side)
J. R. Lonie, The Woman in the Spotlight, HarperCollins AU (during WWII a young actress must employ all the skills of her craft to outwit Goebbels and resist the regime’s attempts to brutalise theatre and culture)
Carmella Lowkis, A Slow and Secret Poison, Doubleday (in the early 1900s, a young gardener at a lush English manor falls in love with her employer)
Faith Martin, A Dangerous Train of Thought, HQ Digital (golden age murder mystery set in Yorkshire, 1926)
Patricia McBride, The Market Girls of Petticoat Lane, Boldwood (WWII saga set in the heart of London’s East End)
Paula McLain, Skylark, Atria/Oneworld (a tale of Paris above and below, where a woman’s quest for artistic freedom in 1664 intertwines with a doctor’s mission during the German occupation in the 1940s)
Fiza Saeed McLynn, The Midnight Carousel, Park Row (novel about an enchanted carousel that causes people who ride it to disappear; set in Paris, 1910 & Chicago, 1920)
Allison Mick, Humboldt Cut, Erewhon (darkly humorous debut eco-horror novel, as a Black woman returns home to the redwood forests of northern California
Allison Montclair, Fire Must Burn, Severn House (the owners of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are more determined than ever to bring love matches to the residents of post-WWII London)
Ross Montgomery, The Murder at World’s End, William Morrow (Cornwall, 1910; Secrets, murder and mayhem collide as an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian hunt a killer)
Javier Moro, trans. Peter J. Hearn, The Architect of New York, Counterpoint (fiction chronicling the life, loves, and successes of Rafael Guastavino, an influential yet largely forgotten Spanish architect)
Carolyn Newton, Songs of the Dead Road, Bloodhound (a tale of memories, survival and redemption set in the shadows of post-war Soviet Union)
Oleksii Nikitin, trans. Catherine O’Neil, trans. Dominique Hoffmann, The Face of Fire, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (offers a tapestry of Ukrainian life under the brutal Soviet and Nazi regimes)
Jennifer Niven, Meet the Newmans, Flatiron (family story about the dual lives we lead, set in 1964)
Olivier Norek, The Winter Warriors, Atlantic Monthly (historical novel of Finnish heroism in the face of Soviet invasion in 1939)
Pamela Norsworthy, The Florentine Entanglement, Black Rose Writing (Cold War era; the marriage of a CIA officer and his wife is plunged into crisis when a spy mission goes awry)
Kelsey O’Brien, The Three, Hera (1791; historical novel set in the gay underworld of Georgian London)
I. V. Ophelia, Fruit of the Flesh, Montlake (behind the glamour of Gilded Age New York, a marriage of convenience between an artisan and a ballerina masks their shared appetite for revenge)
Rob Osler, The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, Kensington (book two, after The Case of the Missing Maid, delves into Chicago’s criminal aldermen, the Gray Wolves)
Anthony Palmiotti, Flight to Freedom, Sapere (naval adventure inspired by a true story of early World War Two heroism)
Rebecca Perry, May We Feed the King, Granta (literary story dances between a historical subject who resists the march of progress and a woman who turns to the past to hide from her present)
M. J. Porter, Lords of Iron, Boldwood (in the conclusion to the Dark Age Chronicles in AD541, Meddi and Wærmund will finally collide in a world of iron and rust)
Marianne T. Rafter, Dancing on the Brink of the World, She Writes (imagined account of real-life British sailor Captain William A. Richardson after he is marooned in the San Francisco Bay)
Sheila Riley, Binding Threads on Beamer Street, Boldwood (Liverpool, 1935; saga of love and betrayal set in the Beamer Street community bound by grit, secrets, and ever-shifting loyalties)
Vanessa Riley, Fire Sword and Sea, William Morrow (Caribbean, 1765; saga based on the life of the legendary seventeenth-century pirate Jacquotte Delahaye)
Candace Robb, A Lion’s Ransom, Severn House (York, 1377. Owen Archer is called upon when a lion created by the goldsmiths of York as a gift for King Richard’s coronation is stolen)
Linda Robertson, The Lusitania Code, Level Best Historia (Book 1 of the Lady Butterschloss Mystery Series, set in post-war Britain)
Heather Rose, A Great Act of Love, S&S/Summit (novel set among the champagne vines of 19th century France and Australia, follows a young woman searching for her father who has committed an unspeakable crime)
Gabriella Saab, The Star Society, Harper Muse (inspired by Audrey Hepburn, story follows Ada and Ingrid as they reunite after World War II, embarking on a journey amid the backdrop of the Red Scare in Hollywood)
John Sayles, Crucible, Melville House (novel about Henry Ford and the violent rise of the Ford Motor Company in 1920-30’s Detroit)
Kelly Scarborough, Butterfly Games, She Writes (based on a true story in early-1800s Europe, a historical tale of forbidden love, fierce duty, and the cost of ambition)
Leslie R. Schover, Fission, She Writes (World War II novel of a young mother’s self-discovery as she is drawn into a love triangle with an atomic spy in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project)
B. D. Smith, Red Mound, Black Rose Writing (troubles arise in various forms for the archaeologists digging at Hamblin’s Fort, an ancient Native American settlement in Arkansas)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Widow’s Key, Sapere (book 10 in The Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series)
Janell Strube, Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution, Acorn Press (inspired by the true story of one of the first women admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the 18th-century)
Tom Sykes, Tangled Saviours, Roundfire (an 80s B-movie star’s survival is inextricably tangled with the fate of a matriarchal tribal community in 16th-century Philippines)
Tangea Tansley, Snakes in Paradise, Arden (novel of power, treachery, cross-cultural friendship, loyalty and love, brings alive a pivotal period in the life of the last sultan to rule on the Iberian Peninsula)
Daniel Taylor, The Prodigal of Leningrad, Paraclete Press (World War II novel set during the siege of Leningrad, where Daniil Aslanov, a docent at the Hermitage Museum, gives tours of empty frames)
Angela Tomaski, The Infamous Gilberts, Scribner (spanning the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, novel weaves a tapestry of English country life as readers enter rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings)
Maria Tureaud, This House Will Feed, Kensington (amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a position at a remote manor house)
Oksana Vasyakina, trans. Elina Alter, Steppe, Catapult (novel follows a queer literature student traveling across Russia with her estranged father, a long-haul truck driver secretly dying of AIDS)
Betty Walker, The Cornish Girls Before the Storm, Avon (new prequel to the Cornish Girls series, set in 1939)
Max Watman, Tomorrow, the War, Skyhorse/Heresy Press (follows the intertwined lives of Jed Stokes, a restless wanderer shaped by violence, and Raleigh, a once-enslaved man seeking justice)
Lauren Westwood, The Inn at Penglas Cove, Boldwood (dual time frame Cornish mystery of doomed love)
Linda Wilgus, The Sea Child, Ballantine/S&S UK (in early 1800s, a band of seafaring smugglers lands on the Cornish coast, where a young widow with a mysterious past becomes entangled in their schemes)
Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree, Gallery/Scout (a feminist literary fiction that explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women)
Peggy Joque Williams, Braving the Dawn, Black Rose Writing (sequel to Courting the Sun; a novel of New France)
Alice Evelyn Yang, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, William Morrow (magical realist family saga explores the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate)
Ellen Yardley, Eleanor and the South Beach Murders, Kensington (Eleanor Roosevelt and secretary Kay Thompson become entangled in a deadly international mystery connected to a famous performer
Chi Zijian, trans. Bruce Humes, The Last Quarter of the Moon, Milkweed Editions (a woman from one of the last remote reindeer-herding tribes of northeastern China tells the story of her family and the last century of her country’s history)
February 2026
Shana Abé, A Crown of Stars, Kensington (account of the Lusitania’s fateful last days, drawn from the true story of a young actress who survived the sinking)
Senaa Ahmad, The Age of Calamities, Pushkin Press/ONE (a collection of novellas and short stories of alternate and speculative histories)
W. M. Akers, To Kill a Cook, Putnam (fast-paced mystery about a food critic in 1970s NY who finds her chef friend murdered and realizes she might be the only one to find the killer)
Cynthia Anderson, The Sister Behind the Berlin Wall, Embla (life-affirming tale of sisterhood and survival set in 1942 and 1989)
Lainie Anderson, Murder on North Terrace, Hachette AU (book two in the cosy Petticoat Police Mystery Series, inspired by one of Australia’s first policewomen)
Sophie Austin, The Storyteller’s Secret, HarperCollins (Ava Adams is known as The Storyteller, using hypnotism to draw long-buried memories from the lost and the lonely in 19th-century York)
Jan Baynham, The Stolen Sister, Joffe (a secret Greek love affair and a daughter’s search for the truth; set in Crete, 1963 and 1984 Wales)
Vicki Beeby, Courage for the Flying Nightingales, Canelo (a nursing orderly in the WAAF is keen to stick with her friends, when they volunteer for the air ambulance and are moved to RAF Starsden)
Ann Bennett, Once We Were Sisters, Bookouture (WWII story about love and friendship and the bond between women)
Gigi Beradi, Bianca’s Cure, She Writes (Florence, 1563; imagines a young Renaissance noblewoman’s experiences as she pursues a cure for malaria in the Medici era)
Rahul Bhattacharya, Railsong, Bloomsbury (novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways of 20th century India)
Audrey Blake, All In Her Hands, Sourcebooks Landmark (in 19th-century, a newly graduated physician must return to London to takeover the family practice and face the prejudice of society and a deadly disease)
Dwayne Brenna, The Laundryman, Literary Press Group of Canada (murder mystery set in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in the winter of 1883/84)
Rachel Brimble, Shared Secrets For the Home Front Nurses, Boldwood (WWII saga; book 4 in series)
Louella Bryant, Sheltering Angel of Belleau Wood, Black Rose Writing (a novel of one woman’s life after Titanic)
Denny S. Bryce, Where the False Gods Dwell, Kensington (1935; inspired by choreographer Katherine Dunham, novel imagines the experiences of three different women who accompany her, hoping to find their destinies)
Anna Caig, The Wise Witch of Orkney, Black & White Edinburgh (1593, Scotland; King James VI launches a bloody witch hunt across the country to rid the land of evil)
Anne Canadeo, More Than You Know, Level Best Historia (a Brooklyn girl fights against the odds to save someone she loves and avenge a cruel murder in post war Manhattan)
Shelly Dickson Carr, Who Killed Lady Pippa, Level Best Historia (book 1 in a new historical mystery series)
Radha Lin Chaddah, And the Ancestors Sing, Rising Action (multigenerational story of sacrifice, survival, and the unbreakable pull of home)
Megan Chance, The Vermilion Sea, Lake Union (about a luxurious 1925 yachting cruise to the Sea of Cortez that turns deadly for a small group of wealthy passengers when its secondary purpose reveals more than one terrible secret)
Janie Chang, The Fourth Princess, William Morrow (Gothic novel set in 1911 China, where two young women living in a crumbling, mansion face danger as secrets of their pasts come to light)
Kerry Chaput, The Secret Courtesan, She Writes (dual-timeline adventure about a historian who risks everything to discover the truth about a female Renaissance sculptor unjustly erased by history)
David Clensy, The Mighty Ocean, Sapere (third book in the Romulus Hutchinson Naval Adventure series following twin brothers fighting with the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy during WWII)
L. D. Colter, Where the Shadows Dwell, Solaris Nova (historical fantasy where two brothers, who have been selling Mayan relics since pre-civil war Guatemala, bring the Mayan destroyer of worlds back to life)
Mary Connealy, Ambush of the Heart, Bethany House (a new series of adventure of love, faith, courage, and resilience in the wilderness of 1870s Colorado)
Catherine Coulter, The Heir of Whitestone, John Scognamiglio (England 1842; Victorian-era romantic mystery filled with daring escapes, exciting twists and witty humor)
Christina Courtenay, Raiders on the River, Headline (Viking historical romance)
Mollie Ann Cox, The Widow Hamilton, Crooked Lane (the widow of Alexander Hamilton faces another mystery in the second book in series)
Carol M. Cram, The Choir, HTF (in an 1890 Yorkshire mill town, in a world that wants to silence them, one group of women dares to sing)
Helena Dixon, Murder at Sea, Bookouture (Kitty Underhay murder mystery set aboard an ocean liner in 1938)
Sarah Domet, Everything Lost Returns, Flatiron (a story of two women separated across time and connected by the arrival of Halley’s comet; set in 1986 and 1910)
Jane Dougherty, Pasiphae, Legend (a feminist retelling of a woman wronged by myth)
Robert Downes, The Sun Dog, Blank Slate (follow-up to The Wolf and The Willow, reintroducing Willow and Wolf in a saga set in Native America during the 1500s. Ojibwe Saga, book three)
Elizabeth Dunne, The Witty Witches of Concord, Level Best Historia (Louisa May Alcott, famed author and detective, is drawn into a web of murder, witchcraft, and small-town intrigue)
Saara El-Arifi, Cleopatra, Ballantine/The Borough Press (Cleopatra tells her own story in this new historical epic)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Pyramids, Allison & Busby (1901; historical whodunnit set in Egypt)
Louise Fein, Book of Forbidden Words, William Morrow (historical novel about an encrypted manuscript that unleashes a chain of consequences across 400 years, set in a world of banned books)
Liz Flanagan, When We Were Divided, Fox & Ink (three lives intertwine in Yorkshire, 1643, during the English Civil War)
Cristina Rivera Garza, Autobiography of Cotton, Graywolf (reveals a rich social history of agricultural colonization, labor activism, environmental degradation, and cross-border migration)
Peter Gibbons, Death of a Kingdom, Boldwood (conclusion to Saxon Warrior series, set in 1004 AD)
C. P. Giuliani, Death at Home, Sapere (espionage adventure thriller set during the Elizabethan era in Tudor England; book 8 in the Tom Walsingham Mysteries)
Ellie Grenier, This Wretched Beauty, Titan (gothic trans retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray unfurls a twisting tale of love, deceit, and dissolution in 1860s London)
Michelle Griep, The Bird of Bedford Manor, Barbour (inspirational Regency romance set in Bedfordshire, England, 1820)
Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes, The Pohaku, HarperVia (saga moving from Hawaii to California and back, about the generations of women tasked with protecting the history and place that made them)
Lori Inglis Hall, The Shock of the Light, The Borough Press/Pamela Dorman (WWII story of twins who meet different fates, but whose bond will last forever)
Kayla Hardy, The Quarter Queen, Ballantine (a Voodoo witch must navigate a magically and racially divided nineteenth century New Orleans to save her mother)
Louise Hare, The House of Fallen Sisters, HQ (from the brothels of Covent Garden to the oppressive society of the 18th century, novel paints a vivid picture of London’s underbelly)
Liz Harris, A Daughter’s Courage, Boldwood (first book in the Linford Family Sagas set in the aftermath of the Great War. Oxfordshire, 1919)
Esther Hatch, If You’ll Have Me, Shadow Mountain (an unexpected connection arises between a lady seeking freedom and a prosperous younger man)
Jody Hedlund, Marrying the Matchmaker, Bethany House (A Shanahan Match series, book 4; romantic conclusion to matchmaking series)
Veronica Henry, The Invitation, Orion (novel set between post-war London and Foxwood Manor in Somerset and filled with secret love affairs, heartbreak and friendship)
Claire Heywood, The Wandering Queen, Hodder & Stoughton (after the death of the King of Tyre, Elissa is forced to flee to North Africa, where she is crowned Queen Dido, new ruler of Carthage)
Naomi Hirahara, Crown City, Soho Crime (two Japanese American men hired to investigate an art theft discover something much more sinister in turn-of-the-century California)
Evelyn Hood, A Dutiful Daughter, Boldwood (Scottish historical saga of duty and dreams)
Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It, Melville House (story of sapphic obsession set in 1965)
Tammye Huf, Inharmonious (US), Blackstone (love story set in the segregated South during and after World War II)
Shotaro Ikenami, trans. Yui Kajita, The Samurai Detectives: The Killer on the Streets, Penguin (second volume is a mystery blended into a portrait of honour and justice in the twilight of the Shogun’s world)
Devon Jersild, Luminous Bodies, Paul Dry Books (novel weaves a portrait of a Marie Curie, whose struggles and triumphs have much to say to women and men today)
Sadeqa Johnson, Keeper of Lost Children, Renegade Books/37Ink (novel explores themes of identity, desegregation, alcoholism, the blush of young, forbidden love, and the power of forgiveness and familial reunion)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, The Last Ride of the Dirty Creek Gang, Pinnacle (a once-notorious gang of retired bank robbers reunite for one last ride)
Adele Jordan, The King’s Stolen Jewels, Sapere (Shadow Cutpurses Tudor Thrillers Book 4, set at Christmas, 1536)
Dietrich Kalteis, Rust and Bone, ECW Press (part coming-of-age and part family drama, set against the backdrop of World War II Ukraine and Germany)
Diane Keech, Ellie’s Great War, She Writes (debut historical coming-of-age story records an upstate New York family’s suffering and growth through World War I and its aftermath)
Michelle Kenney, The Proposition of the Season, One More Chapter (book three of the Fairfax sisters featuring bluestocking, Josephine)
Kennedy Kerr, An Ocean of Time, Storm (timeslip romance of desire, buried truths and souls destined to find each other across time)
Jasmine Kirkbride, The Forest on the Edge of Time, Tor (historical time-travel crossed with sci-fi fantasy as two women are transported through time to opposite worlds)
Eliot Kleinberg, Hypocrite’s Row, Level Best Historia (crime thriller in which Nate Moran must solve a murder in a Palm Beach hotel where the rich and entitled can drink: Hypocrite’s Row)
Anna Kovatcheva, She Made Herself a Monster, Mariner/Harvill Secker (in 19th-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster)
Andrew Krivak, Mule Boy, Bellvue Literary Press (elegiac novel, set in 1929, of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story)
Sarah E. Ladd, An Unconventional Lady, Thomas Nelson (sweet Regency romance explores the expanding world of science as two childhood friends work together to separate fact from fiction)
Kathryn Lasky, Sacred Light, Severn House (in the 1937 New Mexico desert, a bloodied axe carves through the night—its story buried in silence and sand; Georgia O’Keefe mystery)
Debby Lee, The Caregiver at Wounded Knee, Barbour (the Enduring Hope series brings an inspirational romance between nurse Rose Rushing Water, an Oglala Sioux and tribal policeman Nathaniel Gray Cloud)
Carmella Lowkis, A Slow and Secret Poison, Atria (in the early 1900s, a young gardener at a lush English manor falls in love with her employer)
Aimée MacDonald, The Last Witch on the Knock, John Murray (dual timeline story tells of an abused woman in present day and a maid in a big house 300 years earlier, trying to escape the lecherous clutches of her master)
Shona MacLean, The Cromarty Library Circle, Quercus (a group of leading townspeople are brought together by a newly founded circulating library in 1831, Cromarty, Scotland and must negotiate their changing world)
Heather Marshall, Liberty Street, Doubleday Canada (novel about one journalist’s journey into an infamous real-life 1960s women’s prison, and the detective who uncovers her story decades later)
Patrice Mcdonough, Murder By Moonrise, Kensington (1867; mystery set in the Victorian era, where Scotland Yard’s first female medical examiner finds her holiday sidelined by a murderer)
Ian McGuire, White River Crossing, Crown (novel about the lust for gold and its bloody consequences, set in the unforgiving landscape of the sub-Arctic Canadian wilderness)
Fenella J. Miller, Trouble Comes to Harbour House, Boldwood (wartime saga series set in Wivenhoe, England, 1940)
Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey, Phoenix (reimagining of a true crime story that scandalised Victorian society)
Jennifer Murphy, The Ghost Women, Dutton (tale of a mysterious art academy in the woods, a deck of ancient tarot cards and a centuries-old secret)
Hester Musson, The Night Hag, Fourth Estate (historical mystery set in Scotland, 1886)
Andie Newton, The League of Lonely War Women, One More Chapter (two American women work undercover in Nazi Germany as part of a propaganda campaign)
Mary Ann Noe, Shadows Behind the Scenery, Black Rose Writing (Lynn and Alfred Tale #3 in which the duo become embroiled in Hitler’s maelstrom in late 30s while visiting Paris)
Jenny O’Brien, The Resistance Knitting Club, Storm (inspired by the true story of a woman who used knitting patterns to encode intelligence during World War Two)
B. K. O’Connor, Eve, Histria (in Paradise Lost retelling, Eve faces relentless toil, pain, and the resentment of Adam, who blames her for shattering their Paradise)
Kelly Oliver, The Case of the Christie Curse, Boldwood (Mesopotamia, 1930; when Agatha Christie invites the Detection Club to witness the excavations at the ruins of Ur, they expect ancient wonders – not fresh corpses)
Lizzie Page, The Airline Girl, Bookouture (Audrey dreams of adventure, even as she plans for a future as a homemaker. But can she grab an unexpected opportunity that presents itself)
Suzanne Parsons, A Parisian Intrigue, Sapere (first in new series about a female-led WWII adventure story; WWII Aviatrix Adventures, Book 1)
Also: Book 2: Red Sky at Night, coming November 2026
Lisa Patton, Kissing the Sky, Lake Union (dual timeline coming of age about a sheltered Southern girl whose love of music is strong enough to carry her away from her father’s restrictions on her life, to find peace and love at Woodstock)
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, trans. Frances Riddle, The Final Problem, Mulholland/Atlantic (a locked-room mystery set in 1960 at an isolated Greek island resort following a group of strangers, a suspicious death, and a washed-up actor)
Oliver Pötzsch, trans. Lisa Reinhardt, The Girl and the Gravedigger, HarperVia (Inspector Leopold von Herzfeldt reunites with gravedigger Augustin Rothmayer to excavate the city’s dark underbelly. Book 2)
Alex Preston, A Stranger in Corfu, Canongate (reimagining of a real, hidden slice of the British Intelligence Service’s history)
Mary-Jane Riley, Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway, Allison & Busby (Beattie Cavendish, special operative for a covert section of GCHQ, is sent to Scotland in 1949, during the Cold War)
Sofia Robleda, The Other Moctezuma Girls, Amazon Crossing (in sixteenth-century Mexico, a fearless young woman strives to uncover the secrets her mother kept as the last Aztec empress)
Pamela Ryder, Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him, Univ. of Alabama (a reimagining of Billy the Kid-myth in a coming-of-age story woven with history, legend, and the omnipresence of birds)
Daniela Sacerdoti, The Tuscan Sister’s Promise, Bookouture (novel highlights a woman who uncovers diary entries from WWI, where she learns of a woman who once shared Mia’s desire to find her place in the world)
Gian Sadar, Land of Dreams, Lake Union (1930’s mystery in which scandal, secret loves and murder shatter a woman’s Hollywood dream)
J. R. Sanders, Blues in the Dark, Level Best Historia (when the sister of Hollywood movie queen Audrey Chase is kidnapped, she hires L.A. private eye Nate Ross to handle the case in book 5 in series)
Toby Schmitz, The Empress Murders, Allen & Unwin (a whodunnit set in 1925 as the Empress of Australia is making her regular Atlantic crossing to New York)
Eleanor Shearer, Fireflies in Winter, Berkley (novel about two women fighting for survival in the icy wilderness of Nova Scotia)
Leila Siddiqui, The Glowing Hours, Hell’s Hundred (1816; revisionist gothic horror about the summer Mary Shelley began work on Frankenstein, as told by her Indian housemaid)
Jill Eileen Smith, A Deeper Well, Revell (reimagines the story of the woman at the well, breathing new life into an encounter that will continue to inspire and encourage)
Cameron Sullivan, The Red Winter, Tor (reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution)
Christi Keating Sumich, Lafitte Lives, Level Best Historia (historical mystery set in New Orleans 1831, when the sexton of St. Louis Cemetery, Tobias Whitney, discovers a journal hidden within the tomb of Dominique You, a half-brother of the pirate Jean Lafitte)
Sarah Sundin, Mists Over the Channel Islands, Revell (in WWII, as conditions worsen in Jersey, Ivy’s allegiance to the Allies compels her to risk everything including providing medical aid to escaped workers)
Karen Swan, Three Summers, Transworld Digital (summer romance set in 1957, 58 and 61)
Joseph J. Swope, Sharpened Blade, Black Rose Writing (based on the story of Dinah Clark, an indentured slave who won her freedom)
Stephanie Sy-Quia, A Private Man, Picador (slow-burn forbidden love story, laced with passion and faith, set in 1960s Rome and England)
Johnny Teague, The Lost Diary of Lucrezia Borgia, Histria (in the depths of a Vatican church, an archaeologist uncovers a lost diary that will unravel history’s darkest secrets)
Amy Tordoff, All We Have Is Time, Atria (woven between the biggest events in history from London 1605 to Woodstock 1969 and beyond, a jaded immortal woman and a time traveler fall in love)
Teresa Trent, Crying in the Chapel, Level Best Historia (sequel to the cozy mystery I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, set in 1965)
Alexandra Vasti, The Halifax Hellions, St. Martin’s Griffin/Corvus (story in which the most scandalous ladies in London finally meet their match)
Michelle Vernal, The Orphan at the Irish Adoption House, Bookouture (book 3 in series; Ireland, 1920; story of a mother and her quest to find her daughter after the baby is taken from her)
Howard Whitehouse, The Grey Dawn, Zmok Books (third in The Viking’s Daughter series in which the lives of Gudrid and Gisli are intertwined as they struggle to survive)
Sue Williams, The Duke’s Secret, Allen & Unwin (in contemporary Australia, a woman learns a family legend that they’re descendants of a maid who worked for the Iron Duke; what she sets out to prove shocks everyone)
Karen Witemeyer, Taming Lady Temperance, Bethany House (a new Western series featuring witty characters and romance)
Glenda Young, Celebrations at the Toffee Factory, Headline (war is over and three friends hope for better days ahead in the finale to this trilogy)
Paul Aziz Zarou, Arab American Blues, Interlink (coming-of-age story set during one of the most tumultuous and divisive periods in US history)
March 2026
Kōbō Abe, trans. Mark Gibeau, The Traitor, Columbia Univ. Press (part historical fiction, part detective story; a literary novel about navigating changing political landscapes)
Belinda Alexandra, The Italian Correspondent, HarperCollins AU (Rome, 1951; novel that mixes passion with post-war espionage)
Michelle Collins Anderson, The Moonshine Women, Kensington (in Prohibition era Missouri Ozarks, three sisters take over their father’s moonshine business)
Lucy Andrew, A Very Vexing Murder, Corvus (cosy-crime romp set in the world of Jane Austen’s Emma)
Michael Arnold, The River Warriors, Canelo (in Savage Isle book 2, Cullen, now a warrior of renown, is dispatched by Aoife the Dread to seek out a mystic religious totem which could help unite the bickering clans of Britannia)
Elizabeth Arnott, The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, Berkley (three women, whose lives have been cracked wide open by their husbands’ crimes, unite to catch a serial killer)
Hannah Lillith Assadi, Paradiso 17, Knopf/Fourth Estate (tale of one man’s restless search for home the world over)
D. R. Bailey, A Valiant Endeavour, Sapere (Cooper’s Renegades Aviation thrillers, book two)
Mark Barber, The Order, Winged Hussar (when two Holy Order knights return from a failed crusade, they find themselves dragged into a new war against an even deadlier foe)
Joanna Barker, A Love Most Daring, Shadow Mountain (romance meets mystery in this tale of danger, redemption, and love worth fighting for. Part of the Proper Regency Romance series)
David Barnett, Scratch Moss, Canelo (five-timeline tale centred on a community first invigorated, then devastated by the coal mining industry)
Marie Benedict, Daughter of Egypt, St. Martin’s Press (tale of a young woman who unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharoah—rewriting both of their legacies forever)
Amy Rose Bennett, The Governess’s Handbook for Managing Misfit Marquesses, Kensington (graduates of The Parasol Academy for Exceptional Nannies and Governesses are prepared for every circumstance, and know a little magic on the side)
Nelio Biedermann, trans. Jamie Bulloch, Lázár, MacLehose/S&S/Summit (story of a noble Hungarian family and their decline, taking us from the beginning of the 20th century through the Nazi and Soviet eras to the Hungarian national uprising in 1956)
Bonnie Blaylock, The Water Women, Lake Union (a generational story of mothers passing down to their daughters the skills of the art of weaving sea silk in Sardinia, and generous love, the deep pain of loss, and the freedom to be oneself)
Soraya Bouazzaoui, Aicha, Orbit (historical fantasy about the daughter of a Moroccan freedom-fighter, her strange magic, fierce rebellion, and her secret lover)
Jeanine Boulay, What Keeps Us, Echo Road (linked stories spanning from the nineteenth century to today, in which ten women navigate impossible choices in New York City)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, Vanished in the Crowd, Minotaur (retired detective Molly Murphy Sullivan investigates the disappearance of a female scientist)
Kate Bromley, In My Tudor Era, Avon (time-slip novel in which a 21st-century woman finds herself stuck in the body of Catherine Howard, soon-to-be King Henry VIII’s doomed fifth wife)
Izzy Broom, The House of Hidden Letters, Penguin (Skye finds a bundle of letters hidden in the fireplace of a derelict cottage she purchases, their faded pages drawing her into a story of long-forgotten love and tragedy)
Eleanor Buchanan, The Sea Stone Sisters, Headline Review (dual timeline novel weaves together the stories of four sisters and their descendants scattered across the globe)
Rachel Burton, The Strawberry House, Boldwood (dual-timeline novel of forbidden love, buried secrets and the long shadow of war)
June Calvin, Miss Henderson’s Secret, Histria (Regency romance follows one woman’s fight for freedom against a society determined to chain her)
Christy Carlyle, The Scoundrel and the Siren, Avon (a hunt through Norfolk where a legendary treasure hunter and a fierce local woman battle over a Viking hoard. Princes of London series)
Ivy Cassidy, House of Spells and Secrets, Alcove Press (when three sisters return to the house that holds their forgotten legacy, the walls whisper of magic and secrets their mother never told them)
Andrea Catalano, The Lacemaker’s Fortune, Lake Union (in the 1870s, the fate of an immigrant desperate to escape the factories of New York City collides with the ambitions of two men)
Caroline Cauchi, Daughter of the Titanic, One More Chapter (spanning the years after the sinking, an untold story of the daughter history forgot – Helen Melville ‘Mel’ Smith, who carried the weight of a tragedy the world claimed as its own)
Elena Collins, The Three Witches, Boldwood (timeslip historical fiction set in 1050 Scotland and contemporary times)
Kaitlin Corvus, No Such Thing As Monsters, Shadow Spark (set against a 1920s backdrop of realism and enchantment, novel is a psychological fantasy about power, consent, and the monsters we make of each other)
Christopher Cosmos, Island of Ghosts and Dreams, Pegasus (Chania, Crete, 1941; a woman from a small Greek village finds herself swept up in the long and storied history of her island)
Charlotte Cross, The Brides, Tor Nightfire (reimagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – with a sapphic romance at its heart)
Elizabeth Crowens, Round Up the Usual Suspects, Level Best Historia (The Hollywood Baskervilles, book 3, where the sleuths concoct a plan for Basil to assume his on-screen persona and round up possible suspects)
Avery Curran, Spoiled Milk, Doubleday/riverrun (the untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school uncovers buried truths of teenage repression and queer desire)
Sandra Dallas, The Hired Man, St. Martin’s (set in Dust Bowl Kansas as a teenager is murdered just after a handsome stranger arrives in town)
Janis Robinson Daly, Under Two Flags, Black Rose Writing (a re-write and retelling of a memoir of a young Boston woman who travels to Berlin in 1916 to study opera)
N. R. Daws, Murder at the Tower, Orion (murder mystery set around the early 1950s, in post-WW2 Britain. Book two of the series after Murder at the Palace)
Jill Dawson, Pixie, Bloomsbury (turn of 20th-century – a tale of the twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation, of one young woman’s talent, grit and determination)
Felicia Day, illus. Rowan MacColl, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, Gallery (a feminist graphic novel about the lost mythical character of Philonoe—Helen of Troy’s sister)
Alba De Céspedes, trans. Ann Goldstein, There’s No Turning Back, Washington Square Press (originally published in 1938 and banned, story centers on eight women with radically different backgrounds who attend the same college in Rome)
Neil Denby, Speculator, Sapere (book six of the Quintus Roman Thrillers)
Melanie Dickerson, The Good Fortune of Miss Robbins, Bethany House (Regency Romance between a governess and a mysterious earl)
Xavier Dorison, illus. Ralph Meyer, The Undertaker: The Gold Eater & the Dance of the Vultures, Abrams ComicArts (sharpshooting undertaker Jonas Crow has lain low since the Civil War, but when ghosts return to haunt him, he will have to make a stand)
Leisha Douglas, Triple Threat, Sibylline (fictionalized biography traces Elizabeth Hines’ rise from wide-eyed ingénue to international star in 1920s Jazz Age)
J. C. Duncan, Viking Conqueror, Boldwood (finale in the Last Viking adventure series featuring Harald Hardrada)
A. Rae Dunlap, The Dreadfuls, Kensington (true crime and historical fiction combine in Victorian-era thriller featuring a young heroine determined to solve the case of the serial killer, Jack the Ripper)
Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer, Now I Surrender, Riverhead (a woman’s desperate flight from an Apache raid unfolds during the Mexico–US border wars)
Florencia Etcheves, Frida’s Cook, Atria/Primero Sueno Press (debut set in the home of Frida Kahlo, in 1939, where food, art, and love weave together a story of friendship and loyalty)
E. A. Field, Moon Dark, Rising Action (historical fantasy set in the manor and opera houses of late 1800s France)
Betty Firth, Brighter Skies in the Dales, Hera (saga spotlighting the village of Silverdale which has been forever changed by World War Two)
Justin Fox, Malta Inferno, Sapere (book 4 of the Jack Pembroke Naval Thrillers, set in the Mediterranean in summer 1942)
Helen Gaskell, The Regency Switch, HQ (time-travel Regency romcom where two women switch places in time)
Tara Gereaux, Wild People Quiet, Scribner Canada (explores the repercussions of a woman’s decision to hide her Métis identity while living in a small, predominantly white prairie town in the 1940s)
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru, Berkley (a fortune teller in 1920s Paris must use her powers to divine who she can trust when a Romanov princess and her brother come seeking answers to an old mystery)
Esther Goldenberg, The Song of the Blue Bird, Row House (final book of the Desert Songs Trilogy is a story of community, cooperation, and the struggles and triumphs of striving for freedom)
Alexis Hall, Never After, Montlake (a melancholic tale of queer romance set in nineteenth-century England)
Lori Inglis Hall, The Shock of the Light, Viking/Pamela Dorman (WWII story of twins who meet different fates, but whose bond will last forever)
Barbara Hambly, Death in the Palace, Severn House (British widow Emma Blackstone gets mixed up in murder in a 1920s New York flooded with high society, mobsters, and silent-movie stars)
Linda Hamilton, The Fourth Wife, Kensington (a historical Gothic horror story inspired by Mormon folklore and the concept of plural marriage)
Liz Harris, A Wife’s Betrayal, Boldwood (second novel in the Linford Family Sagas)
Nicola Harrison, The Island Club, St. Martin’s (a novel of loves lost and found, shocking secrets, and the power of female friendship, set in 1956)
Penny Haw, The Woman and Her Stars, Sourcebooks Landmark (1772; true story of Caroline Herschel, an 18th century astronomer who lived in the shadow of her brother, but learned to pave her own path)
Olivia Hawker, Through All Our Heavens, Lake Union (in a journey through time, an art historian makes a discovery in the past that may foretell our future)
Cathy Hayward, The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall, Lake Union (four sisters travel to Scotland to unravel the mystery of their recently deceased elderly mother)
Natalie Haynes, No Friend to This House, Harper (retelling of the myth of Medea, and her turbulent relationship with the questing Jason)
Gordon Henderson, Man in the Shadows, At Bay Press (illuminates the assassination of Canada’s most eloquent Father of Confederation, and former Irish nationalist, Thomas D’Arcy McGee)
Kate Hewitt, The Irish Daughter of New York, Bookouture (first book in the new Maggie O’Halloran series, set in 1891, a story of one woman’s determination to change her fortunes against all odds)
Rosie Hewlett, Sweetbitter Song, Sourcebooks Landmark (a story of bravery and hope in ancient times, celebrating two women who fought to protect their love from a world that tried to deny its very existence)
Rachel Hochauser, Lady Tremaine, Orion (feminist reimagining of the fairy tale Cinderella)
Ana Holguin, Second Chance Duet, Forever (slow burn romance about a struggling composer whose big break comes at a cost)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Girl from the Queen’s Head, Boldwood (story of a young woman struggling with her drunken husband and abuse, and the sanctuary she finds in the owner of The Queen’s Head pub)
Michael Jecks, Treaty of Blood, Boldwood (book 5 of The Vintaine, set in 1359 Northern France)
Dinah Jefferies, The Greek House, Harper360 (Corfu, 1930; family drama, mystery, asks can one house hold a lifetime of secrets)
Luisa A Jones, Before the Mountain Falls, Storm (a WWII tale of resilience, found family and second chances)
Tayari Jones, Kin, Oneworld (1950s; story about mothers, daughters, and a lifelong friendship that is as dangerous as it is unbreakable)
Ariel Kaplan, The Kingdom of Almonds, Erewhon (historical fantasy conclusion to the Mirror Realm Cycle set in late 1500s Mediterranean)
Lauren Keegan, The Woman in the Seal Skin, Affirm (set in Scotland in 1695, story of a young woman struggling with grief, oppression, her relationship with nature and her own inherent wildness)
Sophie Keetch, Storm Over Camelot, Magpie/Random House Canada (conclusion to the Morgan le Fay trilogy, a feminist retelling of the story of the misunderstood villainess of Arthurian legend)
Jim Kelly, The American Suspect, Allison & Busby (1942; a story of love and revenge which spans two world wars)
Paulette Kennedy, The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael, Lake Union (novel about a disgraced 1840s Charleston debutante convicted of murder, who is buried alive and escapes her family mausoleum)
T. Kingfisher, Wolf Worm, Tor Nightfire (something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in 1899)
Marion Kummerow, The Last Train Home, Bookouture (novel telling of the experiences of Sinti and Roma people during the Holocaust)
Richard Kurti, Tyranny of Indulgence, Sapere (the power of the Catholic Church is under threat, in 1517 Rome: Basilica Diaries Medieval Mysteries, book 5)
Shawn Kuruneru, Cave Grave: Wild West Tales, Oni Press (graphic novel explores two stories of double-crossing and hopeless humanity set against a backdrop of the lawless West)
M. A. Kuzniar, A Remedy for Fate, Hodderscape (in Prague, early 1760s, Thea bargained away her heart and her memories to the apothecary’s owner; now a stranger offers her a way to escape the bargain)
Rebecca Lehmann, The Beheading Game, Harville Secker/Crown (speculative fiction of Anne Boleyn who wakes up the day after her execution and seeks justice)
Andrew Lifson, Rogues in a Nation, Little Creek (a multigenerational saga from Cold War paranoia and blacklists to union-busting and Indigenous erasure)
H. M. Long, Entwined, Titan (historical fantasy in which three sisters join the hunt for a stolen magical artefact in the start of the Gilded Age)
Lindsay Lovise, Never Spar With a Viscount, Forever (a brooding Viscount fake-courts a fiercely independent governess-spy)
Aimée MacDonald, The Last Witch on the Knock, John Murray (Scottish debut about two women bound together by a centuries-long curse, inspired by a local legend)
Timothy David Mack, All the Tea in China, Blackstone (historical adventure rife with treasure, thrills, and a ruthless pirate queen)
Jennifer Mandula, The Geomagician, Del Rey (when a Victorian fossil hunter discovers a baby pterodactyl, she vows to protect him, with the help of a fellow scholar in this historical fantasy)
Clare Marchant, The Alchemist’s Secret, Boldwood (Two women’s stories are linked across history, with a love story, and a mystery that must be solved)
Joanna Margaret, The Daughters, Mysterious Press (a grieving archivist uncovers a strange connection between recent disappearances and a small New York town’s history of witch trials)
Gay Marris, The Beasts of the Black Loch, Bedford Square (murder mystery set in 1970s remote Scottish highlands –A Natural History of Murder series)
Juan Marsé, trans. Nick Caistor, Last Evenings with Teresa, Mountain Leopard (in 1950s Barcelona, a rebellious daughter of a wealthy family meets an ambitious rogue at a party)
Violet Marsh, Miss Wick and the Duke Dilemma, Forever (the daughter of a pirate and a newly titled duke work together to solve a mystery in this Regency romcom)
Yann Martel, Son of Nobody, W. W. Norton (retelling of the Trojan War from two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar)
Imogen Martin, An Ocean of Stars, Storm (Boston, 1879; tale of passion, redemption, and the power of second chances)
Sujata Massey, The Star from Calcutta, Soho Crime (the glamour and intrigue of India’s silent film era come to life in the fifth installment of the Perveen Mistry series)
Alice G. May, Danger Awaits the Resistance Girls, Boldwood (World War II saga of defiance, danger, and daring women who refused to be silenced; inspired by The Women’s Secret Army)
Francesca May, This Vicious Hunger, Orbit (a dark, gothic fantasy of intoxication, obsession, and two women’s thirst for knowledge; historical fantasy set in a Victoriana-inspired Italian world)
Henrietta McKervey, The Woman in the Water, Hachette Ireland (gothic thriller set between 1930s London and the windswept Cornwall coast)
Luna McNamara, The Witch and the Huntress, William Morrow (Medea and Atalanta join forces on Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece)
Stacy Lynn Miller, The Nightshade, Severn River (Hattie James, book 4, where Hattie’s sister disappears in December 1941)
Mary Monroe, Bad Seeds, Dafina (Depression-era Alabama novel tells of a businesswoman who discovers her dark side when she’s betrayed by friendship)
Santa Montefiore, Secrets of the Starlit Sea, Simon & Schuster (Timeslider, book 2; time-travel romance series takes Pixie Tate on a gilded-age collision course with history)
Richard Morgan, No Man’s Land, Gollanz (dark alternative fantasy horror set after WWI)
Richard Morgan, No Man’s Land, Gollancz (alternate speculative historical fantasy as the Great War endures, an ancient fae race have decided to end mankind’s ascendency over the world)
Susan J. Morris, Wayward Souls, Bindery/Inky Phoenix (a twisty puzzle of a historical fantasy, with characters drawn from the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes; sequel to Strange Beasts)
Donald S. Murray, The Loch of the Bees, Saraband (a novel of interlinked stories that sweeps from the eighth century to the present day)
Jenna Ness, The War Orphan’s Courage, Bookouture (WWII story of courage and hope)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Vengeance in Venice, Kensington (1927; Jane and Redvers have arrived in Venice for their honeymoon, but behind a mask at a costume ball hides the gaze of a heartless killer)
Robert Newman, Intelligence, Serpent’s Tail (Oxford, 1938; when her friends are called up for intelligence work, Ida stays in academia, but stumbles across secret information that could change the direction of the war)
Shelley Noble, The Sisters of Book Row, William Morrow (timely novel of books, banning, and the women who helped save New York’s famed Book Row)
Randy O’Brien, Ribbon of Dreams, Histria (coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Tennessee, exploring identity, family, and hope in a divided America)
Emily Organ, A Death at Raven’s Roost, Storm (book 4 in the Emma Langley Victorian Murder Mystery series, set in London, 1889, when a labourer working on the construction of Tower Bridge is found fatally injured)
Allison Pataki, It Girl, Ballantine (novel inspired by a singular artist and icon who captured the collective imagination of American society)
Tracie Peterson, Faithful of Heart, Bethany House (new inspirational series set in 1870 Minneapolis, weaving themes of redemption, faith, and the healing power of love)
Gin Phillips, Ruby Falls, Atlantic Crime (historical mystery set almost entirely underground at the onset of the Great Depression and the unthinkable crime that happens in its caves)
Marie-Josee Poisson, Blood Bound, Guernica (a mystery unveiling Madame de Pompadour)
Angela Ranson, Grave Merriment, Sapere (Catrin Surovell Tudor Mysteries, book 4, set at Christmas 1561)
Deanna Raybourn, A Ghastly Catastrophe, Berkley (in book 10 in series, Veronica and Stoker find themselves up against a secret society and a darkly seductive duo)
Victoria Redel, I Am You, Firefinch (in 1600s Amsterdam, two women—a painter and her assistant—defy the norms of their time as they take on the male-dominated art world and fall in love)
Lynette Rees, The Coal Miner’s Wife, Boldwood (Victorian saga of one woman’s determination to survive; set in Wales, 1889)
Karen Robards, The Moonlight Runner, Park Row (in the wake of the Great War, a young woman joins the Irish rebellion and risks everything for her country)
Linda Rosen, Abandoning the Script, Black Rose Writing (a novel of a woman who reinvents herself in 1922, when she finds herself in a situation she never wanted)
Ailsa Ross, Hovel, Strange Light/Random House Canada (a young woman in the Rocky Mountains turns to ancient rituals to find solace and connection)
David Rotenberg, City Rising: The Age of Dry Water, At Bay Press (book 4 and the final end in the City Rising ‘Shanghai Tetralogy’)
Rosemary Rowe, Death Stalks Glevum, Severn House (Glevum, Britannia, 200 AD; on his way to see the Emperor’s spy, Junio is distracted by something even more unpleasant)
Shari J. Ryan, The Girl With the List, Bookouture (World War Two story which demonstrates the power of love in triumphing over evil)
Kate Schatz, Where the Girls Were, Dial Press (novel about coming of age in 1960s San Francisco, where a pregnant teenager reckons with womanhood and agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers)
Moacyr Scliar, trans. Heath Wing, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible, Univ. of New Mexico Press (satire in which a mysterious woman discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon’s seven hundred wives)
Irina Shapiro, The Carnival Murders, Storm (the discovery of a murdered woman sparks a nightmare that may destroy everything for Gemma and Sebastian as they plan their life together)
Victoria Shorr, Fatherland, W. W. Norton (set in a prosperous midwestern town in the 1950s, a story about the effect of convenient lies and discovered truths set against the backdrop of family commitment)
Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, Scribner/Faber (tale about an ambitious young woman who must thwart an occult plot by time-traveling fascists during the chaos of the London Blitz)
Dana Stabenow, The Harvey Girl, Head of Zeus-Aries (mystery featuring an all-female detective bureau set during the American frontier boom time of the lawless 1890s)
Linda Stasi, The Descendant, Regalo (story of an Italian immigrant family in the Wild West whose brave, magical women overcame impossible odds to become bootleggers, brides, and Mafia bosses)
M. L. Stedman, A Far-flung Life, Scribner/Penguin AU (a tale about family and belonging, fate and time, set in remote Western Australia in 1958)
Sarah Steele, The Riviera Secret, Headline Review (novel set in the French Riviera in the dangerous days leading up to the outbreak of WWII)
Mary-Lou Stephens, The Hobart Hotel, HQ (dual timeline novel of glamour, intrigue and two women who will gamble their lives to survive; set in Australia 1939 and 1973)
Anna Stuart, The Last Baby in Auschwitz, Bookouture (inspired by true stories, novel tells of a mother’s love and courage during WWII)
A. S. Tamaki, The Book of Fallen Leaves, Orbit (the fates of gods and samurai converge in this Japanese-myth inspired fantasy)
Sally Tarpey, The Country Nurse, Joffe (WWII romance saga set in 1937 and 1939)
ReShonda Tate, With Love from Harlem, William Morrow (a romantic historical drama set against the backdrop of twentieth-century Harlem)
Stephen Taylor, The Cold Light of Day, Sapere (second book in the Augustus Swift Investigation series, set in 1795 London; sequel to Brotherhood of Death)
Cassandra L. Thompson, The Agony of Her, Quill & Crow (two stories, 1910 and 1981, weave together as women grapple with their ideas of motherhood while being confronted with things both sinister and ancient)
Kate Thompson, The Secret Society of Librarians, Hodder & Stoughton (London, 1939 and Occupied Poland, 1942; story, based on real events, tells of two women torn apart by war)
Seána Tinley, The Irish Midwife at War, Hodder & Stoughton (second book in series following the lives of Peggy and her midwife friends)
Charles Todd, A Day of Judgment, Mysterious Press (Inspector Rutledge faces a puzzling case and a cast of locals that don’t take kindly to outsiders)
Colm Tóibín, The News from Dublin, Scribner (collection of eleven short stories, set across Ireland, Spain, and America—about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love)
Solitaire Townsend, Godstorm, Bedford Square (in an alternate fantasy petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own)
Lydia Travers, Death in a Scottish Tower, Bookouture (Lady Poppy Proudfoot is determined to find the culprit in this 3rd installment of the cosy mystery series)
Neil Tully, The Visit, Eriu (during the social change of 1963, two men are used to being on the fringes but while Jim is a romantic, Patrick is full of anger and action)
Sharon Virts, Masque of Honor, Flashpoint (tale of political intrigue, romance, and betrayal set in antebellum Virginia, based on the true events behind the 1819 Mason–McCarty duel)
Laura Vogt, In the Great Quiet, Lake Union (in the Oklahoma prairie of 1893, Minnie Hoopes withstands the volatile wilderness and outlaw threats–but her greatest adventure will be confronting her past)
Eoghan Walls, Field Notes from an Extinction, Seven Stories (told in the vernacular of the day in a novel-as-notebook style, story of a 19th-century ornithologist sent by the Royal Society to a remote Irish island)
Alexandra Walsh, The Boleyn Curse, Boldwood (dual timeline story of love and heartbreak, loyalty and revenge; set in 16th-century and present day)
Chrissie Walsh, The Herring Girl, Boldwood (Ireland, 1937–1941; a young Irish girl finds peace and love in a small harbour town)
Rachel Wesson, The Irish Orphan’s Secret, Storm (set against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence and delving into the dark history of the infamous Mother and Baby homes)
Jenny Williamson, Game of Thieves, Mira (enemies-to-lovers romance set in the last days of the Roman empire)
K. R. Wilson, Stan on Guard, Guernica (follow up to the historical novel Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia)
L. C. Winter, Spider, Spider, September Publishing (Victorian tale of a woman who has lost herself in the poison of vengeance)
Evie Woods, The Missing Notes, HarperCollins (historical fantasy in which one violin charts its own course through history whereby its origins unlock a mystery stretching back decades)
April 2026
Elizabeth Arnott, The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, Viking/Berkley (a celebration of women – their friendships, courage and resilience – and what happens when they dare to break free of the mold that society has set for them. Set in 1960s)
Lucy Ashe, The Model Patient, Union Square/Simon & Schuster UK (psychological exploration of obsession, betrayal and the relationship between a patient and therapist in 1960s London)
Lynn Austin, The Lumber Baron’s Wife, Tyndale (when the young wife of a powerful lumber baron vanishes into the wilds of frontier Michigan, her friend is left to unravel the truth; inspirational fiction)
Dane Bahr, The Dead Ringer, Counterpoint (Montana, 1935; Western story features a man brought back from the dead to exact revenge upon those who have wronged him)
Brianne Baker, Edmonia, Dafina (the story of Black and Native American Neoclassical sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who overcame adversity to create enduring tributes in stone to her race and times)
Kylie Lee Baker, Japanese Gothic, Hanover Square (a haunted house story in which two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds. Settings in 2026 and 1877)
Henry Barajas, Death to Pachuco, Image Comics (Chicano noir retelling of the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial and the Zoot Suit Riots during 1943 wartime Los Angeles)
Brynn Barineau, Jungle of Ashes, History Through Fiction (novel explores ambition, resistance, and forbidden love against the backdrop of Henry Ford’s ill-fated rubber empire in the Amazon)
Ellen Barker, Nothing North of Delmar, She Writes (a novel of one young woman’s post-college foray into the adult realities of landlords, economics, and urban politics, set against the Bicentennial summer of 1976)
Carol Marques Barrios, Mahala, Arcade (coming-of-age story about women’s rights, family expectations, and the courage to forge your own path, set in St. Vincent, British West Indies, 1920)
Judy Batalion, The Last Woman of Warsaw, Dutton (two very different Jewish women in Warsaw in the late 1930s, unexpectedly come together in their search for love and meaning)
Lauren J. A. Bear, Aphrodite in Pieces, Berkley (two hundred years before the common era, Aphrodite asks a sculptor to carve her likeness in stone)
Maryka Biaggio, Margery and Me, Regal House (based on the true story of Margery Crandon, the medium who tangled with magician and spiritualism detractor, Harry Houdini)
Andrew Dennis Biersack, Black Madonna, Rare Bird (gothic horror set in the shadowy underbelly of 1950s Hollywood)
Chelsea Bobulski, A Deal With a Debutante, Haven (a sweet historical romance set in Edwardian England)
Matthew Booth, A Sudden Vengeance, Level Best Historia (Everett Carr series 1930s mystery)
Sarah Bourne, The Paris Resistance, Joffe (wartime romance of courage, sacrifice and forbidden love in occupied France)
Stephanie Bramwell-Lawes, Thornby Manor, Orenda (historical Gothic mystery of love, betrayal, obsession and a house that will not release its past; set in Warwickshire, 1891)
AnneMarie Brear, The Ragged Runaway, Boldwood (saga of courage, friendship and lost love, set in Wakefield, 1901)
Verity Bright, A Very Irish Mystery, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift is having a grand time with her husband in Dublin’s pubs, until another body ruins all their plans)
Jennifer N. Brown, The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, St. Martin’s (dual-timeline murder mystery set in the English countryside, when an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess)
Elizabeth Buchan, Woodspring, Corvus (a multi-generational family saga)
Colleen Cambridge, In the Spirit of French Murder, Kensington (Paris, 1950; after moving to France, Tabitha Knight has a new friend in fellow expat and Cordon Bleu student Julia Child)
Christian Cameron, The Captain of Venice, Orion (the Chivalry series follows young William Gold, who runs away from London to follow the Black Prince, through life as a routier and criminal, and redemption with the Knights of Saint John)
Melodie Campbell, The Pharaoh’s Curse Murders, Cormorant (in winter of 1929, Lady Lucy Revelstoke and her pickpocket-turned-maid, Elf, are voyaging to Egypt in the third installment of The Merry Widow Murders series)
Ella Carey, The Tuscan Villa, Bookouture (Italy, 1945; a crumbling family villa that becomes a vital safe space for the people of Cortona during the war)
Anita Chapman, The House in the Tuscan Hills, Bookouture (dual timeline where a mysterious woman arrives at Jen’s newly inherited house in Tuscany, and lays claim to her inheritance)
KJ Charles, How to Fake it in Society, Tor Bramble (1821; Nicolas-Marc Compte de Valoise, infamous for stealing a priceless diamond necklace meant for Marie Antoinette, hopes to restore his wronged mother’s reputation)
Jennifer Chiaverini, The Patchwork Players, William Morrow (a new installment of the author’s Elm Creek Quilts series)
Rosie Clarke, Wild Hearts on the Pennine Moors, Boldwood (new Yorkshire Dales romance saga series, set in 1888)
Kate Clinch, Every Inch a Saint, Monkfish (dual timeline story of Eileen O’Connor, woven with the lives of a fictional contemporary family a century after her death)
Peter Clenott, The Murder Investigation of Adolf Hitler, Level Best Historia (next installment of the historical mystery series set in Germany)
K. M. Colley, The Roaring Ridleys, Thomas & Mercer (in Jazz Age New York, a murder shatters the privileged life of the city’s most elite family)
Moorea Corrigan, Thistlemarsh, Del Rey (in the wake of WWI, Mouse’s wealthy uncle leaves her Thistlemarsh Hall, with the proviso that she renovates it within a month, or lose it all)
Clair Coughlan, Among the Ruins, Simon & Schuster UK (Dublin, 1970; mystery about one woman’s need to find the truth, whatever the cost)
Anna Cowan, The Duke, St. Martin’s Griffin (sapphic regency romance about the duke who fears nothing, until the woman she never forgot walks through the door)
Lindsey Davis, Murder in Purple and Gold, Hodder & Stoughton (Flavia Albia stumbles upon the murdered corpse of a young man near Rome’s Circus Maximus)
Cristóvão de Aguiar, trans. David Brookshaw, Roots Stirred, Tagus Press/Univ. of Massachusetts (coming-of-age as seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up in the 1940s in a small village on São Miguel, the largest of Portugal’s Azores islands)
Camille de Peretti, trans. Hildegarde Serle, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, Europa (saga inspired by the incredible but true story of the iconic Klimt painting)
Francesca de Tores, Cast Away, Bloomsbury Circus (reimagines the real-life story of Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for the classic novel Robinson Crusoe)
Melanie Dobson, The Lost Story of Via Belle, Tyndale (searching for a story to adapt for film, a screenwriter becomes captivated by a bestselling classic and the disappearance of the woman who wrote it)
E. Davis Enloe, Into the Night Woods, Regal House (in the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains, Boyd embarks on an adventure to find an abandoned trestle and explore a cave with personal significance)
Leah Eskin, Like Wafers in Honey, Levine Querido (dual timeline novel set in 1960s Westchester and Italy in 1943 when Mussolini enacted anti-Jewish laws across the country)
Jonathan Eyers, Tenacious, Sapere (England, 1779; first adventure in an Age of Sail series)
Juliet Faithfull, Liar’s Dice, Doubleday Can (debut about a young teenage girl in 1970s Brazil who is torn away from her twin sister)
Suzanne Fortin, The Secret Midwife of Berlin, Embla (WWII story of one woman’s courage, bravery and sacrifice in the face of fear and tragedy)
Philip Fracassi, Sarafina, Clash Books (historical horror where three brothers go AWOL during one of the most violent battles of the Civil War)
Max Francis, Honour & Heresy, HarperVoyager (gothic, dark academia fantasy of two scholars racing each other to find answers to an invasion in a haunted library)
Emily Franklin, Love & Other Monsters, Godine (story of love, lust, art and betrayal, based on the largely forgotten life of eighteen-year-old Claire Clairmont)
Emma Fraser, Valley of the Fireflies, Storm (a story inspired by true events in the Tuscan mountains in 1939)
Genevieve Graham, The Chambermaid’s Key, Simon & Schuster (novel set in Toronto in 1929, about a young chambermaid, a handsome waiter, and a murder)
Jocelyn Green, The Manhattan Confessions, Bethany House (historical intrigue and the quest for justice against the backdrop of Manhattan’s dark secrets)
Jiyoung Han, Honey in the Wound, Avid Reader Press/Manilla Press (debut novel about a mysteriously gifted Korean family confronting the brutality of the Japanese empire)
Elizabeth Hardinger, Won’t Be Long Now, John Scognamiglio (set in same fictional town as All the Forgivenesses, novel brings to life a misunderstood young woman who finds her way to an unexpected grace)
Indrek Hargla, trans. Adam Cullen, The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church, Pushkin Vertigo (historical murder mystery featuring a chemist turned-sleuth who battles ignorance and superstition and killers in 15th century Estonia)
C. S. Harris, When the Wolves are Silent, Berkley (a brutal string of ritualistic killings terrorizes a city already shaken by economic and political turmoil. Sebastian St. Cyr mystery)
Helen A. Harrison, A Fair Corpse, Level Best-Historia (book 2 in the An Art of Murder Mystery series, set in 1939 New York)
Gracie Hart, The Chocolate Box Girls Find Love, Penguin UK (WWII era saga conclusion to the Rowntrees series)
M. B. Henry, Hold on to Tomorrow, Severn House (a young woman fights to follow her dreams at the start of the 1960s)
Kate Hilton, City of the Muse, Simon & Schuster (dual-timeline novel about the death of a female papyrologist during an archaeological dig in the early 1900s and a present-day quest to find out who killed her)
India Holton, The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire, Berkley (when two history professors and best friends are forced to fake hate to protect their reputations, chaos ensues, in this next historical-fantasy)
April Howells, The Unforgettable Mailman, Alcove (story about intergenerational friendship and the power of human connection, set in 1966 Chicago)
Violaine Huisman, The Monuments of Paris, Penguin (novel drawn from life about a Frenchwoman’s efforts to come to terms with the legacy of her father and grandfather)
Sabrina Jeffries, Nearly A Bride, Kensington (next installment of the Lords of Hazard series set in the Regency Napoleonic era an English nobleman is finally free from exile—but can his heart still be captured?)
Kitty Johnson, Where the Sea Lavender Grows, Lake Union (a woman restoring a historic cottage on the English coast uncovers a connection to the past in this dual timeline novel about art, loss, and love)
Wayne Johnston, The Novice of Holloway Hall, Knopf Canada (over the course of a single week, failed nun Vivvy Holloway faces off against her domineering sister, her ten cleric brothers, and a host of meddling hangers-on, unearthing long-buried secrets)
Samantha Keller, The Light Remains, Catalyst (a family saga unfolds against the backdrop of South Africa in the 1960s)
Jane Kirkpatrick, With the Enduring Tides, Revell (portrays the courage and triumphs of women overcoming the odds and banding together to make a difference in the early 20th century West)
Jean Gordon Kocienda, Girl in a Box, Sybilline Press (in early twentieth century Japan, one precocious daughter runs away from home to live a life of her choosing)
Lana Korchik, Sisters of the Storm, HQ Digital (Albania, 1943; when two US Army nurses find themselves stranded, their only route to safety is through the mountains with the Germans on their tail)
Maxim Langstaff, Sasq’et, Manhattan Book Group (a story blurring the lines between myth and reality, set in a Canadian wilderness of tangled forests, untamed rivers, bears, wolves, and the ancient reverence of Indigenous traditions)
Jane Lark, Heartbreak for the Great Western Railway Girls, Boldwood (book 3 in a saga of sisterhood and sacrifice)
Della Leavitt, Vivian’s Decision, She Writes (Chicago, 1956; story of repeated history, female friendship, and the strength that it takes to make choices of one’s own)
Adam Lofthouse, Tribune and the Sword, Boldwood (next installment in the Shadow of Rome series, set in 383 AD)
Andre Ludington, Double Shadow, Minotaur (2nd installment of the Splinter Effect series, in which time-traveler Rabbit Ward returns to the past to save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem)
Deborah Lee Luskin, Into the Wilderness, Sibylline (a love story and a testament to the surprising flexibility of the human heart; set in Vermont in 1964)
R. MacLeod, Fast and Fastidious, Harper Perennial (1810; romantic Regency adventure in which a meticulous young woman must abandon the rules of propriety to save Britain)
Stephens Gerard Malone, The Unnameable, Nimbus (1960s; exploration of masculinity and sexuality, shame and secrets, in an era when being openly queer meant risking everything)
Zoe Manlow, The Last Secret of Wickham Grange, Bedford Square (when Caroline Alleyn inherits Wickham Grange, all she wants to do is sell up, but it can’t be sold without the consent of five elderly women, and they all refuse)
Emily Matchar, The Lost Girl of Craven County, Putnam (in Depression era, story runs from a historic river town to the hinterlands of rural North Carolina, delving into the impossibility of burying secrets forever)
Hilary McCollum, As A Lover, Bella Books (London, 1928; for centuries, the establishment has suppressed public knowledge of lesbian love until a celebrated writer fights back)
Fiona McIntosh, The French Promise, Storm (1950s story sweeps readers from southern England to northern Tasmania and the streets of postwar Paris)
Keith Moray, Sacrilege, Boldwood (2nd in the Ralph de Mandeville medieval murder mystery series)
Julie Owen Moylan, Elizabeth and Marilyn, Michael Joseph/Ballantine (novel imagines the secret lives of two of the 20th century’s most famous women; set during a summer that brought them face to face)
Chris Nickson, The Faces of the Dead, Severn House (Sergeant Cathy Marsden investigates the death of a local gangster in WWII Leeds)
Michael O’Donnell, Concert Black, Blackstone (a novel of ambition, artistry, music and ambition crossing decades and continents)
Priya Parmar, The Original, Ballantine/Allison & Busby (life of screen icon Katharine Hepburn, a star whose fierce independence, passionate spirit redefined what it meant to be a woman in film)
Emma Parry, Mrs. Benedict Arnold, Zando (a portrait of the young woman who almost ended the American Revolution)
Jonelle Patrick, The Samurai’s Octopus, Seventh Street (historical mystery set in the shogun world of 1784, featuring Birdie, a child who is chosen to serve Yoshiwara’s number one courtesan)
Linda Paul, The Last Gypsy Queen, Black Rose Writing (1942, in a world filled with oppression and prejudice, a young Romani Gypsy woman is forced to work as a tarot card reader for survival, though she longs to become a doctor)
Elaine Hume Peake, Don Keith, The Blacksmith of Dachau, Severn River (A Call to War, book 2 -WWII human story of courage, survival, and the choices that define us)
Tom Perotta, Ghost Town, Scribner (tale about a summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer, looking back on a series of events that changed his life)
Kristen Perrin, How to Cheat Your Own Death, Quercus/Dutton (book 3 of the Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series, in which Annie Adams and her Great Aunt Frances team up across decades to solve two interlocking murders)
Anne Perry, Victoria Zackheim, Death Times Seven, Ballantine (two violent crimes challenge the investigative skills of young Daniel Pitt and his wife, Miriam, in the final novel of mystery series)
Glynis Peters, The Orphan’s Mission, Boldwood (WWII saga of courage and bravery)
Joanna Politano, The Life She Forgot, Grafted Page (a story of enduring love set in Cornwall 1913 and 1947)
M. J. Porter, Storm of Mercia, Boldwood (Viking adventure set in Wessex AD836)
Victoria Purman, The Marriage Trap, HQ (looks at the 1960s, the effects of the pill, rebellion and new ideas on ordinary Australian women, alongside shorter skirts and the Beatles and the search for freedom)
Matthew Reilly, The Detective, Orion (Sam Speedman, a most unique private detective, investigates women and the investigators who searched for them, all of whom have disappeared over 150 years)
Ros Rendle, Shadows at the Manor, Sapere (a romantic adventure family saga set in 1401 Lincolnshire; book three of the Tapestry Tales Medieval Sagas)
Kim Michele Richardson, The Mountains We Call Home, Sourcebooks Landmark (return to the librarians and blue people of Kentucky, in a tale of Appalachia and its people, told by the original Book Woman, Cussy Lovett)
Michael Ridpath, Operation Berlin, Boldwood (mystery set in a world between wars)
Michelle St. Romain, Song of Belonging, She Writes (multigenerational novel infused with touches of magical realism about a woman’s journey to find her place in an uncertain world)
Linda Margolin Royal, The Star on the Grave, Sibylline (biographical fiction of the Japanese diplomat who defied his government to save thousands from the Nazis)
Robert Seethaler, trans. Charlotte Collins, The Last Movement, Europa (1910; a portrait of genius, love, and betrayal at the end of Gustav Mahler’s life)
Muna Shehadi, The Jewel of Cairo, Headline (dual timeline cross-generational novel set in Cairo 1915 and 1976)
Gabrielle Sher, Odessa, Little, Brown (in an imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave)
Leslie Shimotakahara, The Breakwater, Cormorant (family saga in which two brothers, both old men not far from death, must at last confront long-buried family secrets — and their lingering effects on subsequent generations)
Jane Smiley, Lidie, Knopf (America, 1857; panoramic portrait of a volatile era and the headstrong women trying to live an honest life in it)
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson, Opposite Sully’s Gym, Dundurn (new case takes out-of-work PI Patrick Bird down a path of intrigue reaching right into the centre of one of the most infamous assassinations of the 20th century)
Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club, Spiegel & Grau/Fig Tree UK/Doubleday Canada (story of a group of women whose fates converge as summer turns to fall and the Depression tightens its grip)
Richard Strachan, Night Fire, Raven (after completing a 30-flight bomber mission, three characters will discover whether they can find peace amongst the devastation of war)
Emily Sullivan, A Murder in Marylebone, Kensington (widowed mother of two Minnie Harper has left Greece and returned to her native England at the turn of the 20th century—just as a cloud of suspicion falls over her younger sister)
Deborah Swift, The Enemy’s Wife, HQ (1941; when Zofia’s husband is conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army, she is left to navigate Japanese-occupied Shanghai alone)
Stephanie Sy-Quia, A Private Man, Grove (slow-burn forbidden love story, laced with passion and faith, set in 1960s Rome and England)
Monica Tewari, Burn the Sea, Bindery Books (historical fantasy that reimagines the Portuguese attacks on South India in the 1500s and the fierce real-life queen’s story)
Mark Thielman, The Firefall, Severn River (special agents Johnson and Nance unravel a historical puzzle from 1938, when a Jewish violinist, fleeing Nazi Germany, disappeared in Yosemite, carrying a secret that could alter the course of history)
Gill Thompson, The Child at the Window, Headline Review (inspired by the true story of two sisters who helped Jewish people escape fascist Germany)
Lyonel Trouillot, trans. Dr. Lena Robles, The Old Woman of Calvary Hill, Schaffner (completes the trilogy and gives voice to the women of Haiti, the true guardians of their country)
Jen Turano, In Pursuit of Civility, Bethany House (a tale of hijinks, humor, and romance at the Merriweather Academy)
Bridget Walsh, The Spirit Guide, Pushkin Vertigo (novel of murder, manipulation and quest for celebrity in Victorian London)
Mollie Walton, The Suffragette of Ironbridge, Mountain Leopard (beginning in 1911, WW1 saga of love, loss, heartbreak and bravery)
Marlie Parker Wasserman, First Daughter, Level Best (1895; blend of fact and fiction where the line between public duty and private anguish blurs in a mother’s fight to save her child)
Pam Weaver, Bright Lights for the West End Nannies, Hera (series follows young women working as private nannies in the swinging sixties)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Bookshop of 99 Doors, Bethany House (a tale of historical hauntings and present-day mysteries, set in 1910 Pennsylvania and a contemporary bookshop)
Zhang Xiaoyu, Twin Lotuses, Magnetic Press (graphic format novel mixes a snapshot of war-torn China with philosophical sci-fi questions, capturing an ugly time and the flicker of hope and love)
Karen Tei Yamashita, Questions 27 & 28, Graywolf (polyvocal history of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War II)
May 2026
Lucy Andrew, A Very Vexing Murder, William Morrow (debut whodunit that reimagines Harriet Smith, the sidekick of Jane Austen’s Emma, as a spitfire con woman, hired to break off an engagement and uncover a murderer)
Laura Anthony, The Forgotten Midwife, Gallery (dual timelines of present-day and 1950s Ireland; a novel of feminism and resilience that follows the life of a young woman consigned to work in a home for “fallen girls”)
Kelley Armstrong, An Ordinary Sort of Evil, Minotaur (next installment of the A Rip Through Time series, set in 19th-c)
Anna Bradley, How to Lose a Laird, Kensington (three unusually gifted sisters in Georgian Scotland must protect their family fortress from those who would steal its rumored treasures)
Kate Lord Brown, The Silver Thread, Simon & Schuster UK (a tale of enduring love crossing oceans, cultures and timelines)
Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Vanishing Point, Apprentice House/Loyola U. (family epic spanning three generations and a hundred years from the 1880s to the 1980s)
Rebecca A. Carter, An Inheritance of Lies, Lake Union (a young woman must navigate societal expectations, and her own independence in the shadow of WWI and the RMS Lusitania’s doomed voyage)
Jan Casey, The Nowhere Sisters, Joffe (wartime historical saga about sisterhood, survival and hope)
Elizabeth Chadwick, The Crownless Queen, Hachette Mobius (second book in the Jeanette of Kent duology, after The Royal Rebel)
Janet Skeslien Charles, The Parisian Chapter, Atria (dual timeline story offers a panoramic view of a real historic institution, and revisits characters from both of Charles’s novels)
Jerome Charyn, Maria La Divina, Bedford Square (novel humanizes the celebrated diva, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness to reach the heights of acclaim)
Eve J. Chung, The Young Will Remember, Berkley (novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War)
David Clensy, The Restless Wave, Sapere (in 1943, twin brothers Romulus and Remus Hutchinson are caught up in the ongoing battle for control of the seas. Book 4 in series)
Rebecca Connolly, Three Queens, Shadow Mountain (Abigail Adams, Queen Charlotte, and Marie Antoinette form an unlikely sisterhood, navigating revolutions, royal pressures, and personal losses as they shape their own legacies)
Martha Conway, We Meet Apart, Regal House (WWII novel set in Ireland 1940, about sibling relationships and magic and belief in the unbelievable)
Tracy Cook, Wings Over Valletta, Allison & Busby (in Malta, 1941, Kitty’s search for her little girl will force her to choose between loyalty to her country and to her child)
Nicola Cornick, The Fourth Queen, Boldwood (time-slip dual timeline based on Anne of Cleves; set in present and in 1539)
Laurel Corona, Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel, Sibylline (16-year-old Idris Hall ran away from boarding school in 1924, changed her name, and joined a decade-long adventure across five continents behind the wheel of a Model T)
H. W. Crocker, Kruger’s Korps, Knox Press (a deadly game of espionage with an American spy behind enemy lines in World War II)
Richard Cullen, Harbour of Thieves, Boldwood (a tale of treachery and rivalry between Yorkshire’s tough smuggling gangs)
Sunyi Dean, The Girl with a Thousand Faces, Tor (a Gothic tale set in a historical Hong Kong that meshes ancient myths and local legends into a haunting story of ghosts, grief, and women who will not forgive)
Sebastien de Castell, Our Lady of Blades, Arcadia (new novel in the Court of Shadows historical fantasy series)
William Demby, King Comus, Vintage (time-bending literary tale weaves elements of the neo-slave narrative and Afrofuturism into a panoramic vision encompassing the forces of empire, race, gender, and religion)
Becky Docton, The Ruins, HarperCollins (debut set in 1937 when Lucie Kyte’s world changes forever during her stay with a distant cousin at The Ruins, the rambling Kyte ancestral home)
Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, A Founding Mother, William Morrow (portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of one president and mother to another, whose wit, willpower, and wisdom helped shape the fledgling republic)
Lesley Eames, A Promise for Tomorrow, Penguin (the Wartime Newspaper Girls series, book 1)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Lady at the Lodging House, Bookouture (in London, 1940, three women must bond together to make it through the war)
Scott Eveloff, The Golem’s Holocaust, Histria (a fusion of history and folklore, where courage, memory, and the human spirit are the ultimate acts of resistance)
Jessica Everett, Last Summer at Maine Chance, Sourcebooks Landmark (by summer’s end, 1954, in Elizabeth Arden’s health and beauty resort, a young woman learns a most important lesson: that her best investment is in herself)
Molly Fader, Lady X, Doubleday Canada (the search for a notorious vigilante exposes the secrets between three generations of women)
Marthese Fenech, Eight Pointed Cross, Rising Action (16th-century Mediterranean epic chronicling the clash between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights of St John. Book 1 of Siege of Malta)
Clare Flynn, The Tea Planter’s Secret, Storm (Ceylon, 1908; Stella Baxter returns to the island that once promised her everything haunted by her father’s death and an assault that left her with a baby)
Kate Foster, The Repentants, Mantle (tale of two women forever bonded in their exile to the world’s most desolate prison)
Mark Frost, The Yankee Sphinx, Flatiron (a novel about one of FDR’s closest wartime advisers and the president’s final days)
Jean Fullerton, A Wartime Promise for the East End Girls, Bookouture (East London, 1943: As air raid sirens wail, the East End Girls join forces to protect their city and the people they love)
Ann H. Gabhart, A Chance for Kallie Mae, Revell (history and romance from the Appalachian Mountains)
Jerry Gabriel, Deserters, Acre (adventure story set during the American Civil War follows four travelers as they escape toward the Western territories)
Emma Garman, The Kindness of Strangers, Summit/S&S/Virago (set in post-WWII London where a stranger’s arrival at a boarding house sets a deadly chain of events in motion)
Rosza Gaston, Queen of Diamonds, Sapere (in The Anne Boleyn Chronicles book 3, Anne finds herself in the service of Queen Claude of France in 1515)
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Said the Dead, Faber/Knopf Canada (in a derelict Victorian mental hospital in Cork, a woman uncovers a chorus of voices which murmur from the archives and old records, stairwells and walls)
Renae Ghrist, I Am Joey, Black Rose Writing (based on true story of Josefina Guerro, a socialite struggling with a severe illness, who signs on with the resistance in Manila in 1942)
John Glynn, The Lost Book of Lancelot, Grand Central (queer retelling of the legend of Sir Lancelot)
Nora Gold, Doubles, Guernica (takes place in 1968 in an institution for troubled youth, and told from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl who is obsessed with math)
Khanh Ha, The Afterlife of a Threadbare Jester, Red Hen (confronts the brutality of Vietnam’s reeducation camps while illuminating the enduring power of memory, loyalty, and the human will to survive)
Liz Harris, The Miller’s Bride, Boldwood (first installment of the McLeod series, set in Scotland, 1885)
Kate Heartfield, Mercutio, HarperVoyager (historical fantasy prequel to Mercutio’s tale, set in 13th century Italy)
Kate Hewitt, A New Home for the Irish Daughter, Bookouture (second book in the Maggie O’Halloran series, about the importance of finding home and following your heart)
Virginia Hume, Liberty Island, St. Martin’s (dual timeline multigenerational novel of love, legacy and belonging, set in 1900 and in 1922)
Conn Iggulden, Inferno, Pegasus/Michael Joseph (third novel in trilogy as Nero faces the last challenges in his quest for ultimate dominion over the Roman Empire)
Anna Jacobs, Hope Comes to Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (new family saga series)
Eloisa James, The Last Lady B, Gallery (witty historical romance with a gothic twist)
Jeff Jones, The Hunt for Boudica, Sapere (Legion of the Damned Roman thrillers book four takes place as the rebellion in Britannia is crushed and Boudica has escaped with her warriors)
Laura Kasischke, The Lifeguard, Red Hen (a novel about grief and ambition, innocence and blame that spools around a Midwestern swimming pool in summer, 1969, and into the future of an America yet to be imagined)
Anne Keer, The Wildness, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (at the dawn of Enlightenment, an ancient oak tree symbolises resistance, wildness and a young woman’s love of nature)
John R. Kelly, The Inklings Detective Agency, Waterbrook (Tolkien, Lewis, and Christie join forces to unravel a deadly conspiracy in a mystery that sweeps from Oxford to London and the shores of Loch Ness)
Stephen P. Kiernan, Pollock’s Last Lover, William Morrow (in New York City, alternating between the 1960s and the early 2000s is the tale of two women whose lives collide as they contend with the art and legacy of Jackson Pollock)
Christina Baker Kline, The Foursome, Mariner (reimagining of a true story features two sisters in 19th-century North Carolina who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam)
Andre Kurkov, The Lost Soldiers, HarperVia (next installment in the Kyiv Mysteries series, wherein detective Samson investigates the sudden disappearance of a troop of Red Army soldiers from a bathhouse)
Dylan Landis, List of All Possible Desires, Soho Press (told in stories, we follow Rainey Royal in 1970s/ 80s Greenwich Village and dip back into the 1940s and 50s to see family prehistory)
Lizzie Lane, Orchard Cottage Hospital, Boldwood (1934; saga series full of community, chaos and charm)
Soraya Lane, The Last Daughter, Bookouture (final novel in the Lost Daughters series; dual timeline setting of present-day London and 1938 France)
Patrick Larsimont, The Hunters and the Vengeance, Sapere (seventh book in the Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers series, following a young RAF pilot during the Second World War)
Dimitry Elias Léger, Death of the Soccer God, MCD (a global soccer star’s epic ride to the 1950 World Cup places him within shooting distance of his dreams and his own death)
Sarah Nicole Lemon, A Dark and Wild Wood, Harper Voyager (inspired by the tale of Bluebeard, a story of a maiden with dark magic who becomes the apprentice to Lord Death)
Julie Lew, The Wives of Herrick Hall, Quill & Crow (two women must confront Herrick House’s curse, but Herrick has already claimed them as its next ghostly brides)
Terri Lewis, When They Came Home, Miami Uni. Press (portrait of a marriage tested by war’s lingering effects and an example of how the deepest traumas can be met by the patient powers of love)
Christina Li, The Manor of Dreams, Avid Reader/S&S (novel about the secrets in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it)
Amy Licence, Crowned Viper, Sapere (Marwood Family Tudor Saga Book 6, set in spring 1533 when Anne Boleyn finally becomes queen)
Mary Logue, A Wasp in the Beehive, Univ. of Minnesota Press (Salt Lake City, 1881: Brigid Reardon is on the case when her new employer is murdered in his home)
Kate Lord Brown, The Silver Thread, Simon & Schuster UK (a tale of enduring love crossing oceans, cultures and timelines)
Elle Machray, Havisham, HarperNorth (a queer feminist reimagining in which Dickens’ infamous female character tells her side of the story)
Eden Maddox, Seal of Rome, City Owl Press (a tale of heroes and villains, set against the brutal beauty of an imagined Ancient Rome at the height of its glory)
Imogen Matthews, The Girl With Two Names, Bookouture (in 1943 Nazi-occupied Holland, a woman works for the Dutch resistance)
Patricia McBride, Make Do and Mend on Petticoat Lane, Boldwood (a dark underbelly lies beneath the lively market on Petticoat Lane, and the girls realise not everyone plays fair in the world)
JoAnn McCaig, Beneficiary, Univ. of Calgary Press (feminist novel weaves the past and the present in a rich tapestry of life)
Eden McKenzie-Goddard, Smallie, Viking (1961 and present day; tale of a family thrown into collision with the Windrush scandal)
Henrietta McKervey, The Woman in the Water, Hachette Mobius (gothic thriller set between 1930s London and the windswept Cornwall coast)
E. S. McLeod, Andromeda, RH UK Bantam (a reclaiming of the most famed and white-washed woman in Greek mythology)
Lindz McLeod, The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley, Carina Adores (sapphic Regency historical romance of forbidden love)
Rosie Meddon, Isabel’s War, Penguin UK (one woman’s attempt to help the war effort from her sleepy Devon village)
Gabrielle Meyer, Into a Golden Era, Bethany House (next installment of the inspirational time crosser dual time line books, set in 1849 San Fancisco and 1929 California)
Simon Michael, The French Vendetta, Sapere (a Charles Holborne Legal Thriller set in France, 1969)
Ben Miller, A Very Dangerous Pursuit, HarperCollins (charged with a quest, Richard Hannay, intrigue-hunter, finds himself in a dangerous pursuit from the confines of the Orient Express to the decks of the Titanic herself)
Alan Moore, I Hear a New World, Bloomsbury (fantasy novel about murder, mayhem, and magic in the Long London series, set in 1958)
Callie Murray, The Brunswick, Revell (an inspirational WWII novel set in the American South)
Ray Nayler, Palaces of the Crow, MCD (speculative novel in which four young teens, caught between Nazis and the Red Army, survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows)
Andie Newton, The Last Flight From Moscow, One More Chapter (in the underbelly of Cold War Moscow, Mae Pierce, once a formidable OSS agent, has found herself once again thrust into a perilous mission)
Matthew Neill Null, Floodgate, Blair (in the 1960s a former West Virginia coal miner encounters corruption and cultural upheaval working on a dam project that will submerge his town)
Jamie Ogle, Daughter of the Rebellion, Tyndale (historical romance in which a young woman imprisoned in a Roman gladiator school becomes a legendary warrior)
Regina O’Melveny, The Sea-Cure, Running Wild (a novel of journeys in the seventeenth century, aboard a merchant ship that also carries misfits and the mad sent away from their towns as outcasts)
S. J. Parris, Rebel’s Gambit, Hemlock Press (when the body of a Scottish envoy washes up on the banks of the Thames, the Queen’s most powerful spymaster, Robert Cecil, is accused of arranging the murder)
Helen Parusel, The Lost Orphans of Lyon, Boldwood (WWII novel set in Occupied France)
M. William Phelps, They Came for Blood, Hat Creek (Western thriller where the trail to the truth runs red and redemption rides a pale horse
John Pilkington, Death of a Fugitive, Boldwood (1595, Bishopsgate Ward, London. Matthew Cutler, constable for the parish of Spitalfields, finds his duties as constable at odds with his gut feeling)
Richard Ploetz, South, Arcade (1960s story about normal people told with enough intelligence and curiosity to remind us how emotional lives are lived under the veil of normalcy)
Stephen Pressfield, The Arcadian, W. W. Norton (as Telamon and others are drawn into a brutal conflict in Spain in 1500s, novel is a tale of war, fate, and the search for release from a cycle as old as time itself)
Francine Prose, Five Weeks in the Country, Harper (novel inspired by the strange friendship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen and set during the summer of 1857, when Dickens’s family life exploded)
Morgan Radford, Now Then, Amistad (dual timeline follows a Harvard student navigating her own path to self-discovery while uncovering her mother’s secret past fleeing the Cuban Revolution)
M. J. Robotham, The Spy and the Snake, Aria (continuation of the Mrs Spy series featuring a heroine who defies societal expectations during the Cold War)
Simon Scarrow and T. J. Andrews, Warlord of Britannia, Headline (AD 43, Britannia; the story of Caratacus, the barbarian king who led the tribes of Britannia against Rome)
Amanda Schiavo, Fire and Faith, Black Rose Writing (a novel of Mary Tudor. Sequel to In Her Own Right)
Kim Sherwood, Hurricane Room, Hemlock Press (the Double O agents make their last stand in this new spy thriller)
Douglas Skelton, A Thief’s Revenge, Canelo (A Company of Rogues book 6–Jonas Flynt returns from the Caribbean to London to claim revenge against an old enemy)
Amanda Skenandore, When No One Else Will, Kensington (based on the true story of an illegal women’s clinic at the center of a high-profile trial in 1940s Chicago)
Daria Sommers, Sawadika American Girl, Vine Leaves, (Bangkok, 1968; the story of a young American woman coming-of-age on the periphery of war)
Lyn Squire, The Séance of Murder, Level Best Historia (last in Dunston Burnett Trilogy in which an oddly-motivated séance held in a Cambridge country house foreshadows a stabbing)
Thorvald Steen, trans. Olivia Lasky, The Valet, Seagull Books (novel that explores how the Fourth Crusade plundered Constantinople and forever changed the course of European history)
Bradley Steffens, The Empty Quarter, Blue Dome (a mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age continues his lifelong pursuit of knowledge in sequel to The Prisoner of Al-Hakim)
Shaina Steinberg, Echoes of Infamy, Kensington (in postwar Los Angeles, former spies Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher dig into shady real estate dealings, murder, and the aftereffects of WWII Japanese American internment)
Daisy Styles, The Factory Girls, Penguin UK (tale of resilience and friendship among the working women during World War II)
Rachel Sweesey, The Lifeboat Girls, Boldwood (saga in which Julia and her friends – Kathy, Flora, and Betsy – are discovering new opportunities for themselves, stepping into a world slowly opening doors to women)
Pamela Taylor, The Abbot, the Knight and the King, Black Rose Writing (a prequel to the Second Son Chronicles when 16th-century printers Henri and Bertrand Dubois find proof that the legend of the lost chronicles of King Alfred is no legend at all)
Sarah Loudin Thomas, These Empty Places, Bethany House (the history of North Carolina is pictured in this literary story of friendship, love, and letting go)
Janyre Tromp, The Scorpion’s Thief, Grafted Page (a political Cold War fantasy with two sisters– one who is guardian of a cursed Egyptian artifact and one who is trying to steal it)
Harry Turtledove, Lightning Runes, CAEZIK (paranormal fantasy set in a post-WWII Los Angeles where vampires, zombies, and demons are part of the social fabric)
Aola Vandergriff, House of the Dancing Dead, Sapere (Christie agrees to a strange bargain but quickly regrets it in this Gothic novel, set in Mexico, 1974)
Ayelet Waldman, A Perfect Hand, Knopf (amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady’s maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of 19th century England)
Megan Walker, The Duke’s Bargain, Shadow Mountain (ruined by scandal, Georgiana bargains with a duke to regain her place. Part of the Proper Regency Romance series)
George Wallace, Don Keith, Darkest Before Dawn, Severn River (in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, four young submariners are thrown into the chaos of war)
Tiffany L. Warren, A Harlem Wedding, William Morrow (novel of the Harlem Renaissance and its most famous Black debutante, Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois)
Lucy Waverley, Noble Beasts, Black & White (1858; story of a famed artist, a scandalous affair, and the beasts that roamed his mind)
Heather Webb, The Hope Keeper, Sourcebooks Landmark (story of the legendary Hope Diamond and the last woman to own it)
Alison Weir, The Boleyn Secret, Ballantine/Headline Review (story follows Kate Carey who, at twelve-years-old attends her aunt, Queen Anne Boleyn to the scaffold convinced she is innocent)
Thomas Wharton, Wolf, Moon, Dog, Pegasus (follows Wolf as he reincarnates through the ages, from Ancient Egypt to Alexandrian Greece to the Cold War, all the way to a dark future beset by climate change)
G. J. Williams, The Assassin’s Mark, The Book Social (March 1570; Elizabeth’s court has just crushed the Northern rebellion in John Dee and Margaretta, book 4)
Clare Willis, The Singapore Secret, Hodder (dual time WWII novel set in England in present day and Singapore 1942)
Anthony Wood, Land of the Blind, Hat Creek (story of one woman’s quest to strike down those who prey on the innocent)
Blair Palmer Yoxall, Treat Them as Buffalo, Algonquin (an anti-Western set in 1885 paints a portrait of a young man coming of age before his time)
June 2026
Chantel Acevedo, Cages, Europa (spanning Havana, London, and Miami, novel explores exile, forbidden love, fractured families and the nature of truth)
Taylor Anderson, Fleet of Ghosts, Ace (alternate history adventure set in the world of the Destroyermen series)
Krystle Zara Appiah, Half Lives, Borough Press (novel about the enduring power of love set in 1970s Ghana)
Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters, Del Rey (with her country’s future and her own life at stake, an orphaned duchess must journey into a world of myth)
Lindsay Jayne Ashford, No Light but the Stars, Lake Union (two women are separated by centuries in a novel about love that transcends time, persecution, and war; settings 1941 and 1606)
Rojé Augustin, The Butcher of Aberdeen, Post Hill (true crime biographical fiction of Katherine Knight, delving into a life shaped by childhood trauma, violent relationships, and descent into madness)
David Baerwald, The Fire Agent, Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday CA (novel of espionage, war, love, and tragedy that redefines our understanding of the first half of the twentieth century)
Helen Bain, The Daffodil Days, Scribner (novel that follows Sylvia Plath through the final year of her life)
Rue Baldry, Dwell, Northodox Press (the story of the developing relationship between two traumatised young men who fall in love with one another across class divisions in England in 1919)
Julie Bates, Fever Pitch, Level Best Historia (book six in the mystery thriller series with widowed tavern keeper, Faith Clarke, set in the Revolutionary War era)
Johanna Bell, The Orphan’s Garden, Hodder (WWII inspirational saga)
Conor Bender, The Wolves of Biscay, Severn River (thriller that explores the shadow war of World War II, where the line between loyalty and treachery is drawn in blood)
Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, A Pair of Aces, Berkley (novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York)
Melanie Benjamin, The Windsor Affair, Delacorte (tells the story of the abdication of Edward VIII—and the two women at the center of it all)
Sophia Benoit, The Very Definition of Love, Piatkus (regency romance about a wallflower writing a dictionary of bawdy slang who arranges her own marriage to the town rake)
Amelia Blackwell, The Haunting of a Brontë, Macmillan (Georgiana Darcy travels through time once more in this sequel to A Crime Through Time)
David Bolton, Whispering Pines, Rare Bird (interconnected stories capture the fragile beauty of ordinary lives in extraordinary moments in post-war Baltimore)
Kay Brellend, Perilous Times for the Match Factory Girls, Boldwood (Victorian East End saga of courage, crime and survival)
Paul Brous, The Undying Lamb, Rising Action (a Robin Hood adaptation that delves into a forgotten corner of history where the line between legend and truth blurs)
Tonya Brown, What the Ocean Brings, Black Rose Writing (love story set on the coast of 19th century Quebec)
David Buzan, Suspension, Black Rose Writing (a standalone action-adventure historical thriller)
Clare Cavenagh, Tillinghast, Borough Press/Viking (literary horror debut, following a priest whose bloodthirsty life has extended far longer than any mere human’s—and is upended when a stranger comes to town)
Anna Cliffe, Wartime for the Flour Mill Girls, Zaffre (in Kent, 1915, with World War I now in full swing, the Graham sisters take on increasingly vital roles at the family smock mill)
Sara Goodman Confino, Off the Record, Lake Union (novel about an aspiring newspaper reporter in 1962 who gets more than she bargained for)
Vivian Conroy, Peril in Positano, One More Chapter (Miss Ashford Investigates series book 7 takes Atalanta into Italy’s Amalfi coast)
Lorna Cook, The Gilded Girl, Lake Union (second book in Secrets of Trelenna House series following The Distant Daughter)
Abigail Cutter, What the Trees Remember, She Writes (coming-of-age tale set in post–Civil War Appalachia, is part suspenseful mystery, and part an examination of this nation’s history of racial violence)
Sam Davey, The Sisters and the Sword, Diversion Books (a dark retelling of Camelot, where magic and destiny entwine with sibling rivalries, forbidden love, and looming rebellion)
Amy DeBellis, The Widening Gyre, Lanternfish (a guilty secret haunts a young widow as she tries to drown her conscience among the glittering lights of 1920s Berlin)
Boman Desai, Brahms Comes to Dinner, Schaffner (novel set in Germany in the mid-19th century tells the story of renowned composer Johannes Brahms and his lifelong friendship and love for Clara Schumann)
Christina Dodd, Teach the Torches to Burn, John Scognamiglio (third installment of Daughter of Montague series finds a poisoner on the loose on the eve of Rosalind’s wedding to Prince Escalus)
Don Donato, The Privateer, Sapere (first in a new series of 18th century nautical thrillers)
Kat Dunn, Rottenheart, Manilla Press (set in the 1890s, this a story of love and grief, mothers and daughters, death and madness, inspired by the revenge tragedy, Hamlet)
Lesley Eames, The Wartime Newspaper Girls, Penguin UK (first book in new WWII saga duology)
Martin Edwards, Hemlock Bay, Poisoned Pen (Rachel Savernake Mysteries #5; when a fortune teller insists he’s had a vision of a murder to occur in Hemlock Bay, Jacob Flint gets Rachel to take on the man’s claim)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Canterbury Cathedral, Allison & Busby (Kent, 1941; a quest to find a killer is hampered when the deadly force of the Blitz strikes very close to home)
Meg Elison, Foundling Fathers, Tachyon (satire of U.S. history and modern technocracy gone terribly wrong, combining history and science fiction)
James Ellroy, Red Sheet, Knopf (Cold War thriller set in 1962)
Laura Evans, Little Wild, Henry Holt/Mantle (debut fairy-tale-like novel of first love, betrayal, and revenge set on a crumbling British estate in Suffolk, 1937)
Malayna Evans, Isis of Egypt, Alcove Press (a feminist retelling about the woman behind one of the ancient world’s most widespread and enduring cults)
Joseph Faulkner, The Tragic Memoir of Prince Katsu Shibayama, Histria (novel sweeps from Japanese royalty to the seas of the Pacific, in a tale of courage, betrayal, and the choices that define a generation)
Kirsty Ferry, The Witch’s Stone, Boldwood (gothic timeslip mystery where the past refuses to stay buried)
Beth Ford, Love Across Time, Wild Rose Press (Ashley and Thomas, a medieval knight, are in 1377 England, escaping from present-day immigration authorities intent on capturing Thomas. 2nd part of duology)
Hester Fox, A Kingdom of Mist and Mourning, MIRA (Regency-era Romantasy in which a young woman’s untimely death leaves her with a wealth of secrets no mortal can hope to comprehend)
Kimberley Freeman, The Secret Year of Zara Holt, Hachette AU (story set in 1927 and 1967, inspired by the life of fashion designer and businesswoman Dame Zara Bate)
Jackie French, The Diamonds of Tilly Devine, HQ (novel about the choices we make and the chances we never dreamed we’d be given 1931; set at the height of the Depression, Sydney, New South Wales)
Kelly Frost, The Racing Line, Atlantic (feminist novel about one woman’s rise as a racing driver in mid-20th-century Britain)
Marius Gabriel, Unti. Book 2, Embla (WWII sequel to The German Daughter)
Shana Galen, A Shop Girl’s Guide to Wooing a Lord, Berkley (1815; a down-on-her-luck shop girl and the son of an earl find they have more in common than they thought)
Amanda Geard, The Glass Key, Headline Review (after discovering a wartime letter and travelling to Norway, Maggie discovers the story of four young women whose lives were forever changed by the WWII occupation)
Julie Gerstenblatt, The Stargazer of Nantucket, Park Row (1850s sea-faring adventure features a husband-and-wife team of merchants as they embark on a record-setting journey to China, battling storms and pirate-infested waters)
Amitav Ghosh, Ghost-Eye, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (magical realism meets 1960s & 70s India in a novel about a girl with mysterious powers and possibly memories of a past life)
Jean Gill, With Raven Wine, 13th Sign (conclusion of the Midwinter Dragon series, a re-imagining of the Orkneyinga Saga)
A. E. Goldin, Death on the Pearl River, Pushkin Vertigo (London, 1856; Ben Canaan, a young detective on the payroll of Her Majesty’s Executive, returns in this adventure mystery set in Hong Kong; sequel to Murder in Constantinople)
Cynthia Gómez, Muñeca, Putnam (1968 Oakland, California; surreal Gothic novel about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress)
Alex Gough, Caesar’s Nemesis, Canelo (fourth book in The Mark Antony series featuring the battle that shook the world and gave birth to the Roman Empire)
Jennie Goutet, A Love Once Lost, Revell (a story of lost love and second chances against the backdrop of Georgian-era Europe)
Claudia Gray, The Fatal Unpleasantness at Netherfield, Viking (fifth book in mystery series set in Jane Austen’s world finds Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney thrown together again by a murder)
Molly Green, Wartime Secrets at the Mayfair Club, Avon (WWII saga)
Jonathan Hammel, The Jewish Hospital, Skyhorse (in wartime Berlin, a young Bavarian nurse named Lena stands at the epicenter of history’s most harrowing moral crucible)
Elizabeth Hand, Unspeakable Things, Mulholland (loosely inspired by Du Maurier’s Rebecca, in which two queer teenager girls in 1920s London go on a killing spree)
Alex Hay, The Midnight Guests, Hanover Square/Headline (novel set in 1923 during the opening of a new Mayfair hotel, where the owner has a dark agenda and a group of guests with their own secrets)
Jane Healey, Crescendo, Bloomsbury/Vintage Digital (novel of obsession and rivalry set in the concert halls and ballet theaters of 1950s France)
Wendy Holden, The Queen’s Painter, Mountain Leopard (traces Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall as seen by Tudor court artist Hans Holbein)
Jasmine Holmes, Our Sister’s Keeper, Bindery/Mareas (blend of historical fiction and Southern gothic psychological horror, with an exploration of Black sisterhood, rage, and resistance)
Robert Holtom, A Morbid Passion, Titan (1930s-set whodunnit features amateur sleuth Selby Bigge, who must solve a murder at Lady Malcolm’s Servants’ Ball in London’s Royal Albert Hall)
Samantha Lee Howe, Flight of the Turner, No Exit (when a priceless family heirloom goes missing, poor relation Mel must find the culprit and the painting, before Lord Jonathan and Lady Laura return home. Sequel to A Thorn in the Rose)
Emily Howes, Mrs Dickens, Phoenix (reimagines this forgotten woman in a novel peppered with her recipes, expanding in scope with the increasing size of her family and the Dickens’ family’s meteoric social ascent)
Anna Lee Huber, A Bitter Cut, Kensington (Lady Kiera Darby is in anticipation of the upcoming nuptials of her brother, when a future in-law is implicated in a murder)
C. C. Humphreys, The Double Life of Eve Sinclair, Doubleday Can (Stockholm, 1939: romantic, suspenseful novel about a female spy who must push herself to her very limits to save herself)
James Hynes, Peacock, Picador (sequel to Sparrow, Jacob, now older and smarter, vies to become a player in the internal politics at Arcadia)
Lee Jackson, Crossing the Rhine, Severn River (late 1944, as Allied forces grind their way toward Germany’s heart, the Littlefield family finds themselves caught in a desperate struggle)
Kevin Jagernauth, The Longest Death, House of Anansi-Spiderline/Soho (a post-war twisted morality tale about what it means to love someone at any cost)
Arianne James, Daughters of the Tide, HQ (weaving historical fiction with folklore and Tasmanian gothic, debut explores memory and self, the resilience of women and a longing for the sea)
Dinah Jefferies, The Lost Chateau, HarperCollins (saga taking place in France, as the Spanish Civil War is erupting just across the border)
Ethan Joella, The Top of the World, Scribner (1975; dual-narrative novel explores sibling relationships, coming of age, and the quiet power of human connection)
Claire Johnson, The Crookedest Street in the World, Level Best Historia (third in the trilogy crime fiction series set in 1930s San Francisco)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, Fool’s Gold, Pinnacle (story of how gold fever turned one small mining camp into a bustling boomtown)
Adele Jordan, The Tudor Vanishing, Sapere (1537; thief-turned-espionage-agent Gwynnie Wightham finds herself at Hampton Court Palace embroiled in a conspiracy)
Kathleen Kalb, A Fatal Flourish, Level Best Historia (Ella Shane’s next adventure at the turn of the century in book 6 in series)
Ben Kane, A Land Aflame, Orion (211BC; military thriller about the struggle for power between Rome and Carthage)
Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Tradition and Treachery, Crooked Lane (botanist Saffron Everleigh’s fifth mystery adventure)
Jess Kidd, Murder at the Spirit Lounge, Atria (in second installment of mystery series, former nun Nora Breen returns to track down a ghostly killer before it’s too late)
Eliza Knight, Lost in the Summer of ’69, Sourcebooks (three generations of women, an unforgettable summer of music, and the epic cross-country road trip they’ll never forget)
Kangkang Li Kovacs, Nothing to My Name, Viking (spanning the past hundred years of Chinese history, this multi-generational family saga explores how women survive the tsunamis of history)
Catherine Kurtz, Feast, Berkley (in nineteenth-century France, a young woman’s new role as poison taster thrusts her into the world of the nobility, where secrets and danger lurk around every corner)
Elin Anna Labba, trans. Elizabeth Clark Wessel, The Home of the Drowned, Univ. of Minnesota Press (multigenerational saga, from 1942 to 1982, of a family of Sámi women fighting the devastation of their way of life as the water their people have lived near for centuries is transformed into a menacing force)
Soraya M. Lane, The Underground Sisters, Lake Union (novel set in Nazi Germany focusing on two sisters, Ava and Hanna, who work with the resistance, against the regime, from within)
Alexandra Lapierre, trans. Tina Kover, The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin, Europa (Australia early 1900s; tells the story of Stella Franklin who reinvents herself again and again across three continents)
Phil Lecomber, The Devil’s Banquet, Titan (1933; Cockney private eye George Harley return to London’s Soho, to investigate a missing cabaret dancer and a child believed stolen by his nemesis, the occultist Professor Morkens)
Natasha Lester, The Chateau on Sunset, Hachette AU/Sphere/Ballantine (blends the Jane Eyre story with the history of the entertainment industry from the 1950s to the 1970s)
Deborah Levy, My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, Hamish Hamilton (in contemporary Paris, a narrator and two companions explore the life and work of Gertrude Stein)
Tom Lin, Babylon, South Dakota, Little, Brown (American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a morally dubious military secret shapes their lives)
Chuck Locklear, A Storm Coming, Histria (novel set in 1710 North Carolina, where a young Tuscarora woman must choose between love and loyalty as colonial forces threaten her people’s survival)
Melissa Marr, A Treason of Magic, 47North (historical fantasy set in the Regency Era follows a female duke who is a faery hunter, tasked with defeating a monster)
Heather Marshall, Liberty Street, Ballantine (novel about one journalist’s journey into an infamous real-life 1960s women’s prison, and the detective who uncovers her story decades later)
Carol McGrath, The Queen’s Sister, Headline Accent (imagines the story of Jane Seymour’s sister, Elizabeth, exploring her life and the Tudor era behind the scenes)
John Winn Miller, Miriam in the Shadows, Bancroft Press (World War II thriller that explores the cost of resistance, betrayal, and survival)
Judy Molland, The Making of a Witch, She Writes (novel tells of young Alice Molland, who must grapple with accusations of witchcraft and the persecution of women with mysterious gifts in turbulent seventeenth-century England)
Coirle Mooney, A Deadly Prank, Sapere (new murder mystery series featuring young Thomas Middleton in Elizabethan London)
Naomi Musch, The Girl from Tomorrow’s Town, Barbour (next installment of the Enduring Hope inspirational historical series, set in the early 20th-century)
André Narbonne, Those Are Pearls, LPGC/Palimpsest (story of a family whose personal passions are woven into the tapestry of world history)
Gosia Nealon, The Vineyard Secret, Bookouture (dual timeline novel set in 1945 and present day when Matylda learns that her grandmother’s will leaves half her land to a stranger)
Rasheed Newson, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood, Flatiron (LGBTQ noir thriller about fame, big money and political freedom)
Stephen O’Connor, We Want So Much to be Ourselves, Bellevue Literary Press (a German psychoanalyst, his Jewish wife, and their young daughter are swept up in the rising tide of fascism)
Karen Odden, An Artful Dodge, Soho Crime (heist novel about an all-female thieving gang and one young woman’s heroic plan to escape a life of crime; set in Victorian London, 1878)
Maggie O’Farrell, Land, Knopf/Tinder Press (historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger)
Randy Overbeck, Abigail Trench, Diversion Books (Revolutionary-era thriller inspired by the lone female operative in Washington’s spy ring in 1776)
David S. Pederson, A Death After Dinner, Bold Strokes (England, 1951; Professor Liam Cuthbert wades through a tangle of secrets and rivalries to get to the truth of why a much-disliked decorator was poisoned)
F. H. Petford, A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer, Hodder (part of The Alma Timperley Mystery series set in 1915)
Kevin Powers, Children of the Wild, Harper (love story set in the Virginia mountains and on the battlefields of World War I France)
Susan Price, American Royalty, Sibylline (1974; against the backdrop of Newport’s transformation from a rundown port to a tourist town, a struggling actor is forced to confront the cost of survival in a bubble of privilege)
Nahid Rachlin, Given Away, Red Hen (portrait of forced girlhood and generational grief reveals the quiet strength of a woman surviving child marriage and motherhood in 1930s Iran)
Anthony Riches, Empire XV: Field of Blood, Hodder & Stoughton (following the Year of the Five Emperors, three are left in the field. A final bloody confrontation between two of them is inevitable)
Vanessa Riley, A Deal at Dawn, Kensington (Regency romance in which a resilient viscountess risks everything for the daughter she loves . . . and the duke she can’t forget)
Kathryn L. Robinson, Under the Tree Ferns, She Writes (dual timeline story reaching across different times, places, and cultures, Eduardo and Pamela find answers about the enigmatic woman who died in 1942 in the El Yunque Rainforest)
Jay Robison, Champion of the Republic, Histria (when a modern scientist is thrust into the heart of ancient Rome, his knowledge could save the Republic or destroy it)
Lisa Rochon, The Paris Thief, HarperAvenue/Headline Review (in wartime Paris, a woman is entrusted with saving the Mona Lisa during the Nazi occupation)
Jane Loeb Rubin, Mayhem in the Mountains, Level Best Historia (in the Catskills, in 1924, the Isaacson family stand their ground, defending their land and each other during a turbulent time)
Michael Russell, The City in Year Zero, Constable (Germany, 1945; when Ireland’s ambassador to the Third Reich leaves Germany at war’s end, Garda detective Stefan Gillespie is drawn into a murder inquiry)
Jennifer Ryan, The Queen’s Coronation, Ballantine (three women working at Buckingham Palace during Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 navigate personal challenges and societal expectations)
Greg Sarris, The Last Human Bear, Heyday (follows Mary, Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, from the Great Depression to the twenty-first century)
Cheryl Sawyer, Murder at Cirey, Sapere (an 18th-century mystery set in France; book one of the Victor Constant Investigations)
Kathleen Schwab, Queenswood, Blackstone (historical and folkloric fantasy adventure set in a 12th-century Ireland still reeling from the Norman invasions))
Bianca M. Schwarz, The Missing Baroness, Central Avenue (first book in The Inconvenient Heirs Series blends mystery, romance, and feminist grit set against the upper crust of Regency London)
Victoria Scott, The Echo of Lost Stories, Boldwood (dual timeline novel set in present day and 1842)
Lisa See, Daughters of the Sun and Moon, Scribner (in the turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles comes the story of three Chinese women who managed to survive and thrive, despite all odds)
Ruta Sepetys, A Fortune of Sand, Ballantine (the daughter of an automotive magnate escapes to an artistic retreat that holds secrets and intrigue; 1920s)
Samantha Silva, Sometime This Century, Harper Perennial (Regency romcom about sisters, time travel, and how Jane Austen just might change your life)
Luanne G. Smith, The Gilded City of Dreams, 47North (1920s Manhattan; historical fantasy in which a young fairy godmother is caught in an evil conspiracy to control her sisterhood’s magic)
Myrtle Henry Sodhi, We’ve Been Here Before, Dundurn (following emancipation in 1800s Dominica, novel explores a series of work-related migrations where women to leave families to work for affluent families)
Naomi Stephens, Don’t Upstage the Body, Bethany House (witty British historical whodunnit and manor house murder mystery set in the 1950s)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Aeronauts, Sapere (book 11 in The Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series)
Matthew Sweet, The New Forest Murders, Simon & Schuster UK (in summer 1944 someone doesn’t want Jill looking into her brother’s circumstances leading to his death tracking a Nazi traitor)
Rose Tremain, The Housekeeper, Chatto & Windus/Vintage (1930s England; fictionalises the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca)
Pam Troy, The Newcomers, Sibylline Press (first novel in a series set on the fictional island of Touperdu, where the lines blur between superstition and magic, legend and history, promises and betrayal)
Maria Turtschaninoff, trans. Annie Prime, Tangled Roots, Pushkin (400-year story of a family and a farm, deep in the magical Finnish forest)
Alexandra Vasti, Scandal of the Summer, St Martin’s Griffin/Corvus (a desperate debutante meets a ragtag smuggler in this latest Regency romp)
Sharon Virts, Bargains of Fate, Flashpoint (based on true events from the American Regency era, sequel to Masque of Honor explores the thin line between power and integrity, love and lust, honor and death)
Katherine Webb, The Promise of Wonder, Lake Union (spanning three decades of late 19th-c, early 20th-c England, is a story of lost love, atonement, and the long journey towards forgiveness)
Pam Webber, Massawa, She Writes (first in a series about the novice female American spies in North Africa and the Mediterranean that changed the tide of World War II)
Josh Weil, What Came West, Doubleday (portrait of an outsider racing toward belonging in 1840s Sierra Nevada, just before the Gold Rush)
Darcie Wilde, The Abduction of Rosalind Thorne, Kensington (Jane Austen-inspired mystery series finds resourceful Rosalind Thorne facing her most perilous predicament yet)
Beatriz Williams, When You Loved Me, Ballantine (a young widow returns to her late father’s New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life)
Jenny Williamson, Game of Thieves, MIRA (Romantasy saga about a Roman Princess and her Goth warlord husband, set in the last days of the Roman empire)
Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvelous Ways, Putnam (set in 1940s Cornwall following the unlikely friendship between an eighty-nine-year-old woman at the end of her story and a young soldier reeling from World War II)
Ovidia Yu, The Tembusu Tree Mystery, Constable (tenth instalment of series of Singapore-set historical mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Su Lin)
Yudori, Lovers of the Empire, Fantagraphics-Takumigraphics (et in the Korean capital in the 1920s, this period piece follows two teenagers from different social strata thrown together to witness emotional, and eye-opening discovery)
July 2026
Rosie Archer, The Field Girls, Quercus (saga about friendship and love in WWII Gosport, 1943)
Laura Lee Bahr, The Knocking, Little A (in a haunted house, the living and the dead pose dangers to a female journalist in nineteenth-century New York)
D. R. Bailey, The Stealth Hunters, Sapere (book 3 of Cooper’s Renegades Aviation Thrillers set in 1944)
Pepper Basham, The Bachelor Spy, Barbour (fifth inspirational Blake and Gracie mystery where they must work together to root out the criminals, thieves, and spies)
Rowan Beaird, Tenderness, Flatiron/Manilla (novel set in the 1970s during an island wedding, where the bride has recently left a sinister cult that might still be trailing her)
Rachel Beanland, The Half Life, Simon & Schuster (a novel set on an Italian island during the Atomic Age about a navy officer’s wife’s reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent)
Angela Bell, A Lady’s Handbook to Gadgets and Guile, Bethany House (witty romp of brilliant women, whimsical gadgetry, and sweet romance set in the Victorian era)
Rebecca Birrell, Venus Vanishing, Picador (debut novel of desire, art, and the stories lost to the darkness of history; set in Berlin, 1928)
D. V. Bishop, Shadow of Madness, Macmillan (sixth Cesare Aldo mystery, set in Tuscany, 1540)
Beth Brower, The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House)
Jan Carson, Few and Far Between, Scribner (an alternate history of Northern Ireland’s recent past where the last remaining residents of a haunted archipelago face imminent eviction from their home)
Eliza Chan, Harbor of Hungry Ghosts, Orbit (historical fantasy adventure where unfamiliar monsters start stalking the streets of Opium War-era Hong Kong)
Chanel Cleeton, An Infinite Love Story, Berkley (time-travel historical romance set against the 1960s back drop of the Space Race, when an astronaut goes missing and his wife attempts to unravel what happened to him)
Catherine Cliff, Miss Bates, Pegasus (re-imagining of an Austen classic from the viewpoint of the misunderstood iconic bore, Miss Henriette Bates)
Donyae Coles, The Sunken, the Adored, Amistad (horror historical fantasy in which a freed slave from America making a new life in 1800 Venice, finds the plague that killed her former master may have followed her to Italy)
Daniel Colter, The Eagle and the Serpent, Sapere (book one the Legion of Rome Military Thrillers series set in Illyricum, AD 7)
Charlotte Cross, The Brides, Hanover Square (dual timeline feminist gothic epistolary horror novel, following the three women who became Dracula’s brides, and the fourth who managed to escape)
Arvind Ethan David, The Great Game, Thomas & Mercer (London, 1905; an outsider in London investigates a series of murders targeting English aristocrats)
Cindy Dees, Mary Wine, Where the Sky Begins, Blackstone (in 1929, twenty daredevil women take to the skies in the most dangerous race of their lives)
Giovanni De Feo, The Secret Market of the Dead, S&S/Saga (Italian-inspired gothic historical fantasy about a young woman who finds her power in the nocturnal realm beneath her town)
Emily Dunlay, The Library of Leaving, Fourth Estate (historical novel about an American librarian in 1920s Switzerland who must face the truth of decisions she made to survive during the First World War)
C. F. Dunn, Legacy of Steel, Sapere (book 4 in The Tarnished Crown series – a Wars of the Roses adventure set in medieval England, during the reign of Edward IV)
Barbara Erskine, The Valley of Ravens, HarperCollins (two women, centuries apart, are bound by fate)
D. K. Furutani, When Mikan Road Was Ours, Atria (debut novel set across four generations of a Japanese American family)
Danielle Giles, Gentle Things, Mantle (tale of deceit and danger set in London, 1668)
Diana Giovinazzo, Daughters of Naples, Alcove Press (Naples, 1940; novel examines the true nature of sisterly bonds and what one will do to survive)
Rosie Goodwin, Our Sweet Violet, Zaffre (family and friendship saga set in Hull, 1905)
Lisa Hall, The Starlet and the Killer Gossip Column, Hera (next installment of the Hotel Hollywood Mysteries)
Kristin Harmel, Meet Me in Paris, Gallery (new novel with several intertwined stories of love, loss, courage, and redemption set over the course of one week in Paris)
Sarah L. Hawthorn, A Fate Worse Than Drowning, Poisoned Pen (queer historical fantasy, set in 1861 Nova Scotia, dealing with themes of sisterhood, and a supernatural bargain with the devil to sink ships)
India Hayford, Days of Sun and Shadow, John Scognamiglio (book two sequel to The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree)
Virginia Heath, Pride Comes Before a Fall, St. Martin’s Griffin (third installment of a witty Regency romcom where a headstrong chaperone is torn between following her principles or her heart)
Jennifer Higgie, Bedlam, Verso (an exploration of the strange and tortured mind of the Victorian artist and patricide Richard Dadd, a painter of fairies who spent most of his life in psychiatric hospitals)
Sara Hinkley, The Red Sacrament, Titan (Paris, 1869; a dive into the lives and deaths of a coven of vampires living in 19th-century Paris on the cusp of revolt and revolution)
Elisabeth Hobbes, The Laudanum Ladies’ Society, One More Chapter (in a London that insists women remain quiet, dutiful, and dull, two unlikely conspirators discover a secret that awakens everything society tells them to suppress)
Rachel Hore, The French Spymistress, Simon & Schuster UK (when two women’s lives collide in early WWII, they are confronted with what they have lost and what they have gained)
Jenelle Hovde, The Light of Stars, Tyndale (Regency romance featuring two souls caught between obligation and a longing to find their true calling)
Tammye Huf, The Colour of Home (UK), Bantam (1941: in a segregated Floridian town, three young Black soldiers go to war; UK title of Inharmonious)
Graham Hurley, Prey, Head of Zeus-Aries (combining espionage and combat, a thriller of the battle for the skies during the darkest days of World War II)
Douglas Jackson, Blood Enemy, Canelo (part of the Warsaw Quartet set in June 1944)
Jeyamohan, trans. Priyamvada Ramkumar, White Elephant, FSG Originals (novel set during the Great Indian Famine of 1878 that recounts its devastating cost to both life and human dignity)
Alan Judd, No. 1 St James’s Park, Scribner UK (a novel set in WWI about the origin of MI6)
M. R. C. Kasasian, The Terror of Tannery Lane, Canelo (whilst visiting an injured friend in hospital, Lady Violet Thorn overhears a young woman accusing a married couple of murdering her parents and stealing their home)
Naomi Kelsey, Pale Mistress, HarperNorth (a psychological thriller of jealousy, gaslighting, ambition and envy, in 16th-century Cyprus)
Jillian Laine, Henry Tudor Must Die, Berkley (England’s most infamous queens unite in vengeance against Henry VIII)
George Lamming, Natives of My Person, Doubleday Outsider (reimagines the age of European exploration to expose the deep scars of conquest)
Ashton Lattimore, Runner, Ballantine (novel set in Prohibition-era Martha’s Vineyard, where a young woman from a Black seafaring family, plunges into the world of rum-running to save her home)
David Lewis, The Paris Chase, John Scognamiglio (World War II mystery in which a Welsh spy who has become one of Winston Churchill’s most trusted agents, is dropped into France to retrieve vital Nazi documents)
Elizabeth Lim, Fishbone Cinderella, Del Rey (a mother and daughter must break their family’s curse through trials of war and immigration, love and loss, in multi-generational saga set in 1940s Hong Kong & 1960s San Francisco)
Rosanne Limoncelli, Death at King’s Cross, Crooked Lane (DCI Lilian Wyles is confronted by a troubling case that only the four queens of crime can help solve)
Catherine Lloyd, Chelsea Girls, Kensington (starring one of Swinging London’s defining figures, Mary Quant, who made history with the miniskirt, slashed hemlines, and transformed more than fashion for a generation)
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Beyond the Edge of Light, Bantam (Munich, 1938; debut novel of conflicting allegiances, the nature of honour, and the unbearable cost of loyalty in a world on fire)
Kerry Maher, Summer of Love, Berkley (three women make life-changing decisions set in motion by the 1967 Summer of Love, shaping the legacy of their family’s Napa Valley winery forever)
Kirsty Manning, Maisy Bell is Missing, Vintage (reporter Charlotte “Charlie” James investigates the mysterious disappearance of a well-connected American tourist at the Ritz Hotel in pre-War Paris)
Scott Mariani, Die for a King, Hodder & Stoughton (a Will Bowman adventure in the wake of the siege of Acre in 1191)
Carson Markland, Men Like Us, Algonquin (with Kennedy family sights set on highest office, Bobby takes the role of the ruthless operative behind the scenes—but can Bobby secure Jack’s success, and at what personal cost?)
Jackie McMahon, The Cloak and Dagger Club, Berkley (London, 1930; a murder among a group of golden age mystery writers turns into a second chance romance for two of them)
Ann McMan, The Malign Ghosts of Summer, Bywater (from postwar Paris to mid-century New York City, novel traces how the pursuit of love can shape a life)
Lily Meyer, Short War, Verve (debut novel explores US imperialism, class, family and identity against the backdrop of an increasingly unstable Chile)
T. L. Mogford, The Saffron Thief, HarperCollins (historical adventure suspense novel, set in 1666)
Santa Montefiore, The Last Encore, Orion (final novel in the Timeslider trilogy, starring Pixie Tate)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Intrigue, Del Rey (noir set in 1940s Mexico about desire, danger, and greed, and in which seduction is the ultimate con)
Boyd Morrison, Beth Morrison, Duel of Beasts, Head of Zeus-Aries (next novel in the Tales of the Lawless Land series, set in Málaga, Spain, 1352)
Marina Nemat, Mistress of the Persian Boarding House, Penguin Can (told in alternating chapters between time in Russia and Iran, this tale tells of the unbreakable bond between women who choose each other as family)
Gaëlle Nohant, trans. Maren Baudet-Lackner, trans. Sophie-Charlotte Buchan, The Bureau of Unknown Fates, Manilla/St Martin’s (novel about WWII’s forgotten objects and the lives they hold)
Anna Normann, The Librarian of Oslo, Allison & Busby (WWII story of a woman who dares to resist, and the heroism that changes the course of lives including her own)
Gerald Ortiz y Pino, Beyond the Edge of the Known World, UNM Press (a family saga set against the backdrop of the Spanish colonial world)
Kurt Palka, The Autumn of Madame Hélène, McClelland & Stewart (story about courage and family, and about difficult decisions with life-altering consequences, set in 1960s Nova Scotia)
Philip Paris, A Fire in Their Hearts, Black & White (tale of love, faith, and survival, inspired by true events of seventeenth-century Scotland)
Kaarina Parker, To Rule a Ruler, Manilla Press (sequel to Fulvia, taking her from tragedy to a powerful legacy she knows she deserves)
H. G. Parry, The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood, Redhook (WWII historical fantasy where dreams come to life and Arthurian legends are reborn)
Tracie Peterson, A Life So True, Bethany House (novel of heartfelt romance, steady faith, and the power of redemption set in 1893 Minnesota)
Jo Piazza, The Parisian Heist, Dutton (dual-timeline mystery set in art-world intrigue and family secrets, betrayal, and the lure of power)
Carolynn Pietrangeli, The Sicilian Daughter, Radius (biographical family saga of carving one’s path in ancestral and present culture, multi timeline – present day and various point in the past)
Mel Pennant, Miss Hortense and the Last Rites, Baskerville (second series mystery finds Miss Hortense and her friends grappling with the question, “What happens when a man who can’t die, dies?”)
Matthew Plampin, These Wicked Devices, Borough Press (in Rome, 1650, thousands of pilgrims flood in for the Holy Jubilee, but behind the gilded façade of the Vatican, power is unravelling)
Michael Pogach, Valhalla Burning, Diversion Books (9th-century Norway; a dark Viking adventure of grief, vengeance, fear, and fate)
Frances Quinn, The Scandalous Ladies Football Club, Simon & Schuster Uk (story inspired by the Victorian trailblazers who showed the world that women can do anything they put their minds to)
Tony Rea, Bouncer’s Buzz Bomb, Sapere (fifth book in the Gus Beaumont Aviation Thrillers series)
Anthony Riches, Swords of Troy, Hodder & Stoughton (first book in a new epic series of ancient myth and historical adventure)
Bora Lee Reed, Song for Another Home, Ink (a story of family separation and reunion, as well as love and war, set during the war between North and South Korea)
Kelly Rimmer, The Story Keeper, MIRA (told across dual timelines, novel weaves a tale inviting readers into the heart of a family’s darkest secrets)
Bruce Rule, The Debutante Detective, Titan (New York City-set mystery that sees Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt, team up with Holmes and Watson to save the president from a kidnapping)
John Searles, Single Girls, Mariner (fictionalization of Helen Gurley Brown’s early years at the helm of Cosmopolitan, and the group of women she took under her wing)
Shylashri Shankar, Scorpion Palace, Canelo (Hyderabad, 1895; nine people find themselves marooned at a house party in Faluknama Palace during a storm; second book in the new Murder in the Deccan series)
Irina Shapiro, Murder on Devil’s Ridge, Storm (Nurse Gemma Bell and her new husband, Inspector Sebastian Bell unravel the murder of a young girl in this Victorian mystery)
Wilbur Smith, Tom Harper, Vengeance, Zaffre (new Courtney Series adventure; book 8 in the Birds of Prey sequence set in Van Diemen’s Land, 1835)
Stephanie Soileau, Should the Waters Take Us, Doubleday (literary debut that follows one family across four centuries, from France to Acadia to the bayous of Southern Louisiana)
Jason Stone, The Beauty of the Days Gone By, Atlantic (1866; a Western frontier novel based on historical events about a legendary cattle rancher and a family torn apart by the violent struggle between Texans and the Comanche and Kiowa Indians)
Lulu Taylor, The Forever Summer, Pan (dual timeline novel of glamour, drama and family secrets, set in Kent 2002 and Germany 1932)
Matson Taylor, Roman Mornings, Scribner UK (novel of hope and healing set between 1952 and 1976)
Victoria Thompson, Ellen Thompson, City of Promises, Berkley (8th book in historical-mystery series featuring Elizabeth Miles, a young con woman who finds herself embroiled in intrigue in turn-of-the-century New York)
Peter Tremayne, Blood on the Wind, Headline (37th Irish super-sleuth Sister Fidelma Mystery set in 7th-century)
S. J. A. Turney, Prince, Canelo (story of the final years of the Roman empire, and the rise of one of her most legendary emperors)
Gabriel Valjan, Four on the Floor, Level Best Historia (book four of The Company Files, set during the Cold War)
Roseanna M. White, The Spy Keeper of Marseille, Tyndale (in occupied France, a woman becomes a spy for the Resistance and rises to lead the largest intelligence operation in the country)
Carolyn Marie Wilkins, Let the Murderer Say Amen, Kensington (during 1920s Jazz Age America, Nola Ann Jackson learns about developing her natural psychic talents from her aunt)
Colby Wilkens, If I Go Down with This Ship, St. Martin’s Griffin (time-travel LGBTQ adventure rom com about taking a chance on love to defy impossible odds)
Daisy Wood, The Secrets of Provence, Avon (dual timeline WWII tale of love, loss and the realities of war)
Bat Ye’Or, Under the Crescent, Skyhorse (from Cairo of the 19th century through two World Wars to the expulsion of Jews from Egypt, trilogy follows three generations of one Jewish family who fight to remain anchored in an unravelling homeland)
James Ziskin, The Prank, Level Best Historia (cautionary tale set in 1968 where a 13-year-old befriends his 7th-grade teacher setting in motion events that threaten to erupt into a full-blown scandal)
August 2026
John Manuel Arias, Crocodilopolis, Bloomsbury (a story of revenge alternating between Seth’s murderous plans and memories of his and his brother Osario’s upbringing)
Jennifer Ashley, Murder in Blackfriars, Berkley (in Victorian London, valiant cook and amateur sleuth Kat Holloway must help the man she loves solve a murder)
Kerry Barrett, The Last Library of Paris, HQ (sequel to The Bookshop of Secrets)
R. G. Belsky, The Mogul, Level Best Historia (about how a sensational front page murder story causes the downfall of a media empire; set in the 70s and 80s when newspapers were at their peak)
James R. Benn, The Ninth Circle, Soho Crime (US Army Captain Billy Boyle is sent to Havana, Cuba, where the murder of an Intelligence Officer thrusts Billy into the city’s criminal underworld)
Tracy Borman, The House of Boleyn, Grove (history of the Boleyn family woven into a novel of ambition, bloodlines, and the opulent and deadly court of Henry VIII)
Rhys Bowen, The Castle in the Glen, Lake Union (a ghostwriter is in danger as she unravels the secrets of a powerful Scottish family; dual timeline 1964 and 1904)
Corin Burnside, Liesel’s War, HQ Digital (Liesel Heinemann, once a promising student of translation, is now is caught in the storm of war as a reluctant interpreter for the Nazis)
Lyn Liao Butler, Under the Ghost Moon, Lake Union (from the martial law era of Taiwan to present-day Kauai, a woman uncovers her family’s secrets in this multigenerational saga)
Claire Carusillo, The Responsible Party, Henry Holt (replete with inappropriately old boyfriends, dubious medical professionals, and a few boats, several women, in several different times, are trying to stay afloat)
P. C. Cast, Queen of Shadow, William Morrow/Magpie (historical fantasy set in the mystical world of the Isle of Skye in 200 BCE, where legends come to life and the Queen of Shadow holds court)
Brinda Charry, Hocus Pocus, Scribner (a young magician travels across the world seeking fame and fortune all the while hiding a secret; set in the 1800s)
George Makana Clark, The Wreckers, Europa (darkly comic, entertaining epic of pirates, con men, and the enduring scars of the slave trade)
Rory Clements, Invitation from a Dictator, Viking (on the eve of war, in Munich, 1937, a royal guest is lured into Hitler’s deadly web)
Marina Closs, trans. Thomas Bunstead, The Depopulation, Bellevue Literary Press (novel set in a 17th-century Jesuit mission in the Brazilian wilderness, where the harmony of their community is abruptly upended by unforeseen events)
Robert de la Chevotiere, The Twelfth House, Erewhon (1794; a vengeful spirit wills itself into existence in a land where people are property, and dreams of freedom incite rebellion against those who profit from slave labor)
Elizabeth DeLozier, The Whitechapel Full Moon Society, Dutton (a novel blending the historical with fantasy and mystery, set in London, 1888, when Queen Victoria reigns and Jack the Ripper terrorises the East End)
Melanie Dickerson, A Mismatch Made in London, Bethany House (a Regency romance brimming with wit and warmth)
Angus Donald, Templar Assassin, Canelo (second novel in trilogy inspired by a true story about an English Templar knight who joined the Mongol horde of Genghis Khan)
Gordon Doherty, The Eagle and the Wolf, HarperCollins (historical adventure novel; Age of Attila, book 1)
Julianne Edwards, Odette Rising, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Pamela Dorman (portrayal of a woman fighting against the limitations of her society, set in 1897 Sèvres, France)
Cathi Fleming, The Nun of Ravensbrück, Hachette Mobius (WWII tale of tragedies and small mercies, of the bonds of women in a world of war, and of how one nun’s courage changed the course of history)
Tim Flood, The Flower of Canaan, Histria (forbidden love sparks betrayal and rebellion in ancient Canaan, forcing one woman to defy gods and tradition)
Megan Frampton, Demons and Diplomacy, Berkley (1851 London; a pact between an ordinary woman and the silver-tongued son of the Devil is all that stands between Britain and all hell breaking loose; book one in new series)
Alex Gerlis, City of Traitors, Canelo (towards the end of the Second World War, a new conflict looms over who will control Europe when the war ends)
Carlo Gibbs, Silver’s Phoney War, Sapere (first book in the Oscar Silver WWII Naval Adventures series; adventures set during the Second World War)
David Gilman, The Knife Maker of Venice, Head of Zeus-Aries (in seventeenth-century Italy, a skilled young artisan must search for his sister after they’re kidnapped by slave traders and separated)
Stephen Greco, The Woman Who Had Everything, John Scognamiglio (biographical novel about love, ambition, resilience, reinvention, and Elizabeth Taylor on set in Italy during the summer of 1967)
Cate Green, The Bookbinder, One More Chapter (bookbinder Léon Fortel has been dedicated to a craft that dates back centuries – lovingly building whole universes before watching his books make their way into the world; but now the books are coming back!)
S. M. Hallow, The Halls of the Dead, Harper Voyager (a queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged Victorian London in 1849)
M. K. Hardy, The Haunting of Avis Lovelock, Solaris (a professional sceptic joins forces with a professional spiritualist in this supernatural Victorian mystery)
Matthew Harffy, Bane of Bernicia, Head of Zeus-Aries (Anglo-Saxon warlord Beobrand must navigate the caprices of kings as he fights for his honour and his life)
Robert Harris, Agrippa, Hutchinson Heinemann/Random House (from his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through conflict with Mark Antony, the battle of Actium, one man has dominated Agrippa’s life; the ruthless Octavius)
Robert J. Harris, Crescendo, Pegasus (Hollywood, 1959; when a struggling mystery writer is hired by Alfred Hitchcock to work on the script for his new film, madness and murder is his reward)
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Rivals at Ashmore Castle, Sphere (fifth novel in the Ashmore Castle series, set in 1905)
Katherine Alexandra Harvey, Green Eye Blue, Vagrant Press (a sensual work of literary fiction spanning the mid-twentieth century, from Newfoundland to New York City)
Anastasia Hastings, Of Devotion and Death, Severn House (cozy Victorian historical murder mystery)
Sarah Hawkswood, A Shroud of Snow, Allison & Busby (as the 1145 winter bites, Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpoll and Walkelin begin a new hunt for a killer of a popular iron & coal trader)
Alice Hoffman, Witches of Cambridge, Scribner (following two young women in 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they become immersed in a mysterious secret group of witches at Radcliffe)
Rachel Hore, The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge, Simon & Schuster UK (interweaves past and present in the environs of the Norfolk Broads in 2010, and in London in the ’40s and ‘50s)
Anna Lee Huber, The Bravest Hour, Kensington (Verity Kent faces her most dangerous challenge yet, in book 9 in series)
Michael Jecks, Crusader’s War, Boldwood (sequel to Pilgrim’s War, set in 11th-century)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, Whiskey Woods, Pinnacle (new series set during the Texas Whiskey Wars, where a proud family of distillers faces off with a ruthless rival)
Mairi Kidd, Newes of Witches, Black & White (rural Scotland, 1629; historical novel set during the Scottish witch trials filled with confessions and betrayal
Karl Ove Knausgaard, trans. Martin Aitken, Arendal, Vintage (1976; a novel about impossible love and about impossible life and a man trying to find his foothold in the world)
Marina Lisa Komiya, On Their Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides Vol. 1, Fantagraphics-Takumigraphics (manga debut follows the lives of two Japanese war brides following WWII)
Nina LaCour, Meet Me in the Garden, Flatiron (novel set in New Orleans, 1944, inspired by the author’s family and tracing the history of the Great Migration)
Veronica Leigh, Eye For An Eye, Level Best Historia (mystery crime series featuring Claire Williams, Lady Sheriff of Ouabache; set in 1930s)
Zülfü Livaneli, trans. Brendan Freely, Serenade for Nadia, Other Press (based on the real-life sinking of a refugee ship during World War II, an elderly professor revisits the city where he last glimpsed his wife)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton Takes the Waters, Kensington (Caroline and Mrs. Frogeron go to Bath England where some old lady friends share rental apartments and one of them ends up murdered)
Olesya Lyuzna, Liars in Paradise, Mysterious Press (with five days to clear her partner’s name, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in 1925)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, trans. Margaret Jull Costa, trans. Robin Patterson, Memorial de Ayres, Liveright (a domestic drama set on the cusp of Brazil’s abolition of slavery)
Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at Rosecliff, Kensington (1903; when a party crasher is found dead in a fountain during a soiree in Newport, newspaper editor Emma Cross Andrews must clear her own society reporter from suspicion of murder)
Jennifer McMahon, Stay Buried, Gallery (dual timeline queer folk horror in which a woman must confront decades of secrecy and superstition to learn the truth about her mother’s death)
Val McDermid & Jo Sharp, This Door of the Seas, Polygon (novel based on the Darien Venture, the singular event at the end of the seventeenth century that fundamentally altered Scotland’s future)
Fauzia Musa, The Strangling Fig, Juniper (novel about how understanding our past can pave the way for a hopeful future; set in Hyderabad, 1946 and California, 2002)
Ava Miller, The French Resistance Hotel, Hodder & Stoughton (France, 1940; one woman will risk all to save refugees from the Nazis)
Vanessa Miller, The Ladies Hall, Thomas Nelson (1880s Ohio; a mirror into times of great change, where progress is met with violence and resistance but hope always rises)
Téa Obreht, Sunrise, W & N (three lives more than one hundred years apart in the small town of Sunrise; set in 1902, 2003 and 2024)
Barbara O’Neal, A Thousand Painted Hours, Lake Union (novel about love, art, and survival spanning 1900s colonial India to Blitz-era London)
Lizzie Page, The Girl Who Took Flight, Bookouture (air hostess Lola has made her home in the skies, starting afresh, but when her past comes calling it may destroy all she’s worked for)
Alan Parks, Deception, Pegasus/John Murray (in New York City, 1941, the head of the Japanese intelligence section is murdered, and detective Joseph Gunner finds himself in a world where no one can be trusted)
Andrea Penrose, Murder at Somerset House, Kensington (when a murder occurs within the scientific community of Regency London, Lord Wrexford and Charlotte are the perfect pair to unravel it; book 9 in series)
Ginger Pinholster, The Train to Santa Fe, Regal House (imagines the impact of the railroad’s arrival in northern New Mexico, tracing one family’s story across generations)
Kevin Powers, Children of the Wild, Atlantic/Harper (love story set in the Virginia mountains and on the battlefields of World War I France)
Alex Preston, A Stranger in Corfu, Pegasus Crime (reimagining of a real, hidden slice of the British Intelligence Service’s history)
Ellen Rachlin, Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands, Histria (fusion of history, myth, and female leadership that challenges how we see the past)
Markus Redmond, Blood Rising, Dafina (blend of supernatural horror and alternate history where a vengeful vampire tribe wages war across the Southern colonies; Province of Carolina, 1710 & Western coast of North America 1711)
Mandy Robotham, The Compass, Sphere (love and long-kept secrets set against the backdrop of the era-defining 1976 European heatwave)
Gareth Rubin, The Waterfall, Simon & Schuster UK (four interconnected mysteries take the reader from Shakespeare’s day to a 19th-century Gothic former Priory, to 1920s Venice, and finally to 1940s California)
Anthony Quinn, The Millionaire Waltz, Abacus (in London in the 1920s, a young woman treads the path between danger and desire)
Riley Sager, The Unknown, Dutton (in 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it’s happening again)
Del Sandeen, These Walls Remember, Berkley (when two estranged sisters inherit a home possessed by the horrors of its dark past, they must work together to survive; setting early 1900s and contemporary Savannah)
Lauren Lee Smith, The Night Pool, Blackstone (historical horror set in the Gold Rush West, where three women must battle monsters both human and inhuman to survive)
Laraine Stephens, The Bathing Box Murders, Level Best Historia (Melbourne 1928; a storm topples a beach bathing box revealing the graves of a successful businessman, and his wife, Hope. Reggie da Costa series)
Christine Hill Suntz, The Heiress and the Woodsman, Tyndale (Canada 1837; on the road into the Canadian wilderness, Charlotte Carruthers and Joshua Robertson become reluctant allies in a race to save their brothers)
Jodi Taylor, A Family Affair, Headline (time-traveling adventure with Lady Amelia Smallhope & butler Pennyroyal)
Will Thomas, For Services Rendered, Minotaur (Barker & Llewelyn #17, set in London, 1896, where Barker’s world is upturned when his longtime nemesis turns up with evil on his mind)
Terrie Todd, The Reluctant Healer of Halifax, Barbour (inspirational story set around December 6, 1917, when the Halifax harbour was leveled by an explosion)
Alistair Tosh, The Sons of Carthage, Sapere (adventure set in 219BC; the first of The Lion and the Eagle Roman Thrillers)
Louisa Tregere, A Fatal Love, Bloomsbury UK (1955 based on true story; as Ruth Ellis awaits her trial, she recollects growing up in England during WWII and events that led to the death of her lover, David Blakely)
Simon Turney, Agricola: Conqueror, Aria & Aries (Agricola returns to the scene of his greatest exploits, but to achieve glory he must vanquish his greatest foes yet)
Laura Jensen Walker, The Postmistress of Puddlington, Severn House (WWII fiction in which postmistress, Hester, and her fellow citizens of Puddlington are determined to do their bit for the war effort)
Rose Warner, A Christmas Proposal, Canelo (saga about a woman who must make her own way after losing her fiancé and brothers in the Great War)
LaToya Watkins, The Book of Chuck, Penguin (triple timeline novel, set in Texas and spanning decades, investigates the bonds and boundaries of family, generational inheritance, and the power of belonging)
Shirley Perez West, Dreams of Earth and Sky, Lake Union (a ranchero’s daughter in 1845 California fights for her home)
September 2026
Heather Bell Adams, Starring Marilyn Monroe as Herself, Fugere Books (an alternative look at Marilyn Monroe living past 1962)
I. M. Aiken, Captain Henry, Flare (centuries and continents apart, two American soldiers deploy in the years after “mission accomplished”—only to discover a land far from peace. Set in 1870 Georgia and 2006 Baghdad)
Tamera Alexander, In These Hills, Tyndale (a young suffragist on the run in 1905, finds more than refuge in the hills and hollers of Tennessee)
Tasha Alexander, Murder on the Sacred River, Minotaur (1908 and 1740; Lady Emily chases down a killer in India along the banks of the sacred river Narmada)
Natalie Appleton, Mad Hell-Rush of Days, NeWest (Saskatchewan, 1891; a lyrical, unconventional novel that gives voice to the unheard in a long-forgotten world)
Kate Atkinson, Our Noble Selves, Doubleday (in summer 1951, foreign correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn’s attempts to resume a romantic life founder when one of his dates goes missing)
Sebastian Barry, The Newer World, Viking (set against the rapidly shifting landscape of 19th century America, this is a novel about what it is to survive)
Ron Base, Midnight at the Savoy, Douglas & McIntyre (Priscilla Tempest Mystery, Book 5, set in the glamorous world of 1960s London high society)
Toni Bellon, The Cost of Sin, Histria (historical coming-of-age novel that exposes how silence, faith, and family shape a young girl’s understanding of truth)
Hasanein Ben Ammou, trans. William Granara, The Foreigners’ Quarter, Interlink (novel of mid-15th century Venice and Tunisia)
Tanaz Bhathena, Witch Daughter, Grand Central (a retelling of the tragedy of Tamineh; a tale of love and loss in ancient Persia)
Remington Blackstaff, The Durbar’s Reckoning, IPG/RIZE (five years after the Battle of Katsina, in 17th century Nigeria, Isa is ready to join the elite order of durbar warriors)
John Boyne, The Weight of Angels, Henry Holt (alternate fiction asking, rather than dying in penury, what if Wilde had lived to bear witness to the events and changes of the first part of the 20th century, and even influence some of them?)
Denise Derya Brandt, Istanbul Dreaming, She Writes (novel set in 1950s Turkey about a young woman who flees an arranged marriage to pursue independence in Istanbul, where she finds forbidden love with an American airman)
Deborah Carr, Witchbane, One More Chapter (1640, Jersey; in a world where witches burn, loving the enemy is the most dangerous magic of all)
Sara Z. Carson, Dark Messiah, Navigator (story of a teenage girl and her mother caught in the web of a cult leader in 1975, whose optimistic vision of hope descends into apocalyptic horror in the jungles of South America)
Anne Charnock, Alston Moor, Goldsmiths Press (epic novel set on the North Pennine Moors interweaves story from 1548 with one in the present day)
Meg Clothier, In the Shadow of the Solstice, Wildfire (feminist reimagining of Arthurian legend set in the dark and dangerous years after the Romans left Britain)
Philippe Collin, The Barman of the Ritz, Scribner/Transworld (a celebrated bartender at the Ritz Hotel, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, harbors a dangerous secret)
Patrick deWitt, Dodge City, Ecco (novel about a young man on an amphetamine-fueled cross-country road trip, fleeing the draft for the safe haven of Canada)
Neil Denby, Evocatus, Sapere (seventh book in the Quintus Roman Thrillers series: historical military adventures set in Ancient Rome)
Tananarive Due, Mazywood, S&S/Saga (multigenerational literary thriller following the grandson of a famous Black actress from the 1940s and 1950s, who returns to his grandmother’s cabin retreat only to encounter the legacy of her rage)
Emily Dunlay, The Library of Leaving, Harper (historical novel about an American librarian in 1920s Switzerland who must face the truth of decisions she made to survive during the First World War)
Eric Dupont, trans. Peter McCambridge, The Colour of Time, or the Incredible Story of Mary Gallagher, Esplanade Books (larger-than-life family saga juxtaposing the supernatural and real worlds into a unique blend of magical realism)
Cynthia Ellingsen, Until the Last Day, Lake Union (the fate of two strangers becomes part of the history of a celebrated painting in a novel of suspense and forbidden love)
Mario Escobar, Library of Forbidden Books, Thomas Nelson (inspiring story about the power of books and the ideas inside them as inspired by the true events of the Berlin book burnings during World War II)
Sebastian Faulks, Farewell to Eden, Hutchinson Heinemann (a novel about faith in all its forms, and a portrait of an embattled post-war Britain)
Lucy Foley, Agatha Christie, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, HarperCollins (On a rare holiday abroad for Miss Marple, someone is found dead, and a snowstorm descends on the hotel)
Mariah Fredericks, Murder on 34th Street, Minotaur (1932; novel about a fictional murder mystery at the Macy’s parade leading up to the holidays in historic NYC)
Diane Freeman, A Christmas Guide to Family and Murder, Kensington (a country Christmas in Victorian England takes a murderous turn in this mystery featuring Frances Hazelton, the former Countess of Harleigh, and her husband, George)
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Said the Dead, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (in a derelict Victorian mental hospital in Cork, a woman uncovers a chorus of voices which murmur from the archives and old records, stairwells and walls)
Cathy Gohlke, Every Given Day, Tyndale (inspirational historical novel weaving together the discovery of insulin and one woman’s fight to cling to her family and hope)
Matt Goldman, The Prohibited, Univ. of Minnesota Press (brings to life 1920s St. Paul, a haven for bootleggers, gangsters, and bank robbers, but also home to many ordinary folks navigating a new social order)
Rosie Goodwin, The Winter Bride, Zaffre (third book in the new Rags to Riches Trilogy)
Scott Gould, Beneath a Fallen Sky, Regal House (portrait of fear, faith, and the resilience of hope when the world seems poised to end; set May 1910 as Halley’s Comet hurtles towards earth)
Ryan Graudin, Bright and Broken Things, Redhook (a young scholar may be the key to an ancient Egyptian artifact coveted by magicians in novel set amidst the Egyptology craze of 1920s London)
Michelle Griep, Belle’s Christmas Carol, Bethany House (a Dickens-inspired holiday romance novella)
Max Hastings, Plunder, William Collins (story of the last forty days of World War II)
Kate Heartfield, The Sword Master, Solaris (fantasy following Françoise de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, a minor nobleman’s daughter, who travels to Paris and becomes embroiled in a war between shapeshifters and vampires)
Alice Hoffman, The Witches of Cambridge, Scribner (follows two young women in 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they become immersed in a mysterious secret group of witches at Radcliffe)
Charlie N. Holmberg, Lady of Uncanny Charms, 47North (19th-century Victorian fantasy; book 5 of Whimbrel House series)
Rupert Holmes, Where the Truth Lies, Avid Reader (novel will wine and dine you in whimsical company, all the while luring you into a labyrinth of ever-sharpening bends and darkening corners)
Terrence Holt, Soldiers & Sailors, Liveright (recounts the struggles of a doctor as he confronts the ghosts of his gruesome past)
Leslie Howard, Shades of Emily, Douglas & McIntyre (commissioned to buy a painting at auction, Cassie’s life becomes entwined in the experiences of artist, Emily Carr, sending echoes back and forth over a century)
Angela Hunt, Unwavering Heart, Bethany House (a biblically inspired story of motherhood, love, and God’s everlasting faithfulness told through Rebekah)
Micaiah Johnson, The Unhaunting, Putnam (gothic horror set in Mississippi, present day, and the American South during various historical time periods)
Ben Kane, Cannae, Orion (historical epic brings the ancient battle to life amidst fear, madness and brutality of Cannae, one of the bloodiest battles; set in 216 BC)
Linda Kass, World News from Waverley High, She Writes (1969; coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history)
Kathleen Kaufman, Beyond the Graves Waits Mist and Sea, Kensington (on the fictional Bell Island, microbiologist Harper Hafdótti discovers the 1690 journal of a young woman in the grips of a religious cult)
Joseph Kertes, Sirens, LPGC/Stonehewer Books (hiding in a coffin beneath barn floorboards, a sixteen-year-old Roma boy named Gabriel evades Bulgarian and German marauders in wartime Greece)
Terry Kirk, Plunder, At Bay Press (Frank Cork is back as World War II rages across Europe, and the fate of Britain is hanging by a thread)
Gwendolyn Kiste, In These Gilded Ghostly Hearts, Creature Publishing (holds up a dark, queer mirror in a haunting exploration of the obsession at the edges of the American classic The Great Gatsby)
Stephanie Koens, Daughters of the Wreckage, Thomas Nelson (dual timeline inspirational story brings to light the connection between a woman in 2018 and a haunting story in Amsterdam 1628)
Nancy Kress, The Queen’s Witch, 47North (historical fantasy that reimagines the life of Anne Boleyn from the lens of the witch who helps guide her in courtly rise)
Grace Krilanovich, Acid Green Velvet, Two Dollar Radio/Seven Stories (in late 19th century on the central California coast, two wayward young hobos threaten to kill a man who wronged them)
Ariel Lawhon, The Pirate Queen, Doubleday (adventure inspired by the life of Grace O’Malley, an Irish sea captain and folk heroine who risked everything to protect her people against the Elizabethan regime)
Mary Lawson, Solace in Winter, Knopf Canada (winter, 1969; as the Vietnam War drives young men across the Canadian border, widower Jack’s quiet life is overturned by two accidents that happen on the bend in the road into town)
Isabela Livino, An Immaculate Deception, Dutton (debut gothic horror set in 1870s Brazil—a young pregnant woman is unable to escape her lover’s isolated family home)
Mikolaj Lozinski, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, My Name is Stramer, Pushkin (novel following an ordinary Polish Jewish family in the years preceding the Second World War)
Carol MacLean, Land Girls of the Highlands, Canelo (in WW2 Scotland, Molly Robinson signs up for the Women’s Land Army and is none too pleased when her mother insists she take her older sister along)
Madeline Martin, A Time of Witches, Hanover Square (dual timeline story set between 17th-c witch trials in England & present day)
Regina McBride, The White Deer, Green City (summer 1879, on his way to Moscow to study medicine, 19-year-old Anton Chekhov spends a few weeks in the Ukrainian countryside with a friend)
Diane C. McPhail, The French Innkeeper’s Daughter, Kensington (1718; exiled from her home in France, a young woman journeys through Normandy, to pre-Revolutionary Paris, and to her destiny as one of the founding mothers of Louisiana)
Amy Patricia Meade, An A-List for Murder, Severn House (1940s cozy featuring Evelyn Galloway, Hollywood script supervisor turned sleuth)
Dana Mentink, Murders in the Marquee, Love Inspired (cosy historical murder mystery set in a San Francisco hotel, where a trio of amateur sleuths must uncover a killer before another guest checks out for good)
Jean Menzies, The Lady of the Lake, Michael Joseph (sapphic romantasy reimagines intrigue and betrayal at the court of Camelot)
Joanne Merriam, Aether and Ego, Inanna (a steampunk retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with the addition of space travel, dogs, and accidental death, set in 1845)
China Miéville, The Rouse, Pan Macmillan (decade- and continent-spanning story investigating a personal tragedy, when ordinary woman stumbles on dark conspiracies and provokes the attention of uncanny forces)
Madeline Miller, Mestra, Ecco (novella reimagines the forgotten myth of Mestra, the gifted daughter of the King of Thessaly)
Louisa Morgan, The Faerie Handmaid, Redhook (Arthurian historical fantasy where a handmaid to the most powerful priestess must travel to the land of the fae to break the curse haunting the new king of Camelud)
Kevin C. Morris, Untamed Coast, Ballantine (told across three timelines; a story of determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection)
John Mutter, Fortune and Glass, Left Field (philosophical spy novel, a love story, and a meditation on moral choice set inside the gathering darkness of WWII Berlin)
Diego Muzzio, trans. Rahul Bery, The Eye of Goliath, Pushkin (in 1920s Edinburgh, war veteran Dr. Edward Pierce develops experimental therapies to treat mentally ill patients whose cases have been rejected by conventional psychiatry)
Tristan Nettles, The King: A Bronze Age Tale, Histria (continues the saga of the shepherd destined to become a king)
Andie Newton, The Housewives of Atomic Lane, One More Chapter (historical novel based on the author’s own family history)
I. V. Ophelia, The Cannibal, Simon Maverick (third book in the Victorian gothic romance series about a botanist who kills unsavory men, and the one man who’s resistant to her deadly poison)
Mattea Orr, The Last Telegram of Mrs Hudson, Aria & Aries (first in a new mystery series that reimagines Sherlock Holmes’s mother and her lady’s-maid-turned-investigative-partner)
Dimosthenis Papamarkos, trans. Siân Valvis, Gjak, Peirene Press (in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War, young men return from the battlefield, forever changed; their interconnected stories are woven into a portrait of a world in violent transition)
Elaine Hume Peake and Don Keith, Goodnight from Berlin, Severn River (tale of moral courage in the shadow of victory; A Call to War, book 3)
Jed Pearl, We Never Called It Frisco, Coffee House (novel about the art, artists, and their relationships in the countercultural movement of the 50’s and 60’s)
Cathy Pegau, A Deadly Entanglement, Minotaur (follow-up to A Murderous Business, where two women’s determination challenges the cost of greed and the price of failure; set in turn-of-the-century NY)
Robert G. Penner, Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell, McNally Jackson (alternative history set as the Old Empire of sails, slavery, and spices transforms into the New Imperialism of steam and scientific racism)
Andrea Penrose, Murder on Threadneedle Street, Kensington (Wrexford and Sloane’s investigation turns more fraught when one of their closest friends falls under suspicion and the deeper they probe, the more treachery comes to light)
Amanda Peters, The Birthing Tree, Catapult (novel follows one Nova Scotian indigenous woman’s journey to protect the land, the traditions, and the memory of the women who came before her)
Barbara Pronin, A Moon at the End of the World, Black Rose Writing (WW II adventure, a coming-of-age story and a love story that stretches from Nazi-occupied Holland in 1944 to contemporary times)
Weina Dai Randel, The Lost Kingdom of Daughters, Lake Union (in 1950s China, a woman’s passions for two American brothers spell love and lust, jealousy and betrayal)
Rebecca Chamian Ribaudo,Crossing Division Street, Skyhorse (100-year family saga and the true history of Little Sicily and Cabrini-Green, where generations struggled through the defining events of America’s twentieth century)
Vanessa Riley, Murder in St. James’s Park, Severn House (Regency mystery series featuring a smart and fearless mixed-race aristocratic heroine with a notorious family history)
A. Rushby, All Her Beautiful Deaths, Berkley (gothic tale in two timelines in which the lives of two women intersect through a series of photographs of the dead)
A. Rushby, All Her Beautiful Deaths, Verve (dual-timeline gothic mystery inspired by the macabre world of Victorian death photography)
Gabriella Saab, The Survivor’s Guild, Harper Muse (when the Titanic sinks, wo women’s paths are fused together as one saves the other’s life and they are unexpectedly charged with the smallest survivor—a baby boy)
Michelle Sacks, Dancing at the End of the World, Red Hen (century-spanning collection of interconnected stories which trace Berlin’s history through the lives of its inhabitants, integrating survival, reinvention, and the echoes of trauma)
Antonio Scurati, M: The Ascent to Power, Harper (vol. 2 of trilogy follows the 1930s as Benito Mussolini transcends his youth as a small-time newspaperman, agitator, and socialist to become the charismatic Il Duce)
Mengxi Seeley, Silk and Sensibility, Shadow Mountain (retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility set in Ming-dynasty China)
Theresa Shea, Dog Days of Planet Earth, ECW (weaving environmental and political issues of the mid- to late-20th century, still relevant today, novel asks what we’re willing to risk for our personal convictions)
James Slater Simmons III, A Ghost Among Magnolias, Lanternfish (in the midst of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, a young woman, guided by a mysterious specter, grapples with the past and future of her influential Black family)
Lauraine Snelling, Kiersti Giron, Fair Are the Meadows, Bethany House (a heartwarming story of frontier life and the love and faith that sustain through trials)
Marivi Soliven, Taxi Dancer, Red Hen (novel that illuminates the hidden world of Depression-era Filipino taxi dance halls, weaving a forbidden interracial romance with a high-stakes murder mystery)
Julian Spalding, Beauty: Botticelli in Florence, Pallas Athene (speculates on the people, experiences, and events that might have informed Boticelli’s work)
Molly Sturdevant, The Sleepers, Regal House (July 1893; a story of shifting loyalties, loss, and the transformation toward collective power, Congress’ s gold standard sends silver plummeting)
Sarah Sundin, Twelve Days and Twelfth Night, Revell (a World War II Christmas novella)
Nancy Taber, A Cove of Witches, Acorn Press (companion to A Sea of Spectres, a fast-paced adventure full of folklore, history…and witches)
Sherry Thomas, The Vanished Sister, Berkley (Charlotte Holmes becomes entangled in a puzzling missing person case that hits close to home for her beloved Mrs. Watson in this Victorian-set mystery)
Elaine Thomson, Saltwater, Sphere (set on the Isle of Stroma, 1896, second in a quartet of ghost stories set in the wilds of Scotland)
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, Scribner (Oklahoma, 1921; the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself)
Friday Turner, The Country House Murders, Thomas & Mercer (Polly Hope Mysteries book 1; where Polly, an art expert and dog lover investigates in wartime England, 1941)
Oless Ulianenko, trans. Olha Rudakevych, Stalinville, Harvard Ukrainian Research Inst. (set in Kyiv in the post-Soviet Union years, a portrait of a society emerging from decades of violence, repression, and moral ruin)
Fiona Valpy, Sisters of the Midnight Sun, Penguin/Doubleday Canada (two women, decades apart, are torn apart by grief but brought together through hope; set in Shetland 2001 and Norway 1940)
M.G. Vassanji, The Apparition, Doubleday Canada (blending historical with speculative fiction in 13th-century, this novel is an exploration of the rise and fall of empires)
Itamar Vieira Junior, trans. Johnny Lorenz, Saving the Fire, Verso (novel blends the intimate journeys of the characters with faithfully rendered elements of Brazilian life, permeated by the spectre of colonialism)
Bo Wang, The Chinese Lady, HarperVia (debut immortalizes the life of the first Chinese woman to be brought to the United States in the 1800s)
Martha Waters, Spellstruck, Atria (in an alternate 1920s London, an enemies-to-lovers rom-com about the owner of a speakeasy supplying magical drinks and an enforcer of the ban on magic who must team up when potions begin to go awry)
Katherine Webb, The Echo of Loss, Lake Union (Hallewell book #2, set in England 1902, features a marriage built on lies and a long-buried crime)
Helen Wecker, The Gates of Midnight, Harper (conclusion to trilogy after The Golem and the Jinni takes readers to 1930 New York)
Christine Wells, The Lost Perfumes of Paris, William Morrow pb (set against the backdrop of mid-century Parisian glamour and the art of perfumery, a tale of love, and pursuit of passion)
Kate Westbury, The Oxford Guide to Scandal & Lies, Minotaur (set against the backdrop of post-WWII Oxford University, debut layers mystery, romance, and a dash of academia)
Jeff Wheeler, The Last Harbinger, 47North (a princess and her entrusted protector must save a world on the brink of revolution in this historical fantasy)
Susan White, If These Walls, Acorn Press (novel set in the 1940s, during a post-war housing crisis)
Tracy Wise, Manufacturing a Duchess, Type Eighteen (a tale of ambition, affection, and aristocracy in the Regency era)
Carl Wistreich, My Lethal Obsession, Post Hill (confronts the eternal hatred one group has faced throughout history, using modern-day fictional characters and real people and events for the earlier generations)
Guzel Yakhina, trans. Polly Gannon, Eisen, Europa (literary portrait of Sergei Eisenstein and the radical dream of cinema)
October 2026
Jeffrey Archer, Adam and Eve, HarperCollins (WWII novel follows two children born on Armistice Day 1918 whose birth marks the end of one era of war while their love will affect the outcome of another)
J. S. Barnes, Ebenezer Scrooge: Ghost Hunter, Titan (London, 1850; the more Scrooge uncovers of the mysteries at the Fell house, the more he risks awakening the ghosts of his past, present, and of things yet to come)
S. J. Bennett, Death on the Royal Yacht, Zaffre (1966; Queen Elizabeth is touring the Caribbean aboard Royal Yacht Britannia, when her new diary secretary is found dead; book 6 in Her Majesty Investigates series)
H.W. “Buzz” Bernard, Five Days in June, Severn River (June 1944: One weather forecast will determine if D-Day succeeds)
Sian Ann Bessey, When You Rescued Me, Shadow Mountain (clean suspense and romance in the heart of eighteenth-century London)
Ryan Burruss, American Crow, Counterpoint (1952, Maryland; beneath a new suburb carved from the echoes of war, an old hunger stirs, awakened by an itinerant stranger whose gifts reveal what the town has tried to bury)
Colleen Cambridge, Death Down the Aisle, Kensington (when a murderer brings mayhem to a wedding, Agatha Christie’s housekeeper, Phyllida Bright is on hand to sweep up the mystery)
Susannah Clarke, The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City, Bloomsbury (fantasy in which Ranulf, Bishop of Durham understands that the survival of the Northern English people depends on to uniting the human and fairy race)
Mary Connealy, The Heart’s Most Wanted, Bethany House (a new action adventure in the Rocky Mountain Marshals series)
C. J. Cooke, The House of Cursed Daughters, HarperCollins (gothic fantasy novel of witchcraft, curses, and female resistance set in historical Spain)
Andreina Cordani, The Murders of Christmas Past, Zaffre (a killer stalks the streets of London, murdering Christmas-hating misers, a mystery only reformed penny-pincher Ebenezer Scrooge can solve)
Connilyn Cossette, Throne of the Heavens, Bethany House (the early years of King Saul’s reign come to life in this biblical-inspired tale)
Matt Cost, 1955, Level Best Historia (a private investigator historical mystery set in Raleigh, NC in 1950s)
Dilly Court, The Midwinter Daughter, HarperCollins (first of two-part series weaves a tale that follows the lives of two spirited sisters navigating the world of a traveling circus)
Jocelyn Cullity, The Nurse at Baker Hospital, Regal House (mystery story explores a dubious cancer hospital in the 1930s and exposes medical fraud)
Anjet Daanje, trans. David McKay, The Song of Stork and Dromedary, Scribe/FSG Originals (a literary mystery and meditation on love, life, loss, and the inexplicable nature of time, inspired by the life and work of Emily Brontë)
Fiona Davis, Samantha: The Next Chapter, American Girl (next chapter of Samantha Parkington’s story–now an adult searching for justice after her legacy is stolen in New York City in 1920)
Kat Dunn, Rottenheart, Zando (set in the 1890s, this a story of love and grief, mothers and daughters, death and madness, inspired by the revenge tragedy, Hamlet)
Alysandra Dutton, The Stolen Women, Park Row (a case of missing noble women and a young warrior who sets out to bring them home in an ancient historical set just before the founding of Rome)
Rosa Kwon Easton, Red Seal, Lake Union (the journey of a single Korean mother and her son over four decades as they struggle to build a life together in Manchuria, Soviet-occupied North Korea, and a newly democratic South Korea)
Jim Eldridge, The Museum Detectives’ Christmas Mystery, Allison & Busby (a Christmas mystery framed in art and murder in London, December 1906)
Courtney Ellis, Flyweight, Blackstone (inspired by Annie Newton, London’s first female boxer, a story of the strength, defiance, and resilience of women in an ever-changing post-war England)
Lyndsay Faye, Raven, Mysterious Press (an orphaned young woman in antebellum Maryland is pulled into a maelstrom of passion, pain, and occult power)
Blair Fell, The Two Wills, Alcove (late 16th-century; novel explores romance, both on the page and between the lines, where no love is ever really lost—especially when you are the “master mistress” of the greatest writer in history)
Katie Flynn, The Winter Fair, Penguin (love finds a way in Liverpool, 1919 in this inter-war family saga)
Suzanne Fortin, The Secret Nurse of Paris, Embla (WWII story of one ordinary woman’s bravery as she is faced with the ultimate choice, and the sacrifices she must make)
Kathleen Carr Foster, The Jewel of Corlivo, Erewhon (the day after her debut as an apprentice courtesan in Corlivo, Anna finds a letter which will be the key to finding love, friendship, and the greatest adventure of her life)
Kathleen Fox, Evie Walters Takes the Wheel, Lake Union (a widow to take a cross-country journey and explores her memories of the family ranch and childhood dreams and now second chances)
Dayle Furlong, Unto the Day, Dundurn (life changes dramatically for suffragette Anne Brown after her husband’s assassination in spring 1880)
Catherine Gillard, An Incidental Nazi, Histria (follows lives scattered across continents during World War II, where music offers both hope and escape)
Bruce Graham, Ruby Johnson, Pottersfield Press (with the new Angus L. Macdonald Bridge as a backdrop to Halifax’s postwar prosperity and a symbol between the past and the future, Ruby takes charge of her own life to become rich)
Philippa Gregory, The Royal Witch, William Morrow (the story of Eleanor Cobham who was tried and convicted for witchcraft and was almost certainly a practising witch)
Jody Hedlund, A Marriage by the Sea, Bethany House (new historical romance series following a family of sisters living on an island in Maine)
Jenna Helwig, The Foreign Correspondent’s Wife, Crooked Lane (set in post-WWII Paris, the wife of an American foreign correspondent stumbles on the body of her murdered classmate)
Grace Hitchcock, To Win a Wager, Kregel (Regency-era enemies-to-lovers romance set in the Scottish Isles)
Jenny Holiday, Brown-Eyed Earl, Kensington (romantic comedy featuring three Regency-era Earls on their annual trip)
Silas House, The Tulip Poplars, Algonquin (novel spanning 20th century; four people try to find happiness outside of conventional choices – a story of race, class, sexual desire and being good when you’re told you are evil for loving who you love)
Damion Hunter, Hadrian’s Eagles, Canelo (Emperor Hadrian has ordered Britain’s frontier pulled back to more a defensible line; so a great wall, splitting the island in two, is commissioned)
Nneoma Ike-Njoku, The Water House, S&S/Summit (1967, Nigeria; a Gothic tale where a young Nigerian woman returns to the family mansion where her brother died)
Sabrina Jeffries, Mary Jo Putney, Anna Bradley, A Cinderella Christmas, Kensington (Regency romance Christmas stories)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, A Preacher Christmas, Pinnacle (legendary trio of Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk team up to take on a not-so-jolly night raider; a seasonal western)
Jonas Jonasson, trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles, Algot, Anna Stina and the Water of Life, Fourth Estate (adventure of friendship, love and ingenuity, set in 19th-century Sweden)
Stephen Graham Jones, Off the Reservation, S&S/Saga (novel shines light on the dark corners of this country’s history when an activist group plans to repatriate the bones of a Blackfeet boy who was sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School)
Susan L. Katz, Pole Dancers at the Red Barn, She Writes (spanning the 1940s through the 1980s, these fourteen interconnected stories about mothers and children explore how intergenerational conflicts are confronted and resolved)
Mary Beth Keane, Whale Harbor, Scribner (from 1960s Ireland, this multi-generational saga follows eleven brothers torn apart and set on different paths between Ireland, England, Montana, and New York)
Julia Kelly, The Queen of Roses, Gallery (a novel of love and sacrifice set in California 1960 and 1903)
Natalie Kikic, The Haunting of Lavender House, Park Row (dual-narrative alternates between a young woman, whose family is cursed, and a healer centuries earlier, who both fight to be accepted by their homeland)
Stephen Kimber, Traitor’s Game, Nimbus (first in a series of character-driven World War II noir detective mysteries set in Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Lisa Kleypas, Queen of Lombard Street, Avon (Victorian novel about a trailblazing female economist who’s determined to build Britain’s first women’s bank)
Elizabeth Kostova, Mystery Play, Ballantine (epic tale takes us deep into the Gilded Age of the theater and across the Atlantic in pursuit of an ancient evil and its dramatic followers)
Sophia Kouidou-Giles, Ariadne, She Writes (a retelling of a bold, resilient woman from Greek myth)
Yiyun Li, Music Against the Night, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (19th-century saga following two musicians as they mature, study, travel, love, grieve, and, above all, chase their ambitions)
Hannah Linder, Tenderly Betrayed, Barbour (a Gothic-style Regency romance)
Will Maclean, Solace House, Grove (puzzle box of a novel following a group of university students who discover an astonishing secret while clearing out a neglected Victorian mansion)
Edward Marston, The Corpse on the Bristol Train, Allison & Busby (the final case for the Railway Detective series)
Amanda Mason, The Dark, Manilla (seaside folk horror novel set against the blackouts of the 1970s)
Catherine Mathis, Leonor, Histria (in 1367, one woman’s hunger for power will set Portugal ablaze, unless she’s devoured first)
Robin Blackburn McBride, River of Dreams, Guernica (coming-of-age in which Avery Conlon grows from a vulnerable young girl to a strong woman taking charge of her fate, in this tale of self-discovery and romance set in Toronto 1914)
Clara McKenna, Murder at Pellhurst Pond, Kensington (Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst and his wife Stella, dive into a new investigation after discovering a body in a pond on the estate of a man rumored to have killed his wife)
Kelly McWilliams, American Nightmare, Crown (a light-skinned Black man goes undercover to investigate lynchings in the Jim Crow South)
Nicole M. Miller, All We Carry Home, Revell (a historical romance weaves through a story of post-World War II resilience full of equestrian passion)
Rowena Miller, The Dancer and the Dream Thief, Redhook (a dancer finds herself at the center of a bootlegging scheme run by elfin creatures in this Prohibition-era historical fantasy)
Keith Moray, Justice of the Peace, Boldwood (3rd in the Ralph de Mandeville medieval murder mystery series)
Cindy Morgan, The Dogwood Gospel, Tyndale (1954; a talented young trick rider finds unexpected community in a traveling carnival, only to discover secrets in the shadow of the Big Top)
Trudy J. Morgan-Cole, Beyond the Brightening Sea, Breakwater (set against the harsh backdrop of seventeenth-century Newfoundland, three women struggle to find freedom)
Heather Morris, The Piano Teacher of Montparnasse, Blackstone (in 1942, the Nazis come for a Jewish family living in the Montparnasse as the eleven-year-old daughter escapes to the only person she can trust: her piano teacher)
Claire North, As We Fall Through Time, Orbit (a tale of time travel, betrayal, and love that echoes through the centuries)
Lance Olsen, An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies, Dzanc (a lyrical novelization of an artist’s solitary, disembodied life, in a series of recollections at the end of his life in 1973)
Katie Ortiz, The Southern Sorority of Superstitious Witches, Alcove (three women weave together old Southern folklore and magic to fight sexism and educational discrimination in post–Civil War Alabama)
Laura Purcell, Thorns in the Hollow, Magpie (Tabitha’s world is thrown upside down when her cousin dies in a hunting accident)
Shouhua Qi, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Shanghai Press (saga of stratagem, intrigue, and empire set 2000 years ago)
Patricia Raybon, The Sedalia Code, Tyndale (a young woman struggles to rise above her dirt-poor beginnings and outsmart a Nazi threat on U.S. soil during WWII)
Katherine Reay, The Undercover Bookshop, Harper Muse (following her instincts learned through fiction, Gemma Cameron becomes embroiled in an international intrigue involving her Cotswolds village’s mysterious benefactor)
SJ Rozan, John Shen Yen Nee, A Warning to the Curious, Soho, (a missing shipment of weapons for China and the murder of an aspiring scientist kickstart a dash through the world of seances, prizefighting and cutting-edge technology)
Tom Ryan, Return to Breakneck Island, Atlantic Crime (dangers past and present collide on the rocky shores of Breakneck Island as the real story emerges of the disappearance of the MacLearys in 1932)
Shannon St. Hilaire, The Hanford Necklace, She Writes (dual-timeline family saga, set in a Manhattan Project town, about a granddaughter who uncovers her grandmother’s nuclear-age secrets and her own toxic inheritance)
Marina Scott, My Darling Girls, Lake Union (historical horror ghost story set in 1904 Chicago where a crime family’s request for a final portrait of their daughter Millie, stirs up a spirit that refuses to rest)
Joanna Shupe, The Gilded Rose, Avon (retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set against the opulence of Gilded Age New York)
Natasha Siegel, Chateau Reverie, William Morrow (set amidst the final days of the French Revolution, a fairytale full of horrors and wonders: both a romance and a speculative mystery)
Alex T. Singer, Angel Country, S&S/Saga (in an alternate 1904, a xenobiologist hunts down her former research partner after he steals her life’s work in this cosmic horror story)
Paul Smith, The Women of Ravensbrück, The Book Social (Sarah Rothstein a Jewish book keeper, Marie Laurent a French resistance fighter, Zofia Nowicki a Polish nurse, are thrown together in a crucible of suffering)
Wilbur Smith, David Churchill, Flashpoint, Zaffre (new installment in the Courtney saga set in 1943, America and 1946, Kenya)
Suzanne Stauffer, French Toast a la Santa Fe, Artemesia (in 1929 New Mexico, Prudence Bates and her fellow Detourists puzzle out a mystery on the Fred Harvey Indian Detour from Las Vegas to Albuquerque)
Neal Stephenson, D: Heavy Water, William Morrow/Borough Press (second installment in the Bomb Light series—set on the eve of World War II, as nations race to find and control a substance critical to building atomic weapons)
Karen Swan, The Winter Guest, Penguin (dual timeline winter romance set in Paris 1961 and present day Lake Geneva)
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, Scribner (Oklahoma, at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford, an infamous moonshiner and womanizer, seems to have crossed the wrong person at the wrong time)
Kim van Alkemade, The Upstate Dispatch, William Morrow (a grieving writer who sets out to revive an abandoned bookshop in upstate New York discovers forgotten letters that reveal the shop’s secret sapphic history)
Various, Sherlock: Stories, Atria (ten new original Sherlock Holmes stories)
Nghi Vo, The Scarlet Ball, Tor (historical fantasy in which a former convent girl, courtesan, and thief, takes on the secrets of New York’s Gilded Age Four Hundred by impersonating a missing heiress of a powerful family)
T. I. M. Wirkus, A Bad Deal in Mormon Land, Type Eighteen (it’s 1908, and an itinerant spirit medium takes on a mysterious job offered by a religious extremist in Salt Lake City)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Resurrection of Evania James, Bethany House (dual timeline Gothic suspense that brings together a historical tale and a modern-day mystery)
Stephen Wright, Black Moon, Little, Brown (inspired by the 18th-century Irish pirate Anne Bonny, and featuring a heroine of ambition, intelligence, and insatiable appetite)
November 2026
Tessa Afshar, The Palace Spy, Bethany House (finale to the Queen Esther’s Court series unveils a glimpse into Esther’s life beyond the well-known story)
Robert Archambeau, The Bloomsbury Forgery, Regal House (sequel to Alice B. Toklas is Missing where Ida must rely on a band of artists, heiresses, and dealers, to save a historic home, her family, and her sanity)
Jess Armstrong, The Lost Souls of Saint Oda’s, Minotaur (1923; as Ruby Vaughan unfurls a mystery, she finds missing souls and a secret that has been simmering at St. Oda’s since the Great War)
Megan Basham, The Vesalius Club, Ark Press (a Georgian thriller of action, mystery, and suspense, set in 1761)
Kimberly Bea, Stitching Nettles, Erewhon (feminist fantasy retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale “The Wild Swans”, set in late 16th-century Germany)
Hemley Boum, trans. Nchanji Njamnsi, The Resistance, Two Lines Press (1950s Cameroon; a chapter of nonviolent political resistance suppressed by the official record, chronicles the sacrifice of fighting for freedom larger than yourself)
William Boyd, Cold Sunset, Atlantic (third literary thriller starring spy Gabriel Dax draws readers into a world where loyalty blurs, treachery abounds, and any misstep could be fatal)
Alan Bradley, Numb Were the Beadsman’s Fingers, Doubleday Canada/Bantam (episode 12 in the Flavia de Luce Mystery series)
Jonathan Coe, Lessons in Harmony, Penguin (In 1907 composer Maurice Ravel is at the centre of a group of rebellious artists and takes on British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams as a new pupil, the beginning of a deep friendship)
Celeste Connally, Murder of a Merry Gentleman, Minotaur (fourth installment of the Regency-era Lady Petra Inquires mystery series, set in London, 1815)
Rebecca Connolly, Webs of Ink, Shadow Mountain (in 1920s London, “Lady Detective” Maud West enlists newly published Agatha Christie to covertly investigate a dangerous mystery)
Andreina Cordani, A Scrooge Mystery, Pegasus Crime (Ebenezer Scrooge strays from the path of goodness and starts seeing ghosts again)
Nina de Gramont, Peregrine Hill, Simon & Schuster (a novel set in Gilded Age New York about a mother and daughter navigating a world built on men’s appetites and women’s silence)
Stuart Douglas, Sherlock Holmes & the Christmas Murders, Titan (seasonal mystery in which Holmes and Watson must discover the connections between a series of Christmas-themed murders in London)
Charles Finch, Midnight in the House of Commons, Minotaur (amateur sleuth Charles Lenox investigates the murder of a Parliament member in high society Victorian London)
Amanda Flower, The First Ladies’ Guide to Murder, Kensington (set amid Gilded Age-era Washington, historical mystery series debut features the capital’s most influential women as they band together with a common goal)
Amy Lynn Green, The Home Front Sisters, Bethany House (a Little Women-inspired novel set against the backdrop of World War II)
Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time, Penguin/Pamela Dorman (second mystery follows Ali Dawson, the time-traveling detective, on her newest foray into Victorian London)
Annie Groves, Christmas Bells for the Three Sisters, HarperCollins (WW2 historical fiction novel; book 4 in series)
Donna Hill, Nola and Baldwin, Amistad (set during the end of the Great Depression, and shaped by real-world events, is a tale of a love powerful enough to overcome the dark forces of racism)
Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Other Kind of Lion, Lake Union (a war widow and a neglected boy form a chosen family in a multigenerational saga about the transformative power of kindness, set in 1970s California)
Kevin Jagernauth, The Longest Death, Soho Crime (a nod to ’50s pulp noir, a heist thriller and chronicle of the life on the margins of the postwar American dream)
Ayize Jama-Everett, Yote and Kavita, Rosarium Publishing (in 1967 a preacher reshapes belief into obedience, whereby Yote, Kavita, and Hannibal form an alliance which must decide what community demands and what sacrifice can truly redeem)
Allyson Johnson, The Three Lives of Mary Sutton, She Writes (debut novel shows a grittier side of the Gilded Age as two young women struggle to find their own way in 1880s New York)
Flora Johnston, The Berlin Passport Office, Allison & Busby (Berlin, 1938; Corran and Frank Foley, head of the Passport Control Office and spy, put their lives on the line to help individuals and families flee Germany)
Mary Beth Keane, Whale Harbor, Scribner/Phoenix (multi-generational saga inspired by the author’s own family history, following eleven brothers set on different paths between Ireland, England, Montana, and New York)
Vanessa Kelly, Murder at Enscombe Park, Kensington (when Emma Knightley visits her pregnant friend Jane and her husband at their Yorkshire estate, a country house party soon becomes the site of a ghastly murder)
Shauna Lawless, Son of the Serpent, Head 0f Zeus-Ad Astra (second volume in Gael Song: Era II, sees invaders mass on Irish soil, kings lose their crowns, and Ireland’s immortals discover new magical powers; set in winter 1169)
Samir Machado de Machado, trans. Rahul Bery, The Mystery of the Good Nazi, Pushkin Vertigo (locked-room murder mystery set on a zeppelin bound for Brazil from Nazi Germany in 1933)
Natalie Marlow, Death Comes as a Shadow, Baskerville (May 1935; a respectable spinster is dying and her last wish is to be reconciled with her estranged sister and she believes detectives William Garrett and Phyll Hall can help)
Gracie Marsden, Bones of Jade, Flesh Like Ice, Viking (a young woman makes a bargain to give up love– that sets her on a dark journey in this historical fantasy, set in 11th-century Taiwan and inspired by Taiwanese myth)
Craig Melvin, Mrs Mackerel and the Poisoned Pasty Puzzle, Allison & Busby (cosy mystery set in 1958, when television personality cook, Mary Mackerel, must leave London in a hurry as public affection for her curdles)
Robbi Neal, With Winter Comes Darkness, HQ Fiction AU (1975 psychological suspense when an accident burns down a family’s life on the same day a murder is committed)
Chinelo Okparanta, This Impossible Life, Mariner (a journey of crime and betrayal, misunderstanding and misfortune, spanning continents and decades: from Nigeria to the United States to Italy)
Cheryl A. Ossola, How Long a Shadow, Cennan (historical fiction rooted in labor history and the lived experience of immigrant women; set in 1903 Barre, Vermont)
Frances Park, Ahn Love, Penguin (a reminiscence of the summer of 1969 and the Ahns’ seven-day cruise across the Pacific)
S. J. Parris, The Midwinter Martyr, Hemlock (novella in which Giordano Bruno, heretic, philosopher and spy, is on the run from the Inquisition in Venice 1576)
Tracie Peterson, Devoted to Love, Bethany House (hearts are tested as America edges toward World War I in this finale to A Minnesota Legacy trilogy)
Terrie Petree & Hollands, After the Wolf, Arcade (in mid-19th century the growing Latter-day Saints movement is hounded beyond the boundaries of the frontier by ex-believers and opportunists)
Anna Rasche, The Cursed Diamond, Park Row (dual-timeline mystery that follows two women, a century apart, connected by a cursed gemstone believed to provide good fortune to its owner at great cost)
Orit Raz, The German Officer’s Secret, Histria (in a city under siege, a stolen identity and a forbidden love collide in a story of survival, courage, and the cost of trust)
Abigail Rose-Marie, Between Breaths, Lake Union (in the 1930s, two women defy societal norms and pave the way for a medical breakthrough)
Shelly Sanders, The Night Witches, HarperCollins (full description forthcoming)
Simon Scarrow, The Sword of Rome, Headline (Cato and Macro return armed for the 25th installment of the Eagles of the Empire series)
Jeff Shaara, The Unfinished Work, St Martin’s (beginning with his election in 1860, through his pivotal address at Gettysburg, novel reveals the man who refused to let deep divisions and conflicting emotions sunder the country itself)
Irina Shapiro, A Murder in Belgravia, Storm (a Gemma and Sebastian suspenseful Victorian mystery full of power, poison, and deadly secrets)
Mario Theodorou, Felix Grey and the Seven Assassins, Wilton Square (second novel in historical crime series, combining political intrigue, real historical figures, and a high-stakes assassination plot)
Gemma Tizzard, The Nightingales of Boston, Gallery (the lives of three women collide in the wake of Boston’s 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire)
G. J. Williams, The Nun’s Kiss, The Book Social (fantasy mystery blending Arthurian legend with historical crime)
Meg Wykes, Sunshine, At Bay (set in Toronto’s historic Junction area and spanning three generations of a troubled family, novel offers an intimate glimpse of life at its most fragile beginning at the end of WWI)
James Zwerneman, Magog: A Novel of the First City, Diversion Books (follow-up to Uruk: A Novel of the First City, this continues the historical adventure series set in ancient Mesopotamia)
December 2026
V. S. Alexander, The Voyage, Kensington (brings a new perspective to a story that still resonates today — a young couple and their Newfoundland dog set sail on the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage)
Bernard Cornwell, Unti. (Uhtred), Harper (returns to the early days of Britain in a new tale featuring Uhtred, the beloved character from The Last Kingdom series)
Angela K Couch, War-Torn Love, Barbour (a post-WWII era romance set in 1946, Colorado)
Sally F. Cutler, Ruth in Shadow and in Light, She Writes (a novel of family secrets and a young Jewish woman whose search for truth leads her to discover the complex and redeeming power of love)
Pia Ghosh-Roy, And I Am the Arrow, Indigo (an exploration of memory, inheritance, and the invisible threads that bind generations together)
John J. Gobbell, Across the Black Water, Severn River (a new Cold War ignites in the Pacific—and the Ingram family is caught in the crosshairs once again)
Sara Herchenroether, The Murder of Harry Houdini, Little A (a broken WWI veteran joins Harry Houdini to expose fake mediums in 1920s New York)
Sherrilyn Kenyon, All Things Hidden, Blackstone (a supernatural historical fantasy thriller set during WWII)
Julie Klassen, The Widow of Woodlark Cottage, Bethany House (mystery romance set in Regency England)
Snorri Kristjánsson, Broken Banner, Solaris (third and final instalment in the humorous historical fantasy series about a secret order of Roman monster-hunters)
Paula Lafferty, Keeper of the Grail, Erewhon (2nd book in Arthurian series following The Once and Future Queen)
A. M. Linden, The Challenge, She Writes (The Druid Chronicles, Book Five; series finale that follows a Saxon sheriff and a Druid priest as they join forces to save an imprisoned princess and bring a homicidal king to justice)
Jordan Mechner, illus. Etienne Le Roux, illus. Loïc Chevallier, Liberty, Magnetic Press (historical graphic novel that dramatizes the true story of the covert French operation to aid the American Revolution)
Rosie Meddon, Veronica’s War, Penguin UK (WWII saga; next in The Fairlight Series)
Julie Mulhern, A Crime of Fashion, Forever (1920s historical mystery that follows Freddie Archer as she solves crimes surrounded by real-life celebrities of Broadway and the Harlem Renaissance)
Dale Neal, Floodmarks, Regal House (novella delving into the story behind and the apology demanded by a reader, after the Asheville newspaper mistakenly listed her among the dead in the Flood of 1916)
Phong Nguyen, The Three Daughters of Annam, Grand Central (story set in Viet Nam that reckons with history and the impact of three women upon subsequent generations)
Gaëlle Nohant, The Bureau of Unknown Fates, St Martin’s (a novel of loss and restitution in and after wartime)
Walter Vennett, Sayla Is My Name, Regal House (Civil War tale of courage, resilience, and the struggle to claim one’s humanity in a world determined to deny it)
Carissa Weiser, For the King, William Morrow (fantasy ties Arthurian legend into a kaleidoscopic journey through time, perspective, and the trappings of one’s own destiny)
Jenny Williamson, Game of Thieves, Silhouette (enemies-to-lovers romance set in the last days of the Roman empire)
2027
January 2027
Sara Ackerman, The Volcano Keeper, Harper Muse (1980s story of a woman determined to uncover the 1940s secrets of her family and the island she calls home)
A. D. Bell, The Bookbinder’s Code, St. Martin’s (sequel to The Bookbinder’s Secret, set in 1903)
Eleanor Buchanan, The Moonstone Sister, Headline Review (dual timeline second instalment of The Sea Stone Sisters series, combining magical realism with a family saga)
Grant Buday, Ugly John, Biblioasis (a novel based on the life and times of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister)
Yasushi Inoue, trans. J. Martin Holman, The Death of a Certain Woman, Transit (stories from rural prewar Japan that speak to the moment of childhood when the world of adults is as seductive as it is forbidden)
Susan Elia MacNeal, Last Mission to Paris, Minotaur (in London, 1966, three women, covert operatives during WWII, and the daughter of a fourth, search for the long-buried truth about the betrayal behind the wartime death of a fellow agent)
Faith Martin, Murder Among the Spires, HQ (book four in the Val & Arbie Mysteries, set at Oxford University in 1927)
Mattea Orr, The Last Telegram of Mrs Hudson, Head of Zeus-Aries (first in a new historical mystery series that reimagines Sherlock Holmes’s mother and her lady’s-maid-turned-investigative-partner)
S. J. Parris, Rebel’s Gambit, Hemlock (1601; when the body of a Scottish envoy washes up on the banks of the Thames, the Queen’s most powerful spymaster, Robert Cecil, is accused of arranging the murder)
Alexis Schaitkin, Two Lives, Celadon (novel about the fate of two children sent to the English countryside to escape the onset of World War II, and the aftermath of the decisions they made there)
Sally Smith, A Case of Fear and Favor, Raven (Gabriel Ward KC returns in the third installment of the cozy British mystery series, set in Edwardian early 20th-century)
Benjamin Taylor, The Cloud of Knowing, Turtle Point (composer Rafael Bogenschine killed himself at the height of his fame in 1967; his 90-year-old wife Francie, having fended off would-be biographers for decades, finally decides to cooperate with one)
February 2027
Ronald H. Balson, Last Train from Budapest, St. Martin’s (1944; suspenseful tale of courage, brotherhood, and the fight for a future beyond fear; inspired by real historical heroes with a determination to do good and overcome evil)
Caitlin Devlin, The Prettiest People, Lake Union (dual timeline tale explores the impossible choices women faced in an era when loyalty could be as dangerous as betrayal)
Lucy Diamond, The Storytellers, Headline Review (a battered trunk might hold the key to the secrets that bind four women together across the decades)
Sarah Domet, Everything Lost Returns, Flatiron (story of two women separated across time but united by the arrival of Halley’s comet; set in 1986 and 1910)
F. H. Petford, A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Untimely Death, Hodder & Stoughton (third instalment in the Alma Timperley Mystery series, a quirky paranormal cosy crime mystery set pre-WWI)
Johanna van Veen, The Literary Remains of Cornelia Feyen, Bloomsbury Archer (lighthearted epistolary novel that intertwines Dutch faerie folklore with a sapphic love story)
Clare Whitfield, The Last Handmaid, Head of Zeus-Aries (gothic historical thriller inspired by the alleged most prolific female serial killer – set in 1604 Hungary)
Evie Woods, The Heirloom, HarperCollins (on the wild coast of Ireland, an ancient heirloom helps two people to unlock secrets of their past as they discover that their story began four centuries ago)
March 2027
Marie Benedict, The Witch of Wall Street, St. Martin’s (the story of Hetty Green, a self-made woman and the richest woman of the Gilded Age)
Michael Bible, The Terrible, Dalkey Archive (Russian past and the American present blur through the delusional confession of a man claiming to be Ivan the Terrible’s brother)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, A Whiff of Scandal, Minotaur (Molly Murphy returns with her first investigation under her own detective agency)
KJ Charles, The League of Lost Souls, Tor (gothic fantasy set in the 19th to early 20th-century England)
Phyllis R. Dixon, Notes from Beale Street, Dafina (when their family matriarch dies in 1980s Memphis, two sisters battle over her legacy, only to discover her long-hidden history in 1940s Tupelo and an unexpected connection to Graceland)
A. B. Dozier, Honor, Blair (unravels the murder of a young woman within the world of organized crime in 1920s Baltimore)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Vatican, Allison & Busby (the renowned detectives Daniel and Abigail Wilson are asked to investigate a suspected assassination attempt from within the Vatican’s walls)
June Harrington, Merely a Matter of Time, Wildthorn (slow-burn love story between two gifted arcane scientists who fall back in time only to fall for each other)
Joe Hill, Hunger, Headline (Boston, 1776; the dead have been speaking to Captain Amos Crowe since the Battle of Bunker Hill, and now he must track down a witch hidden deep behind enemy lines)
Isabel Ibañez, Witch Dance, Saturday Books (historical fantasy where forbidden magic, a deadly mystery, and a slow-burn romance collide in Renaissance Europe in 1518 Strasbourg)
Norman Lock, The Old Man and the Heath, Belleview Literary Press (a reimagined novel of King Lear, resurrected from the heath to bear witness at time’s end, and six stories that present the Bard’s bit characters anew)
Geraldine Norman, Learning to Drink What Came After, Allison & Busby (follows Geraldine in the drinking dens of Soho alongside artists and criminals, during the last days (and nights) of 1970s Fleet Street to the glamour of post-glasnost Saint Petersburg)
Joachim Schmidt, trans. Jamie Lee Searle, Ósmann, Ferryman of the North, Bitter Lemon Press (historical fiction inspired by the true life of Jón Magnússon Ósmann (1862–1914), a legendary ferryman from northern Iceland)
Dana Stabenow, The Iron Trail, Head of Zeus-Aries (follows undercover Pinkerton agent Clare Wright, who’s still in Fred Harvey’s employ, must find a killer in this mystery set in a bustling US frontier town during the 1890s)
Rose Warner, The Teacher’s Secret, Canelo (when a new group of injured servicemen arrive at the village hospital, Nell discovers amongst them a man from her past, one she was hoping not to meet again)
April 2027
Maren Chase, We Have Hours Left ‘til Morning, Bloomsbury Archer (romantic speculative novel about two time-travel agents who fall in love after meeting again and again …… and again)
Kay Daly, Wilton House, Regal House (17th-century poet Lady Mary Wroth finds scandal and independence through her writing and, four centuries later, inspires a young literary scholar to declare her own independence)
Carol Drinkwater, The Girl From Marseille, Corvus (a novel of love, freedom and community set in Provence, 1938)
Elinor Florence, Touching Grass, Simon & Schuster (late 1800s, Canada’s southern prairies; a woman’s search for her missing sister, and her discovery of a trail of murdered women from Montreal to Maple Creek)
Emilia Hart, The Enigmas, St. Martin’s (novel about a woman who must turn back time to save her sister’s life, set against the backdrop of wartime Britain; set in London 1940 and 1915)
Lucy Holland, The Last Verse of the Harp Lord, Head of Zeus-AdAstra (fantasy novel set in Celtic Britain and based on traditional Welsh and Celtic myths and history)
Wen-yi Lee, Where Rivers Made the Gods, Tor (Singapore, 1975; a city of warring gangs, blazing fire, and fading gods in Lee’s adult fantasy sequel)
August 2027
Robert Knott, Opium Rose, Putnam (lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch must quell a brewing showdown in the early 1880s)
September 2027
Ken Follett, The Deep and Secret Things, Grand Central/ Quercus (tells the rise and fall of a young man and his legacy, set against the backdrop of the Victorian era, at a time of immense social and industrial change)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18, with settings from ancient times to the mid 1970s.
Details are pulled from publisher catalogues and websites; Amazon; NetGalley; Publishers Weekly forecasts; Edelweiss US Trade and BNCCatalist Canada Trade. The age suitability is publisher recommended.
Information is compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
Sufiya Ahmed, Escape from the Child Snatchers, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (1865, Bombay, India; Humza and his friend Ranj are on a mission to bring back Humza’s brother who went missing in London two years ago)
Avi, The Road From Nowhere, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (inside one of America’s most troubled periods of economic crisis, an adventure and a big-hearted tale of boyhood)
Victoria Chang, Eureka, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (BYR), Age 10-14 (in San Francisco, 1885, as the world around her grows scarier, Mei Mei discovers her own power, as well the joy of found family)
Rob Currie, Time For Courage, Tyndale Kids, Age 8-12 (when the Nazis hunt Jewish children, the kids’ only hope is help from the Dutch Resistance. A sequel to Hunger Winter)
Ryan Douglass, The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay, Putnam BfYR, YA (set in 1920s Harlem Renaissance, Nick Carrington and Jay Gatsby’s paths intertwine in both their passion for each other and anger at a society that is set to destroy them)
Sharon G. Flake, Hattie Mae Begins Again, Knopf BfYR, Age 8-12 (story about a southern girl far from home at an elite boarding school in the north; set against the backdrop of the great migration in South Philly)
Rebecca Langston-George, One Fine Voice, Historium, YA (Esther Hopkins is invited to sing a solo at the 1923 Independence Day picnic, but she must find the strength to speak truth to power even if it costs all she holds dear)
February 2026
Derrick Barnes and Christian Gregory, illus. by Frank Morrison, Seven Million Steps, Amistad BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book story about comedian and activist Dick Gregory’s Food Run of 1976 to combat world hunger)
Judy Campbell-Smith, illus. Maggie Carroll, Baseball for Breakfast, Charlesbridge, Age 5-8 (celebrates family, fun, and being American during WWII when people were tested for their resilience)
Honor Cargill-Martin, illus. Jamiee Andrews, The Six Queens of Henry VIII, Sourcebooks, Age 8-12 (an approachable picture book biography introducing Henry’s queens)
Cathy Faulkner, The Treasure Seekers, Firefly Press, Age 8-12 (in November, 1918, young Martha and Stanley are desperate to restore their village’s fortunes before it’s too late—reworked E. Nesbit classic)
Elle Grenier, This Wretched Beauty, Feiwel & Friends, YA (in this Dorian Gray gender-bending remix, set in London 1867, a conflicted young aristocrat spirals down a path to the worst possible version of themselves)
Amanda McCrina, Beyond Seven Forests, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (an 18-year-old Polish countess is trapped in her home with two Polish deserters from the Russian army during a blizzard as World War I rages)
Lindsay H. Metcalf, Footeprint, Charlesbridge Teen, YA (fictionalized account of the first woman to identify carbon dioxide as a cause of climate change in 1856)
Patricia Newman, illus. Isabelle Follath, Beatrice and the Nightingale, Peachtree/Margaret Quinlin, Age 6-9 (in 1924, an audience of more than one million heard the first live radio broadcast of a nightingale accompanying the young cellist Beatrice Harrison)
Sara Pennypacker, illus. John Klassen, The Lions’ Run, Balzer + Bray, Age 8-12 (novel about an orphan during WWII who discovers unexpected courage within himself when he becomes involved with the Resistance)
Teresa Rodrigues, illus. Jamiel Law, Where They Gather, Atheneum BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book story of a newly freed Black couple plant a pecan tree which grows alongside each new generation, weathering various seasons of change from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights period and into present day)
Gloria Steinem and Leymah Gbowee, illus. Kah Yangni, Rise, Girl, Rise, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (feminist organizer Gloria Steinem and Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee share their parallel journeys as activists)
Claire Swinarski, Each and Every Spark, Quill Tree, Age 8-12 (dual timeframe novel follows the mystery surrounding a painting that went missing during the French Resistance’s push against Hitler’s regime)
R. L. Toalson, Love, Sivvy, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (novel inspired by the life, letters and diaries of a young Sylvia Plath)
Patricia Zube, Gift of the Bear, Peter E. Randall/Casemate, Age 8-12 (set in the New England colonies in 1755, this little-known story of our country’s colonial past mirrors the life and trauma of immigrants today)
March 2026
Elisa Boxer, illus. Oksana Drachkowska, Under the Rubble, Apples & Honey, Age 6-8 (picture book true story of how the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto documented what was happening, hiding their papers in buried canisters, which were discovered afterwards and shared with the world)
Jerome Charyn, Silver Wolves, Triangle Square, YA (story of a teenager torn between the life of the streets and a life of art and opportunity in 1950s New York City)
Felicia Day, illus. Rowan MacColl, The Lost Daughter of Sparta, Gallery/Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, YA (sapphic graphic novel about the forgotten sister of Helen of Troy)
Andrea Debbink, illus. Crystal Jayme, I Witnessed: The Great Train Robbery of 1963, HarperAlley, Age 8-12 (aspiring investigative reporter Marilyn witnesses one of the greatest money heists in history…but will she be able to collect enough evidence?)
Judith Eagle, The Blitz Sisters, Faber & Faber (war has been declared and the lives of three sisters, Lydia, Peggy and Teddy, are about to be turned upside down)
Shannon Hitchcock, illus. Stephanie Singleton, Wild Mountain Ivy, Carolrhoda, Age 10-14 (story of two sick girls one hundred years apart, who meet in dreams and both struggle with their illness)
Karina Iceberg, illus. Steph Littlebird, Free to Fly, Heartdrum, Age 8-12 (presenting a hopeful conversation between a grandparent and grandchild about the trauma of the Native boarding schools)
Stacey Lee, Heiress of Nowhere, S&S/Sarah Barley Books, YA (in 1918, an orphan races to uncover a killer when she and her beloved orcas fall under suspicion in this gothic historical mystery) (Tr 8.3)
Carol Lindstrom, Red River Rose, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 8-11 (a dramatic portrayal of a young Métis girl who takes a stand to protect her way of life)
Robyn McGrath, Brave New Ballet, Penguin Workshop, Age 7+ (picture book history of a group of men who were determined to dance and be themselves in 1970)
Rebecca Rose Mooradian, illus. Myo Yim, Rose by the Sea, Atheneum BfYR, Age 4–8 (picture book history of surviving the Armenian Genocide)
Jennifer A. Nielsen, Magnitude, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (story of the fight for survival during the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and the race to find survivors)
Jordi Ortiz, illus. Javi Chaler, The Arrows of the Sioux, Editorial el Pirata, Age 9-12 (the Time Explorers travel to North America to visit a Lakota tribe)
Maria Cristina Pritelli, author and illustrator, The Great Northern Expedition, Creative Editions, Age 7-9 (reimagines the Russian rulers of the time funding an 18th-century expeditionary voyage to Siberia and Alaska)
Jude Reid, The Nightkeeper’s Apprentice, Floris, Age 10-14 (debut children’s novel inspired by folklore of Scotland, when Second World War bombs start falling, and twelve-year-old Eilidh Flett is evacuated to remote Orkney island)
Ellen Schwartz, illus. Margeaux Lucas, The Mysterious Lopsided Letter, Apples & Honey, Age 6-8 (focuses attention on the principle of religious freedom in the early days of the United States)
Hooda Shawa, trans. Nour Jaluli, trans. Sawad Hussain, Velvet Box Letters, Restless Books/Yonder, YA (explores how young Palestinians in the diaspora can redefine their stories while reclaiming the legacy of their forebears)
Nadine Takvorian, Armaveni, Levine Querido, YA (autobiographical graphic novel chronicling one girl’s quest to uncover her family’s history during the Armenian genocide)
Mia Wenjen, illus. Violeta Encarnación, Barbed Wire Between Us, Red Comet, Age 7-10 (a reverso poem about two girls separated by barbed wire and 80 years of history)
Jonah Winter, illus. by Gary Kelley, The Burning of the Books, Creative Editions, Age 7-9 (tells an ominous story of the Nazi book burnings, warning that such events could happen anywhere, even in the United States)
Diane Zahler, The Queen’s Granddaughter, Roaring Brook Press, Age 8-12 (follows 12-year-old Blanca of Castile who, as the next princess of France, must learn how to follow in the footsteps of her grandmother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Rosemary Zibart, Beatrice and the Dirty Diggers, Artemesia, Age 10-12 (in 1942 British-born teen Beatrice Sims joins an archaeological dig in New Mexico with five American Girl Scouts from all over the country)
April 2026
Sharon Reiss Baker, Last Days in Moav, Apples & Honey, YA (a multiple POV novel set in the biblical age, centering on twins who have a mysterious healing gift)
James Lincoln Collier, After My Brother Sam, Scholastic, Age 9-12 (sequel picks up the story of My Brother Sam Is Dead in an examination of patriotism, family, and what it means to be an American)
Erin Edwards, The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (an alternate sapphic retelling of Pride and Prejudice, centring on a romance between shy Georgiana Darcy and headstrong Kitty Bennett)
Jael Jackson, illus. Sona & Jacob, Decide & Survive: The Oregon Trail, Bushel & Peck, Age 8-10 (dive into a world of peril, mystery, and hope—and carve your own destiny on the Oregon Trail)
Abigail Johnson, If You Were Here, Storytide, YA (following Lili and Wren over a Nantucket summer, as they investigate a historical mystery)
Maureen Johnson, The Velvet Knife, HarperCollins, YA (Stevie Bell and her friends travel to New York to solve a murder in the next standalone mystery)
Cathie Pelletier, Evangeline’s Journey, Down East Books, YA (prose retelling of Longfellow’s poem tells the fictional story of a girl who searches for her lost love amid the 1755 expulsion of the Acadians from maritime Canada)
Nikki Shannon Smith, Deep Secrets, Scholastic, Age 9-12 (a story of the Titanic, family, survival, and the secrets we hide from those we love)
Nadine Takvorian, Armaveni, Levine Querido, YA (graphic novel chronicling one girl’s quest to uncover her family’s history during the Armenian genocide; told in interwoven historical, contemporary, and fantastical sequences)
Minoru Tonai, Jolene Gutiérrez, illus. Chris Sasaki, Unbreakable, Abrams BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book biography about the experience of a Japanese American boy incarcerated with his family during World War II)
Diego Vaisberg, Gunnar the Viking’s Great Pizza Adventure, Sourcebooks/duopress, Age 4-7 (a humourous picture book story of Gunnar the warrior who realises that bravery on the battlefield is not his true calling)
May 2026
Hailey Adams, illus. Alisha Monnin, Five Days at the Hotel Alcaraz, Tommy Nelson, Age 8-12 (historical tale of arson, sleuthing, and finding friendship in unlikely places is based on the real Hotel Adams fire of 1910)
S. C. Bandreddi, The Game of Oaths, Candlewick/Walker, YA (adventure of revenge set in a Belle Epoque Paris magical circus led by a ruthless enchanteur)
David Bowles, illus. Charlene Bowles, The Hero Twins in the Realm of Fright, Cinco Puntos, Age 8-12 (graphic novel retelling of an Indigenous Mexican tale, about demigod twins who descend to Xibalba (the land of the dead) to rescue their father and uncle)
Anca Sandu Budisan, author and illustrator, The Home We Dreamed, Quill Tree, Age 4-8 (narrated by a future grandchild of the builder of this house, story shows multiple generations raised here, & the environmental and political changes happening around its plot of land)
June Hur, Behind Five Willows, Feiwel & Friends, YA (a homage to Jane Austen, set in historical Korea about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning)
Anne Lambelet, Beatrix and her Friends, Peachtree/Margaret Quinlin, Age 4-8 (a picture book biography focusing on the joy and comfort Potter found in her animals)
Yamile Saied Méndez, Hear Ye Mortals, Levine Querido, YA (Argentina, 1976; two brothers struggle against a totalitarian regime believing you must fight for what you believe in, even when the world around you tries to silence your voice)
N. T. McQueen, Never Hide from the Devil, Cennan, YA (coming-of-age inspired by a true story of resistance during the Armenian Genocide, 1915)
Tom Palmer, If the Invader Comes, Barrington Stoke, Age 9+ (with the spectre of a Nazi invasion looming over Britain, three children are forced into an unlikely alliance in this wartime tale) UK
Sheena Wilkinson, Star by Star, Little Island Books, Age 8-12 (tale of suffragettes and heroes, courage and survival, as World War One ends, a pandemic sweeps the land and women get to vote!)
Brian Lee Young, Shards of Silence, Heartdrum, YA (a tale that bridges the generational divide between a Navajo teen at an elite prep school and his great-grandmother’s experience at a Native boarding school)
June 2026
Andre Frattino, We Are Pan, IDW/Top Shelf, Age 8-12 (based on the history of the mass evacuation of Cuban children, between 1960 and 1962)
Brian Gallagher, The Case of the Disappearing Double, O’Brien, Age 9+ (volume 3 in The Case of….. series featuring another puzzle to be solved in Dublin, 1912)
Olga Herrera, trans. Aurora Humarán, A Light for Lucinda, Charlesbridge, Age 6-9 (set during the Cuban Revolution, picture book balances the experience of upheaval and hardship with the hope of brighter days ahead)
Danielle Higley, illus. Sona & Jacob, Decide & Survive: Gladiators, Bushel & Peck, Age 8-10 (explore action and adventure in ancient Rome, where every decision could lead to glory, danger, or an untimely end)
Arianna Irwin, illus. Prenzy, Penelope’s Escape from the Platypusary, Mad Cave/Maverick, Age 7+ (in 1957, Penelope the Platypus successfully escaped the Bronx Zoo and her “destined” mate, Cecil, with the help of some unlikely allies)
J. Kasper Kramer, Serpent on the Mountain, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (coming-of-age story that captures the wild beauty of 1970s Appalachia and the fragile ties that bind us to family, faith, and magic)
Amanda West Lewis, illus. Abigail Rajunov, Looking at the Sky, Kids Can, Age 8-12 (graphic novel inspired by the pre–World War II Warsaw orphanage run by children’s rights advocate Dr. Janusz Korczak)
Kirstie Myvett, Florence Wallace’s Year at the Colored Orphan Asylum, Tommy Nelson, Age 8-12 (when the NYC orphanage is destroyed during the Civil War–era draft riots, Florence wonders if a colored girl’s dreams are even worth pursuing)
Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, The Spiritualists, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (magical tale of a young clairvoyant who gets dragged into a dangerous game of revenge alongside a mysterious thief in early 1900s New York City)
Karyn Parsons, Blue Beach, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (historical mystery follows a Black teenager who finds a murdered white debutante on her family’s only Black Santa Monica beach in 1929)
Briana Corr Scott, Peggy and the Ghost, Nimbus, Age 6-11 (chapter book set in 1950s Peggys Cove, following two best friends who try to help a Ghost Girl uncover her past)
April Genevieve Tucholke, illus. Dave Szalay, Rebecca the White House Raccoon, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 6-8 (mostly true tale based on President and First Lady Coolidge’s real-life menagerie and their pet raccoon which causes havoc and hilarity in the White House)
Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki, Billy Bat, Vol. 1, Kana, YA (a historical conspiracy-thriller meta-manga following a Japanese American comic artist’s search for the truth regarding the origins of his character “Billy Bat.”)
July 2026
Katie Abdou, A Prince Among Pirates, Harper Fire, YA (sharp, witty, historical(ish) debut in which Kit Davenport, headstrong, reckless, and unsuited for the House of Lords, is desperate to escape a life that feels completely wrong for him)
Jennifer Robin Barr, Thunder and Mercy, Calkins Creek, Age 10+ (novel transports young readers between the 1770s and 1970s as 12-year-old Theodora “Thunder” uncovers the truth behind a Revolutionary-era spy network)
Esme Raji Codell, illus. Lynne Rae Perkins, Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John “Appleseed” Chapman, Greenwillow, Age 4-8 (picture book fiction honoring Johnny Appleseed, more than 200 years after he was born)
Fiona Marchbank, Ladies of the Knight, Oni Press, YA (in a land where knights compete in tournaments for fame and fortune, follow George on his quest to be the greatest knight in all the land)
Kelly McWilliams, No One Leaves the Manor, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (horror set in 1921, where debutante dreams become bloody nightmares)
Emma Otheguy, illus. Poly Bernatene, Adventure in the City of Stories, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (when stolen artifacts magically appear in their aunt’s closet, cousins Jorge, Camila, and Siggy travel back in time to 1930 New York City to clear her name)
Marcie R. Rendon, illus. Sam Zimmerman, Napesni Renegade, Charlesbridge (Age 4-7 (the journey of a young bison who is separated from his mother when the herd is moved to a new ranch run by the Red Lake Ojibwe)
Rick Revelle, The Elk Whistle Warrior Society, Dundurn, YA (story of a secret, female-led society that relentlessly seeks justice for Indigenous women and children across Turtle Island)
A. L. Sirois, The King’s Ghost, Fitzroy Books, YA (3rd and final book in the Imhotep Chronicles set in ancient Egypt; a mystery where loyalty is fragile, power is deadly, and nothing is as it seems)
August 2026
Clair M. Andrews, A Lovely and Deadly Dance, Little, Brown BFYR, YA (something is stalking the queen of England, and Irene Adler is ready to find whatever may lurk behind this string of murders, with or without Sherlock Holmes)
Eileen Biltmore, The Disappearance and the Diary, Simon Spotlight, Age 8-12 (a girl from a wealthy family must defend her lady’s maid from accusations of theft in this first book in the cozy historical fiction series-The Manor Mysteries)
Eileen Biltmore, The Girls and the Ghost, Simon Spotlight, Age 8-12 (2nd book in The Manor Mysteries series that follows two heirloom lockets through generations of the same family)
Lesa Cline-Ransome, illus. by James E. Ransome, Freedom to Read: The Story of Teacher Mary Peake and One Mighty Oak Tree, Paula Wiseman/Beach Lane, Age 4-8 (picture book biography of Mary Peake, a courageous teacher who started a secret school for Black children)
Piu DasGupta, The Golden Monkey Mystery, Nosy Crow, Age 9-12 (adventure set in the jungles of 19th-century India)
Felicity Epps, A Deadly Scandal, Tempest, YA (historical YA crime series with a supernatural twist, where sisterhood, seances and solving murder is the name of the game)
Caroline Fernandez, About a Home Child, Cormorant YR, Age 9-12 (novel that draws on the real history of the home children who migrated to Canada between 1869 to 1932)
Nicki Greenberg, The Detectives Guide to Ocean Travel, Affirm Press, Age 9-12 (set in 1927, Pepper Stark joins her father, the Captain, aboard RMS Aquitania on a voyage to New York, during which an American stage sensation loses a priceless jewel)
Sandra W. Headen, Roi and Me and the Double V, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (best friends Marvel and Roi help out on the WWII home front, but when racial injustice threatens their community, they must turn to activism)
Beth Kephart, illus. Roberto Innocenti, Mud Angels, Creative Editions, Age 4-8 (the miraculous response of helpers from around the world who assisted Florence in the recovery from the 1966 flood. These people became known as the Angeli del Fango, or “mud angels)
Aden Polydoros, The City of Slaughter, HarperCollins, YA (in turn-of-the-century Chicago, life returns to normal for Frankie and Alter, as both boys inspire each other to start a detective agency. Companion novel to The City Beautiful)
Lyndsay Roberts Rayne, author and illustrator, The Messenger, Beach Lane, Age 6-9 (debut picture book inspired by the true stories of World War I messenger dogs)
Kim Michele Richardson, illus. Chloe M. Giroux, My Kentucky Moonlight School, Norton Young Readers, Age 4-8 (picture book story is based on the early twentieth century’s real-life Moonlight Schools)
Lupe Ruiz-Flores, Paloma Joins the Circus, Carolrhoda Books, Age 10-14 (story of following your dreams and growing into new ones, of finding home in the people around you, set in 1939)
Jessica Spotswood, The Harrow Home for Wayward Girls, Henry Holt BfYR, YA (in 1947, to expose the truth buried in the walls of the Harrow Home, two friends must unravel a legacy of silence and cruelty)
Caroline Starr Rose, illus. Gabrielle Grimard, Books Up the Mountain, Waxwing/Baker & Taylor), Age 4-8 (tribute to the brave women who served the people of the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression)
Kirsten Thompson, illus. Huenito, Aperture, Mad Cave Studios, YA (two students, one in present day and one pre-WWI, time travel using an old camera found in their university’s library, and fall in love. Graphic format novel)
Andrew Varga, Ordeal at Orleans, Imbrifex, YA (in Jump in Time book 5, time-travelling teens, Dan and Sam are transported to medieval France during the Siege of Orleans and the triumph of Joan of Arc)
Mindy Nichols Wendell, California or Dust, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (story of eleven-year-old Meadowlark Jensen whose family has fled the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in hopes of finding a better life in California)
September 2026
K. Ancrum, Adam, Mine, HarperCollins, YA (a queer romantic horror thriller that is a love letter to Frankenstein)
Louise Bradford, illus, Maya McKibbin, Sage and the Snowshoe Express, Kids Can, Age 4-8 (picture book inspired by the true experiences of Indigenous mail carriers)
Peter Burns, Island of Skulls, Aladdin, Age 10+ (action adventure set in a Dickensian-like London. Book two of the School for Thieves series)
Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, illus. Giovanni Rigano, War, Sourcebooks YR, Age 10-14 (the story of two young people, Kat and Adam, whose lives are impacted by the effects of war)
Erin A. Craig, Our Strange Duet, Delacorte, YA (a reimagining of Phantom of the Opera, spotlighting Christine Daaé as she rises to fame while torn between love, ambition, and haunting secrets)
Marie Miranda Cruz, A Boy Called Hero, Carolrhoda Books, Age 10-14 (time-travel adventure story about finding ways to make a difference and be true to yourself, told through 12-year-old Hero who is transported back in time to 1892)
Stef Ferrari, Pining for You, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (a Christmas romance, set between small town in Connecticut and Brooklyn during the storm of the century)
Isaac Fitzsimons, Astra Fox and the Rise of the Wonderworkers, Aladdin, Age 8-12 (set in an alternate Gilded Age where a scrappy wonderworker discovers her illusions uphold the very system that exploits her people)
Ayana Gray, Hawk & Sparrow, Balzer + Bray, YA (a Gilded Age tale of mystery, magic, and romance in which sparks fly when a sorcerer and a reporter form an unlikely partnership)
Marianne Hering and Marshal Younger, Hope in the Ashes, Focus on the Family, Age 7-10 (cousins Patrick and Beth travel back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, where they meet a Quaker African American woman who opened her home to people both Black and white)
Carol Isaacs, author and illustrator, The Cloak from Baghdad, Kar-Ben, Age 8-12 (dual timeline in which a magical cloak transports Louise back in time to her mother’s childhood in 1930s Baghdad, where it is no longer safe to be Jewish)
Autumn Krause, The Gods Will Sing Our Song, Delacorte Press, YA (historical fantasy set in a WWII incarceration camp follows two first-generation Japanese American teenagers drawn together by fate)
Gail Carson Levine, The Unusuals, Quill Tree, Age 10+ (a story of family, prejudice, faith, and unlikely friendship in medieval England)
Fiona MacDonald, illus. David Antram, You Wouldn’t Want to Be Guy Fawkes, Hatch, Age 7-11 (You Wouldn’t Want to series in which young readers experience a racing adventure, secret meetings, close calls and the failure of the Gunpowder Plot)
Susan Metallo, Hearts on the Table, Candlewick, YA (as World War I rages, a seventeen-year-old English feminist with a penchant for thrashing men at cards finds herself stranded on an enemy-controlled island and tangled in love)
Jacqueline Morley, illus. David Antram, You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Shakespearean Actor, Hatch, Age 7-11 (You Wouldn’t Want to series which blends humour with historical detail creating an racing adventure in 1594 Elizabethan England)
Jessica Outram, Bernice and the Wild Waters, Second Story, Age 9-12 (adventure set in fall of 1914, when Bernice’s family move from their small corner of Georgian Bay to the mainland for the school year)
James Patterson, Tad Safron, Time Travel Twins: An Armada of Trouble, jimmy patterson, Age 8-12 (story of time travel, trouble, and twins who never quit, even when they end up in 16th-century London)
Ava Reid, Winterveil, HarperCollins, YA (in an alternate future where the Cold War still rages, four teenage criminals are offered a fresh start at a secret military academy)
Andrea L. Rogers, Death in the Tallgrass, Levine Querido, Age 10-14 (a murder mystery interwoven with Cherokee history and culture)
Pamela Tuck and Joel Tuck, illus. Jerry Jordan, Johnny Tunes and the Gandy Dancers, Lee & Low, Age 4-8 (early 1900s; inspiring tale about a young boy who uses his musical talent to defy the limitations set by others because of his disability)
Eloise Williams, The Library of Lost Stories, Firefly, Age 8-12 (1976; Noni and her new friend fix the town’s old mobile library in the still grieving mining town of Aberfan, South Wales)
October 2026
Sharon Cameron, Up From the Ashes, Scholastic, YA (story about the fight to survive, based on the true story of two heroes and their resistance in the Sobibor death camp during the Holocaust)
Kevin Crossley-Holland, Red the River Rises, Candlewick, YA (historical tale of honor, star-crossed lovers, and loyalty, set during the Viking invasion of York, England)
Philippa Dowding, The War Lantern, Cormorant DCB, Age 9-12 (one day in World War II, three seemingly separate lives are forever changed and bound together by war)
William Dumas, illus. Rhian Brynjolson, The Medicine Way, Highwater, Age 9-12 (a Rocky Cree family in Northern Manitoba travels to hunt, gather medicines, and learn from their relatives during the fall season of tākwākin, in this historical pre-Confederation picture book)
Patricia Hinely, Dear Mr. Cronkite, Waxwing, Age 10-12 (1965; a hopeful novel about grief and growing up, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War)
David MacPhail, illus. Richard Morgan, Velda the Awesomest Viking and the Wild Unicorn Chase, Kelpies, Age 6-9 (join Velda the Viking as she sets sail on a humorous voyage of daring, discovery)
Erica Martin, illus. by Alleanna Harris, Onward, We Marched, Flamingo, Age 4-8 (a lyrical picture book introduction to the civil rights movement)
Bobbi Miller, illus. by Allysa Adams, The Barbary Chronicles: The Lost Prince, Charlesbridge Moves, Age 9-12 (eleven-year-old Jack London holds her own among rascals, ruffians, and thieves in this adventure story set in 1870s San Francisco)
Sara Raasch and Beth Revis, The Blood Queen, Sourcebooks Fire, YA (historical fantasy about a fae princess and an Elizabethan spy working together to stop an army intent on destroying both the mortal and fae worlds)
Sarah Raughley, The Queen’s Command, HarperCollins, YA (our heroine must play a deadly game and risk everything to get to the truth that’s poisoning Victorian England’s royal court)
LuAnn M. Rod, illus. Mattia Lo Rosso, Maddie McDowell and the Missing Mustangs, Chicken Scratch, Age 10-12 (2nd in series with young rodeo star Maddie McDowell in an action and mystery packed historical western adventure, set in 1919)
Kate Schoedinger, illus. Susan Olejarz, Death By Molasses, Peter E. Randall pub, Age 8-12 (follows Luca, a child survivor of the 1919 Great Boston Molasses Flood, who dares to speak out against greedy powerhouses, to avenge his sister’s death)
John Stephens, The Age of Fury, Knopf BfYR/Hot Key, YA (a teen in Gilded Age New York sets out to hunt down her sister’s killer and joins forces with a notorious gangster)
Sam Subity, illus. Yaoyao Ma Van As, True Crime Files: Heist at the Museum!, Sourcebooks Explore, Age 8-12 (high-stakes action-adventure that fuses suspense with the intrigue of a historical true-crime caper―the 1964 American Museum of Natural History jewel theft)
Mia Wenjen, illus. Keith Henry Brown, Postcards from Malcolm X, Red Comet, Age 8-12 (the friendship between Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama, and her awakening as a civil rights activist)
November 2026
Deborah Hopkinson, Take Cover, Scholastic, Age 9-12 (when the World War II Blitz begins, two kids search desperately for their families as Nazi bombs rain down on London)
S. Isabelle, The Revolution of Olivia Witherson, HarperCollins, YA (companion to The Great Misfortune of Stella Sedgwick set in 1860s Paris, prim and proper Olivia is poised to become the wife of a wealthy businessman)
Andy Marino, Escape from Vietnam, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (Book #6 in the Escape From series, set in Vietnam in 1975)
Dawn Quigley, illus. Chief Lady Bird, Paul’s Bunion: A Tall Tale Resized, Levine Querido, Age 4-8 (picture book retelling of Paul Bunyan’s tall tales from a distinctly Native American perspective)
Kip Wilson, illus. Matt Schu, Backpack, Boy, Berlin, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (novel-in-verse fictionalised true story of a boy risking it all to deliver secret anti-Nazi messages while navigating dark times and changing friendships in World War II)
December 2026
Anne Blanchard, trans. Rosie Eyre, Rosa Luxemburg: No to Borders, Triangle Square, Age 12+ (fictionalized biography of the Polish-German revolutionary and anti-war activist)
Isabelle Collombat, trans. Rosie Eyre and Sarah Ardizzone, Janusz Korczak: No to Denying the Rights of Children, Triangle Square, Age 12+ (portrait of a heroic doctor who, after surviving the deprivations of the Warsaw ghetto voluntarily, accompanied the children to Treblinka)
Zohra Nabi, Witch Light, Simon & Schuster UK, Age 8-12 (second Cassia Thorne mystery set in 19th-century London)
January 2027
Dusti Bowling, illus. Beth Hughes, Sir Edmund of the Wild West: Mystery in Roswell, Holiday House, Age 7-11 (chapter book series featuring a service dog who thinks he’s a knight, tasked with chasing unsolved ghost stories of the Wild West – the 1947 Roswell incident)
Lisa Gerlits, The Singer of Terezin, Apples & Honey, Age 10-14 (1944; Eva and her sister are sent to live in a girl’s home in the walled city of Terezin, where thousands of Czech Jews face hunger, disease, and fear of transport to the “East.”)
Taylor Grothe, Monstrous Beautiful Things, Peachtree Teen, YA (a sapphic romantic fantasy rooted in medieval history)
Leslie Johnson Piotrowski, illus. Tonya Engel, The Northbound Train, Abrams BfYR, Age 4-8 (story about the Great Migration, that affected more than six million Black American families who migrated to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence)
February 2027
Kate Albus, The Passage of Jamie Quill, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (suspense aboard the Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic, as an orphan tries to escape his criminal uncle by pulling one last con—posing as a first-class passenger)
Kerrie Logan Hollihan, illus. Julie Benbassat, Louisine Lights a Legacy, Abrams BfYR, Age 5-9 (picture book story for young children about an influential leader of the suffragist movement in 1919)
Dylan Merconis, author & illustrator, Queen of the Sea, Candlewick, Age 10-14 (story of political intrigue drawn from the real life of Elizabeth I, set on an island at the heart of a treasonous royal plot)
March 2027
Ondrej Navratil, illus. Jakub Cenkl, Vikings, Albatros Media, Age 4-6 (follow a daring crew of Vikings from a successful raid back to a Viking village in the land of rocks and snow, in a blend of historical facts and imaginative narration)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for historical novels set in eras from ancient times to the mid-1970s. Details are based on publishers’ descriptions and are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Heather Alexander, My Heart’s Desire, Wild Rose Press (1883 romance in which a woman travels through a mysterious time portal to the Old West, to save her best friend)
Isa Arsén, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf, Putnam (mid-century novel about two Shakespearean actors during one summer that will drive them closer or rip them apart)
Sophie Austin, The Lamplighter’s Bookshop, HarperCollins (romance full of secrets in which Evelyn Seaton answers an advertisement for an assistant at a forgotten bookshop in York)
Lauren J. A. Bear, Mother of Rome, Berkley (reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible)
S. J. Bennett, A Death in Diamonds, Crooked Lane (two murders in Chelsea plague amateur detective Queen Elizabeth II. Fourth book in series)
Lauralee Bliss, When the Avalanche Roared, Barbour (one of six stories about historic disasters which transformed landscapes and lives)
Xavier Bosch, trans. Samantha Mateo, What the Light Touches, Amazon Crossing (dual timeline tale of love and intrigue about a woman on the cusp of middle age, her grandma, and a houseguest who changes everything)
Julie Brooks, The Heirloom, Headline Review (dual timeline tale set in Brisbane 2024 and Sussex 1821)
Lois Cahall, The Many Lives & Loves of Hazel Lavery, Historium Press (Victorian drama about an American socialite whose influence altered the course of the Anglo-Irish treaty)
Lila Cain, The Blackbirds of St Giles, Simon & Schuster UK (1782 London; Daniel & his sister Pearl escape a sugar plantation and arrive in London where they are callously tricked into the underworld labyrinth of the rookeries of St Giles)
Tara Calaby, The Spirit Circle, Text (a possibly supernatural sapphic mystery woven around the romance of old Melbourne)
Elizabeth Camden, When Stars Light the Sky, Bethany House (Gilded Age romance in which Inga and Benedict will be swept into a dangerous world on the brink of war)
Cecil Cameron, The Rebel Daughters, HarperNorth (Russia, 1825; tells the story of the brave women who defied everyone by following the revolutionaries into the wilds of Siberia to find courage and freedom and love)
Maggie Campbell, The Housekeeper of Holcombe Hall, Michael Joseph (1929, Lancashire; Holcombe Hall’s owner has passed away, and as the roaring twenties ends the upstairs and downstairs residents begin a new era)
H. D. Carlton, Phantom, Montlake (a novel of dark temptation and dangerous desire, set in November, 1944)
Costanza Casati, Babylonia, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel based on a legend which tells of an orphan born into a life of toil and anonymity who rises from nothing to rule kingdoms and command armies)
P. C. Cast, Boudicca, William Morrow (inspired by the history of Boudicca’s attack on Roman Britain, novel is a retelling of one of the most legendary female warriors of all time)
Megan Chance, Glamorous Notions, Lake Union (a costume designer’s past casts a long shadow over her well-constructed lies in this story about stolen identities, friendship, and betrayal)
Karissa Chen, Homeseeking, Sceptre (told in alternating narratives, novel spans seven decades, through the most tumultuous period of modern Chinese history up to contemporary times)
Rory Clements, A Cold Wind from Moscow, Zaffre (1947; book 8 of Tom Wilde series in which Wilde faces an uphill battle to protect those he loves from merciless killers)
Jennifer Coburn, The Girls of the Glimmer Factory, Sourcebooks Landmark (a tale of resistance, friendship, and the dangers of propaganda, based on the real story of Theresienstadt)
Elizabeth Costello, The Good War, Regal House (dual timeline novel set in 1948 and 1964 dealing with the impact of war, gender roles, and the role of the artist in society)
Tania Crosse, The Butterfly Girl, Joffe Books (a tale of the courage of a young nurse during the Plymouth Blitz, 1941)
Elizabeth Crowens, Bye Bye Blackbird, Level Best (PIs Humphrey Bogart and co. turn the underbelly of Tinseltown upside down to stop a crazed killer from claiming another victim)
Judith Cutler, In at the Death, Severn House (the future of Thorncroft House and its occupants is in the balance while a mysterious murder brings up a past best forgotten, in this Victorian upstairs-downstairs murder mystery)
Dean Cycon, A Quest for God and Spices, Koehler Books (a literary romp through the geopolitical, religious and mercantile landscape of medieval Europe and beyond, as a monk and a merchant seek the fabled Christian king Prester John)
Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen, Dutton (novel transports readers from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back. Set in Egypt, 1936 and NYC, 1978)
Jennifer Deibel, Heart of the Glen, Revell (Saoirse Fagan finds a new start at a sheep farm in the wild hills of Dunlewey, Ireland. But master tweed weaver Owen McCready isn’t used to accepting help from outsiders)
Pepsi Demacque-Crockett, Island Song, HarperCollins (a story of finding home sweeps readers from the Caribbean to 1950s London)
Joan Donaldson, Ae Fond Kiss, Black Rose Writing (continues the story begun in On Viney’s Mountain and celebrates second chances and the importance of community)
Tara Dorabji, Call Her Freedom, Simon & Schuster (novel about one woman’s love for her family; an investigation into colonialism’s relationship with loss and innocence spanning from 1969 to 2022)
Anton du Beke, A Dance for the King, Orion (in London 1942, spies have infiltrated high society at the Buckingham hotel, alongside a wave of American GIs)
Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, Chris Crabtree, Hold Strong, Lake Union (based on true events―about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II)
A. Rae Dunlap, The Resurrectionist, HarperNorth (combines fact and fiction in a tale of the risks and rewards of scientific pursuit, the passions of its boldest pioneers, and the anatomy of human desire. Set in Edinburgh, 1828)
Dana Levy Elgrod, The Resistance Lily, Seventh Street Books (in Paris, 1941, protégé of a wealthy family is drawn into a dangerous game of survival, in which losing is simply not an option)
Jonathan Evison, The Heart of Winter, Dutton (novel of marriage is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments)
David Wright Faladé, The New Internationals, Atlantic Monthly Press (1947 Paris; novel interweaves a coming-of-age, a cross-cultural romance, and a portrait of international youth at a definitive moment in contemporary history)
Jennie Felton, Rosie’s Dilemma, Headline (unfolds against the backdrop of war with all its hardship, danger, heroism and sacrifice, and the anxiety for loved ones which no-one can escape)
Lily Fielding, Orphan of the Storm, Penguin (19th-century saga about found family, romance and triumph over adversity, set in a small village in 1876)
Emerson Ford, What the Silent Say, Storm (WWII story inspired by a true story)
Laura Frantz, The Indigo Heiress, Revell (to settle her family’s debts and secure a suitable marriage for her sister, a colonial American indigo heiress is forced to wed a Scottish merchant she loathes)
Allan Gaw, The Silent House of Sleep, Polygon (first in trilogy mystery series when two corpses are discovered in a London park in 1929)
Amira Ghenim, trans. Miled Faiza, trans. Karen McNeil, A Calamity of Noble Houses, Europa Editions (a complex mosaic of secrets, memories, accusations, regrets, and emotions, journeying through upheavals of history from 1930s to present day)
Elizabeth Gill, A Sister’s Dream, Quercus (saga in which Catrin determines to change her life for the better by becoming a doctor)
C. P. Giuliani, A Matter of Blood, Sapere (book 6 in the Tom Walsingham Mysteries series set in London, 1588)
Allegra Goodman, Isola, Dial Press (inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine; the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival)
Philip Gray, The House with Nine Locks, Harvill Secker (a master forger transforms a young woman’s life in post-war Flanders)
Aaron Gwyn, The Cannibal Owl, Belle Point Press (coming-of-age story inspired by the real-life figure Levi English, a settler who ran away to live with the Comanche)
Carmel Harrington, The Lighthouse Secret, HarperCollins (dual timeline dram set in 1951 Ireland and 2023 Maine)
Alex Hay, The Queen of Fives, Graydon House/Headline Review (1898; novel set against the most magnificent wedding of the season, as a mysterious heiress sets her sights on London’s most illustrious family)
Grady Hendrix, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Berkley/Tor Nightfire (1970; story set in Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret)
Kate Hewitt, The Girl Who Never Gave Up, Bookouture (final book in the Emerald Sisters series tells of the power of a mother’s love)
Emma Hinds, The Quick and the Dead, Bedford Square (historical fantasy delving into the shadowed, political world of Tudor alchemy)
Wendy Holden, The Teacher of Auschwitz, Zaffre/Harper (the inspirational and uplifting true story of Fredy Hirsch)
Catherine Hokin, The Train That Took You Away, Bookouture (1938; story of a family torn apart by war)
M. J. Hollows, The Violinist’s Secret, HQ Digital (WWII murder mystery)
Daniel Huhn, trans. Rachel Stanyon, I Will Come Back For You, Ithaka (true story of a Jewish teenager who escaped Nazi Germany for the UK and returned to his homeland to liberate his parents from a concentration camp)
Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant, The Life of Herod the Great, Amistad (never before published novel reveals the historical Herod the Great as a philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision)
Shannon Ives, Those Fatal Flowers, Dell (Greco-Roman mythology and the mystery of the vanished Roanoke colony collide in a story exploring sapphic longing and female rage)
Michael Jecks, Death Comes in Threes, Severn House (princess Elizabeth’s unlikely assassin finds himself on the hook for two murders in this light-hearted Tudor mystery series)
Flora Johnston, The Endeavour of Elsie Mackay, Allison & Busby (1927; three women, a fearless aviatrix, a jaded wife and a secretive academic strain to reach for their dreams on the cusp of an uncertain future)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, Purgatory Crossing, Pinnacle (new historical Western in the Nathan Stark series)
Heather Kaufman, Before the King, Bethany House (weaves a tale of faith, resilience, and love amid the danger of King Herod’s court)
Michelle Kenney, The Mismatch of the Season, One More Chapter (when Phoebe Fairfax discovers she is to be wed to an earl old enough to be her grandfather, she decides to embark on an adventure)
Janice Kidd, A Tea-Dark Bearing, Regal House (opening in 1801, two formerly enslaved women devise a daring plan of escape through a rugged, untamed wilderness, fleeing the dangerous prejudice of unscrupulous men)
Anita Kopacz, The Wind on Her Tongue, Atria/Black Privilege Publishing (sequel to Shallow Waters, Oya is sent to New Orleans to study under Marie Laveau, the Queen of Voodoo, beginning a journey across the still young America)
Caroline Lamond, The Socialites, One More Chapter (in the 1920s, three young girls enter a strict, cheerless convent school in a quiet London suburb. Six years later they leave, to change the world …)
Callie Langridge, The Mandeville Curse, Storm (book 4 in the Mandeville Mystery series, set in 1937)
Ed Lee, The Poydras Ring, Addison & Highsmith (novel set in New France – amid the colonial life of duels, slave rebellions, paramours and war, a powerful voodoo amulet is passed down through generations)
Judith Lennox, A Different World, Headline Review (novel exploring the joys and challenges of family life throughout the twentieth century)
Graham Ley, Moonlight at Cuckmere Haven, Sapere (book 4 in the historical romance Wentworth family saga series)
Howard Linskey, A Serpent in the Garden/Players of Death, Canelo (the greatest writer who ever lived turns spy in London 1592)
Robert Littell, Bronshtein in the Bronx, Soho Press (portrait of ten weeks in the life of Leon Trotsky)
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Elita, TriQuarterly (winter 1951; a child development specialist travels to Elita in the Puget Sound where guards of the penitentiary have discovered an animal-like adolescent living outside the prison walls)
Annie Lyons, A Girl’s Guide to Winning the War, Headline (WWII tale of unexpected friendship, community and two remarkable women who change the course of the war)
Bonnie MacBird, The Serpent Under, Collins Crime Club (murder, jealousy, and deceit underscore three interlocking mysteries as Holmes and Watson take on a high-profile case at Windsor Castle)
Tarris Marie, Empress Creed, Black Odyssey Media (romantic drama set amidst the glitz and grit of 1930’s Chicago, where post-Depression hardship and Jim Crow injustice still rule)
Beezy Marsh, Queen of Diamonds, William Morrow (third in a crime saga series about real-life gang girl, Alice Diamond)
Edward Marston, Mystery at the Station Hotel, Allison & Busby (Shrewsbury, 1866; a suicide of a railway executive turns into murder for Inspector Colbeck)
Katherine Mezzacappa, The Ballad of Mary Kearney, Addison & Highsmith (set in County Down, Dublin, and London, story told through letters, diaries, testimonies, and trial proceedings, gives voice to Ireland’s tumultuous history)
Ellie Midwood, The Photographer’s Secret, Bookouture (a family story of courage, set in Germany, 1944)
Stacy Lynn Miller, The Songbird, Severn River (novel of espionage, love, and betrayal in WWII Brazil)
Susan Cummins Miller, My Bonney Lies Under, Artemesia Publishing (August 1885; on board the steamship Oceanic, Keridec Rees is carrying her father’s ashes home, when her friend and companion, Anne Bonney, disappears)
Colin Mills, Bitter Passage, Lake Union (a 19th-century Arctic expedition descends into a chilling nightmare in a novel of discovery, rescue, deliverance, and survival by any means)
Patrick Modiano, trans. Mark Polizzotti, Ballerina, Yale University Press (a novel of art, desire, and time lost and regained, in 1960s Paris)
Lindsay Marie Morris, The Last Letter from Sicily, Storm (tale of forbidden love and impossible choices stretchesfFrom the terraced hills of Sicily to the brewing tensions of wartime America)
Kate Mosse, The Map of Bones, Macmillan (dual timeline conclusion to The Joubert Family Chronicles, set in southern Africa in 1688 and 1862)
Annie Murray, The Pearl Button Girl, Pan Macmillan (book one in the Children of Birmingham series, starting in Victorian Birmingham)
Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights, Magpie (debut novel about two college students in early 70s Pittsburgh, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence)
Graham Norton, Frankie, HarperVia (traveling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York, a story about love, bravery, and what it means to live a significant life
Paraic O’Donnell, The Naming of the Birds, Tin House (Inspector Cutter and Sergeant Bliss solve their strangest and most personal case yet in second installment of Victorian murder mystery series)
Elaine Neil Orr, Dancing Woman, Blair (portrait of a young female artist, torn between two men and two cultures, struggling to find her passion and her purpose in the 1960s)
Angie Paxton, Seeds, S&S/Rising Action (a debut fantasy novel set in Mycenaean Greece that explores the myth of Persephone)
Margaret Pemberton, The Oyster Girl, Pan (WWI family drama)
Caryl Phillips, Another Man in the Street, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (novel about relationships in 1960s London)
MJ Porter, Betrayal of Mercia, Boldwood (next installment of Dark Ages Adventure Series, set in Londonia, AD835)
Samantha Quamma, A Future of Her Own, Black Rose Writing (a student encounters the restrictions of 1960s’ society and collegiate life and decides to push back)
Kritika H. Rao, The Legend of Meneka, Harper Voyager (first in a duology; fantasy inspired by one of the most famous romances in Hindu mythology)
Amber Raven, The Weybourne Witches, One More Chapter (a tale of witches, women and the will to survive; set in 1647, Weybourne, Norfolk)
Midge Raymond, Floreana, Little A (intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world)
Sheila Riley, Family Ties on Beamer Street, Boldwood (family saga, book two, set in Liverpool, 1920s)
Mandy Robotham, A Dangerous Game, Avon (as a deadly fog engulfs London in 1952, Dexie and Harri, both officers with the Met, must expose a fugitive, risking everything for justice and each other)
Renée Rosen, Let’s Call Her Barbie, Berkley (beginning with the innovation which becomes an icon, from 1956 through the following decades of highs and lows)
Tom Ross, Miss Abracadabra, Deep Vellum Publishing (tells a story of intergenerational change and conflict in a Black American family in the pre-Civil Rights era)
Shari J. Ryan, The Family Behind the Walls, Bookouture (WWII novel about the strength of the love between a mother and daughter triumphing over evil)
John Sayles, To Save the Man, Melville House (1890; sheds light on the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School)
Victoria Scott, The Storyteller’s Daughter, Boldwood (dual timeline novel set in 1940 and 2008 which explores a secret buried for decades and a story which will change everything)
Bernhard Schlink, trans. Charlotte Collins, The Granddaughter, HarperVia (1960s exploration of the legacy of German reunification and the rise of modern populism)
Betty Shamieh, Too Soon, Avid Reader Press (saga follows one family’s journey from fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in the 60s & 70s, to hustling in the NY theatre scene post-9/11)
Cathy Sharp, An Orphan’s Story, HarperCollins (tale of a young boy’s journey to find home)
Amélie Skoda, Bethnal Green, Manilla Press (1971; explores the themes of sacrifice and heartbreak, the power of using your voice and the will to build a life of one’s own)
Barbara Southard, Unruly Human Hearts, She Writes (a tale of faith, passion, idealism, and the limitations faced by women in the nineteenth century)
A. L. Sowards, Beyond the Crescent Sky, Shadow Mountain (1383; as the Ottoman Empire extends its grip into the Balkans, events force Ivan and Helena to choose between loyalty or following their hearts)
Dana Stabenow, Abduction of a Slave, Head of Zeus/Aries (historical mystery in the Eye of Isis series set in Ancient Egypt during Cleopatra’s reign)
Lucy Steeds, The Artist, John Murray (Provence, 1920; an aspiring journalist believes he will make his name by interviewing artist Edouard Tartuffe, while his niece Ettie has spent years cultivating her secrets)
Mary-Lou Stephens, The Jam Maker, HQ Fiction (Tasmania 1874; a tale of danger, deceit and the measures one woman will take to succeed in love and life)
Julia Bryan Thomas, The Kennedy Girl, Sourcebooks Landmark (a journey to France through the eyes of a wide-eyed American orphan who becomes embroiled in an international espionage scheme)
Gemma Tizzard, Grace of the Empire State, Gallery/Headline Review (debut novel in which a daring dancer must take her twin brother’s place as a riveter high atop the in-progress Empire State Building to save her family from ruin)
Joanna Toye, A New Chapter at the Little Penguin Bookshop, Century (continuing saga as Carrie’s business selling books is thriving, as her beloved Mike returns from war)
Karen Tuft, Lady Anna’s Favor, Shadow Mountain (London, England, 1814; Lady Anna Clifton will stop at nothing to find her missing brother)
Sean Tyler, White Hell, Level Best (story of a white man pioneering west to California in 1846, who befriends an escaped slave and fights to protect her from the bigotry of his fellow travelers)
Alexandra Vasti, Earl Crush, St. Martin’s/Corvus (romcom in which a reclusive earl’s life is turned upside down when a stranger shows up on his doorstep)
Alexandra Walsh, The House of Echoes, Boldwood (dual timeline novel with insight into the Tudor court through the eyes of a woman who has only her guile to keep her alive)
Jenni L. Walsh, Ace, Marvel, Spy, Harper Muse (based on the life of a very real American tennis icon)
Minette Walters, The Players, Allen & Unwin/Blackstone (a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes, England 1685)
Tiffany L. Warren, The Unexpected Diva, William Morrow (brings Black opera singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield to life in a novel of the forgotten diva’s remarkable story)
Jeri Westerson, Rebellious Grace, Severn House (Henry VIII’s court jester Will Somers turns reluctant inquisitor once again when a grotesque murder within the palace walls is linked to the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion)
Charmaine Wilkerson, Good Dirt, Ballantine (the daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom)
Sue Williams, The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress, Allen & Unwin (story of female friendship, betrayal and triumphs based on historical events)
Susan C. Wilson, Helen’s Judgement, Neem Tree Press (first-person retelling that redefines the story of Greek mythology’s Helen of Troy)
Jane Yang, The Lotus Shoes, Park Row/Harper Canada/Sphere (set in 1800s; focuses on an enslaved maid and her wealthy mistress as they survive the restrictions placed on them as women)
Ellen Yardley, Eleanor and the Cold War, Kensington (1950s Cold War historical mystery debut featuring the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s indispensable assistant)
Mosab Hassan Yousef, James Becket, The Last Prophet, Forefront Books (based on the life of the prophet Muhammed, one-time shepherd and outcast revolutionary)
Guixing Zhang, trans. Carlos Rojas, Elephant Herd, Columbia Univ. Press (narrative begins in the 1970s and explores the repercussions of Sarawak’s mid-century Communist insurgency, focusing on a boy, his extended family, and his Indigenous classmate and travel companion)
February 2025
Rose Alexander, A Santorini Secret, Bookouture (in 1944, a young woman is forced to make a terrible sacrifice to save a life)
Belina Bauer, The Impossible Thing, Atlantic Monthly (tale of obsession, greed, ambition, and a crime that has remained unsolved for a hundred years)
Ron Base, Curse of the Savoy, Douglas & McIntyre (fourth Priscilla Tempest mystery series is a tale of suspense set against the backdrop of high society and 1960s London)
Elizabeth Becker, The Moonlight Healers, Graydon House (debut with a magical twist about one woman’s discovery of her family’s secret healing abilities)
Marie Benedict, The Queens of Crime, St. Martin’s (a story of Agatha Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women)
S. J. Bennett, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold, Zaffre (1961; fifth book in the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates mystery series)
H.W. “Buzz” Bernard, Where the Dawn Comes Up Like Thunder, Severn River (amidst the turmoil of World War II, a daring Army Air Forces aviator is swept into an odyssey that will carry him to the far corners of the earth)
Laurent Binet, trans. Sam Taylor, Perspectives, Harvill Secker (murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence, 1557)
Kay Blythe, Murder at Merry Beggars Hall, No Exit (cosy mystery set in December 1922 with society dressmaker Jemima Flowerday)
Rachel Brimble, Dangerous Days for the Home Front Nurses, Boldwood (a WWII saga of friendship and love set in Bath, 1942)
Douglas Bruton, Woman in Blue, Fairlight Books (explores the intersection between art, artist and viewer)
Louella Bryant, Willie, Rum Running Queen, Black Rose Writing (during Prohibition, Rum Running Queen Willie Carter Sharpe rises from poverty to the heights of fame and fortune in the moonshine business)
Barney Campbell, The Fires of Gallipoli, Elliot & Thompson (portrayal of friendship forged in the trenches of the First World War)
Roger Celestin, The Delicate Beast, Bellevue Literary Press (a novel of a life lived in the shadow of history, portraying the pernicious legacy of political violence)
Rosie Clarke, Family Matters at Blackberry Farm, Boldwood (family saga continues as WWII touches everyone’s lives and loves on Blackberry Farm)
Eden Francis Compton, Belle, Level 4 Press (a true-ish story about Belle Gunness, a modern, liberated woman, esteemed by everyone in a small Indiana town, in 1890)
Mary Connealy, Whispers of Fortune, Bethany House (adventure of courage, danger, and love in the Wild West, in 1875 California)
Nicola Cornick, The Secrets of the Rose, Boldwood (novel tells of two women divided by time but bound by a centuries’ old mystery)
Kim Curran, The Morrigan, Michael Joseph (debut retelling of Ireland’s mythic goddess of war)
Martin Davies, Mrs Hudson and the Capricorn Incident, Allison & Busby (Sherlock Holmes looks to longstanding housekeeper Mrs Hudson, and her able assistant housemaid Flotsam, to assist in a case)
Camille Di Maio, Come Fly With Me, Lake Union (in 1962, hope takes flight for two women navigating an adventurous new life in a novel about love, friendship and escape)
Helena Dixon, Murder on the Cornish Coast, Bookouture (next installment of cosy crime mystery set in 1937)
Renita D’Silva, New Arrivals on West India Dock Road, Boldwood (first of a new series set in 1938, on the brink of war)
Rachel Donohue, The Glass House, Corvus (dual timeline tale of two sisters and their secrets, of love, regret and vengeance)
Rachel Louise Driscoll, Nephthys (UK) / The House of Two Sisters (US), Harvill Secker UK/Ballantine US (story of a forgotten daughter and a forgotten goddess)
Kat Dunn, Hungerstone, Manilla Press/Zando (set against the uncontrolled appetite of the Industrial Revolution, novel is a sapphic reworking of Carmilla, the book that inspired Dracula)
Elyse Durham, Maya & Natasha, Mariner (debut novel set in the fascinating world of Cold War Soviet ballet follows the fates of twin sisters whose bond is competitive, complicated, but never broken)
Lesley Eames, A Foundling at the Wartime Bookshop, Penguin (fifth in the WWII saga series)
Erin Crosby Eckstine, Junie, Ballantine (a young girl faces a life-altering decision, navigating love, friendship, and her sister’s ghost as the Civil War looms)
Allison Epstein, Fagin The Thief, Doubleday (reimagining the world of Charles Dickens and reclaiming the character of Fagin from the antisemitic stereotype)
Linda Epstein, Ally Malinenko, Liz Parker, The Other March Sisters, Kensington (reimagining of Little Women in which Jo’s sisters grapple with societal strictures, queer love, motherhood, chronic illness, artistic ambition, and more)
Charles B. Fancher, Red Clay, Blackstone (chronicles the interwoven lives of an enslaved Black family and their white owners as the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins)
Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho, Liveright/Fourth Estate (novel that probes the psyche of a bloodthirsty governess in the Victorian era)
Amanda Flower, I Died for Beauty, Berkley (Amherst, 1857; when a blaze takes a neighbor’s home and his life, Emily Dickinson and her maid Willa have a burning desire to crack the case)
Danny Fromchenko, The Keeper of the Laugh, Seventh Street (story of love and redemption set in the aftermath of World War II)
Kelly Frost, The Kings Head, Atlantic (1957; debut of conflict and camaraderie, carving a slice of history for London’s forgotten Teddy Girls)
Kate Furnivall, The Crash, Hodder & Stoughton (in Paris 1933, people’s lives are torn apart by a single terrifying event)
Nicole Galland, Boy, William Morrow (thought-provoking historical tale of love, political intrigue, and gender-swapping set in the theatre world of Elizabethan London)
Peter Golden, Their Shadows Deep, Lake Union (imagines the connection between JFK’s presidential campaign and an ex-cop’s investigation into her husband’s murder)
Esther Goldenberg, Seventeen Spoons, Row House Publishing (delves into the life of Joseph, the youngest and most favored son in the tribe of Jacob. Second in the Desert Songs Trilogy)
Kat Gordon, The Swell, Manilla Press (Iceland 1910; moving between the turn of the 20th century and the 1970s a dark mystery is unravelled, rich in Icelandic myth)
Gail Milissa Grant, The Sable Cloak, Grand Central (novel set in the South and Midwest during the time of Jim Crow that reveals a little-known part of American pre-civil rights history of Black intrigue and power)
Stephen Greco, The Last American Heiresses, John Scognamiglio (draws readers into the lives of legendary heiresses Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton and the public rivalry that defined them)
Elly Griffiths, The Frozen People, Quercus (Ali Dawson ventures back farther than before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton)
Thomas Guay, Chesapeake Bound, McBooks (1763; a story of desperate immigrants looking for adventure, advancement, love, and most of all a sense of belonging in the colonies)
Amanda Hampson, The Tea Ladies, Penguin AU (cosy crime novel set in Sydney in the swinging sixties)
Julie Hartley, The Promise She Made, Bookouture (determined to find out what happened to her sister during the Blitz, Ruby joins the Special Operations Executive)
Penny Haw, Follow Me to Africa, Sourcebooks Landmark (dual timeline novel inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world’s most distinguished paleoanthropologists)
India Hayford, The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree, John Scognamiglio (set in rural Arkansas in 1967, Southern novel draws readers into a visceral tale of secrets, desperate choices, and belonging)
Nydia Hetherington, Sycorax, Quercus (a reimagining of what came before Shakespeare’s The Tempest)
Dani Heywood-Lonsdale, The Portrait Artist, Bloomsbury UK (an art historian determines to uncover the true story about Timothy Ponden-Hall, a controversial artist thought to have died decades earlier)
Van Hoang, Silver and Smoke, 47 North (historical fantasy in the golden age of Hollywood where success for two Vietnamese dreamers means conjuring a magical break)
Elisabeth J. Hobbes, Dance With the Fae, One More Chapter (a blend of romance, mystery and magic in a historical fantasy set in 1919)
Pam Jenoff, Last Twilight in Paris, Park Row (a Parisian department store, a mysterious necklace and a woman’s quest to unlock a decade-old mystery are at the center of this novel of love and survival, set in 1953 & 1943)
Nancy Johnson, People of Means, William Morrow (dual timeline novel about a mother and daughter each seeking justice and following their dreams during moments of social reckoning—1960s Nashville and 1992 Chicago)
Lora Jones, The Woman in the Wallpaper, Sphere (as revolution blazes across France, the lives of three women are set to collide in unimaginable ways)
Adele Jordan, The Body in the Chamber, Sapere (third book in the Shadow Cutpurses Tudor series; a historical espionage adventure set during King Henry VIII’s reign)
Alka Joshi, Six Days in Bombay, MIRA (novel follows a young Anglo-Indian nurse who embarks on a journey from her home in Bombay, through Prague, Florence, Paris, and London, to uncover a mystery)
Julia Kelly, The Dressmakers of London, Gallery (novel about two estranged sisters who inherit their late mother’s dressmaking shop in London during World War II)
Vaseem Khan, City of Destruction, Hodder & Stoughton (new mystery featuring the inimitable Persis Wadia, set in Bombay, 1950)
Thomas Kohnstamm, Supersonic, Counterpoint (illuminates themes of identity, displacement, destruction, and reinvention that give rise to all great American cities)
Carolyn Korsmeyer, Riddle of Spirit and Bone, Regal House (a skeleton discovered buried beneath a city sidewalk leads a group of student archaeologists to the 19th century spiritualist movement)
Ann-Helén Laestadius, trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles, Punished, Scribner (story of five Indigenous children forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden)
Soraya M. Lane, The Pianist’s Wife, Lake Union (fiction inspired by true stories of those who chose to defy the Nazis from within Germany)
Elizabeth Langston, Once You Were Mine, Lake Union (in a quiet North Carolina town in 1968, a seventeen-year-old girl’s life is forever changed when a summer romance leads to an unplanned pregnancy)
Jane Lark, The Great Western Railway Girls, Boldwood (a new WWII industry saga beginning in 1939)
Patrick Larsimont, The Wire and the Lines, Sapere (Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers, book 5, set during WWII)
Barbara Leahy, Rembrandt’s Promise, Bonnier (1642; the Dutch Golden Age is underway, as an impoverished widow from Edam, becomes nursemaid in the house of renowned painter Rembrandt)
Ed Lee, The Poydras Ring, Histria (in the territory of New France, amidst duels, slave rebellions, and war, a cursed ring binds generation in a struggle for power)
Tod Lending, The Umbrella Maker’s Son, Harper Paperbacks (in which a Jewish teenager in World War II Poland fights to save his life and find the young woman who holds his heart)
Adam Lofthouse, Raven: Defier of Rome, Boldwood (first book in the Enemy of the Empire series, set in AD 144)
Canisia Lubrin, illus. Torkwase Dyson, Code Noir, Soft Skull (fifty-nine linked fictions based on the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France)
N. J. Mastro, Solitary Walker, Black Rose Writing (a novel of Mary Wollstonecraft)
Imogen Martin, The Mountains Between Us, Storm (California 1848; a woman braves the mountains to California, to find her missing husband, amidst the turmoil of the Gold Rush)
Elsie Mason, The Loveless Child, Orion (England, 1940s; a novel of the Sixteen Streets, South Shields)
Alyssa Maxwell, Two Weddings and a Murder, Kensington (June 1922; as Lady Phoebe and her betrothed say their vows of holy matrimony, a killer has vowed unholy vengeance on the town’s chief inspector)
Stephen May, Green Ink, Swift Press (novel of politicians, spies and lovers and the mysterious disappearance of Victor Grayson in 1920)
Rachel Scott McDaniel, The Dreams We Knew, Kregel (blend of mystery and second-chance romance in twenties New York)
Patrice McDonough, A Slash of Emerald, Kensington (Victorian-set mystery series where medical examiner Julia Lewis, and her partner, DI Richard Tennant, investigate a string of murders. Julia Lewis series book two)
Kathleen McGurl, The Lost Diamond, HQ Digital (dual timeline romance set in India, 1947 and London 2024)
Steven A. McKay, King of Wessex, Canelo (third installment of the Alfred the Great series)
Amy Patricia Meade, Death Upon a Star, Severn House (historical cozy featuring obsession, power and murder, set in 1939, Los Angeles)
Fiona Melrose, Even Beyond Death, Corsair (1657 Avignon; the story of a man in love and a tale of the sacrifices we make for it)
Fenella J. Miller, Stormy Waters at Harbour House, Boldwood (tale of wartime bravery and courage; next installment in Harbour House series)
Meredith Miller, Cold Grace, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (story of survival and humanity set in early 1900s New England exploring themes of race, disability, eugenics and rural life on the fringes of society)
Shara Moon, Let Us March On, William Morrow (inspired by the life of real-life crusader, Lizzie McDuffie, who as a maid in FDR’s White House, spearheaded the Civil Rights movement of her time)
Jean P. Moore, Crossing from Shore to Shore, Running Wild Press (dual timeline love story set against the backdrop of the WWI Red Scare and the Spanish Flu)
Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody, Berkley (in 1919, amidst civil and social unrest, in a place called Harlem, Black pride is evident everywhere…in music, theatre, fashion and the art)
Lars Mytting, trans. Deborah Dawkin, The Night of the Scourge, The Overlook Press/Maclehose (family drama set in WWII–era Norway)
Sacha Naspini, The Bishop’s Villa, Europa Editions (1943; based on the true story of a collaboration between the Catholic diocese of Grosseto and the Fascist authorities)
Suzanne Nelson, The Librarians of Lisbon, Zando Projects (with World War II raging across Europe, best friends Selene and Beatrice are enlisted by the U.S. Intelligence Office to infiltrate the Axis spy network)
Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru, A Piece of Red Cloth, Allen & Unwin (novel based on the oral history of the Yolngu people from north-east Arnhem Land)
Anne O’Brien, The Queen and the Countess, Orion (England 1450s; can Queen Margaret and the Countess of Warwick trust each other in the midst of treachery and the turmoil of battle?)
Joseph O’Connor, The Ghosts of Rome, Europa Editions (second book in the Rome Escape Line trilogy, set in Italy 1944)
Jamie Ogle, As Sure as the Sea, Tyndale House (Christian historical romance novel set in Eastern Roman Empire, AD 310)
Sally Page, The Secrets of Flowers, Blackstone/Harper (novel about a grieving woman who rediscovers herself by uncovering the lost story of the girl who arranged flowers on the Titanic)
Heather Parry, Carrion Crow, Doubleday (gothic horror commentary on the constraints of polite society, that unfurls one family’s festering secrets)
Victoria Purman, The Radio Hour, Harper Muse (a funny look at the golden years of radio broadcasting in post-war Australia)
Frances Quinn, The Lost Passenger, Simon & Schuster UK (1912; uplifting story about grabbing your chances with both hands, and being brave enough to find out who you really are)
Youssef Rakha, The Dissenters, Graywolf Press (a transgressive novel that spans seventy years of Egyptian history from the 1950s to the present)
Nicola Rayner, The Paris Dancer, Head of Zeus/Aria (story of courage, friendship and resistance, inspired by the true story of a Jewish ballroom dancer in Paris during WWII)
Lynette Rees, The Cobbler’s Apprentice, Boldwood (a boy down on his luck finds his way in a cruel Victorian world)
Madeleine Reiss, The Taking of Irene Hart, One More Chapter (1859, Somerset; widow Hester Hart decides to sign over all her family’s worldly goods – and the family freedom – to a secretive religious community)
Nancy Revell, A Secret in the Family, Century (saga follow-up to the Shipyard Girls set in 1945 Sunderland and 1953 Durham)
Evelio Rosero, trans. Victor Meadowcroft, House of Fury, New Directions (brings to light Colombia’s violent history on one night in 1970)
David Rotenberg, City Rising: The Bend in the River, At Bay Press (tells the story of two destitute Baghdadi Jews who become opium lords)
S. E. Rutledge, The Girl Who Saved Them, Bookouture (during WWII a woman smuggles allied soldiers out of occupied Paris)
Robert Seethaler, trans. Katy Derbyshire, The Café with No Name, Europa Editions/Canongate (a story of the hopes, kindnesses and everyday heroism of one community in 1966)
Victoria Shaun, City of the Sun, Melville House (in modern-day Hollywood, a copywriter uncovers the secret of a 1904 movie that was never finished; dual timeline set in present and 1904 NY, Hollywood and Berlin)
Jill Eileen Smith, Dawn of Grace, Revell (on the brink of despair, Mary Magdalene is about to discover that while the life of faith is never perfect, perfect love casts out fear–and Jesus makes all things new)
Richard Strachan, The Unrecovered, Raven Books (debut inspired by the legend of Gallondean, which has it that if the heirs to the house hear the howling of a spectral hound nearby, their death will quickly follow)
Stephen Spotswood, Dead in the Frame, Doubleday (book 5 in Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime)
Steve Stern, A Fool’s Kabbalah, Melville House (in the ruins of postwar Europe, the world’s leading expert on the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism goes on a journey to recover sacred books stolen by the Nazis)
Sarah Sundin, Midnight on the Scottish Shore, Revell (story takes you to the wild Scottish seaside, where danger lurks under the surface of the water–and in the depths of the human heart)
Abdellah Taïa, trans. Emma Ramadan, Live In Your Light, Seven Stories (three moments in the life of Malika, a Moroccan countrywoman, from 1954 to 1999; from French colonization to the death of King Hassan II)
Tangea Tansley, Snakes in Paradise, Arden (novel of power, treachery, cross-cultural friendship, and love, reimagining history in a pivotal period in the life of the last sultan to rule the Iberian Peninsula)
Hope C. Tarr, Stardust, Lume (WWII; novel set against the backdrop of war-torn Paris)
Mario Theodorou, Felix Grey and the Descendant, Neem Tree (Edwardian crime caper set in London, 1904, a few years after Queen Victoria’s death)
Grace Tiffany, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, Harper (novel about Judith Shakespeare, a middle-aged apothecary and midwife during the English Civil War)
Elizabeth A. Tucker, The Pale Flesh of Wood, She Writes (twentieth-century multigenerational braided narrative examining the rippling effects of trauma and perceived fault after a loved one’s suicide)
Yuko Tsushima, trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, Wildcat Dome, Penguin Classics (a metaphysical saga of postwar Japan)
Simon Turney, Agricola: Warrior, Head of Zeus/Aries (first in series where Agricola must tread a careful path to stay alive through the Year of the Four Emperors)
Eric von Neff, The Quan Shang Opera, Histria (erotic thriller in which San San finds herself thrust into an arranged marriage with tyrannical figure who owns a laundry and garage in San Francisco)
Jack Wang, The Riveter, House of Anansi Press/HarperVia (debut novel explores what one man must sacrifice to belong in the only home he has ever truly known)
Larry Weill, The Dutchman’s Gold, North Country Books (historical novel involving a pair of situational treasure hunters from New York who are enticed into a search for one of America’s largest treasures)
Raymond Wemmlinger, The Queen’s Favourite, Sapere (biographical historical novel of the Seymour sisters, set during the Tudor period at Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth’s court)
Lauren Westwood, The House of Light and Shadows, Boldwood (an old-house historical mystery, layered with romance and secrets)
Charlotte Whitney, A Tiny Piece of Blue, She Writes (novel follows a homeless young girl as she struggles to survive during the Great Depression)
Steve Wick, The Ruins, Pegasus Crime (thriller set in 1954, where the grim horrors of Nazis in America collide with the manufacturing of the suburban dream)
Jenny Williamson, Enemy of My Dreams, Canary Street (in the last days of the Roman Empire a princess and Goth warlord forge a dangerous alliance in this historical fantasy)
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Mutual Interest, Bloomsbury (novel about three queer people united by marriage, love, and their budding business empire in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York City)
Kell Woods, Upon a Starlit Tide, Tor/Voyager AU (fairy tale-inspired historical fantasy set in Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758)
March 2025
Anita Abriel, American Housewife, Lake Union (NYC 1950; for a beloved television star in 1950s America, image and reality clash in a novel about fame, marriage, and secrets)
Claire Anderson-Wheeler, The Gatsby Gambit, Renegade Books AU/Viking (1922; at the Gatsby West Egg Mansion one of the guests is murdered and Greta Gatsby is on hand to investigate)
TJ Alexander, A Gentleman’s Gentleman, Vintage (dry wit, a slow-burn romance, and a nuanced portrait of trans identity in this Regency romance)
Deepa Anappara, The Last of Earth, Oneworld (novel set in mid-19th century Tibet, featuring three travellers, one Indian, two British, who venture into a kingdom then forbidden to outsiders)
Laura Anthony, The Women on Platform Two, Gallery (in 1970s Dublin, all forms of contraception are forbidden, but an intrepid group of women will risk everything to change that in this little-known true story)
Maggie Anton, The Midwives’ Escape, Banot Press (novel filled with adventure, warfare, and romance, that is true to both Torah and to history)
Libby Ashworth, The Widow’s Shillings, Michael Joseph (third in Cavanah series, with her daughter, Agnes, married, Kitty must focus on her youngest children and their dream of making it across the sea to America)
Alice Austen, 33 Place Brugmann, Grove Press/Bloomsbury (a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle—told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment building in Belgium in 1939)
D. R. Bailey, The Night Angels, Sapere (novel features women pilots in WWII, in the second of the Secret Sirens Aviation Thrillers)
Cecily Blench, Secrets of Malta, Zaffre (1943; while investigating the disappearance of her former lover, Margarita stumbles upon the hunt for a dangerous spy)
Bob the Drag Queen, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, Gallery (novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and music)
Chris Bohjalian, The Jackal’s Mistress, Doubleday (the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, Silent as the Grave, Minotaur (retired Detective Molly Murphy Sullivan goes undercover)
AnneMarie Brear, The Riverside Maid, Boldwood (saga set in Victorian Yorkshire)
J. C. Briggs, The Secrets of Treasonfield House, Sapere (a dual timeline Gothic mystery set in England between the 1950s and the First World War)
Jessica Bull, A Fortune Most Fatal, Union Square (a witty murder mystery featuring Jane Austen as an intrepid sleuth— second installment in the Miss Austen Investigates series set in 1797)
Lucy Caldwell, These Days, Zando/SJP Lit (follows two sisters over the course of four nights as they reckon with their futures in war-torn Belfast)
Melodie Campbell, The Silent Film Star Murders, Cormorant (Lady Lucy Revelstoke reboards her ocean liner for another high society murder mystery, book 3, on the high seas)
Michael Dennis Cassity, York’s Ride, Univ. of Nevada Press (story set in 1914, in northern California and western Nevada with the tale of two twelve-year-old boys and a legendary, wild horse from the desert)
Brian Castleberry, The Californians, Mariner Books (novel that spans 100 years of American history, starting with the early days of cinema)
Crystal Caudill, Written in Secret, Kregel (in the heart of nineteenth-century Cincinnati, where justice is scarce and danger lurks in every shadow, one woman holds the power to rewrite fate)
Su Chang, The Immortal Woman, House of Anansi Press (a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai, escapes to America, ten years later, to become a true Westerner)
Veronica Chapa, Malinalli, Atria/Primero Sueno Press (retelling of the triumphs and sorrows of one of the most controversial and misunderstood women in Mexico’s history and mythology)
Roohi Choudhry, Outside Women, The Univ. of Kentucky (intertwines the narratives of two women carving their existences outside of patriarchal and colonial spaces as they search for kinship and strength)
Joanne Clague, The Lightfingered Lass, Canelo (the House of Help for Friendless Girls, book 2. Victorian saga)
Donovan Cook, Woden’s Spear, Boldwood (adventure of turmoil, coming of age and survival set in Old Saxony, 449 AD)
Iver P. Cooper, 1637: The Pacific Initiative, Baen (historical fantasy centering conflicting power struggles between the colonists and the native Americans)
Emily Critchley, The Undoing of Violet Claybourne, Sourcebooks Landmark (1938; gothic mystery following a young girl enthralled by the enigmatic Claybourne sisters and the tragedy that binds them together for good)
Richard Cullen, Winter Warrior, Head of Zeus/Aries (book three of The Wolf of Kings Viking adventure set in England, 1069)
R. M. Cullen, Harlequin is Dead, Sapere (historical thriller set in 18th century London. First in Richard Brinsley Sheridan Mysteries)
Siobhan Daiko, The Girl from Sicily, Boldwood (dual timeline story from wartime Italy, set in 1945 and 2005)
Jeanne M. Dams, Murder of a Recluse, Severn House (a warm-hearted 1920s historical mystery with a courageous heroine)
N. R. Daws, Murder at the Palace, Orion (when one of the ladies in residence at Hampton Court Palace fails to answer her maid’s call, Mrs Lydia Bramble, palace housekeeper, is called in to investigate)
Katie Daysh, A Merciful Sea, Canelo (romantic historical adventure of the sea)
Ellie Dean, With Promises to Keep, Century (1947; Cliffehaven book 21 in which Peggy Reilly and the rest of the Cliffehaven community must pull together to keep everyone safe)
P. T. Deutermann, The Second Sun, St. Martin’s (historical thriller set during the waning months of World War II)
Helena Dixon, The Secret Detective Agency, Bookouture (first in a new cosy series with Miss Jane Treen – the coffee-drinking cat lover dressed head to toe in tweed, who just happens to be a secret super sleuth)
Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express, S&S-Summit/Picador/Harper Avenue (historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station)
José Donoso, trans. Megan McDowell, The Mysterious Disappearance of the Marquise of Loria, New Directions (an elegy to the literary erotica of 1920s Madrid)
Ariel Dorfman, Allegro, Other Press (historical mystery set in 1789 tells of friendship and betrayal, and how music allows us to defy death)
Kate Eastham, A Fresh Start for the Country Nurse, Boldwood (Lara Flynn takes on a new job as a district nurse and midwife at a country practice in July 1936)
Sarah M. Eden, The Tides of Time, Shadow Mountain (in 1793, a storm propels Lili forward through time, kindling a love that transcends the ages)
Fang Fang, trans. Michael Berry, Soft Burial, Columbia Univ. Press (part mystery, part historical fiction, and part social exposé, novel intercuts different generations, regions, and time periods to explore historical trauma and the psychological toll of repressed violence)
Diane Fanning, Lizzie, Level Best (historical fiction imagines the thinking and fear that drove Lizzie Borden to an extreme act of cruelty)
Kaitlin Felix, Rán’s Daughters, Outland Entertainment (adventure of sea salt, blood, and gold features a female-driven Viking crew)
Katie Fforde, From London With Love, Century (1968 — Felicity arrives in London to stay with her mother, do a secretarial course – and meet a suitable man)
Pip Fioretti, Skull River, Affirm Press (a murder mystery and a portrayal of a country on the verge of transformation – set in 1912 NSW)
Elinor Florence, Finding Flora, Simon & Schuster (novel set in turn-of-the-century Alberta about a young woman on the run from her abusive husband who uses a legal loophole to claim a homestead in the Wild West)
Katie Flynn, Forgotten Child, Century (late summer 1940; Isla Donahue’s idyllic lifestyle comes to an abrupt end when her father sends her to the poorhouse)
Kate Forsyth, Bitter Greens, Allison & Busby (a dark retelling of the Rapunzel tale set around the court of the Sun King)
Jacqueline Friedland, Counting Backwards, Harper Muse (dual time line story is a reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won. NY, 2022 and Virginia, 1927)
Jackie French, The Whisperer’s War, HQ Fiction (1940; Lady Deanna becomes enmeshed in the German plot to restore the Duke of Windsor to the throne and ensure an alliance with Hitler)
January Gilchrist, My Sister’s Shadow, Crooked Lane (envy and desire infiltrate the lives of twin sisters in this gothic suspense set in England and New York City)
Leonard Goldberg, A Scandalous Affair, Pegasus Crime (a Daughter of Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Joanna Holmes must confront a shocking case of blackmail that threatens the highest levels of His Majesty’s government)
S. K. Golden, The Socialite’s Guide to Sleuthing & Secrets, Crooked Lane (hotel heiress Evelyn Murphy is on the hunt for a cunning killer and a mysterious thief in the third Pinnacle Hotel mystery)
C. W. Gortner, The Saint Laurent Muse, William Morrow (novel of fashion’s 1970s “It Girl” Loulou de la Falaise, and her life partying and designing with Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, and Halston)
Chaim Grade, trans. Rose Waldman, Sons and Daughters, Knopf (a glimpse of the rich Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania that the Holocaust will eradicate)
Alex Grecian, Rose of Jericho, Tor Nightfire (supernatural horror where ghosts and ghouls are the least of a witch’s problems in nineteenth-century New England)
Gabrielle Griffiths, Greater Sins, Doubleday (1915, Scotland; a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community after a perfectly preserved body is pulled from a peat bog)
Rachel Griffiths, The Trouble with Anna, Gallery (witty slow burn frenemies-to-lovers romance)
Emilia Hart, The Sirens, St. Martin’s/The Borough Press (novel of mystery and magic, about four sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea. Set in 2019, 1999 and 1800)
Gracie Hart, The Chocolate Box Girls at War, Michael Joseph (2nd book in saga set in York, 1940, where the Rowntrees factory is turned over to making munitions)
Sophie Haydock, Madame Matisse, Doubleday (novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, set in the 1930s art movement in France)
Lucy H. Hedrick, Six Weeks in Reno, Lake Union (a woman at a “divorce ranch” in 1930s Reno strives to live life on her own terms)
M. B. Henry, As the Storm Clouds Gather, Severn House (1915; novel of two young people drawn together through war)
Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind, Atria (story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both)
Charlie N. Holmberg, Wizard of Most Wicked Ways, 47North (when dead enemies rise, grave matters of the heart, mind, and body clash in the fourth Whimbrel House Victorian fantasy novel)
Angela Hunt, The Daughter of Rome, Bethany House (tale of faith and sacrifice set against the rich tapestry of Nero’s ancient Rome)
Georgia Hunter, One Good Thing, Pamela Dorman Books/Allison & Busby (story of hardship and hope, courage and resilience, that follows one young woman’s journey through war-torn Italy)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Pick-Pocket’s Return, Boldwood (Victorian saga about two orphaned children who once saved each other from a terrible fate)
Anna Jacobs, Hope Comes to Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (third book in the Eastby End saga series)
Guy Jenkin, Murder Most Foul, Legend Press (dark, witty murder mystery set in 1593 with amateur sleuths Will Shakespeare and Chris Marlowe’s sister, Ann)
Kath Jonathan, The Resistance Painter, Simon & Schuster (dual timeline examines the little-known story of Poland’s resistance army and the contemporary lives of two artists, grandmother and granddaughter, which are inextricably entwined)
William W. Johnstone; J.A. Johnstone, The High Country, Kensington (celebrates the guts, glory, and often deadly exploits of the pioneering fur trappers who tracked and tamed the American frontier)
Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, S&S/Saga Press (historical horror set in the American west in 1912 follows a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire looking for justice)
Dietrich Kalteis, Dirty Little War, ECW Press (crime novel set in mob-filled Chicago during the 1920s Prohibition)
Susanna Kearsley, The King’s Messenger, Sourcebooks Landmark (story of treachery, betrayal and love set in 1613 when James I/VI’s son and heir dies plunging the nation into mourning)
Fiona Keating, Smoke and Silk, Mountain Leopard (opium smuggling, murder and romance meet in this historical thriller set in Victorian London)
Jim Kelly, The Cambridge Siren, Allison & Busby (WWII murder mystery set in Cambridge, spring 1941. Nighthawk book 4)
Julia R. Kelly, The Fisherman’s Gift, Simon & Schuster/Harvill Secker (debut set in a Scottish village, in 1900, in the weeks after a young boy mysteriously washes up on shore, causing the buried secrets to come to light and rekindling an old love story)
Paulette Kennedy, The Artist of Blackberry Grange, Lake Union (a ghostly novel about family secrets, sacrifice, and lost loves)
Lynn Knight, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread, Bantam (London, 1925; ambitious designer-dressmaker Rose Burnham turns sleuth to bring a swindler to justice)
Jackson Kuhl, The Island of Small Misfortunes, Regal House (gothic ghost mystery set on a private island in 1898)
Brianna Labuskes, The Boxcar Librarian, William Morrow (Depression-era novel about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library)
Lizzie Lane, Tough Times on Coronation Close, Boldwood (next installment in the Coronation Close saga set in WWII)
Soraya Lane, The Spanish Daughter, Bookouture (dual timeline tale in which a woman finds courage in her grandmother’s story)
Kathryn Lasky, A Slant of Light, Severn House (1930s mystery; when students of St Ignatius go missing, painter and amateur sleuth Georgia O’Keeffe must infiltrate the school to figure out what’s going on)
Iris Mitlin Lav, Gitel’s Freedom, She Writes (narrative about the lives of Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century)
Phil Lecomber, Midnight Streets, Titan Books (dark thriller set in 1920s Soho, featuring George Harley, a cockney private detective)
Rosanne Limoncelli, The Four Queens of Crime, Crooked Lane (first woman detective chief inspector in the CID, is determined to find a killer with the help of the four crime writers; Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Allingham)
Andrew Ludington, Splinter Effect, Minotaur (time traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward maneuvers through the past to recover a long-lost, precious menorah hiding out in ancient Rome)
Julianne MacLean, All Our Beautiful Goodbyes, Lake Union (1946 and 1995; tale of lost love and fallen dreams, set in remote Nova Scotia and spanning decades)
Sanam Mahloudji, The Persians, Scribner (travelling from the 1940s to early 2000s, a searching portrait of a family in crisis at the turn of the century, and an American family saga reinvented)
Clare Marchant, The Shadow on the Bridge, Boldwood (the discovery of a book of poems draws contemporary Sarah into the story of Anne Howard in 1571)
Lee Martin, The Evening Shades, Melville House (tells the story of two lonely people in a small Midwestern town slowly revealing their secrets to themselves, and each other)
Sandro Martini, Ciao, Amore, Ciao, Black Rose Writing (the accidental discovery of an aged photo from World War II offers a jaded journalist a last gasp at bonding with his dying father)
Kate Maruyama, Alterations, Running Wild (dual timeline story told in 1940s and 1998 about a woman who gets a job sewing for Edith Head at Paramount’s costume department)
Maggie Mason, A Mother’s Hope, Sphere (wartime novel about motherhood, hardship and courageous women during WWII)
Susan Meissner, A Map to Paradise, Berkley (mystery set during the McCarthy era in 1956 Malibu, California)
John Winn Miller, Rescue Run, Bancroft Press (after escaping the treacherous waters of WWII, Captain Jake Rogers leads his crew on a daring mission across Nazi-occupied Europe. Sequel to The Hunt for the Peggy C)
Vanessa Miller, The Filling Station, Thomas Nelson (inspirations novel delves into the sisterhood of two women and highlights the strength and resilience of Black women and the beauty of Black joy in the face of adversity)
Mark J. Mitchell, A Book of Lost Songs, Addison & Highsmith (a picaresque tale follows one man’ s journey and disillusionment in a world of brutality in the late 13th-century)
Mary Monroe, Bent But Not Broken, Dafina (Depression-era Alabama novel tells of a mistreated wife who finally finds the love she’s longed for—only to be plunged into deceit, betrayal, and murder)
Allison Montclair, An Excellent Thing in a Woman, Severn House (the owners of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are determined to bring love matches to the residents of Post-WWII London, despite a murder investigation)
Louise Morrish, Women of War, Penguin UK (August 1914; as World War One begins, two women are determined to do whatever they can for their country)
Stuart Nadler, Rooms for Vanishing, Dutton (the violence of war has fractured the universe for a Jewish family from Vienna, where the novel finds them alone in their separate futures, and haunted by the loss of their loved ones)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Homicide in the Indian Hills, Kensington (American newlywed Jane Wunderly learns that tigers aren’t the only dangers lurking in 1920s India)
Gosia Nealon, The Wartime Chocolate Maker, Bookouture (a girl risks her life hiding notes vital to the Polish resistance in boxes of chocolates made in her father’s factory)
Valerie Nieman, Upon the Corner of the Moon, Regal House (immerses readers in a story about the real rulers who changed the face of Scotland)
Phil Oakley, Runners, Stoney Creek Publishing (historical saga continues in second Oakley book about resilience, family, and the price of ambition)
Janette Oke, The Pharisee’s Wife, Tyndale House (about a young Jewish woman, plucked from obscurity and thrust on perilous journey, only to witness the world’s most life-changing story)
Emily Organ, The Whitechapel Widow, Storm (1888 during the Ripper spree a widow hunts for her husband’s killer)
Debra Oswald, One Hundred Years of Betty, Allen & Unwin (set against a century of world events and social upheavals, the anti-war protests, the women’s liberation movement, and the AIDS crisis during the 1980s)
Lizzie Page, The Wartime Mother, Bookouture (saga set in England, 1941 in which widowed Winnie struggles to keep her pub open with the help of an orphaned girl she cares for)
Lew Paper, Legacy of Lies, Level Best (thriller focusing on a former FBI Special Agent-turned-private investigator, who is asked by a Mafia contact to follow Jimmy Hoffa in the weeks before his abduction)
Tracie Peterson, A Constant Love, Bethany House (historical romance of healing and spiritual depth set during the early years of the city of Cheyenne)
Chris Petit, Come In and Shut the Door, Scribner UK (employed by a collector of dubious historical objects, Parker discovers things that will lead him into the darkest corners of 20th-century history)
Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus, Bloomsbury/Gollancz (reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin)
Anthony Quinn, The Mouthless Dead, Abacus (crime novel based on the Wallace Murder, a national cause célèbre of the 1930s and still unsolved)
Angela Ransom, A Glittering Peril, Sapere (lady-in-waiting, Catrin Surovell Tudor Mysteries book 3, set in 1561)
Marcie R. Rendon, Broken Fields, Soho Crime (Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, is back on the case after two men are found dead on a rural farm in Minnesota in 1970s)
Helena Rho, Stone Angels, Grand Central (novel set in the Pacific theater, focusing on the Korean diaspora and Japanese occupation during WWII)
Vanessa Riley, A Wager at Midnight, Zebra (romance in which a duke has made a wager to find husbands for the love-of-his-life’s two sisters, in order to have a second chance with her)
Jane Rosenthal, The Serpent Bearer, She Writes (part World War II spy thriller, part romance, and part tale of buried family secrets)
Karen Russell, The Antidote, Knopf/Chatto & Windus (dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town)
Kim Vogel Sawyer, Hope’s Enduring Echo, Waterbrook (historical romance about two young people whose discovery of fossilized bones leads to a love that echoes through the ages)
Simon Scarrow, A Death in Berlin, Headline (next installment of the Inspector Schenke WWII espionage thriller series)
Isabelle Schuler, The House of Barbary, Raven Books (story walks the thin line between retribution and revenge, and the choices we must make when confronted by evil)
Kent M. Schwendy, Sailing Toward the Tempest, Black Rose Writing (early in the French Revolutionary War, a young British naval officer finds himself unexpectedly in charge of a powerful frigate)
Caroline Scott, Greenfields, S&S UK (when Robert Bardsley arrives at Greenfields in spring, 1933, it is home to a collective of writers, artists, and musicians, until the cracks start to show)
Rachel Seiffert, Once the Deed is Done, Virago (set in Northern Germany, 1945; as the war comes to an end, a boy stands witness to secrets he doesn’t understand and cannot carry alone)
Betty Shamieh, Too Soon, Avid Reader/S&S (saga follows one family’s journey fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, to chase the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies)
Joanna Shupe, The Gilded Heiress, Avon (story full of secrets and betrayal, set among the streets of New York City’s Gilded Age)
Danielle Steel, Far From Home, Macmillan (wartime tale about the love between a mother and daughter)
Anna Stuart, The English Wife, Bookouture (novel inspired by the remarkable life of Clementine Churchill)
Marion Taffe, By Her Hand, 4th Estate (a young girl in the Peak District, Mercia, AD 910 develops a friendship with Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians)
Maisie Thomas, A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, Boldwood (first installment in new saga series set in Manchester 1941)
Liz Tolsma, When the Sky Burned, Barbour (novel taking place in the true-life setting of the deadly fire of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, October 8, 1871)
Christopher C. Tubbs, Betrayal, Lume Books (tale of swashbuckling adventure, loyalty, and resilience)
Claire van Ryn, Where the Birds Call Her Name, Penguin AU (dual timeline novel set in 2023 and 1968 in Tasmania’s north-west)
Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue, Poisoned Pen Press (gothic horror set in the Netherlands, 1887 when one of two sisters goes temporarily insane)
Radha Vatsal, No. 10 Doyers Street, Level Best (mystery novel of New York City on the cusp of modernity, as seen through a unique immigrant perspective)
Michelle Vernal, The Dressmaker’s Secret, Bookouture (a young orphan is raised by a talented dressmaker in a bridal shop)
Also: The Dressmaker’s Past, Bookouture (book two – a bridal shop holds the key to discovering what happened the day Sabrina’s mother disappeared)
Bridget Walsh, The Spirit Guide, Gallic (1879, London; scriptwriter Minnie Ward and ex-police officer Albert Easterbrook are drawn into a world of celebrities, ghosts and questionable cults)
Boo Walker, Peggy Shainberg, The Secrets of Good People, Lake Union (Florida area, 1970; a whirlwind romance, impulsive marriage, and a murder among friends in a twisty whodunit)
J. E. Weiner, The Wretched and Undone, HTF Publishing (Southern Gothic saga set in the heart of the Texas Hill Country and inspired by real people and actual events)
Amy Weldon, Creature, Sea Crow Press (braids Mary Shelley’s life journey with that of her most famous character –Victor Frankenstein’s half-human Creature)
Alexandra Weston, The Lavender Bride, Boldwood (historical romance set in 1930s Hollywood)
Lauren Willig, The Girl from Greenwich Street, William Morrow (based on the true story of a famous trial, as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr investigate the shocking murder of a young woman)
Evie Woods, The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris, One More Chapter (mystery in which Edie leaves everything behind in Ireland for her dream job at a bakery in Paris. Except the bakery isn’t in Paris – and neither is Edie)
Helen Yendall, The Highland Girls Report for Duty, HQ Digital (WWII saga set in Scotland, 1944; book 3 in series)
April 2025
Milo Allan, Murray Hall, Black & White (inspired by a true story of one Scot’s rise to prominence, novel unearths a queer past erased by history)
Michael Arnold, The Savage Isle, Canelo (the epic story of Britain on the cusp of the Roman conquest. 42AD)
Ingeborg Bachmann, trans. Tess Lewis, The Honditsch Cross, New Directions (new translation of novella set during the final days of the Napoleonic occupation of Austria in 1813)
David Baldacci, Strangers in Time, Grand Central (novel set in London in 1944, about a bereaved book shop owner and two teenagers scarred by the second world war)
Anne Berest, Claire Berest, Gabriële, Europa (novel about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world)
Sian Ann Bessey, A Time Traveler’s Masquerade, Shadow Mountain (romance blossoms when Isla Crawford steps into McQuivey’s Costume Shop in London and is swept back in time to 1605)
Nancy Bilyeau, The Versailles Formula, Lume Books (historical thriller in which a woman is invited to a dinner party at a Gothic castle and is drawn into a web of deception, espionage and murder)
Laurent Binet, trans. Sam Taylor, Perspective(s), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence, 1557)
Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women, Harper Muse (a humorous, thought provoking and nostalgic romp through one pivotal American year in the 1960s)
Kate Lord Brown, The Golden Hour, Simon & Schuster UK (dual timeline story which interweaves desert archaeologists, priceless treasures, Nefertiti’s tomb and the cabarets of WW2 Cairo, with restless expats living in Beirut)
Susan Buttenwieser, Junction of Earth and Sky, Manilla Press (unfolds in multiple timelines the enduring bond of grandmother and granddaughter)
Colleen Cambridge, A Fashionably French Murder, Kensington (1950; American expat Tabitha Knight has found a new life in postwar Paris, along with a delightful friend in aspiring chef Julia Child)
Christian Cameron, The Venetian Heretic, Orion (brings to life Renaissance historical events of espionage and murder, while retaining a human story at its heart)
Deborah Challinor, Black Silk and Buried Secrets, HarperCollins AU (novel featuring heroine Tatty Crowe and the world of Sydney’s Victorian funeral business; second installment after Black Silk and Sympathy)
Fliss Chester, Death in an English Village, Bookouture (a family gardener is murdered near a site of legendary buried treasure. Cressida Fawcett, book 7)
Jennifer Chiaverini, The World’s Fair Quilt, William Morrow (celebration of quilting, family, community, and history, featuring a quilt entered in the Sears National Quilt Contest for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair)
Georgina Clarke, Viper in the Nest, Verve Books (third instalment of the historical mystery series set in 18th century London)
Madeleine Cleary, The Butterfly Women, Affirm Press (weaves romance and mystery into a tale of Australian history)
Aliocha Coll, trans. Katie Whittemore, Attila, Open Letter (Attila the Hun, reimagined as a visionary leader, contemplates the fate of his people at the gates of Rome. First English translation)
Elena Collins, The Cornish Witch, Boldwood (dual timeline historical mystery about secrets, longing and the power of a mother’s love; set in present day and 1625)
Manda Collins, A Wallflower’s Guide to Viscounts and Vice, Grand Central (a wallflower and a rake join together to solve a mystery in this historical rom-com)
Vivian Conroy, Death on the Rhine, One More Chapter (Miss Ashford Investigates, book 5; cosy mystery set in 1930s)
Christina Courtenay, Shadows in the Spring, Headline Review (present day and AD80 timeline with an Iceni tribe member who is home in Britannia with vengeance on his mind)
Joanna Courtney, Salome, Piatkus (feminist retelling of the royal daughter who loved to dance)
Siobhan Curham, The Lost Story of Sofia Castello, Bookouture (mystery in which a writer is tasked with the job of writing the memoir of Sofia Castello – a singer who faked her own death in 1941)
Sandra Dallas, Tough Luck, St. Martin’s (in this homage to True Grit, a young woman makes a perilous journey west in 1863 in search of her gold-mining father)
Sarah Damoff, The Bright Years, Simon & Schuster (told from three points of view over four generations, story tells a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy)
Martina Devlin, Charlotte, The Lilliput Press (a fictional tale of Charlotte Brontë and a story about fiction– who creates it, who lives it, who owns it)
Claire Deya, trans. Adriana Hunter, Blast, Other Press (captures the beginning of a postwar period in which everyone must rebuild their lives and identities, and overcome the obsessions that prevent them from healing)
Helena Dixon, The Seaside Murders, Bookouture (second in the new cosy series The Secret Detective Agency)
Stuart Douglas, Death at the Playhouses, Titan (second novel in the Lowe and Le Breton Mysteries set in the early 1970s featuring two ageing actors attempting to solve a murder after their famous co-star is found dead)
C. F. Dunn, Sun Ascendant, Sapere (book 2 in the Wars of the Roses saga)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at St Paul’s Cathedral, Allison & Busby (Coburg and Lampson work to solve a very puzzling case in May 1941)
Laura Elvery, Nightingale, Univ. of Queensland (a tale of faith and love, bravery and care, and the vitality of women’ s work. Set in London 1910)
Jean Ende, Houses of Detention, Apprentice House/Loyola Univ Press (like many immigrants who flee persecution, when the Rosens escaped the Nazis they thought life in America would be perfect)
Oisin Fagan, Eden’s Shore, John Murray (tale of greed, revenge and love, populated by a cast of revolutionaries and pirates, capitalists and aristocrats, sailors and soldiers, slaves and spies)
Joan Fernandez, Saving Vincent, She Writes (an early twentieth century novel about Jo van Gogh who battled the male-dominated art elite in her fifteen-year crusade to save her genius brother-in-law Vincent from obscurity)
Lily Fielding, A Locket Full of Hope, Penguin (19th-century saga about found family, romance and triumph over adversity)
Betty Firth, A Wartime Wedding in the Dales, Hera (WW2 saga set in the Yorkshire Dales in 1942)
Essie Fox, Dangerous, Orenda Books (historical thriller about Lord Byron, as decadent and dark as the poet himself)
Lynne Francis, The Disgraced Daughter, Piatkus (a heart-warming new saga of love, betrayal and secrets)
Allan Gaw, The Moon’s More Feeble Fire, Polygon (in 1930, Cuthbert and his team find themselves in a world of people-trafficking, prostitution and drug use amongst the upper classes)
Peter Geye, A Lesser Light, Univ. of Minnesota Press (story about industry and calamity, science versus superstition, patriarchy’s corrosive power, and the consequences when these forces collide in the wake of rapid social change)
Danielle Giles, Mere, Mantle (990 AD, deep in the fens; a novel about fear and survival, power and position, and a love that takes hold in the darkest of places)
Jenny Gladwell, The Bookshop Murders, Hodder & Stoughton (murder mystery set in London 1928)
Kelsie Sheridan Gonzalez, The Ones Time Forgot, Alcove Press (Irish mythology collides with Gilded Age New York in this debut enemies-to-lovers historical romantasy set in Manhattan, 1870)
Eric Goodman, Kaveh Zamanian, Mother of Bourbon, Post Hill (biographical fiction story of the most successful and influential woman distiller of Kentucky Bourbon)
Rosie Goodwin, Our Dear Daisy, Zaffre (saga set in Nuneaton, 1880)
Genevieve Graham, On Isabella Street, Simon & Schuster (novel set in Toronto and Vietnam during the turbulent sixties about two women caught up in powerful social movements)
Holly Green, A Call to Home, Hera (historical romance spans Europe during World War Two)
Beth Hahn, The City Beneath Her, Regal House (delivers a tale of suspense in a feminist noir thriller)
Jo Harkin, The Pretender, Knopf/Bloomsbury (the true story of the little-known Lambert Simnel, a figurehead of the 1487 Yorkist rebellion who ended up working as a spy in the court of King Henry VII)
C. S. Harris, Who Will Remember, Berkley (1816; the macabre murder of a prominent nobleman throws an already unsettled London into chaos)
Olivia Hawker, The Stars and Their Light, Lake Union (1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, the mystery of the unknown grips a sheltered novitiate in a novel about fate, agency, and faith)
Elise Hooper, The Library of Lost Dollhouses, William Morrow (about a young librarian who discovers historic dollhouses and embarks on a journey to uncover their hidden secrets in an interwoven narrative set during the early- to mid-twentieth century)
Rebecca Ide, The Gentleman and his Vowsmith, S&S/Saga Press (a roguish young lord, his intended bride, and his former lover race to survive when an arranged marriage goes wrong in this historical fantasy debut)
Michael Jecks, Fields of Glory, Boldwood (first book in the Vintaine series, set in 1346 France, during the one hundred years war)
Sabrina Jeffries, Hazardous to a Duke’s Heart, Kensington (new series in which a lord, detained in France during the Napoleonic war, returns home to find he’s inherited a dukedom)
Morgan Jerkins, Zeal, Harper (multi-generational novel that illuminates the legacy of slavery and the power of romantic love. Dual timeline novel set in 1865 and 2019)
Belinda Jones, The Hotel Where We Met, Quercus (a sweet time travel romance taking readers through the Victorian era to the Roaring Twenties, stopping off in the Fifties and Eighties)
Jenni Keer, The House of Lost Whispers, Boldwood (part romance, part mystery, and part First World War historical fiction)
Venessa Vida Kelley, When the Tides Held the Moon, Erewhon (blend of historical fantasy and romance at the turn of the 20th century; a fairytale of queer identity and found family)
Naomi Kelsey, The Darkening Globe, HarperNorth (1597, London. Beatrice’s husband returns from the New World with a mysterious woman, and an enormous painted globe, which starts to illustrate murder scenes)
Jess Kidd, Murder at Gulls Nest, Atria (1954; first in a cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears)
Karen Lynne Klink, War and Preservation, She Writes (journey through sacrifice, resilience, and love in the heart of the Civil War in Book 2 of The Texian Trilogy)
Joanne Kormylo, The Resistance Daughter, Hodder (novel inspired by true stories of WWII in Poland, 1942)
Richard Kurti, Carnival of Chaos, Sapere (book 4 in the Basilica Diaries Medieval Mysteries)
Ben Ladouceur, I Remember Lights, Book*Hug Press (a reminder of forgotten history and an exploration of the details of queer life)
Deryn Lake, Love Song of the Nightingale, Lume Books (historical time-slip romance)
Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River, Swift Press (novel inspired by the life of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into history)
Natasha Lester, The Mademoiselle Alliance (US), The Paris Code (UK), Ballantine/Sphere (brings to life the true story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who led one of the largest and most effective resistance networks in France during World War II)
Jessica Levine, Three Cousins, She Writes (set during the second wave of feminism and the sexual revolution, this coming-of-age novel is about female friendship in the 1970s)
Olesya Lyuzna, Glitter in the Dark, Mysterious Press (the search for a kidnapped singer in Prohibition-era New York leads an intrepid reporter from Harlem speakeasies to the dazzling world of the theater)
Alice G. May, The Resistance Girls, Boldwood (new saga series inspired by the true-life stories of The Women’s Secret Army)
Fiona McIntosh, The Fallen Woman, Storm (a talented botanical artist finds that her greatest strength lies, not in conforming to society’s rules, but in daring to defy them)
Lindz McLeod, The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet, Carina Adores/Atom (sapphic romance between Charlotte Lucas and Mary Bennet, after the death of Mr. Collins)
Fiza Saeed McLynn, The Midnight Carousel, Michael Joseph/Park Row (a story of grief, obsession, revenge and enduring love set in Paris, 1900 and Chicago, 1920)
Catriona McPherson, The Edinburgh Murders, Hodder & Stoughton (Edinburgh, 1948; welfare officer Helen Crowther investigates just how deep corruption can go)
Joanna Miller, The Eights, Putnam/Fig Tree (follows the unlikely friendship of four women in the first female class at Oxford, and their coming of age in a world forever changed by World War I)
Jennifer Moore, Discovering Dahlia, Covenant (inspirational Victorian romance; Blue Orchid Society, book 5)
Laura Morelli, The Keeper of Lost Art, William Morrow (during World War II, a girl makes a connection with a boy sheltering in her family’s Tuscan villa, where the treasures of the Uffizi Galleries are hidden)
Boyd Morrison, Beth Morrison, The White Fortress, Head of Zeus/Aries (third historical adventure in the Tales of the Lawless Land series, set in 1350s Europe)
Kelly Mustian, The River Knows Your Name, Sourcebooks Landmark (in dual storylines, Nell, in 1971, and Becca, in early 1930s, move toward 1934, the catastrophic year that will forever link them)
John Shen Yen Nee, S. J. Rozan, The Railway Conspiracy, Soho Crime (Judge Dee and Lao She must use all their powers of deduction to take down a sinister conspiracy between Imperial Russia, Japan, and China in 1920s London)
Susan Neuhaus, The Surgeon of Royaumont, HQ Fiction AU (a young Australian woman on the battlefields of World War I finds her calling through her work as a surgeon)
Chris Nickson, No Precious Truth, Severn House (first in a new WWII historical thriller series introduces Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch in Leeds)
Jenny O’Brien, The Book of Lost Children, Storm (a wartime nurse risks everything to protect mothers and babies in Nazi-occupied Guernsey)
Maureen Paton, The Mystery at Rake Hall, Swift Press (first in a new historical crime series in which C.S. Lewis finds himself an unlikely detective)
Sarah Penner, The Amalfi Curse, Park Row/Legend Press (dual timeline tale in which a nautical archaeologist searching for sunken treasure unearths a centuries-old curse and powerful witchcraft)
Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Happy Land, Berkley (multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the courage it takes to dream)
Jean-Yves Pitoun, The Three Partisans, Union Square (saga of three World War II freedom fighters and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds)
Joanna Davidson Politano, The Curious Inheritance of Blakely House, Revell (in 1901, clockmaker Sydney Forrester inherits the estate of a mysterious industrialist, the estranged uncle she never met)
MJ Porter, Men of Iron, Boldwood (first book in a new Dark-Age Adventure series)
Weina Dai Randel, The Master Jeweler, Lake Union (story of a young woman’s dangerous rise to fame in the perilous world of jewelry in 1920s Shanghai)
Pamela Reitman, Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life, Sibylline Press (novel inspired by the life and work of a young German-Jewish art student at The Berlin Fine Arts Academy during Hitler’s rise to power)
Paul Remmers, Island Intern, Stoney Creek Publishing (in early summer 1900, in the wake of a devastating storm, a young doctor struggles to save lives while searching for the love of his life)
Rachel Rueckert, The Determined, Kensington (set during the Golden Age of Pirates, based on the real experiences of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who dared to subvert the rules and roles assigned to women of their time)
Toby Schmitz, The Empress Murders, Allen & Unwin (novel that is both a witty whodunnit and a look at the excesses of the British Empire in its decline)
Bailey Seybolt, Coram House, Atria (haunting novel about a crime writer who risks everything as she investigates the mystery of two deaths, decades apart, at a crumbling Vermont orphanage)
April J. Skelly, A Lethal Engagement, Crooked Lane (1890; an airship bound for London is thrown off course by a murder on the first night of its transatlantic voyage in this locked-room historical mystery debut)
Fiona Veitch Smith, The Penford Manor Murders, Embla Books (The Miss Clara Vale Mysteries Book 4, set in the Golden Age)
Lauraine Snelling, Kiersti Giron, Land of Dreams, Bethany House (Norwegian immigrant Amalia Gunderson and her ward, Ruth Forsberg, arrive in Iowa to claim the boarding house Ruth has inherited)
Andrés Felipe Solano, trans. Will Vanderhyden, Gloria, Counterpoint (centered around a historic concert at Madison Square Garden, novel spans two continents and five decades as it charts the lives of a mother and son in NYC)
Burhan Sönmez, trans. Sami Hêzil, Lovers of Franz K., Other Press (tribute to Kafka in a key period of history in the 1960s, when the Berlin Wall divided Europe, and women were fighting for freedom)
Shaina Steinberg, An Unquiet Peace, Kensington (novel following Paper Moon takes place in October 1948 around the Berlin Airlift)
Elaine Stock, The Last Secret Kept, Black Rose (set against the backdrop of the construction of the Berlin Wall, novel explores the beauty of individualism)
Emily Sullivan, A Death on Corfu, Kensington (murder mystery at the turn of the 20th century, where widow Minnie Harper struggles to find her place in a swiftly changing world)
Judy Summers, An Orphan’s Dream, Mountain Leopard (Liverpool, 1864; when Jemima Jenkins’s Pa passes away, she is thrown out of her lodgings and dismissed from her job as a schoolmistress)
Karen Swan, The Midnight Secret, Macmillan (last in The Wilde Isle series set on a remote Scottish island amidst the glamour and intrigues of high society in the 1930s)
Nadia Terranova, trans. Ann Goldstein, The Night Trembles, Seven Stories (two stories converge in the aftermath of the devastating 1908 earthquake in Sicily and Calabria)
Mark Thielman, The Devil’s Kitchen, Severn River (a blend of historical fiction and suspense that challenges the boundaries between past and present)
Will Thomas, Season of Death, Minotaur (in late Victorian England, private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn find themselves in the middle of the chaos when forces align to take over London’s criminal underworld)
Mae Thorn, Without Words, Wild Rose Press (romance in which a woman gains the ability to detect witches and inadvertently falls for a witch)
Milo Todd, The Lilac People, Counterpoint (story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis then the Allies)
C. W. Towarnicki, Notes From a Deserter, HTF Publishing (a Civil War farmer’s odyssey from battle to desertion ends in tragedy, revealing the era’s tumultuous spirit through a series of vignettes)
Jennifer Uhlarik, Love and Order, Barbour (separated as children adopted out to different families, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice)
Nghi Vo, Don’t Sleep With the Dead, Tordotcom (a reinvention of The Great Gatsby with Nick Carraway, on the eve of WWII)
Shirley Russak Wachtel, The Baker of Lost Memories, Little A (novel spanning decades about the broken bonds of family, memories of war, and redemption and hope)
Tasma Walton, I Am Nannertgarrook, S&S Bundyi (based on the story of the author’s ancestor, novel asks us to consider who, in colonial history, were the real savages, and what it means to be civilised)
Ursula Werner, Magda Revealed, She Writes (fictionalized account of Jesus’ life and ministry—told from the perspective of disciple Mary Magdalene)
Rita Woods, The Edge of Yesterday, Forge (a principal dancer with a renowned Harlem company stumbles through a vortex, a portal through time that transports her back 100 years to 1925 Detroit)
Jaime Jo Wright, Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse, Bethany House (dual timeline novel in which Beth washes ashore on Lake Superior with no memory, and is mistaken for the ghost of a local fisherman’s late wife)
Yu Hua, trans. Todd Foley, City of Fiction, Europa Editions (story of love, blood and dreams, set in early 20th century China)
May 2025
Alina Adams, Go On Pretending, HTF Publishing (three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR)
Jenny Adams, A Poisonous Silence, Crooked Lane (a film star is poisoned in Prohibition-era Philadelphia in the second Deadly Twenties mystery)
Isabel Allende, My Name is Emilia del Valle, Ballantine (1890s; a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself)
Merryn Allingham, The Venice Murders, Bookouture (book 11 of cosy mystery series when amateur detective and bookshop owner Flora Steele, and husband Jack Carrington, end up on a ‘murderous’ honeymoon in 1959)
Cynthia Anderson, The Pilot’s Wife, Embla (a dual timeline WWII novel set in 1944 and 2015)
Kelley Armstrong, Death at a Highland Wedding, Minotaur (fourth installment of the Rip Through Time series with time-traveler Detective Mallory Atkinson)
Lelita Baldock, The Keeper of Lost Art, Storm (a tale of love, sacrifice, and the power of art in the darkest of times)
Martha Bátiz, A Daughter’s Place, House of Anansi Press (Madrid, 1599; romance inspired by the real-life daughter of Miguel de Cervantes)
Susanna Bavin, A Wedding for the Home Front Girls, Bookouture (historical saga set during WWII in Manchester, 1941)
Alfonz Bednár, trans. David Short, Rajendra A. Chitnis, The Hours and the Minutes, Karolinum Press/Charles Univ, (an engaging critique of communism in the 1950s, debunking the founding myths of a modern Slovakia)
Gaëlle Bélem, trans. Hildegarde Serle, The Rarest Fruit, Europa Editions (set in 19th-century La Réunion, novel follows a Creole boy born into slavery, whose talent for botany leads him to revolutionize the vanilla industry)
Ginny Bell, The Dover Café on Trial, Zaffre (fifth book in WWII historical fiction saga series)
Tom Bentley-Fisher, The Boy Who Was Saved by Jazz, NeWest Press (a coming-of-age story and meditation on belonging)
Millicent Binks, A Most Parisian Murder, Bookouture (step into the glittery world of Paris in this Golden Age whodunnit full of intrigue, mystery and murder)
Neil Blackmore, Objects of Desire, Hutchinson Heinemann (traverses the 20th century with a glimpse into the lives of the cultural elite, and a story of betrayal, deceit, and literary fraud)
Barbara Tifft Blakey, The Angel of Second Street, Barbour (inspirational romance set in Eureka, California, 1885)
Talhi Briones, Mrs. Victoria Buys a Brothel, Renaissance Press (set in the US in 1865, this is a story about women who age, gossip, drink, love, and help you hide the body of your dead husband)
Jesse Browner, Sing to Me, Little, Brown (after the fall of Troy, an eleven-year-old boy sets off for the razed city when his father and sister fail to return home)
Katherine Bryant, Give My Love to Berlin, Walrus Publishing/Amphorae (Berlin, 1927; novel follows the lives of two gay couples trying to navigate falling in love and thriving in their community)
Rachel Burton, The House at River’s Edge, Boldwood (dual timeline love stories set in 1914 and 1997)
Ciar Byrne, A Lethal Cocktail, Headline Accent (a novel of three ex-husbands; two ex-wives; one murder; and a wedding that’s the talk of the town)
Lila Cain, The Blackbirds of St Giles, Dafina (1782 London; Daniel & his sister Pearl escape a sugar plantation and arrive in London where they are callously tricked into the underworld labyrinth of the rookeries of St Giles)
Joy Callaway, The Star of Camp Greene, Harper Muse (1918; WWI romance about a Broadway star forced to stay at Charlotte, NC’s Camp Greene for the duration of the war, after she overhears secret information. Inspired by the woman who initiated the USO)
Linda Chavez, The Silver Candlesticks, Wicked Son (a novel of the Spanish Inquisition)
Inger Christensen, trans. Denise Newman, The Painted Room, New Directions (three-part novella about the Italian Renaissance and the intrigue surrounding the frescoes made on the walls of a famous bridal chamber in the ducal palace of Lodovico III Gonzaga)
Barry Michael Cole, One Hundred Pearls, Livingston Press at Univ. of W. Alabama (mythical slave Sadie’s story embodies the lived experience of a silent multitude and chastises any attempt to rewrite the bloody history of American Slavery)
Jody Cooksley, The Surgeon’s House, Allison & Busby (sequel to The Small Museum, Maddie’s sister, Rebecca, is forced to question the stability of the life she has created)
J. C. Corry, The Storyteller’s War, Black Rose Writing (a tale of intrigue, loyalty, and love in medieval Europe)
Emma Cowing, The Show Woman, Hodder & Stoughton (set in the Edwardian era, novel about the first all female circus act)
Katherine Scott Crawford, The Miniaturist’s Assistant, Regal House (an art conservator discovers a familiar face in a 200-year-old miniature portrait and must reconcile her past with that of the men she loves across two different lifetimes)
Jiu Da, The Winding Dirt Road, Historium Press (an antithesis to propaganda written by both Chinese and foreign writers in 20th century, gives insight into how human docile nature and characteristics are manipulated, bringing about cultural and social corrosion)
Anjet Daanje, trans. David McKay, The Remembered Soldier, New Vessel Press/Scribe UK (a love story and a novel about the power of memory and imagination, set in Flanders 1922)
Oliver Darkshire, Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, W. W. Norton (debut reimagines a heroine of Boccaccio’s Decameron in a world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers)
Edward J. Delaney, Hard Margins, Turtle Point Press (in the search for justice for a road accident in 1958, an agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs finds a report from the post Civil War era)
David Demchuk, Corinne Leigh Clark, The Butcher’s Daughter, Hell’s Hundred (literary thriller that draws from historical sources and shines new light on Mrs. Lovett, the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known)
Cécile Desprairies, trans. Natasha Lehrer, The Propagandist, Swift Press (novel gives rare insight into a French female proponent of fascist ideology during WWII)
Helena Dixon, Murder at the English Manor, Bookouture (next installment of the 1930s era Miss Kitty Underhay Mysteries)
David Donachie, Tested by Fate, McBooks (the toll of war, both physical and emotional, becomes a poignant part of Nelson’s journey as he battles not only his enemies but also his own inner demons)
Frederic S. Durbin, The Country Under Heaven, Melville House (1880s, post Civil War; western about a former Civil War soldier following enigmatic visions that started coming to him after he survived one of the war’s bloodiest battles)
Marjorie Eccles, A Fatal Necessity, Severn House (historical mystery sharply conveys British society and politics of the interwar period of the 1930s)
Sarah M. Eden, The Best-Kept Secrets, Covenant (inspirational romance; The Huntresses, Book 3)
Jessie Elland, The Ladie Upstairs, Baskerville (a dark and twisted tale of ambition and desire featuring a scullery drudge who longs to become a lady’s maid)
Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer, Headline Accent (historical noir set against the London Blitz in 1941)
May Ellis, New Hope for the Clarks Factory Girls, Boldwood (1917: as the war reaches its final moments, the families of the Somerset village of Street take comfort in new arrivals amongst them as they navigate a changing world)
Stephen G. Eoannou, After Pearl, Santa Fe Writer’s Project (a wartime murder mystery and one man’ s struggle with reclaiming his life and sobriety while investigating a dirty politician)
Rob Espenscheid, The Rise of the Mad March, Stoney Creek Publishing (a tribute to 1973 bar bands, musical dreamers, and the offbeat ambition of a band who never made it to the big time)
Elaine Everest, New Horizons for the Woolworths Girls, Pan (a story of hope and change in the final novel in series)
Patricia Falvey, The Famine Orphans, Kensington (based on the little-known story of the thousands of young women sent from Irish workhouses to Australia after the Famine)
Rickey Fayne, The Devil Three Times, Little, Brown/Fleet (debut spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil)
Melora Fern, Whistling Women and Crowing Hens, Sibylline Press (the tumultuous 1920s, a modern era of flappers and smuggled whiskey is experienced through a woman in a traveling roadshow)
Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Bochica, Atria/Primero Sueno Press (1923 Colombia; debut gothic horror in which a young aristocrat is desperate to escape her past)
Amanda Flower, Not They Who Soar, Kensington (sister of the famous flying Wright Brothers, Katharine Wright, investigates an unsettling death at the 1904 World’s Fair)
Jack Ford, Beyond This Place of Wrath and Tears, Kensington (dual timeline novel of Lee Carson, the heroic yet elusive female journalist who defied convention and danger to report from the front lines of WWII)
Kate Foster, The Mourning Necklace, Mantle UK (centres on a woman from 18th-century Edinburgh who survived her own execution)
Helen Fripp, The Emerald Twins, Bookouture (dual timeline novel set in France 1944 and present day)
Ann H. Gabhart, The Pursuit of Elena Bradford, Revell (when her father dies, leaving the family in debt, Elena’s mother packs the family up to go to in search of a rich husband for Elena)
Kathy George, Estella, HQ Fiction AU (the icily enigmatic anti-hero of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations tells her own story … and changes the ending in this feminist take on the classic)
Julia Golding, The Wordsworth Key, One More Chapter (in 1812, Jacob Sandys and Dora Fitz-Pennington, find themselves drawn into the scandals once more when William Wordsworth’s prized notebook of unpublished poems goes missing)
Alison Goodman, The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin, Berkley (in Regency England, the eccentric Colebrook sisters are amateur detectives who use their wits and invisibility as “old maids” to fight injustice)
Alan Govenar, Come Round Right, Deep Vellum (novel set during a pivotal moment in American history, when the Vietnam War was raging, and the idealism of the 1960s was losing ground to frustration, anger, and violence)
Donna Gowland, The Missing Wife, Sapere (a young aspiring writer finds romance and mystery in Paris)
Sara Hailstone, Wretched, Running Wild Press (amongst a handful of letters from a Jewish man in an internment camp in Belgium, Nelle strives to tell the story of a secret love, a man’ s escape and death in Auschwitz, to her unborn daughter)
J. C. Harvey, The Wanton Road, Allen & Unwin (final instalment in the Jack Fiskardo trilogy sees Jack return to a London filled with bitter rivalries and deadly secrets)
Natasha J. Hastings, How to Charm a Viscount, Magpie (romantasy in which the Season could end with charmed suitors waiting at the altar, or scandalous magical mischief afoot)
Jody Hedlund, A Wager with the Matchmaker, Bethany House (book three in the Shanahan Match series)
Joanna Hickson, The House of Seymour, HarperCollins (as John Seymour’s ambition rises in Tudor England, his wife, Isabel, realises her husband will pay any price to get what he wants)
Grace Hitchcock, To Kiss a Knight, Kregel (desperation leads to questionable choices in this humorous inspirational Regency romance)
Jenny Holiday, Manic Pixie Dream Earl, Kensington (Regency romance follow up to Earl’s Trip, focusing on the goth, Effie)
James Holland, Alvesdon, Atlantic Monthly (stretching from the summer of 1939 to the Battle of Britain, this is a fictional portrait of how the war changed everything for one family and their community)
Gill Hornby, The Elopement, Century (1820; Mary Knatchbull lives under the sole charge of her father, but when he marries Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, Mary’s life changes)
Christopher Huang, A Pretender’s Murder, Inkshares (second Eric Peterkin mystery set in 1920s aftermath of the Great War)
Eva Ibbotson, The Secret Countess, Picador (romantic adventure where, after revolution tears her country apart, a young Russian countess is forced to flee Saint Petersburg for rural England)
Conn Iggulden, Tyrant, Pegasus (second novel in trilogy finds newly-crowned Emperor Nero fending off court rivals while embracing his fate as the most feared, notorious ruler in Roman history)
Lee Jackson, Storming the Reich, Severn River (the eighth installment in the After Dunkirk series)
Anna Jacobs, The Secrets of Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (Rachel and Joss are married and keen to continue the hard work to rebuild Eastby End in this continuation of the Eastby End Saga series)
Nicole Jarvis, A Spell for Change, Titan (historical fantasy set in post WWI Appalachia)
Lola Jaye, The Manual for Good Wives, Macmillan UK (dual narrative historical novel about love, generational trauma, second chances and hope)
Natalie Jenner, Austen at Sea, St. Martin’s (1865; two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, find their lives transformed by a visit to England to Francis Austen, keeper of her memories)
Martha Jean Johnson, The Queen’s Musician, SparkPress (an untold story about how the plot against Anne Boleyn entrapped a gifted young musician named Mark Smeaton)
Luisa A. Jones, What We Left Behind, Storm (a story of love forged in wartime)
Eleanor Joslin, Measure of Devotion, Regal House (October 1863; explores themes of sacrifice, resilience, and the impacts of war on family bonds, and one woman’s fight for survival in a time of unprecedented turmoil)
Ben Kane, Rome, Orion (Rome, 410 AD; story of a little-known Galla Placidia whose ambition saw her, against all odds, become empress of Rome)
Amy S. Kaufman, The Traitor of Sherwood Forest, Penguin (historical reimagining of the Robin Hood ballads, told through the eyes of one of his spies)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Written on the Dark, Ace/Berkley/Hodderscape (a novel of love and war that evokes the drama and turbulence of medieval France)
Daniel Kehlmann, trans. Ross Benjamin, The Director, S&S-Summit/riverrun (tale inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to be forced to return to his homeland and create propaganda films for the German Reich)
Martha Hall Kelly, The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club, Ballantine (two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women)
Suzanne Kelman, The Paris Promise, Bookouture (third novel in The Paris Sisters series tells the story of the power of a mother’s love during WWII)
T. E. Kinsey, The Beast of Littleton Cotterell, Thomas & Mercer (in 1912, Lady Hardcastle and her fearless lady’s maid, set out to find a rational explanation for some gruesome deaths)
Jane Kirkpatrick, Across the Crying Sands, Revell (inspired by a true story of the first female mail carrier to traverse the cliff-hugging mountain trails of Oregon and discovers that a life without risk is no life at all)
Christina Koning, Murder in Oxford, Allison & Busby (a cat and mouse murder game in Oxford, 1942)
Andrey Kurkov, trans. Boris Dralyuk, The Stolen Heart, HarperVia/MacLehose (second installment of the Kyiv Mysteries after The Silver Bone)
Dawn Reno Langley, The Mystic, Black Rose Writing (exploration of remorse, responsibility, and the power of human connection set in 1950s Massachusetts)
John Lawton, Smoke and Embers, Atlantic Monthly/Grove UK (ninth installment opens in 1950, when Chief Inspector Troy learns that his sergeant has been conducting an affair with the mistress of a London racketeer)
Adam Lofthouse, Outlaw: Nemesis of Rome, Boldwood (second installment of the Enemy of the Empire series)
Jane Loftus, The Herb Knot, HQ Digital (novel set during the Hundred Years War, about a young boy whose mother is murdered after Battle of Crecy in 1346)
Lisa Lucas and Steve Landsberg, Ping, Historium Press (alternates between the 1970’s Ping Pong diplomacy between the U.S. and China, and the present-day struggles of a multi-generational family)
Nev March, The Silversmith’s Puzzle, Minotaur (Captain Jim Agnihotri and Lady Diana Framji return to India as they investigate a murder amidst colonial Bombay’s complex hierarchy)
Scott Mariani, The Pilgrim’s Revenge, Hodder & Stoughton (first in new revenge epic thriller set in 1190)
Annabelle Marx, The Rebel of Seventh Avenue, Storm (in early 20th Century New York a woman is determined to fashion not just beautiful clothes, but her own place in a man’s world)
Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin, Berkley (romance about an academy with a secretive aim—train young women to distract, disrupt, and discredit the patriarchy)
Patrick McCabe, Goldengrove, Unbound (dark satire about a theatrical agency acting as a front for British counter-terrorism in 1960s Dublin)
Michael McGarrity, Night in the City, W. W. Norton (crime fiction set in New York City in the mid-1950s)
Kristina McMorris, The Girls of Good Fortune, Sourcebooks Landmark (Portland, 1888; novel explores the complexity of family and identity, and the importance of stories that echo through generations)
Jonathan Meades, Empty Wigs, Unbound (a hallucinatory literary ride through the twentieth century)
Gabrielle Meyer, Every Hour Until Then, Bethany House (a time-crosser tale of intrigue, loyalty, and romance–threaded with suspense and decisions that could change history)
Mary Alice Monroe, Where the Rivers Merge, William Morrow (first of two novels celebrating one intrepid woman’s life across multiple generations in the American South. Dual timeline set in 1908 and 1988)
Jacob McArthur Mooney, The Northern, ECW Press (a novel concerned with sports, labor, growing up, and God, set in Ontario in the early 1950s)
Christopher Moore, Anima Rising, William Morrow (tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s journey of self-discovery, set in Vienna, 1911)
Sarah Moss, Ripeness, Picador (story that moves from 1960s Italy to contemporary Ireland)
Alice Murphy, A Showgirl’s Rules for Falling in Love, Union Square (romance between a vaudeville star and a showbiz tycoon who find love at the turn of the twentieth century)
Pat Murphy, The Adventures of Mary Darling, Tachyon (Victorian-era fantasy adventure featuring well-known literary characters)
Amita Murray, An Unladylike Secret, Avon (final installment of the Marleigh Sisters series)
Gosia Nealon, The German Next Door, Bookouture (story of a mother hiding a Jewish doctor’s family during WWII)
Frank Nissen, Fortune’s Price, Black Rose Writing (book two in A Gold Rush Odyssey series after Fortune’s Call)
Brionni Nwosu, The Wonderous Life and Loves of Nella Carter, Hodderscape (an enslaved woman makes a bargain with Death whereby she can travel and document every place from the Victorian age to Gilded Age New York)
Scott O’Neill, The Witch, the Seed and the Scalpel, McNidder and Grace (Edinburgh, 1841; story follows the battle between botanist Joseph Ware and one of Scotland’s last witches, against a sinister order of surgeons)
MJ Pankey, Oracle of Helinthia, Muse and Quill (book two of Greek myth of warring gods and the mortals who must find a way to end the conflict before it destroys their world)
Mollie Panter-Downes, One Fine Day, Virago (together again in 1946, after years of separation by war, Laura and Stephen Marshall must find their way in an altered, shabbier world)
David Park, Ghost Wedding, Oneworld (novel follows two troubled men, separated by nearly a century and bound by the ghosts of their past)
S. J. Parris, Traitor’s Legacy, Hemlock Press (when a young heiress is found murdered at the theatre, the Queen’s spymaster Robert Cecil calls upon former agent Sophia de Wolfe to investigate)
Owen Pataki, Smoke in the Cypress, Permuted Press (a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars travels from France to Louisiana to rescue a young French noblewoman, but is quickly ensnared in a complex web of intrigue and violence)
Kristin Perrin, How to Seal Your Own Fate, Dutton (second novel in the Castle Knoll series, where Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades)
Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, An Unexpected Grace, Bethany House (journey to Kalispell, Montana, in an inspirational romance on a trail to navigate lost love, second chances, and redemptive grace)
Oliver Pötzsch, trans. Lisa Reinhardt, The Gravedigger’s Almanac, HarperVia (first volume in a new mystery series which introduces a gravedigger and young inspector who must stop a serial killer in fin de siecle Vienna)
Barbara Pronin, Winter’s End, Black Rose Writing (traces a journey of resistance, from the streets of Nazi-occupied Holland to a finale seventy years later)
D. C. Rivera, Campfires, Running Wild (a tug-of-war romance set in 1969 which exposes a web of violence, dark secrets, and betrayal)
Rebecca Rosenberg, Silver Echoes, Lion Heart (a Roaring Twenties Gold Digger dual-timeline novel weaves a tale of resilience and the enduring bond between mother and daughter)
W. A. Schwartz, Fabulous Beasts, Black Rose Writing (inspired by the life of Sylvia Plath, a story which tackles the complexities of art, abuse, mental illness in early 1960s London)
Cat Scully, Below the Grand Hotel, CLASH books (1920s gothic horror in which a wannabe Ziegfeld girl is granted her wish to be famous)
Natasha Solomons, Cleopatra, Manilla Press (told from the perspectives of Cleopatra and Caesar’s mistress Servilia, novel draws out the real woman behind the great legend)
Suzanne Stauffer, Fried Chicken Castañeda, Artemesia Publishing (a young woman finds bootleggers, murder, romance, and gourmet dining at the Castañ eda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico)
Danielle Steel, A Mind of Her Own, Delacorte (historical drama about a young woman’s fight to chart her own destiny, challenging norms for women of the time)
Keith Stuart, Love is a Curse, Sphere (a woman uncovers the tangled history of her ancestors as she sifts through diaries, letters, and paintings)
Mary Ellen Taylor, After Paris, Montlake (tale of hope that intertwines the lives of three women who fight for survival in 1940s France and present-day Virginia)
Danielle Teller, Forged, Pegasus (novel set in the Gilded Age, exposes the dark heart of the American dream)
Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records, W. W. Norton/Granta/Knopf Canada (explores the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity, our search for home, and the place of faith and humanity in our world)
Annabelle Thorpe, The Moonlit Piazza, Head of Zeus/Aria (WWII; as the Nazis tighten their grip on power, family-run Casa Maria is now under Nazi control, to the fury of matriarch Elena Capaldi)
Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea, Lake Union (NYC, 1923; a young man comes of age and crosses continents in search of himself and a cause)
Martha Anne Toll, Duet for One, Regal House (weaves a narrative of loss, connection, and the hope that love can be found where life resides)
Lydia Travers, Death at the Highland Loch, Bookouture (new historical cosy whodunnit series featuring Lady Poppy Proudfoot, Scotland 1924)
Jen Turano, A Lesson in Propriety, Bethany House (first in a new series presents a tale of laugh-out-loud adventure, romance, and mischief in the Gilded Age)
S. J. A. Turney, Kings of Stone and Ice, Canelo (Wolves of Odin Viking adventure book 6)
Blair Underwood, Joe McClean, Sins of Survivors, Amistad (crime family saga set in the Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit in the dark and dangerous days of the 1930s)
Isabelle Valeri, Letters From the Dead, Atria/Emily Bestler Books (debut novel set in a world of old money, privilege, and family intrigue, as a young heiress returns home from a decade-long exile to face powerful enemies)
Alex Vede, Yucatan 1512, Dark Horse Comics (Spanish soldiers enter the Yucatan seeking a legendary city of gold)
Aurora Venturini, trans. Kit Maude, We, the Casertas, Soft Skull (a novel about the horrors of family life and the loneliness of womanhood in mid-20th-century)
Michelle Vernal, The Dressmaker’s War, Bookouture (book 3 in the Brides of Bold Street series)
Also: The Dressmaker’s Chance, Bookouture (fourth book in the Brides of Bold Street series)
J. A. Wainwright, The Blind Viper, Mosaic Press (set on a secluded Greek island in the shadows of the Spanish Civil War, story follows Leo Dalca, a blind painter whose artistry transcends sight)
Anneka R. Walker, The Rules of Matrimony, Shadow Mountain (an unexpected marriage and a love worth fighting for in London, England, 1823)
Betty Walker, Brighter Days for the Cornish Girls, Avon (new instalment in the Cornish Girls saga series set in Cornwall, 1947)
Susan Wands, Emperor and Hierophant, SparkPress (book 3 of Arcana Oracle series finds Pamela Smith having to protect her tarot deck from Aleister Crowley once again)
Paul Wedel, Yuangrat Wedel, Dark Karma, River Books Press (book two of the Beads on a String trilogy immerses readers in the cultural and personal conflicts of exotic southern Siam a century ago)
Alison Weir, The Cardinal, Headline Review/Ballantine (in the Tudor court, readers bear witness to the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey)
Tim Welsh, Ley Lines, Guernica (novel set in the waning days of the Klondike Gold Rush)
Raymond Wemmlinger, The Queen’s Cousin, Sapere (biographical historical novel of Anne of Denmark, wife of King James and Queen of Scotland during the Tudor era)
Also: The Queen’s Daughters, Sapere (part four of the Tudor Royals series- coming in August 2025)
David Whitfield, The Unravelling of Mary Reddish, Legend Press (inspired by real events that took place at England’s first publicly funded asylum in Nottingham)
Glenda Young, Secrets of the Toffee Factory Girls, Headline (as the Great War rages, Jack’s toffee factory in the market town of Chester-le-Street, Durham, is threatened with closure when sugar rations begin)
Eiji Yoshikawa, trans. Alexander Bennett, Musashi: Earth, Fire and Water, Tuttle Publishing (novel set in Japan, 1600, interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety and dedication to the Way of the Samurai. New unabridged trilogy translation) Musashi: Wind and Void Musashi: Sun, Moon and Perfect Clarity
Yudori, Raging Clouds, Fantagraphics (in 16th-century Netherlands, a proper Dutchwoman and her husband’s slave mistress collaborate on a scientific discovery that could free them from the bounds of patriarchal society)
June 2025
Sophie Austin, The Lamplighter’s Bookshop, HarperCollins (set in an old bookshop full of literary treasures combined with an enemies-to-lovers romance)
D. R. Bailey, The Fire Maidens, Sapere (third military war-time adventure novel in the Secret Sirens Aviation Thrillers Series)
Laney Katz Becker, In the Family Way, Harper (set in the 1960s before Roe, novel about the friendship between a group of suburban housewives who help one another navigate through their personal challenges, marriages, and pregnancies)
Vicki Beeby, High Hopes for the Bomber Girls, Canelo (finale to the WWII series Bomber Command Girls)
Charles Belfoure, The German Cotton Picker, Severn House (1943; a novel of one man’s life-changing journey as he overcomes his deeply embedded prejudices)
Anya Bergman, The Tarot Reader of Versailles, Manilla Press (in the early days of the French Revolution, two women with powers share a connection)
Ben Bergonzi, A Cruel Corpse, Holand Press (1747; a novel of murder and secrets, inspired by real-life female soldiers who served in the military in the 18th century)
Erin Bledsoe, Mob Queen, Blackstone (set in the 1930s, story follows one woman’s rapid rise through the Mafia as she searches for the truth about what happened to her friend)
Amanda Block, The Haunting of Hero’s Bay, Hodder & Stoughton (dual timeline mystery set in Crescombe, North Devon in 1840 and present day)
Amy Bloom, I’ll Be Right Here, Random House/Granta (multigenerational novel about an unconventional family which embraces the complexity of humanity and the lawlessness of love)
Dennis E. Bolen, Amaranthine Chevrolet, Rare Machines (a teenage boy’s uncanny road trip across a radically changing Canada in 1967)
Jerry Borrowman, Flames of Anarchy, Shadow Mountain (in 1908 America, a storm of anarchy threatens the nation, leading to a tale of betrayal, fear, and the birth of the FBI)
Franck Bouysse, trans. Lara Vergnaud, Clay, Other Press (tensions boil over in a rural mountain community whose able-bodied men have left to fight in World War I)
Verity Bright, Death at a Paris Hotel, Bookouture (golden age cozy mystery set in Paris)
Fern Britton, A Cornish Legacy, HarperCollins (story about fresh starts and finding home in the most unlikely places)
Serena Burdick, A Promise to Arlette, Atria (historical novel following a married couple whose idyllic 1950s suburban life is threatened by the promises they made during World War II)
James Lee Burke, Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie, Atlantic Monthly (story set in early 20th-century of a young girl who fights against potentially overwhelming forces)
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, trans. Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling, New Directions (a queer baroque satire which forms a searing criticism of conquest and colonialism, religious tyranny, and the treatment of women and indigenous people)
Francesca Capaldi, Stormy Skies at the Beach Hotel, Hera (a WWI saga continuation in series)
Jack Carr, Cry Havoc, Atria/Emily Bestler (thriller set in 1968, which may make you question all you thought you knew about Vietnam)
Paco Cerdà, trans. Kevin Gerry Dunn, The Pawn, Deep Vellum (examines the geopolitical anxieties of the world in the 1960s during the Cold War)
Kerry Chaput, Wild as the Stars, Black Rose Writing (mother-daughter saga brings Seattle’s roaring twenties to life with magical realism)
Carryl Church, Secrets of the Ambrose Café, Joffe/Choc Lit (1925; courage, forbidden love, secrets and consequnces abound in this between wars tale)
Heather Clark, The Scrapbook, Pantheon/Jonathan Cape (debut novel of a first-love story, haunted by history and family memory, inspired by the WWII scrapbook of the author’s grandfather)
Rosie Clarke, Troubled Times at Harpers, Boldwood (London 1929; new installment of the Welcome to Harpers Emporium series)
Mary Connealy, Legends of Gold, Bethany House (Tilda Muirhead’s life takes an unexpected twist when she takes a position teaching at an orphanage following her cross-country pursuit of two brothers obsessed with a treasure map)
R. M. Cullen, Death’s Long Shadow, Sapere (murder mystery set in 18th century England where two seemingly unconnected murders might be linked. Richard Brinsley Sheridan series book 2)
Carolyn Dasher, American Sky, Lake Union (three generations of women navigate life on their terms in a novel about love and war, family secrets, and mothers and daughters finding the freedom to fly)
Sam Davey, The Chosen Queen, Diversion Books (Igraine, destined mother of King Arthur, takes center stage in a feminist retelling of Camelot)
Dennard Dayle, How to Dodge a Cannonball, Henry Holt (caricature of the American Civil War, told through the story of a white teenager who joins an all-Black regiment of soldiers)
Tatiana de Rosnay, Blonde Dust, Grand Central (American West, 1960; redemptive novel about the unexpected friendship between Marilyn Monroe and a young maid)
Dee DeTarsio, Suellen, Histria (post Civil-War romance set in the Antebellum South)
Christina Dodd, Thus With a Kiss I Die, John Scognamiglio (the irreverent eldest daughter of the not-so-ill-fated Romeo and Juliet returns to sleuth another day in fair Verona)
Paul Doherty, Immortal Murder, Headline (January 1313; as London is gripped by a freezing winter, Sir Hugh Corbett becomes embroiled in a ghoulish game of kings. Book 25 in series)
Tsering Dondrup, trans. Christopher Peacock, The Red Wind Howls, Columbia Univ. Press (portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao delves into forbidden history spanning the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1958 Amdo rebellion)
Rachel Louise Driscoll, The House of Two Sisters (US) / Nephthys (UK), Ballantine (US)/Harvill Secker UK (1887; a young Victorian Egyptologist traverses the Nile River on a mission to undo a curse that may have befallen her family)
Kelli Estes, Smoke on the Wind, Lake Union (present day and 1801; in the Scottish Highlands, two devoted mothers separated by centuries discover a haunting connection)
Mary Anna Evans, The Dark Library, Poisoned Pen Press (psychological suspense novel set during WWII)
Harriet Evans, The Treasures, Viking/ HarperVia (a story of Alice, Tom, and Sevenstones — a family and a house over fifty years and three generations)
Brooke Lea Foster, Our Last Vineyard Summer, Gallery (novel set in 1965 and 1978 about a graduate student who returns with her sisters to their family’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and begins to unravel old family secrets)
Hester Fox, A Magic Deep and Drowning, Graydon House (a gender-flipped historical fantasy retelling of The Little Mermaid set in Holland, 1650)
Dianne Freeman, A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder, Kensington (Victorian-era mystery in which Frances Hazelton and her husband uncover the secrets of backstage Paris to find out who’s acting the role of a killer to perfection)
Jean Fullerton, The East End Girls, Bookouture (a wartime saga set in the east of London in 1942)
Hazel Gaynor, Before Dorothy, Berkley (long before Dorothy visits Oz, her aunt, Emily Gale, sets off on her own unforgettable adventure – set in Chicago, 1924 and Kansas, 1932)
Peggy Glendenning, That Was Enough, Little Creek Press (an immigrant saga inspired by the true journey of Francesco and Concetta Nardi, who leave Italy in pursuit of the American dream)
Alex Gough, Caesar’s Avenger, Canelo (book three in the Mark Antony adventure series)
Claudia Gray, The Rushworth Family Plot, Vintage (fourth book in series finds amateur sleuths Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney caught up in a murderous scheme involving the family of Edmund and Fanny Bertram)
Amy Lynn Green, The Codebreaker’s Daughter, Bethany House (a tale of courage, danger, and the bond between mother and daughter, based on real experiences of World War II OSS agents and World War I codebreakers)
Michelle Griep, Of Silver and Secrets, Bethany House (romance set in Victorian England in 1889)
Elaine Griffin, Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens, Black Rose Writing (Chester Carter is a crucial witness to the “biggest scandal” early-nineteenth-century Fairmount has seen)
Kristin Harmel, The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau (US) / All the Diamonds in Paris (UK), Gallery/Mountain Leopard Press (dual timeline novel about two jewel thieves, a priceless bracelet that disappears in 1940s Paris, and a quest for answers in a decades-old murder)
Virginia Heath, Look Before You Leap, St. Martin’s Griffin (second humorous novel in the Miss Pretence’s Protégées Regency romp of a series)
Robert Holtom, A Queer Case, Titan Books (1920s-set whodunnit in which a queer sleuth must solve a murder in a mansion on London’s Hampstead Heath without revealing his sexuality, lest he be arrested)
Anna Lee Huber, A Tarnished Canvas, Berkley (Lady Kiera Darby had planned to spend the winter practicing her painting, but instead, she must find the flaw in a killer’s masterpiece)
Madeline Hunter, The Lady Takes on London, Zebra (a headstrong heiress and an arrogant barrister debate the laws of love and reputation)
Megan Hunter, Days of Light, Grove Press/Picador (dual timeline historical novel about one woman’s unconventional life)
Kelsey James, The Colony of Lost Souls, John Scognamiglio (a young woman in 1930s California goes looking for her missing sister and is drawn into a chilling cult)
Jeff Jones, Fortress of Steel, Sapere (an unruly band of slaves and thieves proves to be toughest legion serving Rome in 59 AD)
Roberta Kagan, The Last Lullaby, Storm (WWII; a story of love and heartache in a Europe where Hitler’s Nazi Party is gaining power and darkness is rising)
Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge, Crooked Lane (botanist Saffron Everleigh faces her hardest challenge yet when she returns to her childhood home)
Laurie R. King, Knave of Diamonds, Bantam/Allison & Busby (novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes)
Terry Kirk, Pitfall, At Bay Press (depression-era novel set when a head trader at Chicago’s leading brokerage firm loses in fortune in a single day in October, 1929)
Eliza Knight, Confessions of a Grammar Queen, Sourcebooks Landmark (there are no female publishing CEOs in 1960’s New York, until Bernadette Swift plans to change that)
Sarah Landenwich, The Fire Concerto, Union Square (literary novel about a 19th-century female pianist from Poland lost to history and another woman’s quest to ensure she is not forgotten)
Caroline Lea, Love, Sex & Frankenstein, Michael Joseph (retelling of the summer that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein)
David Lewis, A Beacon in the Night, John Scognamiglio (an unflappable British spy works alongside her aristocratic partner to root out homegrown Nazi collaborators during WWII)
Terri Lewis, Behold the Bird in Flight, She Writes (inspired by real historical figures—Isabelle d’Angoulême and Hugh de Lusignan—novel is set in a period that valued women only for their dowries and childbearing)
Joanna Lowell, A Rare Find, Berkley (queer Victorian era historical romance)
Kyra Davis Lurie, The Great Mann, Crown/Random House UK (retelling of The Great Gatsby set amongst L.A.’s Black elite)
Catherine Mann, Lightning in a Mason Jar, Lake Union (dual timeline novel spanning decades about trauma, survival, and the bonds of female friendship)
Zoë Marriott, The Moonlit Maze, Headline Review (dual timeline mystery and love story, set in 1924 and 2024)
John Matthews, Realms of the Round Table, Pegasus (a famous legend in literature retold for a new generation with some surprises that will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever been enchanted by tales of Camelot)
Mia McKenzie, These Heathens, Random House (a teenager travels to Atlanta to get an abortion and finds herself in the middle of the civil rights movement and the secret lives of queer Black people)
Phil Melanson, Florenzer, Liveright (set in Renaissance-era Florence, debut reimagines the intersecting lives of three ambitious men—a banker, a priest, and a gay painter named Leonardo)
Simon Michael, The Fall Guy, Sapere (tenth book in the Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers, set in London, 1969)
Fenella J. Miller, All Change at Harbour House, Boldwood (continuation of the WWII saga set in Wivenhoe May 1940)
Rowenna Miller, The Palace of Illusions, Redhook (historical fantasy set in Paris in the run up to the 1900s World’s Fair)
Aram Mrjoian, Waterline, HarperVia (in two timelines more than a century apart, a close-knit Armenian American family grapples with the aftermath of losing one of their own)
Elizabeth Musser, From the Valley We Rise, Bethany House (WWII novel about protecting the safety of Jewish children from Nazi retribution)
Harini Nagendra, Into the Leopard’s Den, Pegasus (in 1922, Kaveri Murthy investigates a series of murders that take her from the bungalows of Bangalore to the mist-enshrouded mountains of Coorg)
Jenna Ness, The Home for War Orphans, Bookouture (Orphans of St Agnes Book 1, set during WWII)
Vaishnavi Patel, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion, Ballantine (speculative novel that imagines an alternate version of India that was never liberated from the British, and a young woman who will change the tides of history)
H. G. Parry, A Far Better Thing, Tor (shuttling between London and Paris during the Reign of Terror, generations of violence-begetting-violence lead Sidney Carton, a servant to the faerie realm, to a heartbreaking choice)
David S. Pederson, A Marvelous Murder, Bold Strokes Books (movie star Victor Marvel, aided by his boyfriend, Griffin, and Eve, Victor’s smart, young costar, solve the murder of a film director in 1939)
Mel Pennant, A Murder for Miss Hortense, Pantheon (introduces a fearless sleuth in a new murder mystery series set in Birmingham)
Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding, Hutchinson Heinemann/Henry Holt (debut about five sisters in a small village in 18th century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs)
Holly Race, Six Wild Crowns, Orbit (a feminist fantasy retelling of Henry VIII’s wives from their perspective)
Nilima Rao, A Shipwreck in Fiji, Soho Crime (a young Indian police sergeant investigates a bizarre chain of events when a purported sighting of Germans in 1915 Fiji turns deadly)
Katherine Reay, The English Masterpiece, Harper Muse (set in the art world of 1970s London as one young woman races against the clock to uncover the truth about a Picasso)
Heather Redmond, Death and the Runaways, Kensington (London 1814; Mary Godwin becomes captivated by the murder of a pregnant shopgirl and the disappearance of her stepbrother)
Cathy Rigg, That Which Binds Us, Keylight Books (in the 1860s, on Virginia’s Appalachian frontier, the fates of five people are forever linked as they navigate love and loss amid the strife and turmoil of the civil war)
M. J. Robotham, Mrs Spy, Head of Zeus/Aria (a laugh-out-loud ride through 1960s London as Maggie Flynn, unexpected MI5 operative and single mum, unravels the intelligence agency’s secrets)
David Rotenberg, City Rising: The Ivory Compact, At Bay Press (the Shanghai Tetralogy book 3, after The Bend in the River)
Shari J. Ryan, The Singer Behind the Wire, Bookouture (WWII story of hope and faith in humanity and the power of love to triumph over evil)
Riley Sager, With a Vengeance, Dutton/Hodder & Stoughton (in 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family and twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution)
Hiroaki Samura, Snegurochka of the Spring Breeze, Kodansha Comics (transports readers to the frigid fringes of the nascent Soviet Union of the 1930s)
Katharine Schellman, Last Dance Before Dawn, Minotaur (fourth in the mysterious queer Nightingale mystery series set in 1920s New York)
V. E. Schwab, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, Tor (genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger, set Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532, London, 1827 and Boston, 2019)
Caroline Scott, The Best of Intentions, Simon & Schuster UK (a story of friendship, community and staying true to yourself)
Julia Seales, A Terribly Nasty Business, Random House (London provides deadly opportunities for a fledgling inspector in the follow-up to A Most Agreeable Murder)
Olive Senior, Paradise Once, Akashic Books (brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492)
B. A. Shapiro, The Lost Masterpiece, Algonquin (mystery follows 19th-century Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot and her 21st-century great-great-great granddaughter, who inherits a Nazi-looted Edouard Manet painting)
Robert W. Smith, A Gamble on Liberty, Meryton Press (novel shadows the struggles of an East Tennessee community during the American Civil War)
Sally Smith, A Case of Mice and Murder, Raven Books (first in a new mystery series introducing eccentric sleuth, barrister Gabriel Ward. Set in 1901)
Maggie Stiefvater, The Listeners, Viking/Headline Review (1942; the owner of a sophisticated hotel makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, while most of the staff have sons and fathers heading to the front lines)
Christine Hill Suntz, The Lawyer and the Laundress, Tyndale (Canada, 1837; when lawyer James Kinney and laundress Sara O’Connor’s paths cross in a British colony on the brink of rebellion, a marriage of convenience may be their best hope of survival)
Matthew Sweet, The New Forest Murders, Simon & Schuster UK (in summer, 1944, one last chance of success for the Nazis depends on a traitor in an English village in the New Forest)
Rachel Sweasey, The Girl from Normandy, Boldwood (dual timeline historical novel set in Paris 1940 and in 1998 Normandy)
Denis Thériault, The Samurai of the Red Carnation, Pushkin Press (a romantasy historical adventure, set in medieval Japan and revolving around the art of waka poetry)
Jeremy Tiang, State of Emergency, World Editions (follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region)
Anna Trench, Florrie, Jonathan Cape (story of female footballer Florrie and the hidden history of the women’s game told in this debut graphic novel)
Christopher C. Tubbs, Farnborough, Lume Books (high-stakes naval thriller explores the courage and deadly danger of the Q-ships)
Chrissie Walsh, A New Dawn for the Mill Girls, Boldwood (historical saga set in the mills of West Yorkshire, 1897)
Ashley Weaver, One Final Turn, Minotaur (final installment in the Electra McDonnell series brings safecracker Ellie on a mission across World War II-era Europe to Lisbon to rescue a group of escaped POWs)
Amanda Weinberg & Silvia Mazzola, The Lost Secrets of the Italian Post Office, Embla (Italy, 1943; in a world where everyone is keeping secrets, two friends must be careful who they trust)
G. J. Williams, The Cygnet Prince, Legend Press (in 1561, a young German prince arrives in England claiming to be the rightful heir – the son of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves)
Gerri Willis, Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster, Harper (a wealthy Southern belle risks everything to become a Union spy)
Mary Wood, A Lasting Promise, Pan (dual timeline story set in France 1943 and London 1963)
Emma Pei Yin, When Sleeping Women Wake, Quercus/Hachette AU/Ballantine (historical debut of three women who are forced on a journey of survival during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II)
Ovidia Yu, The Rose Apple Tree Mystery, Constable (Singapore, 1947; in this installment Le Froy is on a protection assignment for Max Moreno and his wife Elfrieda, whose associates have been brutally murdered)
July 2025
Jann Alexander, Unspoken, Black Rose Writing (novel set in the Texas Panhandle during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era)
Richard Babcock, A Small Disturbance on the Far Horizon, Regal House (in the stark Nevada landscape of the 1950s, storyline explores the aftermath of a murder through the intertwined lives of three individuals)
Tracy Baines, Stormy Times for the Dockyard Girls, Boldwood (historical saga series set around the hardworking women of Grimsby Dockyard)
Alli Barker, Until the Red Leaves Fall, HarperCollins AU (a tale of secrets and betrayal in the aftermath of war)
J. D. Barker and Kyle Dunn, The Finer Things, S&S/Hampton Creek (as a sculptor’s art evolves into something terrifying, a trail of bodies begins to surface across New York and Detective George Snyder must unravel the connection)
Amy Barry, Seven Brides for Beau McBride, Atria AU (with seven brides vying for his attention, Beau McBride’s heart is pulled to the one who wants nothing to do with him)
Pepper Basham, The Highland Heist, Barbour (fourth in the romance Freddie and Grace Mystery series)
Nishant Batsha, A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart, Ecco (novel of love, radical ambition, and intellectual rebirth set at the dawn of World War I)
Amy Rose Bennet, The Nanny’s Handbook for Magic and Managing Difficult Dukes, Kensington (a recent graduate of the Parasol Academy for Exceptional Nannies and Governesses finds her supernatural abilities are little help when it comes to falling for her employer)
Amelia Blackwell, A Crime Through Time, Macmillan (debut featuring a new series where Jane Austen, time travel and crime collide)
Karen Brooks, The Whisky Widow, HQ Digital (1780; story of bravery, adventure, love and murder in the Scottish Highlands)
Benedict Brown, Arsenic and Old Lies, Storm (book 5 of the Marius Quin Mysteries series, set in 1920s London)
Carolyn Brown, The Paradise Petition, Montlake (in nineteenth-century Texas, two tough-minded women dare to challenge the status quo)
Faddei Bulgarin, trans. Michael R. Katz, Ivan Vyzhigin, Northern Illinois Univ. Press (an amusing picaresque filled with local color and comical portraits, narrated by its hero, an orphaned peasant in 19th-century Russia)
Joel Burcat, David S. Burcat, Whiz Kid, Milford House (coming-of-age novel set in 1950 Philadelphia)
Gabriela Cabezon Camara, trans. Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling, New Directions (novel finds glimmers of hope for the future in the brutal history of colonial Latin America)
Anita Chapman, The Italian Vineyards, Bookouture (novel is the unravelling of a romantic mystery at the heart of the Verona vineyards)
Susan Choi, Flashlight, Jonathan Cape/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (story of one family swept up in the tides of the twentieth century, ranging from post-war Japan to suburban America)
Cara Clayton, Mistress of the Manor, Sapere (first installment of a new historical series set in an English Manor House in 1342, Lincolnshire, England)
Meg Waite Clayton, Typewriter Beach, Harper (1950s Hollywood— story of an unlikely friendship between a screenwriter and a young actress)
Rowan Coleman, Never Tear Us Apart, Hodder & Stoughton (situated on the island of Malta in WWII, this time-slip story tells about the power of fate)
Iris Costello, The Paris Bookshop Secret, Penguin (a story of love and heartbreak, centred around a bookshop in 1950s Paris, and written by a reclusive woman in her eighties)
Nick Croydon, The Turing Protocol, Affirm Press (thriller blends historical fact with fiction to tell the extraordinary story of a machine that allows the user to send messages to the past)
Ellie Curzon, The Lost Orphans, Bookouture (novel set in 1944, inspired by a true story about runaway evacuees)
Janet Dailey, Calder Strong, Kensington (familial saga set in 1929 Montana, where even as the future burns bright, old rivalries, heartbreaks, buried secrets, and ranching feuds still loom)
Lindsey Davis, There Will Be Bodies, Minotaur (a decade after the destructive eruption, Flavia Albia finds herself investigating family secrets and possible crimes buried in the ash of Mount Vesuvius)
Giovanni De Feo, The Secret Market of the Dead, S&S/Saga (Italian-inspired gothic historical fantasy in which a young woman competing with her twin brother to inherit the family forge finds her power in a nocturnal world)
Louise Douglas, The Emerald Shawl, Boldwood (dark gothic historical novel of love, murder, madness and secrets)
JC Duncan, Wolves of the Empire, Boldwood (new Dark Age military adventure beginning in 1041 AD, Constantinople)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Colosseum, Allison & Busby (a husband-and-wife archaeological team find themselves at the heart of a murder investigation in 1900 Rome)
Diana English, The Well of Sorrow, She Writes (story of a child’s survival of family violence and trauma, set in California and England in the 1960s and 70s)
Mario Escobar, A Bookseller in Madrid, Harper Muse (Madrid, 1934; inspiring story in the face of the horror of intolerance and a tribute to literature)
Jess Everlee, To Sketch a Scandal, Carina Adores (Victorian romance in which a rule-breaking bartender falls for a Scotland Yard detective, set in the high-stakes world of London’s underground queer community in 1885)
Conor Farrington, The Maiden Faust, Galileo Publishers (a retelling of the Faust legend)
Natalie Fergie, 25 Library Terrace, Unbound (multi-period novel about determined women who grasp their own destiny and help other women to grasp theirs)
Elizabeth Fremantle, Sinners, Michael Joseph a tale of rage and resistance of young noblewoman Beatrice Cenci)
Kelly Gardiner, Sharmini Kumar, Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Investigator (US) / Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective (UK), HarperVia/HQ Fiction (the search for a missing maid leads Caroline Bingley into murder and mayhem in Regency London)
Sally Gardner, The Bride Stone, Head of Zeus/Apollo (in 1796, Duval Harlington, recently released from a French prison, is on his way home to inherit his father’s estate where several conditions apply)
Francesca Giannone, trans. Elettra Pauletto, The Letter Carrier, Crown/Headline Review (story of a woman ahead of her time, in Salento, Italy, 1934, who reads books no one has ever heard of, wears pants just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights)
Elizabeth Gill, A Widow’s Courage, Quercus (1909 Northumberland; unjustly blamed for an accident, widowed Shona finds herself alone and friendless in a village that has always seen her as an outsider)
James Grady, American Sky, Pegasus (novel set in mid-century Montana, from blue-collar life in the heartland to Kent State and the Civil Rights movement)
Molly Green, The Wartime Librarian’s Secret, Avon (WWII saga in which Esme faces an uncertain future after she loses her dream job due to wartime budget cuts)
Eliza Graham, The Girl from the Fjords, Storm (spanning the fjords of Norway to post-war Germany and Stockholm, novel explores the impossible choices faced during wartime)
Elly Griffiths, The Frozen People, Pamela Dorman (time travel mystery in which Ali Dawson finds herself trapped in 1850)
Lisa Hall, The Strange Disappearance of Kitty Fox, Hera (a twisty time-hop mystery set in the 1950s)
Barbara Hambly, Murder in the Trembling Lands, Severn House (New Orleans, 1841; musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January is caught up in another crime in this 19th-century mystery)
MK Hardy, The Needfire, Solaris (sapphic Scottish Gothic tale of supernatural magic)
C.C. Harrison, The Women of Bandit Bend, Artemesia Publishing (Old West historical fiction in which Tally Tisdale and her 16-year-old sister arrive in Summit Creek to take over their missing father’s rugged homestead)
Samuel Hawley, Daikon, Avid Reader (fiction premised on the possibility the US delivered three atomic bombs to the Pacific, not two, & the first falls into the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army, who try to figure out how it might be used against Americans)
Anna Fitzgerald Healy, Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, Putnam (set in 1960s Maine, a murder mystery following a young woman who just wishes something interesting would happen in her life)
Jane Healey, The Women of Arlington Hall, Lake Union (a female codebreaker puts her future and her heart on the line in a novel about love, loyalty, betrayal, and Cold War spy games)
Nydia Hetherington, Sycorax, Pegasus (a reimagining of what came before Shakespeare’s The Tempest)
Catherine Hokin, The Secret Locket, Bookouture (WWII romance in which a member of the Hitler Youth vows to save the Jewish girl who long ago took his locket, and his heart)
Rachel Hore, The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge, Simon & Schuster UK (dual timeline novel set on the Norfolk Broads in 2010, and in London in the ’40s and ‘50s)
Jenelle Hovde, No Stone Unturned, Tyndale (inspirational Regency romance set in rolling hills of West Sussex)
Theresa Howes, A Matter of Persuasion, HQ Digital (retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, set in Gilded Age New York, 1882)
Graham Hurley, Kane, Head of Zeus/Aries (1941; one man at the heart of American power must undertake a wartime mission that will take him into enemy territory before he leaves US soil)
Sophie Irwin, How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days, HarperCollins (new rom-com Regency series)
Roy Jacobsen, trans. Don Bartlett, trans. Don Shaw, The Unworthy, MacLehose/Quercus (WWII novel about a gang with no name —teenage boys growing up in a working-class area of Oslo under the shadow of Nazi occupation)
Sarah James, Last Stop Union Station, Sourcebooks Landmark (Hollywood, 19424; when an aging Hollywood starlet is forced to join the Victory caravan to save her continued stardom, she becomes entwined in a potential murder tied to a group of homegrown Nazis)
Claire M. Johnson, City Lights, Level Best (while struggling to keep the Moore Detective Agency afloat, Maggie Laurent is led deep into the world of labor unrest, the IWW, & the Sedition Act)
Lynn Johnson, Heartache For the Tram Girls, Hera (book 5 in the Potteries Girls romantic saga series set in WWI)
Hilary Jones, Under Darkening Skies, Mountain Leopard (concluding story in trilogy of the twentieth century, covering a time of upheaval, conflict and extraordinary leaps in medicine)
Kathleen Kaufman, The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey, Kensington (dual timeline 1866 and 1900; as spiritualism reaches a fever pitch, a Scottish girl crosses the veil to unlock a connection within an infamous asylum)
Allison King, The Phoenix Pencil Company, William Morrow/Fourth Estate (literary cross-generational novel that is part contemporary family drama, part WWII-era historical, part grounded fantasy, part queer romance)
Stefanie Koens, Daughters of Batavia, HarperCollins AU (a woman searching for answers in her own life finds them – and much more – in the wreckage and haunting stories of the Batavia shipwreck)
Daniel Kraus, Angel Down, Atria (novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war)
Jacek Król, Without Pity, Histria (WWII fiction beginning in September, 1939, when Germany invades Poland; the Soviets join in the invasion and Warsaw falls)
Mark Kurlansky, Cheesecake, Bloomsbury (novel follows one Manhattan block as an ancient cheesecake recipe-and a conniving landlord-change the Upper West Side forever)
Eleni Kyriacou, A Beautiful Way to Die, Head of Zeus/Aries (1950s Hollywood and London; historical crime novel explores the dark underbelly of the movie industry and the lengths people will go to protect their reputations)
Lizzie Lane, Bleak Times at Orchard Cottage Hospital, Boldwood (new installment of the 1930s Cottage Hospital saga where hope springs eternal)
Christy K. Lee, The Fort, Rising Action (a novel set during the Canadian fur trade era, where a resilient single mother defies conventions to forge a new life on the frontier)
Pierre Lemaitre, The Silence and the Rage, Little, Brown/Tinder Press (a dive into France in the “glory days” of the 1950s, through the lens of one ambitious, troubled family)
P. D. Lennon, The Case of the Mad Doctor, Canelo (1772; novel inspired by the true story of Jamaica’s first serial killer)
Marie Léticée, trans. Kevin Meehan, Camille’s Lakou, Vanderbilt Univ. Press (story of a young Caribbean girl living with her single‑parent mother in a 1960s urbanized zone in Guadeloupe, and following her through her adult life)
Norman Lock, Eden’s Clock, Bellevue Literary Press (a disabled Civil War veteran makes a journey toward a fateful encounter with author Jack London, only hours before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake)
Adam Lofthouse, Eagle and the Flame, Boldwood (military adventure set in Britannia, AD367)
Steven Mayfield, Sixty Seconds, Regal House (as the clock ticks down the final minute of World War II in Europe, novel tells the stories of nine people on both sides of the Atlantic)
Terrence McCauley, The Twilight Town, Level Best-Historia (a Dallas ’63 mystery thriller)
Lesley McDowell, Love and Other Poisons, Wildfire (dual timeline mystery set in Glasgow, 1857 and New York, 1927)
Linda McQuaig, The Road to Goderich, Dundurn Press (tale of love, deception, and betrayal unfolds against the backdrop of the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada)
Tom Mead, The House at Devil’s Neck, Mysterious Press/Head of Zeus-Aries (locked-room mystery set in London and an island off the English coast during the late 1930s)
Rupande Mehta, Noor and Vera, Neem Tree Press (tale of two women whose destinies converged amidst the chaos of Nazi-occupied France during World War II)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching, Del Rey/Arcadia (three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this multigenerational horror saga)
Shannon Morgan, Grimdark, Kensington (gothic story set in a sinister English manor house where a woman discovers her destiny winding through centuries of previous incarnations. Present day, 1645, and 1216)
Lindsay Marie Morris, Beneath the Sicilian Stars, Storm (from an American internment camp to Sicily’s bombed villages, story follows one family’s fight for survival, identity, and hope during World War II)
Eliza Morton, Betsy’s War, Pan (third part of the Liverpool Orphans Trilogy set at the outbreak of WWII)
K. L. Murphy, The Great Forgotten, CamCat Books (inspired by the great train wreck near Nashville on July 9, 1918, this is the story of five men whose lives were intertwined that fateful day)
D. J. Nix, The Shakespeare Secret, Alcove Press (when three women writing under one name become suspects in a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth, their secret identity is suddenly at risk)
Timothy David Mack, All the Tea in China, Blackstone (historical adventure full of treasure, thrills, and a ruthless pirate queen)
Melissa O’Connor, The One and Only Vivian Stone, Gallery (novel about a pair of estranged lovers reconnecting over mysterious tapes found in an attic and the old Hollywood secret hidden within them)
Emily Organ, The Poison Puzzle, Storm (Emma Langley returns in book two of the Victorian mystery series)
Kaarina Parker, Fulvia, Manilla Press (Fulvia, daughter of a wealthy family, is drawn into a world of debauchery and learns just how precarious the balance of power in the Republic is)
Alan Parks, Gunner, Baskerville (new thriller partly inspired by the true story of Rudolph Hess’s secret mission to broker appeasement with Britain during WWII)
Lesley Pearse, The Girl with the Suitcase, Michael Joseph (1941; after waking up in hospital a nurse mistakes a woman for someone else and hands over a suitcase full of money and tickets to Ireland)
Cathy Pegau, A Murderous Business, Minotaur (mystery set in turn-of-the-20th-century NY with two queer business women as sleuths)
Tracie Peterson, Designed With Love, Bethany House (this historical romance continues The Hope of Cheyenne series)
Matthew Plampin, These Wicked Devices, The Borough Press (Rome, 1650; behind the gilded façade of the Vatican, power is unravelling)
MJ Porter, Warriors of Iron, Boldwood (next in series of Dark-Age Adventure set during Britannia’s tribal age in AD541)
Markus Redmond, Blood Slaves, Dafina (reimagining of the vampire origin story as the last surviving member of an ancient African vampire tribe leads an army of enslaved people in a battle for freedom and revenge)
Kelly Rimmer, The Midnight Estate, Piatkus (told across dual timelines, novel weaves a tale inviting readers into the heart of a family’s darkest secrets)
Elaine Roberts, Victory for the Foyles Bookshop Girls, Boldwood (London, 1918: the war in Europe is drawing to an end, presenting new challenges for the Foyles girls)
Rosália Rodrigo, Beasts of Carnaval, Mira (fantasy debut follows a woman recently freed from slavery as she searches for her missing brother, and explores the Indigenous history and folklore of the Caribbean)
Josh Rountree, The Unkillable Frank Lightning, Tachyon (retelling of Frankenstein in the Wild West, with a resourceful woman struggling with the man she loved before she made him into a monster)
Morgan Ryan, A Resistance of Witches, Viking/Bantam (as World War II rages, a witch abandoned by her coven must journey to find a book of unspeakable power before it lands in Nazi hands)
Shelly Sanders, The Night Sparrow, Harper (novel inspired by real female snipers and interpreters who worked in the Red Army during World War II)
Fiona Schneider, The Perfumer’s Secret, Michael Joseph/Penguin (as a woman delves deeper into the past, the lives of two women intersect in the present)
Neema Shah, A Thread of Light, Picador (1941; during the London Blitz, air raid warden Ruby is drawn into the world of the India Forum, where a group of Londoners are working to free India from British rule)
Shylashri Shankar, Blood Caste, Canelo (1890s historical crime debut set in Victorian India, where an outcast Brahmin detective teams up with and English inspector to solve a series of Ripper-style killings)
Irina Shapiro, Murder on Platform Four, Storm (a mysterious woman’s murder leads Sebastian and Gemma to risk everything to find a remorseless killer. Tate & Bell book five)
Rick Skwiot, The Bootlegger’s Bride, Blank Slate Press (two corpses— one suicide, the other a murder— are linked by a St. Louis bootlegger’ s killing three decades earlier)
Michelle Sloan, Mrs Burke and Mrs Hare, Polygon ( in Edinburgh’s Old Town, sixteen people are murdered to feed surgeon Dr Robert Knox’s insatiable need for his anatomy classes)
Luanne G. Smith, The Golden Age of Magic, 47North (against the backdrop of 1920s Hollywood, a young fairy godmother on a mission is embroiled in magic, mystery, and murder in this historical fantasy)
Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb, Raven Books (book two of The Trials of Gabriel Ward, set in winter 1901)
Wilbur Smith, David Churchill, Crossfire, Zaffre (a race-against-time WWII thriller set in 1943)
A. L. Sowards, Roads of Resistance, Covenant (a romance set amidst war and resistance)
Laraine Stephens, The White Feather Murders, Level Best-Historia (a Reggie da Costa murder mystery, book 5)
Nell Stevens, The Original, W. W. Norton/Scribner UK (in a grand English country house in 1899, an art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor)
Karen Swan, The Hidden Heart, Macmillan (conclusion to the historical series based upon the dramatic evacuation of the Scottish island St Kilda in the summer of 1930)
Allie Therin, Viscounts & Villainy, Carina Press (third novel in the Roaring Twenties Magic books set in 1925 New York)
Sarah Loudin Thomas, These Blue Mountains, Bethany House (when pianist Hedda Schlagel sees a photo of an American memorial to German POWs with her dead fiancé’s name, it sends her on a journey to the US to uncover long-buried secrets)
Hillary Tiefer, The Secret Ranch, Histria (dual timeline story where elderly Jean relives her experiences during the war when she was in the Women’ s Army Corps. Set in 2006 and 1940s)
Harry Turtledove, Powerless, CAEZIK SF & Fantasy (alternate history inspired by the historical model of Alexander Dubcek’s “socialism with a human face” in 1968 Czechoslovakia)
Harald Voetmann, trans. Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen, Visions and Temptations, New Directions (in the eleventh century, in the city of Regensburg, Othlo of St. Emmeram lies on his sickbed and takes a journey through Heaven and Hell)
Mollie Walton, The Shopgirl of Ironbridge, Mountain Leopard (Victorian saga set in Ironbridge, 1893)
Jeri Westerson, The Misplaced Physician, Severn House (London, 1895 — when Doctor Watson is kidnapped while Sherlock Holmes is out of the country, private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson must find the missing physician)
Roseanna M. White, The Collector of Burned Books, Tyndale (World War II historical about the power of words, where two people form an unlikely friendship amid the Nazi occupation in Paris. Inspirational fiction)
Susan Wiggs, Wayward Girls, William Morrow (in 1968 six teens are thrust into confinement at the Good Shepherd—merely for being gay, pregnant, or simply unruly)
Carolyn Marie Wilkins, Murder at the Wham Bam Club, Kensington (1920s Illinois; a psychic uses her abilities to help the Black community of Agate, Illinois, fight against crime and corruption)
Beatriz Williams, Under the Stars, Ballantine (the destinies of three women converge across centuries, as a true disaster at the dawn of the steamship era evokes a legacy of family secrets in modern-day New England)
Ellen Marie Wiseman, The Lies They Told, Kensington (in rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement)
Olga Wojtas, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Uncharted Island, Saraband (Fifty-something librarian Shona McMonagle is sent spinning through time and space for another mission)
Benjamin Wood, Seascraper, Viking/Scribner (portrait of a young man confined in by his class and the ghosts of his family’s past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment)
Daisy Wood, The Banned Books of Berlin, Avon (novel set in Berlin, 1933 and inspired by the true stories of the early Nazi resistance)
Felicity York, The Quiet Wife, HarperNorth (1887; based on a true story, a slow-burn tale of a woman reinventing herself, while embarking on a forbidden love affair with James Whistler)
August 2025
Shana Abe, A Crown of Stars, Kensington (1915; account of the Lusitania’s last days, drawn from the true story of a young actress who survived)
Giaime Alonge, trans. Clarissa Botsford, The Feeling of Iron, Europa (from the horrors of WWII to the spy games of the Cold War, comes a haunting tale of survival, vengeance, and the enduring shadows of history)
Donna Jones Alward, Ship of Dreams, One More Chapter (two women seek to escape their troubled lives only to have their plans irrevocably altered aboard the Titanic)
Rebecca Anderson, Whispers of Shadowbrook House, Shadow Mountain (1880; governess Pearl Ellicott and heir Oliver Waverly unravel a haunting mystery while confronting their growing forbidden love)
Mesu Andrews, Noble: The Story of Maakah, Bethany House (through Maakah’s lens of nobility, courage, and love, readers get a biblical tale of King David and his royal household)
Maya Arad, trans. Jessica Cohen, Happy New Years, New Vessel Press (an epistolary novel inviting the reader to read between the lines of a series of letters written between 1966 and 2016)
Jennifer Ashley, A Silence in Belgrave Square, Berkley (amateur sleuth Kat Holloway must uncover the secrets of Victorian London’s most elite noblemen to save the man she loves)
Jan Baynham, The Silent Sister, Joffe/Choc Lit (mid-twentieth century story about a secret that spans generations, set in Greece, 1953 and Wales 1973)
Ella Berman, L.A. Women, Aria/Berkley (novel about the complicated friendship between two ambitious and talented female writers in 1960s Los Angeles)
Rachel Brimble, Winter Wishes for the Home Front Nurses, Boldwood (Winter, 1942; secrets abound for the Home Front Nurses in this WWII saga series)
D. V. Bishop, Carnival of Lies, Macmillan UK (historical thriller set against the backdrop of the Medici dynasty in 1530s Renaissance Italy)
Shelley Blanton-Stroud, An Unlikely Prospect, She Writes (novel, set in post–WWII San Francisco, about a young female newspaper publisher and a story that could change the course of her city’s future)
Giles Blunt, Bad Juliet, Dundurn (literary novel set in the Adirondacks in 1916, when the mountain air was considered a treatment for tuberculosis)
Rhys Bowen, Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure, Lake Union (blindsided by betrayal in pre-WWII England, a woman charts a daring new course)
Anna Bradley, What Happens in the Highlands, Kensington (new historical romance series set in Georgian Scotland, in which three unusually gifted sisters must protect their family fortress from those who would steal its rumored treasures)
E. Joe Brown, A Cowboy’s Dilemma, Artemesia Publishing (Kelly Can saga, book two, set in post-WWI 20th-century American west)
Paula Byrne, Six Weeks by the Sea, Pegasus/William Collins (fictional biography of Jane Austen explores whether Jane ever fell in love like her fictional heroes)
Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Diaz, Berkley (1765; when a demonic presence awakens in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust)
Andrea Catalano, The First Witch of Boston, Lake Union (biographical fiction about Margaret Jones, first woman prosecuted and hanged for witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony)
Rory Clements, Evil in High Places, Viking (Munich, 1936; as athletes fight for gold and the Nazis fight for power, Hitler’s right-hand man, Goebbels’ mistress disappears and Detective Wolff has to find her)
David Clensy, For Those in Peril, Sapere (first instalment of a new WWII naval adventure series)
Genevieve Cogman, Damned, Tor UK (in England, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel discover earth-shattering secrets that could change their world forever in final instalment of Scarlet Revolution trilogy)
Sara Goodman Confino, Good Grief, Lake Union (a hopeful novel about widowhood, set in 1963)
Connilyn Cossette, Splendor of the Land, Bethany House (a tale of redemption, courage, and sacrifice, et against the backdrop of ancient Israel)
Dilly Court, Poppy’s Choice, HarperCollins (historical saga in which, desperate to protect her family, Poppy must put her trust in a stranger)
Beth Cowan-Erskine, Only Murders in the Abbey, Hodder (1930s Golden Age murder mystery)
Nick Croydon, The Turing Protocol, Simon & Schuster UK (speculative historical suspense debut told in alternating timelines asking if the most powerful invention in history will save the world—or destroy it)
Richard Cullen, Valour, Boldwood (continuation of the historical adventure series set in Burzenland 1223AD and featuring The Black Lion, Estienne Wace)
Angus Donald, Templar Traitor, Canelo (new adventure series set in 1241, featuring an English knight, a Mongol conqueror and an alliance that shook the world)
Kate Eastham, Changing Seasons for the Country Nurse, Boldwood (describes the quiet heroism of a woman making a difference, one visit at a time)
Tochi Eze, This Kind of Trouble, McClelland & Stewart (spanning the 20th century, the story asks how we are beholden to the past and what we owe the future)
Juliette Fay, The Harvey Girls, Gallery (1926; novel transports us to 1920s America with this tale of two very different women who must learn to trust each other)
Natalie Fergie, 25 Library Terrace, Unbound/Embla (novel about strong and determined women who grasp their own destiny and help other women to grasp theirs, set in one house over the course of a century)
June Francis, Secrets and Lies, Canelo (20th-century romantic family saga)
Hayley Gelfuso, The Book of Lost Hours, Atria/Atlantic (multi-period novel moving from pre-WWII Germany to Cold War-era America to the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history)
Alex Gerlis, The Second Traitor, Canelo (second novel in Double Agent series takes readers from 1940 wartime London to Berlin and from German intelligence headquarters in Hamburg to Rotterdam)
Kelly J. Goshorn, The Undercover Heiress of Brockton, Barbour (second book in the Enduring Hope series of Christian historical novels)
Donna Gowland, The Lost Girls, Sapere (Mary Shelley Investigations, book two set in London 1815)
R. L. Graham, The Spies of Hartlake Hall, Macmillan (historical crime novel set in the closing stages of the First World War)
Nataly Gruender, Selkie, Grand Central (Quinn is a selkie: an ancient mythological creature who can turn from a seal into a human, and this is the story of when she dares to do it and to step onto land)
Janice Hadlow, Rules of the Heart, Mantle (a married woman of high social standing in 18th century England tries to hide from the judging eyes of her elite circle)
Evelyn Hood, A Widow’s Hope, Boldwood (Scottish historical saga of loss, love and hope, set in Scotland, 1865)
Alois Hotschnig, trans. Tess Lewis, My Mother’s Silver Fox, Seagull Books (one man’s search for truth and identity in the long shadow of WWII)
Emily Hourican, A Kennedy Affair, Mobius/Hachette Books Ireland (three young women navigate an ever-changing city in London 1943 and find themselves less sure than ever of what tomorrow will bring)
Nana Howton, Burning Seasons, Scribe UK (story of survival, sisterhood, and the fight for a brighter future, set in 1970s Brazil)
Anna Lee Huber, A Moment’s Shadow, Kensington (1920 Dublin; former Secret Service agent Verity Kent must deal with the possession of poisonous gas by a ruthless adversary)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Orphan’s Promise, Boldwood (despite her aunt’s attempts to barter her off, young Rose is determined to marry for love)
Douglas Jackson, Blood Vengeance, Canelo (1943; third instalment in the Warsaw Quartet which tasks resistance double agent, Investigator Jan Kalisz with an agent’s murder)
Barbara Josselsohn, The Secret Orphanage, Bookouture (story of resistance in World War Two France, during the dangers of Nazi occupation)
Toni Jordan, Tenderfoot, Hachette AU (coming-of-age of a girl in 1970s Brisbane who wants to become a greyhound racer)
Jessica Francis Kane, Fonseca, Penguin (fictionalizes Penelope’s Fitzgerald’s real and momentous trip to northern Mexico in 1952)
Lana Kortchik, Angels of War, HQ Digital (The Philippines, 1941; Rose Williams is sent to Manila for her first assignment as a US Navy nurse where it seems like paradise until Pearl Harbor is bombed)
David Farrell Krell, This Dagger, My Heart, SUNY Press (fiction centered around the life and tragic death of the German Romantic poet and philosopher Karoline von Günderrode)
Sharon Kutzman, The Lost Baker of Vienna, Viking/Headline Review (novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s own family after the Holocaust)
Leopold Lahola, trans. Julia Sherwood, trans. Peter Sherwood, The Last Thing, Karolinum Press/Charles University (translation of a collection of short stories that face the atrocities and paradoxes of World War II)
Veronica Lancet, Fairydale, S&S AU/Atria (gothic historical and paranormal romance meet in a tale about an orphaned English teacher’s journey to a mysterious coastal town to claim her inheritance in 1955)
Soraya M. Lane, The Secret Librarian, Lake Union (inspirational story of two women prepared to risk everything to help others survive the horrors of World War II)
Mariely Lares, Dawn of Fate and Fire, Harper Voyager (Zorro reimagining weaves Mesoamerican mythology and 16th-century Mexican history into a historical fantasy filled with magic, intrigue, and romance. Sequel to Sun of Blood and Ruin)
Jane Lark, The Forbidden Love of an Officer, Boldwood (conclusion to The Marlow Family Secrets Regency Romance saga)
Catherine Law, The Girl from the War Room, Boldwood (romance set during World War Two)
Debra Lee, Pullman, Histria (story set in New Orleans during Prohibition, seen through the eyes of a naïve Pullman porter)
Eva Leigh, The Sea Witch, Canary Street Press (fantasy set in an early 18th century alternate-universe Caribbean world; a fresh feminist twist on colonialism, toxic masculinity, and the politics of freedom)
Charles N. Li, Lord Guan, Regan Arts (highlights Guan Yu’s journey and tells the story of the making of a timeless 2nd-century hero)
Judith Little, Glorious Ruins, Lake Union (novel set in 1920s Paris, based on the friendship between Coco Chanel and world-famous muse Misia Sert)
Peter Mann, World Pacific, Harper (novel of intrigue, adventure, and the perils of self-invention, set in San Francisco and the Asian Pacific during the outbreak of the Second World War)
Shirley Mann, Maggie’s War, Zaffre (story of friendship, love and courage in the face of war. Next in series to Bridget’s War)
Clare Marchant, Daughter of the Tarot, Boldwood (two women, linked by the cards, unravel a secret spanning the decades)
Madeline Martin, The Secret Book Society, Hanover Square (novel set in 1895 Victorian London about a forbidden book club, dangerous secrets, and the women who dare to break free)
Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at Arleigh, Kensington (reporter, sleuth, and new mother Emma Cross Andrews comes to the aid of a distraught wife who’s convinced her husband is trying to kill her)
Patricia McBride, Wedding Bells for the East End Library Girls, Boldwood (a wartime story of resilience, love and the power of friendship)
Marie McWilliams, The Secrets of Blackthorn House, Quill & Crow (gothic horror set on the Yorkshire Moors)
Catherine Merridale, Moscow Underground, William Collins/Fontana (Moscow, 1934; novel of life, death and politics in the world of Stalin’s tyranny)
Nicholas Meyer, Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing, Mysterious Press (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson delve into the world of art forgery in this new historical mystery)
Ellie Midwood, To Save Her Husband, Bookouture (1933, Berlin; story of a woman who flees Germany with her Jewish film director husband, who has attracted the wrong kind of attention)
Stacy Lynn Miller, The Rio Affair, Severn River (when a disgraced singer is snared in the undercurrents of WWII espionage, she must learn to become a shadow in the limelight. Second Hattie James novel)
Audrey Minutolo-Le, Gray Ledges, Down East Books (inspired by true events about a coastal Maine village in the 1930s, novel explores the lives of two women who operate competing hotels in an idyllic summer resort)
Tonya Mitchell, Needle and Bone, Bloodhound (a gothic revenge story set in Philadelphia, 1841)
Santa Montefiore, Shadows in the Moonlight, Simon & Schuster (Timeslider, book1; timeslip romance in which Pixie Tate is summoned to the wild Cornish coast to unravel a mystery at St Sidwell Manor)
Tara Moss, The Italian Secret, HarperCollins AU (post-war mystery where investigator Billie Walker follows a trail of secrets to Italy’s Neapolitan coast)
Peter Orner, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, Little, Brown (the cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death sets a contemporary writer on a quest to uncover the truth and its connection to his own family)
Philip Paris, A Fire in Their Hearts, Black & White (Scotland, 1662; a tale of love, faith and survival, inspired by true events of the seventeenth-century)
Suzanne Parry, The Communist’s Secret, She Writes (WWII tale of betrayal and second chances details how a woman trapped in occupied Russia fights the Nazis)
AJ Pearce, Dear Miss Lake, Scribner/Picador (conclusion to a quartet of novels set in London during World War II)
Linda Bennett Pennell, Gilead’s Physician, Black Rose Writing (in 1890, what begins as an ordinary life as a country doctor for James, becomes a life of extraordinary circumstances)
Princess Joy L. Perry, This Here is Love, W. W. Norton (1690s, Tidewater, Virginia; three people—two enslaved, one indentured— must carve out choices from the narrowest of circumstances and confront heartrending questions)
S. W. Perry, Cairo Gambit, Corvus (thriller featuring the hunt for a missing person, set in Cairo 1938)
Eric Pope, Macedonian Sun, Prende Publishing (story of King Philip II of Macedonia who had become the most powerful man in Greek history when he was assassinated in 336 BCE)
Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding, Henry Holt (debut about five sisters in a small village in 18th century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs)
Kate Quinn, Vicky Alvear, Simon Turney, Russell Whitfield, Stephanie Thornton, Libbie Hawker, David Alexander Blixt, A Song of War, William Morrow (seven authors recreate the Trojan War: its heroes, its villains, its survivors, its dead)
Sarah Rayne, The Face Stealer, Severn House (a puzzling mystery pulls the thieving Fitzglen family back to a shocking crime committed in the time of Catherine the Great)
Mary-Jane Riley, Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club, Allison & Busby (Beattie Cavendish, formerly of the Secret Operations Executive, must rely on her skills to survive a game of deception at the dawn of the Cold War)
Matt Riordan, While the Getting is Good, Hyperion Avenue (amid the gangland wars of Prohibition, one fisherman’s long-shot play to secure his family’s future brings disaster to everyone he loves)
Erika Robuck, The Last Assignment, Sourcebooks Landmark (1956; story of photojournalist Dickey Chappelle as she risks everything to show the American people the price of war through the lens of her camera)
Michael Russell, The City in Year Zero, Constable (Stefan Gillespie crime thriller Book 10, set in WWII, 1945)
J. R. Sanders, Blues in the Dark, Level Best-Historia (a Nate Ross mystery set in the 1930s)
Paula Saunders, Starting from Here, Random House (a story of facing the many challenges and terrors of girlhood, and finding your way from wherever you are to wherever you need to go)
Thomas Schlesser, trans. Hildegarde Serle, Mona’s Eyes, Europa Editions (a story across five centuries of art history and the cultural significance of iconic masterpieces)
Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Art of a Lie, Atria/Mantle (in 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits)
Douglas Skelton, Ship of Thieves, Canelo (next in Company of Rogues series)
Sarah Stewart Taylor, Hunter’s Heart Ridge, Minotaur (1965; Detective Frank Warren and his formerly CIA-connected neighbor Alice Bellows return to investigate the death of a federal judge. Sequel to Agony Hill)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Power Principle, Sapere (in 1878 Homes takes on a case at the beginning of his career as a detective)
Ken Tentarelli, The Blackest Time, Black Rose Writing (a novel of Florence, Italy, during the Black Plague)
Michelle Vernal, The Irish Adoption House, Bookouture (in 1920 Ireland a young woman, pregnant and single, has her baby taken away and sent to Savannah, Georgia)
Erica Vetsch, A Scheming in Parliament, Kregel (book two of the Of Cloaks & Daggers Regency series with a mystery and compelling faith journeys)
James Wade, Narrow the Road, Blackstone (Southern Gothic odyssey, a young man’s quest to reunite his family takes him on a life-altering journey through the wilds of 1930s East Texas)
Alexandra Weston, The Hollywood Runaway, Boldwood (1932; a new life in Hollywood is forged from the ashes of an old one in Liverpool)
Darcie Wilde, The Heir, Kensington (the future queen becomes a rebellious sleuth when she solves the mystery of a dead man discovered on the grounds of Kensington Palace)
John Willingham, The Last Woman, Texas Christian Uni. Press (inspired by true events, story follows three young women whose lives become intertwined as they flee up the Mississippi River in 1877)
Bruce Wilson, Muckrakers 1917, Artemesia Publishing (1917; reporters for an Arizona newspaper expose a political assassination in Phoenix during the Spanish Flu epidemic)
Jennifer L. Wright, Last Light Over Galveston, Tyndale (amid the 1900 Galveston hurricane, one woman’s perseverance is severely tested)
Samantha York, The Foreshore, Salt Publishing (gothic historical fiction debut using familiar tropes of the shipwreck and abandoned island to explore community, grief, religion, relationships and the fear of the unknown)
September 2025
Sara Ackerman, The Guest in Room 120, Mira (novel inspired by one of America’s most famous, mysterious deaths, that of Stanford University’s founder Jane Stanford in Waikiki)
Tasha Alexander, The Sisterhood, Minotaur (Lady Emily investigates the murder of a glamorous debutante in next in series set in 1907)
Jack Anderson, The Return of Moriarty, Crooked Lane (after Professor Moriarty survives Reichenbach Falls and Sherlock Holmes dies, Moriarty finds himself caught up in a locked-room mystery Holmes couldn’t solve)
Lainie Anderson, Murder on North Terrace, Hachette AU (Miss Cocks and Ethel Bromley return for Book Two in the cosy Petticoat Police Mystery Series, inspired by one of Australia’s first policewomen)
Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Watching Over Her, Atlantic (during an infamous sculptor’s final hours, he reveals his impoverished childhood, his unlikely rise to fame and his meeting with Viola, the daughter of a powerful aristocratic family)
Richard Aronowitz, Night Comes Down, Guernica (novel set in a remote town in the borderlands between England and Wales in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign)
Ronald H. Balson, The Righteous, St. Martin’s Press (novel of bravery, betrayal, exile, and hope set in World War II Budapest)
Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, Lake Song, Mad Creek Press (novel told in stories against a backdrop of historical events―bootlegging, Klan attacks, gold smuggling, the Albany Ketchup Murders, the 1965 Northeast blackout―as a generations-long mystery unwinds)
John Banville, Venetian Vespers, Faber and Faber (supernatural mystery puzzle taking place in 1899)
J. S. Barnes, Frankenstein’s Monster, Titan (a writer finds his rural English life disrupted by the arrival of mysterious doctor with a legendary past)
Karen Barnett, Through Water and Stone, Kregel (split-time historical romance novel set in 1948 and present)
Damien Barr, The Two Roberts, Canongate (novel spans from 1930s Chicago to wartime London)
Susanna Bavin, A Baby for the Home Front Girls, Bookouture (fifth and final book in The Home Front Girls series romantic saga)
Madeline Bell, The Austen Affair, St. Martin’s Griffin (two feuding co-stars in a Jane Austen film adaptation accidentally travel back in time to the Regency Era)
Renée Belliveau, A Sense of Things Beyond, Vagrant Press (in the aftermath of the First World War literary fiction explores what is commemorated and what is forgotten)
James R. Benn, A Bitter Wind, Soho Crime (to solve a murder at an English airbase, Billy Boyle must immerse himself in the world of WWII radio espionage)
Matthew Blake, A Murder in Paris, Harper (an expert in memory must uncover the truth about her family’s wartime past)
Meihan Boey, The Formidable Miss Cassidy, Harper Perennial (historical fantasy in which a Scottish governess arrives in Singapore to take up her new post, only to find a host of problems await that require her unique skills)
Verity Bright, Murder at the Royal Palace, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift cosy mystery, book 23)
Michael Burge, The Watchnight, Histria (1852; reimagining of the untold story of the Methodist settlers who colonized Australia’s Jenolan Caves during the Frontier Wars)
Charles Bush, The Boy with the Jade, HTF Publishing (novel explores a young aristocrat’s quest for identity amid love, loss, and betrayal in 18th-century China)
Dan Chaon, One of Us, Henry Holt (macabre tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a travelling carnival)
Jerome Charyn, Maria La Divina, Bellevue Literary Press (humanizes Maria Callas, revealing the mythical artist as a woman who survived hunger, war, and loneliness)
Ann Yu-Kyung Choi, All Things Under the Moon, Simon & Schuster (a tale set in 1920s Korea, of one seemingly ordinary woman who rises from illiterate villager to reluctant revolutionary)
Alys Clare, The Skeleton in the Rose Bed, Severn House (a killer is loose on the streets of London and he has set his sights on private investigators Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham)
Chanel Cleeton, The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes, Berkley (a librarian defies the Castro regime in Post-Revolutionary Cuba to protect a mysterious book with a legacy that spans from the beginning of the 20th century)
Bridget Collins, The Naked Light, The Borough Press (a haunting gothic tale of ancient darkness and a love that defies convention)
L. D. Colter, While the Gods Sleep, Solaris (first book in a new fantasy trilogy where ordinary people stumble into the twisted games of the gods)
Rebecca Connolly, A Carol for Mrs. Dickens, Shadow Mountain (inspired by real individuals, novel reminds us that the true spirit of the holiday lies in love, faith, and the joy of giving)
Mia Couto, trans. David Brookshaw, The Cartographer of Absences, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (novel about a father and son in the waning days of colonial Mozambique)
Stephanie Cowell, The Man in the Stone Cottage, Regal House (follows Charlotte Bronte’s early writing and Emily’s secret romance with a local shepherd)
Erin A. Craig, A Land So Wide, Pantheon (historical fantasy blend of dark fairytale and romance set in the Canadian wilderness)
Lesley Crewe, The Spirit of Scatarie, Nimbus (novel set on Nova Scotia’s remote Scatarie Island, follows three friends whose lives are inextricably bound, and the spirit who guides them)
H. S. Cross, Amanda, Europa Editions (a meditation on love, trauma, and redemption and the infinite varieties of human experience, set in a post WWI nation of upheaval)
Carolyn Newton Curry, Trudy’s Awakening, Mercer Univ. Press (novel set in Georgia, latter half of the 19th-century, tells of three women whose lives were intermingled as they worked to overcome society’s barriers to their progress)
Celeste Daniels, Only You, Hera (story of two musicians who have loved each other in different incarnations over many lifetimes)
Jason Diamond, Kaplan’s Plot, Flatiron (debut novel about mothers and sons, crime and consequence, unspoken family secrets, and being Jewish in America)
Victoria Dowd, Death in the Aviary, Datura Books (locked room murder mystery set in 1928/29 in which Charlotte Blood investigates)
Lacey Dunham, The Belles, Atria (coming-of-age story in 1951 is an excavation of the dark side of girlhood, privilege, and desire to belong)
Anne Echols, Roland’s Labyrinth, She Writes (a story set in 1400s Provence about a young, passionate doctor who falls in love with a mentally ill young woman)
Sarah M. Eden, Echoes of the Sea, Shadow Mountain (historical romance in which a modern-day London actor time-travels to 1803)
Martin Edwards, Hemlock Bay, Head of Zeus/Aries (fifth novel in the Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mystery series)
Cynthia Ellingsen, The Cut of the Moon, Lake Union (a mystery and a longing for love link two women, a century apart, in a novel about family secrets and lies)
Sarah Emsley, The Austens, Pottersfield Press (in a world hostile to art, love and the idea of women’s choices, novel contrasts Jane Austen’s choice to write fiction, with her sister-in-law Fanny’s choice to marry for love)
Christine Estima, Letters to Kafka, House of Anansi (a tragic romance and feminist adventure about translator and resistance fighter Milena Jesenská’s love affair with Franz Kafka)
Janis Falk, Not Yet Lost, She Writes (a Polish immigrant woman fights against worker oppression in Depression-era Detroit)
Liz Fenwick, The Secrets of Harbour House, HQ (romantic dual timeline novel set in 1930s Paris and Venice)
David Field, The Belvedere Scandal, Sapere (an Esther and Jack Enright mystery set in 1901 as the crown is passed to Edward VII)
Charles Finch, The Hidden City, Minotaur (aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox makes a triumphant return to London from his travels to America, to investigate a mystery hidden in the architecture of the city itself)
Ken Follett, Circle of Days, Grand Central/Quercus (through characters such as a miner named Seft and the priestess Joia, readers explore the famous and ancient stone circle in England)
Emerson Ford, Every Bend in the River, Storm (true story of a woman caught between freedom and duty, set against the backdrop of the American Revolution)
Mariah Fredericks, The Girl in the Green Dress, Minotaur (mystery about the 1920 murder of the gambler Joseph Elwell)
Sarah Freethy, The Seeker of Lost Paintings, Simon & Schuster UK (interweaving war-torn Rome, 1939, with modern-day London, 1997, this historical novel is about love, betrayal and a quest for the truth)
Rosza Gaston, Maid of Honour, Sapere (tale of Anne Boleyn at Margaret of Austria’s court)
Peter Gibbons, Camelot, Boldwood (next installment of the Chronicles of Arthur series)
Anthony Graziano, Teddy’s World, Guernica (a tale of love, strength, and perseverance by a family confronting a world hostile to those who are “different.”)
David Greig, The Book of I, Europa Editions (novel set on a remote Scottish isle in 825 AD serves as a philosophical commentary on guilt and redemption, but also humanity, love, and the things we choose to believe in)
Brit Griffin, The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien, Latitude 46 (against a landscape ravaged by human greed in 1907, O’Brien must make hard choices about loyalty, sacrifice and revenge)
Annie Groves, Three Sisters in the Snow, HarperCollins (1942 on Victory Walk in East London where the Harrison sisters are wishing for some winter magic; book 3 in series)
Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle, Grove/Black Cat (feminist retelling of Moby-Dick through the eyes of one woman during which, as the American Civil War breaks out, Ishmaelle boards the whaling ship Nimrod)
Gilbert Hackforth-Jones, Chinese Poison, Sapere (first book in a series of British Royal Navy thrillers)
Nathan Harris, Amity, Little, Brown/Tinder Press (New Orleans, 1866; delves into the years of the Civil War’s aftermath to deliver a tale of what freedom means in a society still determined to return its Black citizens to bondage)
Elodie Harper, Boudicca’s Daughter, Union Square/Apollo (follows Boudicca’s rise and fall through the eyes of her youngest daughter, Solina, who seeks revenge against Rome)
Sarah Hawkswood, Feast for the Ravens, Allison & Busby (September 1145: when the body of a Templar knight is discovered it’s up to Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin to bring a killer to justice)
Natalie Haynes, No Friend to This House, Mantle (retelling of the myth of Medea, and her turbulent relationship with the questing Jason)
Rosie Hewlett, Medusa, Transworld (reimagining of the myth of Medusa, as the snake-haired Gorgon sets the record straight about her monstrous reputation)
Tim Hodkinson, The Blazing Sea, Head of Zeus/Aries (warrior prince Einar reunites with the Wolf Coats as they voyage south to Byzantine lands)
Robert Hough, Anarchists in Love, Douglas & McIntyre (recreates the political violence and revolutionary idealism that flowed through New York City during the Gilded Age of the 1890s)
Lorena Hughes, The Night We Became Strangers, Kensington (two young journalists try to uncover what happened to their families when an Ecuadorian radio station replicated The War of the Worlds in 1949)
Faulkner Hunt, The Ballad of Innes of Skara Skaill, Regalo Press (a bereaved son takes up with two young brothers living outcast on the village streets and moors of Skara Heath)
Michael Jecks, Ashes of Rebellion, Boldwood (1358; A free company of English men and boys, led by John Hawkwood, previously of Sir John de Sully’s Vintaine, have only their wits, combat skills and each other to rely on)
Maureen Johnson, Jay Cooper, The Creeping Hand Murder, Crown (interactive mystery set in November 1933, London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows all their secrets)
Dan Jones, Lion Hearts, Head of Zeus/Aries (third and last installment in the Essex Dogs series, set in 1351)
Teddy Jones, A Family of Good Women, Stoney Creek Publishing (inspired by historical events – can a new life be built from the ashes of hardship on the plains of the 1920s Texas Panhandle?)
Don Keith, Elaine Hume Peake, The Kaboom Boys, Severn River (saga of courage, sacrifice, and friendship, set during WWII and based on true events)
Julia Kelly, A Dark and Deadly Journey, Minotaur (typist-turned-field agent Evelyne Redfern is ready for her next assignment with Britain’s secretive Special Investigations Unit)
Katherine Kirkpatrick, To Chase the Glowing Hours, Regal House (1922; novel explores themes of love, greed, loss, privilege, and self-discovery, set against the backdrops of Egypt and England)
Julie Klassen, A Sea View Christmas, Bethany House (Regency coming of age romance; companion novella to the Summers Sisters)
Gerrit Kouwenaar, trans. Michele Hutchison, Fall, Bomb, Fall, Pushkin Press (story of a teenager’s coming-of-age at the outbreak of war)
Jane Lark, The Great Western Railway Girls Do Their Bit, Boldwood (story of friendship, courage and women’s strength on the home front)
Sue Lawrence, Whispers in the Glen, Saraband (tale inspired by real events of sisterhood and resilience in a Highland village home front in World War II Scotland)
Erryn Lee, What Remains, Historium (dual-timeline mystery that bridges centuries-and secrets-between ancient Rome and the modern world)
Jen Sookfong Lee, The Hunger We Pass Down, Erewhon (horror-tinged intergenerational saga set in modern- day Vancouver and 1940s Hong Kong)
Mackenzi Lee, Lady Like, Dial Press (two women set their sights on marrying the same duke)
Amanda Lees, Secrets of Villa Eden, Bookouture (a romance story set in Cairo 1942 and the present day)
Marianne Leone, Christina the Astonishing, Akashic (sardonic coming-of-age novel told from the perspective of Christina, who with Catholic school nuns, Italian mothers, and small-town Massachusetts in mid-20th-century)
Paul Levine, Midnight Burning, Amphorae/Blank Slate (Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein battle fascists when the LAPD and the FBI will not)
Michael Robert Liska, Alice, or the Wild Girl, Skyhorse (story about the unlikely bond between an aging naval commander and the feral child he picks up on a deserted island in the South Seas in mid-19th century)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the Missing Heir, Kensington (a cross between a Regency romance and a detective story)
Ruth Frances Long, The Book of Gold, Hodderscape (first book in The Feral Gods historical fantasy trilogy, set in 16th-century)
Edward Marston, Murder on the Great Northern Railway, Allizon & Busby (Lincoln city bursting at the seams for the annual Horse Fair, further complicates a challenging case for the Railway Detective)
Madeline Martin, The Secret Book Society, Graydon House (set in Victorian London, tracing the lives of four women and the clandestine book club that frees them from the constraints of their husbands and homes)
Ilana Masad, Beings, Bloomsbury (novel rooted in true events asks how our beliefs, memories, and pain tie us to one another and to our history)
Sarah McCoy, Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely?, William Morrow (novel based on a true story: a beautiful young movie star of Hollywood’s Golden Age gives up her career to become a nun)
Fiona McIntosh, The Soldier’s Daughter, PRH AU (Charlie must prove his bravery, but it is Violet, Charlie’s daughter, who will fight to claim his lasting legacy)
Heather B. Moore, Julia, Shadow Mountain (fictional biography charts Julia Child’s journey from intelligence officer to beloved chef)
Syd Moore, The Great Deception, Magpie (1940. Britain invades Iceland, and an agent is dropped into this occupied territory to assess a clairvoyant in Reykjavik)
Shani Mootoo, Starry Starry Night, Book*Hug (gives voice to a young girl living in 1960s Trinidad and spanning her life between the ages of four and twelve)
Louisa Morgan, The Faerie Morgana, Redhook/Orbit (reimagines the story of Morgan Le Fay, one of the women in Arthurian legend)
Judi Morison, Secrets, S&S Bundyi (family saga spanning more than half a decade, about three generations fractured by secrets, and the three strong women who must bring them into the light)
Walter Mosley, Gray Dawn, Mulholland (next installment of the Easy Rawlins novels set in 1970s Los Angeles)
P. Moss, Screwing Sinatra, IDW Publishing (focuses on one of the most celebrated performers in pop culture and his connections to the mob and political power in Golden Age Las Vegas)
Heather Mottershead, No Women Were Harmed, Sphere (set against the realities of a Victorian asylum, debut sees one woman take her revenge on the men who would keep her caged)
Donna Mumma, First Comes Marriage………..Then Comes Murder, Barbour (in 1956 Levi City, Florida, a renowned bridal gown designer is facing the greatest challenge of her career when someone starts killing brides)
Jenna Ness, The Last War Orphan, Bookouture (Paris, 1940 – when the orphanage is taken over by the Nazis, orphan Lucie hides a baby left on the doorstep, along with the help of a kind soldier)
Anna Newallo, Fragile Wicked Things, Open Road (dark gothic romance paranormal reimagining of Charlotte Brontё’s Jane Eyre)
Max Nightingale, Murder in Tinseltown, Pegasus (murder mystery set against the glamorous backdrop of Hollywood’s golden era)
Kevin O’Brien, Everyone a Stranger, Kensington (historical suspense thriller set during World War II, as a young war widow is unwittingly drawn into a web of intrigue and murder)
Liz O’Neill, Ways of Virtue, She Writes (1950s New England; literary romance about a young socialite and a pilot who take a chance on each other against extreme odds)
Emily Organ, Murder in the Soho Graveyard, Storm (next installment of the Emma Langley Victorian mystery series, set in London, 1890)
Elizabeth Bass Parman, Bees in June, Harper Muse (in a Tennessee small town in the 1960s, one woman finds the courage to stand up for her life with a little help from the bees)
Cathy Pegau, A Murderous Business, Minotaur (historical mystery about two queer women in turn-of-the-century New York)
Stacia Pelletier, The Deliverance of Barker McRae, Mercer Univ. Press (a tale about trespass, frontier religion, fathers and daughters, and friendships between unlikely companions)
Andrea Penrose, Murder at Somerset House, Kensington (next installment in the Lord Wrexford and Charlotte Regency mystery series)
Angela Petch, The Lost Garden, Bookouture (novel about the risks people took in wartime, family secrets, loss and love)
Tracie Peterson, Misty M. Beller, and Karen Witemeyer, On a Midnight Clear, Bethany House (three Western-themed Christmas romance novellas)
Scott Phillips, The Devil Raises His Own, No Exit Press (noir set in 1916 Hollywood dives into the dark origins of the film industry)
Carol Pouliot, Murder at the Moulin Rouge, Level Best-Historia (next installment in the The Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mystery series)
Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket, Penguin Press (in 1932 Great Depression, private eye Hicks McTaggart thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent to locate the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune)
Oriana Ramunno, Smoke in Berlin, Hemlock Press (detective crime thriller set in Berlin during The Second World War)
Victoria Redel, I Am You, Zando/SJP Lit (in 1600s Amsterdam, two women—a painter and her assistant—defy the norms of their time as they take on the male-dominated art world and fall in love)
Michael Redhill, The Trial of Katterfelto, Knopf Canada (in late-18th century, conjurer Gustavus Katterfelto and colleague, Roger Gossage, travel across the English countryside with a bag of tricks)
Sophie Rickard and Scarlett Rickard, This Slavery, SelfMadeHero (graphic novel adapted from a novel by the feminist poet Ethel Carnie Holdsworth about what it was like to grow up female in prewar industrial Britain)
Tony Robinson, The House of Wolf, Sphere (a witty recreation of the Anglo-Saxons, Alfred the Great, and the making of England)
Heather Rose, A Great Act of Love, Allen & Unwin (Van Diemen’s Land, 1839; a young woman of means must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists to create a new life on the island)
Gareth Rubin, The Waterfall, Simon & Schuster UK (four interconnected mysteries take the reader from Shakespeare’s day to a 19th-century Gothic former Priory, to 1920s Venice, and 1940s California)
A. Rushby, Slashed Beauties, Verve/Berkley (gothic feminist body horror in two timelines revolving around three Anatomical Venuses that come to life to murder men who have wronged them)
Patrick Ryan, Buckeye, Random House (story weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century)
Suzanne Uttaro Samuels, Seeds of the Pomegranate, Sibylline Press (a story of one woman’s struggle for survival in a brutal early 20th-century world)
Park Seolyeon, trans. Anton Hur, Capitalists Must Starve, Tilted Axis (historical novel about labour activism in Japanese-occupied Korea)
Chrystal Schleyer, A Rather Peculiar Poisoning, Park Row (in 1910, celebrations for twin brothers’ marital engagements take a turn when one is poisoned, and everyone becomes a suspect)
Tamar Shapiro, Restitution, Regal House (family drama set against the backdrop of German reunification)
Cathy Sharp, The Evacuee’s Promise, HarperCollins (young Georgie Greene is evacuated to the English countryside to keep him safe from the London Blitz)
Michelle Shocklee, The Women of Oak Ridge, Tyndale (two women work at a Manhattan Project site during World War II and uncover truths that change their lives)
Sarah Sigal, The Paris Spy, Lume Books (in Paris 1938, Lady Pamela More takes on a dangerous assignment to infiltrate the Parisian circles of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor)
Joan Silber, Mercy, Counterpoint (story of a moment of fear and abandonment that reverberates across decades, and set against the changing social and sexual mores from the 1970s onward)
Marisa Silver, At Last, Simon & Schuster (explores a mid-century American family centered on two matriarchs whose intertwined lives reflect the complexities of family, tradition, and personal ambition)
Esperanza Hope Snyder, Orange Wine, Bindery Books (a story of sisterhood, love, passion, and betrayal set against the backdrop of early twentieth-century Colombia, where the Catholic Church exercises total control over women)
José Sotolongo, The Optimistic Cuban, Histria (in 1959 Havana, middle-class student activist Fernando fights against the corrupt, U.S.-backed Batista regime)
Barbara Stark-Nemon, Isabela’s Way, She Writes (coming-of-age tale of one fourteen-year-old girl’s escape from early-17th-century Portugal’s Inquisition)
Susan Stokes-Chapman, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Harvill Secker (the snowy village of Merrywake celebrates the Christmas season after the Napoleonic Wars)
Anna Stuart, The President’s Wife, Bookouture (novel of one woman’s bravery, determination and courage, inspired by the life of Eleanor Roosevelt)
Seamus Sullivan, Daedalus Is Dead, Tordotcom (story of fatherhood and masculinity, told through the reimagined Greek myth of Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, Ariadne, and the Minotaur)
Defne Suman, The Last Apartment in Istanbul, Head of Zeus/Apollo (story of Istanbul’s deterioration, beginning from COVID-19 era and weaving its way backwards to the 1950s)
Melinda Taub, The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet, Grand Central (queer story that recasts Mary Bennet as a scientist, one who creates a monster in an attempt to save herself from spinsterhood)
Andrew Taylor, A Schooling in Murder, Hemlock Press (historical mystery set in the last days of WWII)
Maisie Thomas, Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel, Boldwood (an uplifting saga of female friendship, set in Manchester)
Jane Thynne, Appointment in Paris, Quercus (Harry Fox, an MI5 Watcher, now suspended, and his associate Stella Fry are reunited in this espionage war thriller)
Katie Tietjen, Murder in Miniature, Crooked Lane (continues the adventures of amateur sleuth Maple Bishop, owner of a dollhouse business)
Seána Tinley, The Irish Midwife, Hodder & Stoughton (in an era when midwifes/handywomen can be arrested, young Peggy leaves Belfast for Dublin, to train as a legal midwife)
Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps, Lake Union (second Theo Sterling book, following The Palace at the End of the Sea, set in 1929)
Mariana Travacio, trans. Will Morningstar, trans. Samantha Schnee, All That Dies in April, World Editions (an ancestral tale rooted in Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality)
Lydia Travers, Murder on a Scottish Island, Bookouture (Lady Poppy Proudfoot is on the case of a dead body and a missing sapphire in Scotland, 1924)
Fiona Valpy, The Dark of the Moon, Lake Union (dual time line novel set in WWII and present day; a young man uses maths, logic and persistence to track down a man’s final resting place)
Alexandra Vasti, Ladies in Hating, St. Martin’s Griffin (two Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this sapphic Regency)
Rose Warner, The Teacher Evacuees, Canelo (1939; evacuated to the countryside, teacher Victoria McKaye realises there are more dangers than German bombs in wartime)
Kathy Watson, Orphans of the Living, She Writes (follows the Stovall family’s early 20th-century quest for home and redemption as they confront racism, poverty, and inequality)
Pam Weaver, The West End Nannies, Hera (a family saga set in 1960s in London’s West End)
Doris Webster, Mary Alden Hopkins, Consider the Consequences, Pushkin Prress (interactive 1930s romantic time capsule where readers decide what the characters do)
Marty Wingate, The House for Lost Children, Bookouture (WWII 1940 tale of a little orphan girl and the woman who would do anything to protect the children in her care)
Kimberley Woodhouse, A Song in the Dark, Bethany House (against the backdrop of the impending WWII, blind virtuoso pianist Chaisley Frappier embarks on a concert tour through a rapidly changing Europe)
Norman Woolworth, The Bolden Cylinder (tent.), Level Best-Historia (early 20th-c story revolves around Buddy Bolden, a New Orleans cornetist and band leader who is sometimes referred to as the first jazz musician)
Seishi Yokomizo, trans. Bryan Karetnyk, Murder at the Black Cat Café, Pushkin Vertigo (to solve this mystery, set in post-war Tokyo, scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi will have to untangle a complex web of love, jealousy, and betrayal)
Kitty Zeldis, One of Them, Harper (a story of secrets, friendship, and betrayal about two young women at Vassar in the years after World War II)
October 2025
Eliette Abecassis, trans. Johanna McCalmont, A Couple, Arctis (told in reverse chronology against the backdrop of Paris and the major historical upheavals of the last decades)
Nekesa Afia, As Long as You’re Mine, Lake Union (beneath the glitter of 1930s Hollywood, dangerous secrets connect two generations of women)
Rose Alexander, The Letter from the Island, Bookouture (a dual timeline novel of family set in present day London and 1944, Crete)
Skye Alexander, When the Blues Come Calling, Level Best-Historia (fifth mystery, taking place in NYC during the summer of 1926, has Lizzie Crane about to make her recording debut when tragic events occur)
Kimberly Bea, The Changeling Queen, Erewhon (fantasy inspired by the “Ballad of Tam Lin” and weaving mystical folklore through a story set in medieval Scotland)
Pepper Basham, Sense and Suitability, Thomas Nelson (old flames turned enemies reunite and despite their best attempts, can’t seem to stay apart)
Mathieu Belezi, trans. Lara Vergnaud, Attacking Earth and Sun, Other Press (novel set in the early days of the 19th-century French colonization of Algeria)
Alexandra Bell, The White Octopus Hotel, Del Rey (two lost souls living in different centuries meet and discover if a second chance awaits them behind its doors)
Michelle Bennington, Widow’s Peak, Level Best-Historia (next in mystery series featuring former actress and spy Lady Ravenna Birchfield. Set in early 1800s)
Lucy E. M. Black, A Quilting of Scars, Now or Never Publishing (a frontier meditation on aging and remorse, highlighting the confines of a community where strict moral codes are imposed upon its members and fear of exposure terrifies queer youth)
Sara Blaydes, The Restoration Garden, Lake Union (1940; a landscape architect unearths the tangled history of a once-celebrated English garden)
Diane Botnick, Becoming Sarah, She Writes (examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters)
Sasha Butler, The Marriage Contract, Salt Publishing (portrays life in an unforgiving Elizabethan era, exploring love’s many forms)
Colleen Cambridge, Two Truths and a Murder, Kensington (1930s mystery in which Agatha Christie’s housekeeper, Phyllida decides to crash a party and an investigation)
Deborah Carr, The Witching Hour, One More Chapter (dangerous secrets lie beneath the surface on Jersey during the Nazi occupation in this historical fantasy)
Beth Cato, A House Between Sea and Sky, 47North (1920s California; historical fantasy in which two people in need of healing find strange refuge in a house with a mind of its own)
KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers, Poisoned Pen (Edwardian Gothic in which two warring lovers uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House―and live to tell the tale)
Adrienne Chinn, The Queen’s Necklace, One More Chapter (a saga in two timelines)
Rosie Clarke, Better Days on Dressmakers’ Alley, Boldwood (Lady Diane’s business continues to thrive in London’s East End, 1926, but there’s trouble ahead)
Denise Smith Cline, The Resettlement of Vesta Blonik, Regal House (family saga of life-changing choices made against the backdrop of the Great Depression)
Mary Connealy, Riches Beyond Measure, Bethany House (conclusion to the Golden State Treasure series, as Cord and Annie realize that some treasures are far more valuable than earthly goods)
Donovan Cook, Woden’s Storm, Boldwood (continuation of the adventure of turmoil, coming of age and survival set when Britannia was on its knees and fighting for its very existence)
Lorna Cook, The Distant Daughter, Lake Union (family saga set in Singapore, 1941 and Cornwall, 2025)
C. J. Cooke, The Last Witch, Berkley/HarperCollins (an accused witch in Innsbruck, 1485, must use her voice to fight for her life—and the truth)
Tea Cooper, The Tangled Web, HQ (Maitland, 1892; the sudden death of her brother leads a young woman on a quest to find a missing boy)
Andreina Cordani, A Scrooge Mystery, Zaffre (reformed miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, sees the spirit of a girl, whose murder he must solve if he is to avoid the dreaded vision of The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come)
Joanne Bischof DeWitt, The Heart of Bennet Hollow, Tyndale (Virginia 1904; an Appalachian farmer’s daughter and a wealthy businessman find a surprising love but must reckon with what divides them)
Christina Dodd, Much Ado About Mistletoe, Kensington (Daughter of Montague Christmas novella)
Anton Du Beke, The Winter Ball, Orion (next installment of the Buckingham Hotel series set in London 1942)
Caroline Dunford, Hope Against Evil, Headline Accent (new series set around WWII featuring Euphemia Martin’s (previous mystery series) perceptive daughter Hope Stapleford)
C. F. Dunn, Degrees of Affinity, Sapere (book three in the Wars of the Roses series, set in England 1472)
Mari Ellis Dunning, Witsh, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (a woman seeks the help of a healer in 16th-century Wales)
David Elias, Into the Ark, Radiant Press (family saga set in the early sixties in a southern Manitoba valley)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Irish Nurse at the Lodging House, Bookouture (nurse Grace Whelan is full of hope for a fresh start and hopes the family she’s desperately running from don’t catch up with her)
P. W. Finch, The Devil’s Knight, Canelo (first installment of The Thurstan Wildblood series, set during the Third Crusade in 12th-century)
Betty Firth, A Little Miracle in the Dales, Canelo (n inspirational historical romance, set in World War Two)
Jillian Forsberg, The Porcelain Menagerie, History Through Fiction (two timelines, bound by a king’s obsessions: art and survival intertwine as Johann and Fatima navigate the king’s unpredictable demands and the deadly allure of court life)
Mario Fortunato, trans. Julia MacGibbon, The Innocent Days of War, Other Press (a group of young people’s lives and passions collide in unexpected ways as World War II transforms Italy and England)
A. E. Goldin, Murder in Constantinople, Pushkin Vertigo (London, 1854; the chance discovery of an enigmatic letter and a photograph brings Ben Canaan on a dangerous adventure in this first in series)
Suzanne Goldring, Her Husband’s Return, Bookouture (dual timeline World War Two novel about the dark secrets one woman was forced to keep)
Philippa Gregory, Boleyn Traitor, William Morrow/Harper Collins UK (brings the Boleyn traitor, Jane, Lady Rochford, out of the shadows in a groundbreaking tale of love, betrayal and survival)
Lisa Groen, The Cassatt Sisters, Black Rose Writing (takes place during Mary Cassatt’s years with the Impressionists, while living with her sister Lydia and their parents in a Montmartre apartment)
Chris Hadfield, Final Orbit, Mulholland (Cold War thriller set against the backdrop of the real 1970s “Space race” between the US, USSR, and China)
Jill G. Hall, On a Sundown Sea, She Writes (a novel of Madame Tingley and the early 20th-century origins of Lomaland)
Carissa Halton, Revolution Songs, NeWest (debut novel based on the little-known true history of the 1932 battle for Alberta between the Ku Klux Klan and the Communists)
Sophie Hannah (Agatha Christie), The Last Death of the Year, HarperCollins (New Year’s Eve, 1932; Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool arrive on the Greek island of Lamperos for a little holiday and a little murder)
Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting, Tor (genre-defying fantasy adventure through time, as a reluctant lady knight and a historian with dreams of being a hero, fight to rewrite their tragic fates)
Alis Hawkins, The Hunters Club, Canelo (book 3 in The Oxford Mysteries; the uncovering by Basil of a secret society and the murder of a student, cause Non and Basil to join forces again)
Terri J. Haynes, The Daughter of Shiloh, Barbour (part of the Enduring Hope inspirational series)
Alan Hlad, A Secret in Tuscany, Kensington (set in World War II Tuscany and near-present day, novel draws on real-life events, and spans two generations)
Mike Hollow, The Bloomsbury Murder, Allison & Busby (1941; a woman who has taken victims of the Blitz and the war that’s torn Europe apart and given them refuge in her home, is now a victim of murder)
Gill Hornby, The Elopement, Pegasus (a romance novel of the Austen family, set in 1820)
Sam K. Horton, Ragwort, Solaris (sequel to Gorse, this second novel is filled with magic, folklore and faith, set in 19th-century Cornwall)
S. D. House, Dead Man Blues, Crooked Lane (historical crime novel set in the South pulls the past into the present)
Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It, Verve Books (story of sapphic obsession set in 1965)
Angela Hunt, Rescued Heart, Bethany House (a series starter that transports readers to the Old Testament world of Sarah, the first Matriarch and a witness to the steadfast covenant of God)
Aamir Hussain, Under the Full and Crescent Moon, Dundurn Press (a young woman realizes her power and place in the world while defending her city from zealotry in a battle of words and beliefs during the Islamic Golden Age)
Margaret Hutton, If You Leave, Regal House (WWII through 1973; story exploring motherhood, love, and art, as three women carve a wayward path toward reconciliation)
Shotaro Ikenami, trans. Yui Kajita, The Samurai Detectives, Penguin (first in series portrayal of one of the most intriguing periods in the history of Japan)
Gish Jen, Bad Bad Girl, Knopf (a novel about a mother and a daughter forced to reckon with one another across decades)
Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder, MCD (epic novel set in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific during the height of the Tu’i Tonga Empire in 10th-c)
Jenni Keer, The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House, Boldwood (in Norfolk, England, 1895, not everything at Thistlewick Tye is quite what it seems in this ghostly mystery)
Jason Kingsley, Lord of Blackthorne, Rebellion (historical fantasy in which a young knight is gifted a ruined castle and faces a battle to rebuild it and gain the trust of the surrounding village)
Jonas Kreppel, trans. Mikhl Yashinsky, Adventures of Max Spitzkopf, White Goat Press (available for first time in English, rare 20th-century detective stories feature Max Spitzkopf — legendary private eye and defender of the Jewish people)
Soraya Lane, The Hidden Daughter, Bookouture (story about the importance of following your heart, set in present day and Norway 1951)
Daniel M. Lavery, Christmas at the Women’s Hotel, HarperVia (a novella about one lively Christmastime at the Biedermeier Hotel)
Wen-yi Lee, When They Burned the Butterfly, Tor (historical fantasy set in Singapore, 1972)
Judy Lev, Bethlehem Road, She Writes (twelve stories one iconic street in Jerusalem where immigrants young and old struggle to find themselves between the years 1967 and 1999)
Beth Lewis, The Rush, Pegasus/Viper (in 1898 Canada, a lawless land stricken with gold fever, the struggle for survival and fortune takes a turn towards murder)
Kristen Loesch, The Hong Kong Widow, Berkley/Allison & Busby (in Hong Kong, 1953, in a remote mansion, witnesses insist a massacre took place, but the police declare it a collective hallucination, until decades later, when one witness returns)
Adam Lofthouse, War Lord: Scourge of Rome, Boldwood (final instalment in the Enemy of the Empire trilogy)
Brenda Lozano, Mothers, Catapult (tale of two women in 1940s Mexico—one whose daughter has just been kidnapped and another who has just adopted a little girl)
John A. McDermott, The Last Spirits of Manhattan, Atria (based on a true story, set in 1956 Manhattan, where famed director Alfred Hitchcock is hosting a star-studded party in an allegedly haunted house)
Imogen Matthews, Only I Can Save Them, Bookouture (Nazi-occupied Holland, 1942; inspired by the true story of wartime photographer Rudolf Breslauer)
Alice G. May, A New Recruit, Boldwood (inspired by the true-life stories of The Women’s Secret Army during WWII)
Fiona McIntosh, The Chocolate Tin, Storm (in post-war France, Captain Harry Blakeney discovers a dead soldier clutching a love letter tucked inside a tin of chocolates)
Denzil Meyrick, Murder at Holly House, Poisoned Pen (Yorkshire, 1952; murder mystery begins when a dead stranger is found lodged up the chimney of Holly House)
Fenella J. Miller, Blitz Spirit at Harbour House, Boldwood (next installment in the Harbour House series, set in September, 1940)
Linda Lael Miller, The Silver Hills Boarding House, Canary Street (frontier story about a woman who risks everything to protect her younger siblings …and the widower who sees a second chance at love)
Stacy Lynn Miller, The Secret War, Severn River (Hattie James, book three in which, in a factory in the Brazilian jungle, the Germans are developing a long-range bomber capable of reaching the US)
Ada Moncrieff, Murder at Midwinter, Harvill Secker (in 1937, Daphne suspects that she and her friends are being sent messages – or threats – related to the disappearance of a classmate twenty years ago)
Ross Montgomery, The Murder at World’s End, Penguin (Cornwall, 1910; Secrets, murder and mayhem collide as an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogerian hunt a killer)
Michael Moorcock, Mark Hodder, The Albino’s Secret, S&S/Saga Press (story weaves elements of fantasy, action, and adventure into an alternate history reflecting the world of the 1930s)
Keith Moray, Desolation, Boldwood (a dark medieval mystery set in York, 1361. Ralph de Mandeville book 1)
Hugo Moreno, Where the North Ends, Univ. of New Mexico Press (story of love, fate, and redemption in which an aspiring writer finds himself trapped in the body of a seventeenth-century Franciscan novice accused of heresy)
Andie Newton, The Ghost House, One More Chapter (the proprietress of Chateau Ten in occupied France, 1944, discovers some of her guests are dangerously obsessed with the pursuit of an object hidden within Zone Rouge)
Chris Nickson, A Rage of Souls, Severn House (in Leeds, 1826, thieftaker Simon Westow takes on dark secrets and perplexing murders)
Anna North, Bog Queen, Bloomsbury (flashing between post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, novel connects across time two gifted young women learning to harness their strange strengths)
Judy Nunn, Pilbara, HarperCollins AU (set in the Pilbara in late 1800s, the tale of a family on a mission to restore the honour of its name)
Tiffany Odekirk, Winterset, Shadow Mountain (gothic Regency romance set in northern England, 1820)
Ambrose Parry, The Death of Shame, Canongate (last in series takes Raven and Sarah into a treacherous labyrinth of exploitation, corruption, high-level complicity and Victorian-style revenge porn)
Kate Pearce, Only Rakes Need Apply, Kensington (three Regency ladies each seek lovers with no strings attached)
Tanya Pell, Her Wicked Roots, Gallery (in a queer retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, a young woman is lured to an estate owned by a botanist who might be hiding dark secrets)
Tracie Peterson, A Moment to Love, Bethany House (Cheyenne, Wyoming; a journey of healing and forgiveness on the frontier in The Hope of Cheyenne, book 3)
Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey, trans. Nathan H. Dize, Duels, Seagull Books (set in 1842, a tale of education, violence, and hope, in which one man’s dream for a better future collides with a community on the edge of transformation)
MJ Porter, Shield of Mercia, Boldwood (book 8 of The Eagle of Mercia Chronicles set in AD836)
Laura Purcell, House of Splinters, Raven Books (gothic horror set in England, 1774)
Domnica Radulescu, My Father’s Orchards, Histria (story of a Romanian family caught in the crossfire between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia during World War II)
Allyson Reedy, Mrs. Wilson’s Affair, Union Square (retelling of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of Tom Buchanan’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson)
Alyson Richman, The Missing Pages, Union Square/Harper Collins (a love story, a ghost story, and an elegy to the healing power of books; set in 1912 and present day)
Lev AC Rosen, Mirage City, Minotaur (Evander Mills book 4 set in 1950s San Francisco)
Eden Royce, Psychopomp & Circumstance, Tordotcom (southern Gothic historical fantasy featuring Phee St. Margaret, a daughter born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston)
Shari J. Ryan, The Nanny Outside the Gates, Bookouture (a Jewish girl is given a choice to work as a nanny in a Nazi officer’s home or be sent to the camps)
Anbara Salam, The Salvage, Tin House/Baskerville (gothic literary thriller set in 1962)
Catori Sarmiento, But the Wicked Shall Perish, Running Wild (follows a young Jewish woman, as she is brought back to life in 1920s Venice and navigates the political and societal landscape of 1920s Italy and Austria)
Marina Scott, The Night Guests, Lake Union (gothic ghost story set in 1903, Omaha, Nebraska)
Victoria Scott, The House on the Cliff, Boldwood (dual timeline tale of forbidden love, buried secrets, and ghostly whispers, set in 1966 and present)
Robert Scully, Robert J. Corber (ed.), A Scarlet Pansy (1932), Fordham-New York ReLit (celebrating its early 20th-c effeminate and sexually adventurous protagonist, literary work illuminates our understanding of queer history)
Irina Shapiro, Murder on the Prince Regent, Storm (London, 1859; nurse Gemma Tate boards the American packet ship the Prince Regent to aid Inspector Sebastian Bell in investigating the death of a British aristocrat)
Angela M. Shupe, In the Light of the Sun, Waterbrook (two sisters, separated by oceans and global conflict, are bonded through music and love. Novel based on true events from World War II)
Rosemary Simpson, In Deadly Fashion, Kensington (a killer has designs on ruining the wedding of heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter)
Wilbur Smith, House of Two Pharaohs, Zaffre (next installment of the Ancient Egyptian series featuring the great mage Taita)
Chevy Stevens, The Hitchhikers, St. Martin’s Press (in 1976 Canada, a couple make an RV road trip to repair their marriage and heal the wounds of recent tragic events)
Bonnie Suchman, What Remains is Hope, Black Rose Writing (second novel after Stumbling Stones about Alice Heppenheimer, daughter of a prosperous German Jewish family)
Matthew Sweet, Bookish, Mobius (set in post-war London in 1946, about an enigmatic independent bookshop owner who helps the local police solve crimes)
Klaus Teuber, Catan: The Order of the Ravens, Blackstone (book 2 returns to Catan, Island of the Sun, where Thorolf rules with an iron fist over the unfree, who fight to reclaim their futures)
Charles Todd, A Christmas Witness, Mysterious Press (a seasonal Ian Rutledge novella)
Gary W. Toyn, From Malice to Ashes, American Legacy Media (spanning Nazi-occupied Lithuania, Soviet labor camps, and the refugee corridors of wartime Europe, novel follows three families torn apart by two brutal regimes)
Lida Turpeinen, trans. David Hackston, Beasts of the Sea, MacLehose/Little, Brown (debut that explores the lives touched by one of history’s most intriguing extinct animals. Novel set in 1741 and 1859)
Peter Tremayne, Grave of the Lawgiver, Headline/ Severn House (the thirty-sixth Sister Fidelma Celtic mystery, set in AD 673)
Carrie Vaughn, The Glass Slide World, 47 North, (sequel follows a young scientist unlocking her magical abilities amid a high-seas adventure in 1902)
Boo Walker, Before We Say Goodbye, Lake Union (an epic love story prequel to the Red Mountain Chronicles)
Catherine Walker, A Watch of Nightingales, Inanna (historical mystery novel re-imagines a little-known time in the life of famous Canadian painter Emily Carr)
Alexandra Walsh, Daughter of the Stones, Boldwood (a dual timeline layered tale of sisterhood, legacy and the enduring power of love across the ages, set in present day and Iron Age Britain)
Jenni L. Walsh, Sonora, Harper Muse (inspired by a true story of one of the first female horse divers, novel is set in the heyday of the American carnival scene)
Martha Waters, And Then There Was The One, Atria (historical romance set in 1930s England with a murder mystery twist)
Paul Waters, Murder in Moonlit Square, No Exit Press (new series set in Delhi, featuring an Irish nun and an Indian hotelier)
Amanda Wen, Echoes of a Silent Song, Kregel (dual timeline romance; first book in the Melodies and Memories duology)
Joshua Wheeler, The High Heaven, Graywolf (multi-genre debut novel tracing one woman’s quest for faith across the American West during the 1960s Space Age & suffused with the absurdist history of American space travel)
Howard Whitehouse, The Gray Blade, Zmok Books (first in The Viking’s Daughter trilogy)
Mary Winters, Murder in Matrimony, Severn House (countess-turned-advice-columnist Amelia Amesbury has a wedding to plan alongside a new murder in this historical mystery)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Bell Tolls at Traeger Hall, Bethany House (in 1890, the ominous tolling of the bell announces that death has come to Traeger Hall, leaving orphaned Waverly Pembrooke to piece together the puzzle behind her uncle’s and aunt’s murders)
Felicity York, The Quiet Wife, Harper North (based on a true story, the tale of a woman reinventing herself, while embarking on a love affair with James Whistler)
Larry Zuckerman, To Save a Life, Cennan Books (1909; a young Jewish woman steals her dowry to flee Russia and an arranged marriage)
November 2025
Tessa Afshar, The Royal Artisan, Bethany House (rooted in biblical truths, story paints a tale of life, love, and intrigue in Queen Esther’s royal court)
Jess Armstrong, The Devil in Oxford, Minotaur/Allison & Busby (next in the historical gothic murder mystery with Ruby Vaughn)
Jina Bacarr, The Stolen Children of War, Boldwood (World War Two novel of courage, love and survival)
Kerry Barrett, The Bookshop of Secrets, HQ Digital (in a bookshop nestled in the streets of Lisbon, a shopkeeper leads a double life)
A.D. Bell, The Bookbinder’s Secret, HQ (a story of mystery and romance set in Oxford, 1901)
S. J. Bennett, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold, Crooked Lane (amateur sleuth Queen Elizabeth II is back on the case in 1960s England)
Sian Ann Bessey, The Maid of Sherwood Forest, Shadow Mountain (historical romance fantasy time travel in which Mariah, who thought Robin Hood was just a legend, is pulled her into his world)
Millicent Binks, Murder at the Scottish Ball, Bookouture (an Opal Laplume Mystery, set in 1934)
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, trans. Philip Boehm, Berlin Shuffle, Metropolitan Books (a lost novel rediscovered and published for the first time, follows a group of Berliners on the skids in 1920s Germany as society begins to spin out of control)
William Boyd, The Predicament, Atlantic Crime (1963; novel starring the travel writer-turned-reluctant spy Gabriel Dax, who finds himself implicated in a dangerous conspiracy)
Paula Brackston, The Cathedral of Lost Souls, St. Martin’s Press (in book two Hecate Cavendish must draw upon all her gifts, and the assistance of her family of ghostly allies, if Hereford is not to be lost to darkness forever)
J. C. Briggs, The Prisoner of Raven’s Gaze Hall, Sapere (a Gothic mystery set in England after the First World War, exposing family secrets and the legacy of trauma from the war and its aftermath)
Benedict Brown, The Holly Village Murders, Storm (cosy mystery, book 6 of the Marius Quin Mysteries)
Jessica Bull, The Austen Christmas Murders, Michael Joseph (‘tis the season for Jane to embark upon festive delights, making merry, and solving murders)
Graeme Macrae Burnet, Benbecula, Biblioasis (1857, story of Angus MacPhee who bludgeoned his parents and aunt to death in the crofting community on the remote Hebridean island of Benbecula)
Brisa Carleton, Last Call at the Savoy, Grand Central (a young writer brings to light the story of Ada Coleman, the woman who crafted the cocktail recipes The Savoy popularized in its handbook a century ago)
Kerry Chaput, The Death of Primrose Whittaker, Black Rose Writing (in 1924, put to work as a fortune teller, reluctant psychic Primrose communes with the souls of the lost and lonely)
Meagan Church, The Mad Wife, Sourcebooks Landmark (historical suspense following a 1950s housewife who begins to unearth dark secrets about her neighborhood and her own mind)
Joanne Clague, The Rebel Daughter, Canelo (Victorian saga continuation of The House of Help for Friendless Girls series)
Georgina Clarke, A Kiss from the Devil, VERVE (Lizzie Hardwicke Mystery, book 4 set in 18th century London)
Celeste Connally, Revenge, Served Royal, Minotaur (Regency-era Lady Petra Inquires mystery series set in September 1815)
Vivian Conroy, Trouble in the Alps, One More Chapter (book six of the 1930s Miss Ashford cosy mystery series)
Kendra Coulter, The Tortoise’s Tale, Simon & Schuster (a century of American history unfolds through the eyes of a giant tortoise snatched from her ancestral lands)
Christina Courtenay, Ripples Through Time, Headline Review (dual-time novel travels from the present day to the battles of West Mercia)
Susan Coventry, Till Taught By Pain, Regal House (explores the dawn of modern medicine in America in late 19th-century)
Anna Cowan, The Duke, St. Martin’s Griffin (a sapphic Regency romance about the duke who fears nothing… until the woman she never forgot walks through her door)
Josephine Cox, A Daughter’s Secret, HarperCollins (hoping to one day own her own teashop, a servant below stairs at the big house, carefully saves her wages each week)
Norma Curtis, The Bridge Between Friends, Boldwood (story of forbidden love, wartime secrets and the healing power of friendship, set in 1992 and 1944)
Ellie Curzon, The Lifeboat Orphans, Bookouture (WWII story of 15-year-old Connie who leaves war-torn England for the safer shores of America, with a nine-year old orphan boy in her care)
Brigitte Dale, The Good Daughters, Pegasus (story of three suffragettes in London and the battle for equality in 1912)
Erica Lucke Dean, Chasing Stardust, Lake Union (Zoey Jones is spreading her late mother’s ashes along a path her eccentric grandma G-Lo followed in 1972: David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust tour)
Samir Machado de Machado, trans. Rahul Bery, The Good Nazi, Pushkin Press (a zeppelin leaves Nazi Germany for Rio de Janeiro; a luxury holiday for those on board, until one of them is murdered in the airship’s bathroom)
Helena Dixon, Murder Most British, Bookouture (The Secret Detective Agency Book 3)
Also: Murder at Midwinter Farm (Kitty Underhay Mystery, book 22)
Catherine Fearns, The Fault Mirror, Quill & Crow (Belle Époque, Paris, 1900: American heiress Lydia Temple falls in love with aristocrat Séraphine de Valleiry and builds her a castle in the Swiss mountains —the Chateau des Miroirs)
Marshall Fine, Hemlock Lane, Lake Union (a story of family bonds and buried truths, set in 1967 when a young woman’s homecoming becomes a reckoning)
Anita Frank, Small Acts of Resistance, HQ (the survival of a downed pilot depends on the courage and compassion of a local family in occupied Northern France)
Darry Fraser, The Adventuress of Albany, HQ AU (historical romance adventure set in Albany, Western Australia, 1881)
Jean Fullerton, Winter Wishes for the East End Girls, Bookouture (festive wartime saga about love, courage and friendship)
Andrew Furman, The World That We Are, Regal House (delves into themes of love, family, the quest for meaningful work, and the search for a true home; dual timeline set in present and 1837 Massachusetts)
C. P. Giuliani, The Man From Morocco, Sapere (set in London, 1589; the seventh in the Tom Walsingham Mysteries series)
Julia Golding, The Austen Intrigue, One More Chapter (1812 London; up-and-coming novelist Jane Austen joins forces to solve the brutal murder of a French count and his opera singer wife)
Adrian Gostick, Jack Slade: Song of the Butcherbird, Arcade (tale of frontier justice in the early days of the Pony Express)
Lily Graham, Her Forgotten Hours, Bookouture (a WWII story about love, strength and sacrifice when a female pilot’s plane is shot down over France)
Ayana Gray, I, Medusa, Random House/Bonnier (portrays a young woman caught in the cross currents between her desires and the cruel, careless games of the Olympian gods)
Annie Groves, Three Sisters in the Snow, HarperCollins (WWII saga set around Christmas time)
Barbara Havelocke, Estella’s Fury, Hera (a dark Victorian Gothic crime thriller)
Elizabeth Hobbs, Murder Made Her Wicked, Crooked Lane (bicycle-riding, aspiring archaeologist Marigold Manners is ready for adventure in Boston, 1894)
Evelyn Hood, An Heiress’s Courage, Boldwood (a Scottish saga of grit and determination, set in Port Glasgow, Scotland 1930)
John Irving, Queen Esther, Simon & Schuster (revisits the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, in the 1920s, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther—a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism)
Michael Jecks, Pilgrim’s War, Boldwood (first in new series on the Crusades, set in France, 1096)
Brian Kaufman, Rat Town Blues, Black Rose Writing (Mark “Slag” Ferguson (bartender, ex-boxer) adds unlicensed private investigator to his resume in this noir thriller)
Susanna Kearsley, Named of the Dragon, Simon & Schuster (a novel of love, lies, and loyalty, set against the backdrop of the early Jacobite rebellions)
Vanessa Kelly, Murder at Donwell Abbey, Kensington (Jane Austen’s Emma Knightley navigates changes in her family—while meeting her match in a deadly adversary)
Katrina Kendrick, A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage, Head of Zeus/Aria (a Regency dance of espionage and seduction)
Shona Kinsella, Daughters of Nicnevin, Flame Tree (historical fantasy about two powerful witches who meet in the early days of the 1745 Jacobite uprising)
Christina Koning, Murder in Paris, Allison & Busby (next installment in the Blind Detective Investigates series, set in 1945)
Ann Hanigan Kotz, Wayward Son, Bookpress Publishing (final novel in The Karoline Olsen Series)
Marion Kummerow, The Last Safe Place, Bookouture (novel inspired by the true events of Operation Seven, where a handful of Jewish citizens escaped Berlin in 1942 by posing as German intelligence agents)
Olivia Laing, The Silver Book, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (a queer love story and a noir-ish thriller set in the months leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975)
Stephanie Landsem, The Fault Between Us, Tyndale (based on events of the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake story is an exploration of the bonds of sisterhood)
Callie Langridge, A Twelfth Night Miracle, Storm (when grief threatens to steal her Christmas spirit, baker Freya Harris discovers that some houses hold more than just memories; Mandeville Mystery, book 5)
Shauna Lawless, Daughter of the Otherworld, Head of Zeus/AdAstra (historical fantasy set in the world of medieval Ireland during the time of the Norman invasion)
Con Lehane, The Red Scare Murders, Soho Crime (noir brings 1950s New York to life in a murder mystery)
Hervé Le Tellier, trans. Adriana Hunter, The Name on the Wall, Other Press (World War II historical fiction honors the life of a young French Resistance fighter)
A. M. Linden, The Quarry, She Writes (set in early medieval Britain, fourth installment tells the story of a Saxon sheriff on the hunt for fugitive Druids—unaware that he is being pursued as well)
Hannah Linder, The Red Cottage, Barbour (Meg must confront the past and decide who she trusts in this Gothic style Regency romance)
A. J. MacKenzie, Path of Gold, Canelo (Edward III has opened negotiations with King Alfonso XI of Castile, and sends Derby and Merrivale to bargain with him, in next installment of Simon Merrivale Mysteries)
Amy Mantravadi, Face to Face, 1517 Publishing (novel about the Reformation which follows the lives of Martin Luther, Desiderius Erasmus, and Philipp Melanchthon as their world descends into chaos and violence in the year 1525)
Scott Mariani, The Knight’s Pledge, Hodder & Stoughton (Will Bowman historical adventure crime thriller, book two, set in 1191)
Isolde Martyn, The April King, Sapere (romantic biographical historical mystery novel set in Tudor Elizabethan England, 1593)
Catherine Mathis, Inês, Histria (love, jealousy and revenge at court in 14th-century Portugal. First of a trilogy)
Clara McKenna, Murder at Cottonwood Creek, Kensington (far from their beloved Morrington Hall, Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst and his American wife find fossils and murder in Montana)
Amie McNee, To Kill a Queen, Crooked Lane (when Queen Elizabeth I is nearly assassinated, the rebellious heir to a criminal legacy seizes an opportunity for a better life. Set in London 1579)
Gabrielle Meyer, Through Each Tomorrow, Bethany House a (tale of love and sacrifice, set in 1563 Elizabethan England and 1883 Newport)
Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter, Europa (in the winter blizzards of 1962, secret resentments harboured in four lives rise to the surface)
Larry Millett, Mysterious Tales of Old Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press (shining a light on the colorful characters and curious corners of Twin Cities history, novel brings the 19th-century city to life)
Abir Mukherjee, The Burning Grounds, Pegasus (next installment of the mystery series set in late-1920s Calcutta, with Sam Wyndham and Surendranath Banerjee)
Kathleen Novak, Come Back I Love You, Regal House (dual timeline ghost story set in present and a century earlier)
Mirta Ojito, Deeper Than the Ocean, Union Square/Harper Collins (multigenerational novel set in the Canary Islands and Cuba in the early part of the twentieth century, and New York and Key West in the present)
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs. Collins, Little, Brown/Hodder & Stoughton (Charlotte Lucas finally becomes the heroine of her own story)
Jonathan Payne, Hotel Melikov, CamCat (in book two, Citizen Orlov discovers a sinister plot that forces him to choose whose side he is on)
Glynis Peters, The Orphan’s Last Goodbye, One More Chapter (last installment of The Red Cross Orphans series as WWII comes to a close)
Ella Quinn, Catching Lady Theo, Kensington (a consummate rake pursues his perfect match in this Regency Here Come the Grooms series)
Michelle Rawlins, Joy for the Steel Girls, HQ (book six in the series set in 1941, with Hattie, Josie and Daisy navigating uncertain times in Sheffield)
Stephen Ronson, The Blitz Secret, Hodder Paperbacks (WWII thriller set in 1940)
Madeleine Roux, These Violet Delights, Dell (can a star-crossed pair overcome a simmering family feud for a chance at love in this Regency romance)
Natasha Siegel, As Many Souls as Stars, William Morrow (romantic speculative novel about two women—a witch and an immortal demon—who make a Faustian bargain)
Gianni Solla, trans. Richard Dixon, There Was a Time for Such a Word, HarperVia (a novel set in small-town 1940s Italy, in which a young illiterate herdsman learns to read with the help of his two friends)
A. L. Sowards, Against a Crescent Storm, Shadow Mountain (next installment in The Balkan Legends where Danilo and Maja must fight to save their people before the sultan exacts his revenge)
Johnny Teague, The Lost Diary of Lucrezia Borgia, Histria (a tale of history, betrayal, and revelation and one man’s quest for answers that could reshape the past and future alike)
Gabriel Valjan, Eyes to Deceit, Level Best-Historia (fourth book in The Company Files series — noir fiction with hardboiled characters, a post-war setting, espionage and crime)
Michelle Vernal, Secrets at the Irish Adoption House, Bookouture (a woman abandoned by her family when she gives birth out of wedlock, searches for her daughter who is taken from her)
George Wallace and Don Keith, Argentia Station, Severn River (a WWII military thriller of bravery, brotherhood, and sacrifice. Book 1 in The Tides of War)
Marlie Wasserman, First Daughter, Level Best-Historia (historical crime fiction centered around the imagined kidnapping of Grover Cleveland’s child)
Iona Whishaw, A Season for Spies, Touchwood Editions (in prequel to the mystery series, Lane Winslow embarks on her first spy mission in wartime England)
Benjamin Wood, Seascraper, Scribner (portrait of a young man confined in by his class and the ghosts of his family’s past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment)
James Zwerneman, Uruk, Diversion Publishing (first in a series inspired by ancient Mesopotamia, following a small band of misfits who find a new tribe and must best bloodthirsty neighbors before they can achieve their dream)
December 2025
Rochelle Alers, Between Good and Evil, Dafina (set in 1960s and 70s three young New York City men walk the fragile line between right and wrong)
D. R. Bailey, The Tipping Point, Sapere (aviation adventures set during the second world war and featuring a team of fighter pilots)
Chris Barkley, The Man on the Endless Stair, Pegasus/Polygon (1950s; a bestselling author entrusts an old friend with finishing his final novel)
Julie Bates, The Enemy Within, Level Best-Historia (Continental Army, winter 1778; trapped by the weather Faith Clarke and allies must discover the unseen enemy who is killing soldiers and taunting Washington after each death)
Cara Black, Huguette, Soho Crime (saga of one young woman’s survival in the lawlessness of post-Libération France)
Sara Gothelf Bloom, Just Enough to Start Over, Paul Dry (follows the three Dubrovsky sisters’ experiences as refugees as refugees in Shanghai and London, and Toronto)
Kay Blythe, A Poisoning at Castle Gloaming, No Exit Press (second 1920s Jemima Flowerday mystery)
Miguel Bonnefoy, trans. Ruth Diver, The Dream of the Jaguar, Other Press (generational saga of a family whose fate is intertwined with that of Venezuela)
David Buzan, The Wrath of Legends, Black Rose Writing (sequel to In the Lair of Legends (c2023), featuring Jolon Winterhawk, a combat veteran of many skirmishes during the American Civil War)
Cara Clayton, Mutiny at the Manor, Sapere (book two in a new medieval saga series, set in 1381, Lincolnshire, England)
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Storm, Harper (next installment featuring the fictional Richard Sharpe as the war against Napoleon rages across Europe and Britain prepares to invade France for the first time)
Dilly Court, The Winter Belle, HarperCollins (when Kitty and her family fall on hard times, she is determined to save her mother and her sisters from a life of poverty)
Nick Croydon, The Turing Protocol, William Morrow (speculative historical suspense debut told in alternating timelines asking if the most powerful invention in history will save the world—or destroy it)
Nadia Davids, Cape Fever, Simon & Schuster (gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s)
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, trans. Alison Entrekin, Three Stories of Forgetting, FSG Originals (exploration of the memories of three men and the reverberations of slavery, colonialism, and empire, told in three overlapping stories)
Kristi DeMeester, Dark Sisters, St. Martin’s Press (three women must chase a curse through the generations in order to reclaim their power – novel set in 1750, 1953 and 2007)
Kat Devereaux, Daughter of Genoa, Harper Perennial/Aria (adventure set in the war-torn 1940s and inspired by true events)
Renita D’Silva, Heartache on West India Dock Road, Boldwood (WW2 saga of friendship, courage and the power of community)
Janet Rich Edwards, Canticle, Spiegel & Grau (set in thirteenth-century Bruges, debut novel follows a young woman’s explorations of faith, agency, and love among a community of independent women)
Allan Gaw, The Shadows and the Dust, Polygon (next installment of the Dr Jack Cuthbert Mysteries, set in 1930s)
Richard Goodkin, The Magnificent Lies of Madeleine Béjart, Cherry Orchard Books (originally written in French novel is a compelling portrait of a woman who shaped the world of theatre while carefully crafting her own myth)
Donna Gowland, Death at the Altar, Sapere (book 3 of the Mary and Percy Shelley murder mysteries)
Janice Hadlow, Rules of the Heart, Henry Holt (a married woman of high social standing in 18th century England tries to hide from the judging eyes of her elite circle)
Herik Hanna, illus. Charlie Adlard, Altamont, Image Comics (a mix of fact and fiction exploring an infamous moment in cultural history, displaying a disenchanted portrait of a free and dreamy youth, marked by the Vietnam War)
Tessa Harris, The Florence Sisters, HQ Digital (Italy, 1940; with Florence on the cusp of war, Il Scorpione, the no-nonsense Englishwomen of the city, find their genteel livelihoods under threat by the Nazis)
JJA Harwood, A Steep and Savage Path, Magpie (historical fantasy in which a desperate ritual is performed in a Transylvanian village to lay a hungry vampire to rest)
Chris Hauty, Dead Ringer, Atria/Emily Bestler (novel that explores what might have really happened at the JFK assassination in 1963)
Sophia Holloway, An Independent Woman, Allison & Busby (against the backdrop of the social season in Bath, gossip, grandmamas and a climatic duel look set to complicate any chance of a happy ever after for Louisa and Benfield)
Stephen Hunter, The Gun Man Jackson Swagger, Atria/Emily Bestler (a classic-style Western about a Civil War veteran investigating the dark reality of a prosperous ranch)
Eloisa James, The Last Lady B, Gallery (gothic historical romance based on the legend of Bluebeard)
Claire Johnson, For Thee, Level Best-Historia (a novel centring on Pauline Pfeiffer’s marriage to Ernest Hemingway)
Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne, My Fair Frauds, Harper Muse (a high society fraud and a scrappy swindler team up to take down Gilded Age New York)
Richard Kirshenbaum, The Hollywood Fix, Post Hill (during Hollywood’s Golden Age, a destitute young man journeys to Los Angeles and becomes the PR fixer to the most important film studio and its studio chief)
Julie Klassen, Whispers at Painswick Court, Bethany House (romance and mystery feature in a novel full of English village charm, intrigue, and love)
Paula Lafferty, The Once and Future Queen, Erewhon (historical fantasy set in present & 7th century AD, Glastonbury & Camelot after a women jumps through a time portal)
Erin Lindsey, Pearls and Poison, Severn House (Rose is back and this time she’s flying solo as she investigates criminal paranormal activity in Gilded Age New York City)
Marc McNulty, An Unexpected Vitality, Amazon (blends historical intrigue with a modern detective narrative, exploring art, deception, and the enduring power of genius; set in 1791 and present day)
Tara Moss, The Italian Secret, Dutton (post-war mystery where investigator Billie Walker follows a trail of secrets to Italy’s Neapolitan coast)
Ginny Kubitz Moyer, The World at Home, She Writes (coming-of-age story about a young woman discovering love, loss, and the power of her own creativity in World War II San Francisco)
Julie Mulhern, Murder in Manhattan, Forever (inspired by one of the first real-life female columnists at the New Yorker, historical mystery follows Freddie Archer as she solves crimes in 1920s Manhattan)
Niklas Natt och Dag, Hope and Destiny, Atria (a new historical series that takes us to 1434 medieval Sweden to unravel one of the country’s most infamous murder mysteries)
James Patterson, Imogen Edwards-Jones, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, Little, Brown (a biographical fiction thriller about a woman who changed Hollywood history)
Tim Powers, The Mills of the Gods, Baen (historical supernatural fantasy set in the artistic milieu of Paris, 1925)
G. B. Rubin, Murder at Christmas, Simon & Schuster UK (interactive festive mystery, set in 1932, that casts the reader in the role of the detective)
James D. Shipman, Crossing the Line, Kensington (set against the background of the Krakow Jewish ghetto in WWII, three very different women are brought together through the hardships of war)
Lauraine Snelling with Kiersti Giron, At Morning’s Light, Bethany House (book 2 of Home to Green Creek creates a picture of overcoming grief and embracing love on the Midwestern frontier)
Julian Spalding, Beauty: Botticelli in Florence, Pallas Athene (fictional biography imagines what Botticelli was feeling and thinking as he painted)
A. R. Talley, Between Sunrise and Sunset, Black Rose Writing (book 1 of Montrose Manor – saga of a young woman leaving her life of servitude and making her own way by seeking help from the Montrose estate heir, to find her brother)
Lulu Taylor, A Legacy of Secrets, Pan (can Flick and daughter Etta ever break free from the shadows of a painful past, and the curse that seems to hang over every generation of their family?)
Pamela Taylor, The Last Priest of Tintagel, Black Rose Writing (from Oxford to the papal court in Avignon to the headland of Tintagel, a Cornishman tries to accomplish his dream to become a priest)
Dean Thompson, Imagine Murder, Perfect Bound Books (start of a new series where John Lennon and Yoko Ono help solve a mystery set in New York, 1972)
Simon Turney, Agricola: Commander, Head of Zeus/Aria & Aries (new Ancient Roman historical adventure set In the aftermath of Rome’s civil war, when Agricola returns to Britannia)
Micheliny Verunschk, trans. Juliana Barbassa, The Jaguar’s Roar, Liveright (story of an Indigenous girl’s kidnapping during a colonial expedition, intertwines with a young woman’s modern-day search for identity and ancestral truths)
Chrissie Walsh, Trying Times for the Mill Girls, Boldwood (Yorkshire saga of courage, family and hope in changing times)
Valerie Wilson Wesley, The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum, Kensington (Harlem Renaissance marks a rebirth of Black cultural in this historical mystery set in the excess of the Roaring Twenties)
Howard Whitehouse, The Grey Girl, Zmok Books (second in The Viking’s Daughter series follows Gudrid and Gisli as they escape from their village to an isolated fjord)
Felicity York, The Secret Sister, HarperNorth (second novel in Stately Scandals series, which unearth a true story about rebellious women who have lived in the stately homes of 19th-century northern England)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18, set in eras from ancient times to the mid 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ) using publisher descriptions and recommended age suitability.
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
H. M. Bouwman, Scattergood, Neal Porter, Age 9-12 (coming-of-age in rural Iowa in 1941, where twelve-year-old Peggy’s quiet life is turned upside down by refugee arrivals, first love, and a heartbreaking diagnosis)
Deborah Bodin Cohen, Kerry Olitzky, illus. Cinzia Battistel, Rembrandt Chooses a Queen, Apples & Honey, Age 4-8 (inspiring story of Judaism and art intersecting in 17th century Amsterdam)
Selene Castrovilla, illus. Jenn Harney, George Washington’s Spectacular Spectacles, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (picture book story taken from American history, about George Washington’s little known reading aid)
Erin Cotter, A Traitorous Heart, Simon and Schuster BfYR, YA (Paris, 1572; a noblewoman in the French court finds herself under the watchful eye of Parisian royalty when she falls in love with the handsome king)
Sarah Crossan, Where the Heart Should Be, Greenwillow, YA (historical novel-in-verse is a story of love, family, and the forces that can destroy us or bind us forever; set in 1847)
Terry Deary, Terrible True Tales: The Stone Age, Bloomsbury UK/ANZ, Age 7+ (a collection of humorous Stone Age tales based on true stories)
Judith Eagle, illus. Jo Rioux, The Accidental Stowaway, Walker Books US, Age 8-12 (rollicking transatlantic romp set in 1910, where a plucky girl accidentally stows away on a glamorous steamship, finding herself in the midst of a mystery)
L. M. Elliott, Truth, Lies and the Questions In Between, Algonquin YR, YA (timely exploration of 1973—the Watergate hearings, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Roe v. Wade—unfolds through the story of a young woman driven to question everything)
Kimberly Newton Fusco, The Secret of Honeycake, Knopf BfYR, Age 8-12 (Hurricane gets stuck living with her old aunt and meets a series of unexpected friends, including a mangy cat, that can help her find her voice in a whole new way)
Camryn Garrett, The Forgotten Summer of Seneca, Amulet, Age 8-12 (in which a girl finds a doorway in Central Park that leads to the historical and magically preserved Seneca Village)
Julie Gilbert, illus. Soia Di Chiara Manetti, Penny and the Tragic Voyage, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (Girls Survive series historical fiction about the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915)
Marianne Hering, Marshal Younger, Double Cross Down Under, Focus on the Family, Age 7+ (story of Reverend George Taplin and his friend James Unaipon, two faithful men of God serving the Aboriginal people)
Cheryl Willis Hudson, illus. London Ladd, When I Hear Spirituals, Holiday House, Age 6-9 (a girl connects with her heritage and history through twelve spirituals and four events —Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Great Migration, and the Enslaved People’s Uprising of 1811)
William Hussey, The Boy I Love, Andersen Press, YA (gay romance between two young soldiers as the summer of 1916 ticks down to one big push on the Somme)
Iszi Lawrence, The Cursed Tomb, Bloomsbury UK/ANZ, Age 9+ (an adventure of curses, myths and legends set in 1249 BCE in ancient Egypt)
M. G. Leonard, illus. Manuel Sumberac, Time Keys: Hunt for the Golden Scarab, Macmillan Children’s, Age 9-11 (time-travel action adventure, first in series)
Matthew K. Manning, illus. Dante Ginevra, Secrets Between States, Capstone Pr Inc, Age 7-10 (graphic novel featuring three stories about the most courageous spies of the World War I)
Joy McCullough, Everything is Poison, Dutton BfYR, YA (historical YA in prose and verse, set in early 17th-century Rome)
Shelia P. Moses, illus. Keith Mallett, Sharing the Dream, Nancy Paulsen, Age 4-7 (inspiring picture book portrait of a monumental day in US history, seen through a child’s eyes)
Marissa Moss, author and illustrator, Ellis Island Passover, Creston Books, Age 5-10 (Uncle Ezra shares the story of his first seder in America)
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, Radiant, Dutton BfYR, Age 8-12 (set against the backdrop of the Birmingham church bombing, the Kennedy assassination, and Beatlemania, novel in verse is about race, class, faith, and finding your place in a loving family)
Sarah Raughley, The Queen’s Spade, HarperCollins, YA (loosely inspired by the true story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria’s African goddaughter)
Jewell Parker Rhodes, Will’s Race for Home, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 8-12 (adventure story about a son and his father who set out to win land during the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889)
Johan Rundberg, trans. Eva Apelqvist, The Lost Ones, Amazon Crossing Kids, Age 10-14 (Stockholm, 1880; Mika will do what it takes to make sure there are no more lost ones—and to bring the infamous killer, the Dark Angel, out into the light)
Kim Sigafus, illus. Soia Di Chiara Manetti, Faye and the Dangerous Journey, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (historical fiction about the Ojibwe Removal of 1850, known as the Sandy Lake Tragedy, shows the terrible history through the eyes of one child)
Emma Bland Smith, Growing Up in the Shadow of Alcatraz, Capstone, Age 8-11 (story focusing on the more than 100 children and their parents who lived on Alcatraz Island where the parents worked at the notorious prison)
Cary Sneider, Starry Messages, Tumblehome Inc, Age 9-12 (in a series of letters to her nephew, Galileo’s daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, tells the story of her father’s discoveries with his telescope)
Maria van Lieshout, Song of a Blackbird, First Second, YA (fiction based on true events, story has two intertwined timelines: one is a modern-day family drama, the other a tale of a WWII-era bank heist carried out by Dutch resistance fighters)
Emily A. Weinberg, The Feather of Truth, Histria Kids, Age 9-12 (travel to ancient Egypt in this fast-paced adventure filled with historical detail, friendship, exotic scenery, and action)
February 2025
Kwame Alexander, Black Star, Andersen Press, YA (second book in the Door of No Return trilogy, set during the turbulent segregation era; a story of struggle, determination and the unflappable faith of an American family)
Jeannine Atkins, Green Promises: Girls Who Loved the Earth, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (meet three remarkable historical women who followed their dreams and paved a path for women in science)
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, illus. Hagar Ophir, Golden Threads, Ayin Press, Age 8-12 (draws on a series of inspiring historical episodes in Fès, 1920, when Jewish and Muslim artisans organized against the introduction of a new machine that threatened to replace their manual labor)
Paul A. Barra, Samson and the Charleston Spy, Level Best, Age 8-12 (historically accurate and action-packed adventure/mystery about a boy confronting the Civil War from the Confederate perspective)
Anne Blankman, The Enemy’s Daughter, Viking BfYR, Age 8-12 (the tale of a girl fighting her way back home after surviving the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915)
Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR), YA (historical mystery that examines truth, rebellion, reconciliation. Set in 1940s, 1980s and spring 2020)
Solange Burrell, Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace, Unbound, YA (debut that combines historical fiction with fantasy and explores themes of enslavement and empire; set in 1748 West Africa)
Kellyn Carni, Ricochet, CamCat Books, YA (Anastasia Romanov escapes her family’s execution when a magical necklace transports her and her brother to an alternate 1918 Russia on the brink of its own revolution)
Deborah Bodin Cohen, Kerry Olitzky, illus. Martina Peluso, Twist, Tumble, Triumph, Kar-Ben, Age 5-8 (picture book story of gymnast Ágnes Keleti, a Hungarian Jew who worked during WWII using Christian identity papers, and dreaming of the Olympics)
Adrianna Cuevas, What Fell from the Sky, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR), Age 8-12 (based on true events that occurred in 1950s America, story is about a boy whose rural Texan town becomes the setting of a military training exercise in which the army pretends to be Communist forces that have taken over)
Judith Eagle, The Great Theatre Rescue, Faber & Faber, Age 9-11 (adventure set in the 1930s)
Kate Fodor & Laurie Petrou, The Rehearsal Club, Groundwood, Age 9-12 (a mystery spans decades at the Rehearsal Club in this story of sisterhood and friendship)
Adam Gidwitz, Max in the Land of Lies, Dutton BfYR, Age 8-12 (follow-up to Max in the House of Spies in which Max returns home to Berlin as a British spy)
Joshua M. Greene, Fighter in the Woods, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (true story of a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Poland who escaped near death to join and fight with the Soviet partisans)
Stacy S. Jensen, illus. Victo Ngai, Before I Lived Here, Neal Porter, Age 4-8 (a backwards history book which helps young readers to understand what came before – from a contemporary building to ranches, to log cabins to indigenous people and their eviction from their lands)
Stephen Krensky, illus. Adriana Predoi, Amazing Annie, Apples & Honey, Age 5-8 (one woman’s remarkable adventure as she cycled around the world)
Carole Lindstrom, illus. Aly McKnight, The Gift of the Great Buffalo, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, Age 4-8 (picture book illuminates the true history of Native-American life on the prairies in the 1800s)
Amy Novesky, illus. Jessica Love, The Poet and the Bees, Viking BfYR, Ages 4-8 (a picture book story about Sylvia Plath, her writing and her bee keeping)
Emma Otheguy, illus. Poly Bernatene, Cousins in the Time of Magic, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (historical fantasy in which three cousins get transported back to 1862 to play an important role in the Battle of Puebla)
Edeet Ravel, Miss Matty, Literary Press Group of Canada, YA (World War II story explores the impact of historical events on personal lives)
Leah Williamson, Jordan Glover, illus. Robin Boyden, The Wonder Team and the Space Race, Macmillan Children’s, Age 8-12 (travelling back to 1950’s America, the Wonder Team find themselves right in the middle of the Space Race)
Beryl Young, illus. Sean Huang, The Moon’s Journey, Red Deer Press, Age 6-8 (set in the 1950s, picture book follows a young family as they travel across the ocean to a new home in Canada)
March 2025
Marcie Flinchum Atkins, One Step Forward, Versify, YA (coming-of-age novel, told in verse,about 19-year-old Matilda Young, the youngest suffragist to be imprisoned and mistreated for lawful protests during WWI)
Kristin Butcher, Closer to Far Away, Red Deer Press, Age 9-12 (a story of grief and hope set in Saskatchewan, 1921)
Karen Cushman, When Sally O’Malley Discovered the Sea, Yearling, Age 8-12 (the story of an orphan who decides to go west–with nothing but gumption as her guide)
M. M. Downing & S. J. Waugh, The Adventures of the Flash Gang: Berlin Breakout, Regal House, Age 8-12 (book three in which two friends must use all their street wiles—with the help of a Flash or two—in 1936 Berlin)
Ursula Murray Husted, author and illustrator, Botticelli’s Apprentice, Quill Tree, Age 8-12 (graphic novel set in Renaissance Italy, following a young girl’s quest to become an apprentice to Sandro Botticelli)
Jeramey Kraatz, illus. Crystal Jayme, I Witnessed: The Lizzie Borden Story, HarperAlley, Age 8-12 (story of a boy who witnesses a crime: graphic novel true crime series)
Jennie Liu, The Red Car to Hollywood, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (Los Angeles, 1924; sixteen-year-old Ruby Chan forges her own way in LA with the help of friend and actress Anna May Wong)
M. K. Lobb, To Steal From Thieves, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (an alchemologist and a con man team up to steal a rare necklace from the 1851 Great Exhibition in London)
Jennifer A. Nielsen, One Wrong Step, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (1939 — adventure about two kids and their fight for survival on the unforgiving trails of Mount Everest)
Calvin Alexander Ramsey, illus. R. Gregory Christie, The Library in the Woods, Carolrhoda Books, Age 7-11 (follows a Black boy in 1959 North Carolina, whose new friends show him the Negro Library)
Linda Joan Smith, The Peach Thief, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (middle-grade debut set in 1850s Lancashire, England, explores longing, belonging, and the courage it takes to find your place)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. Karen De la Vega, I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919, Graphix, Age 8-12 (graphic novel adaptation)
Also: I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 (graphic novel adaptation)
Rabiah York, illus. Maneli Manouchehri, The One and Only Rumi, Nancy Paulsen, Age 4-8 (the story of Rumi’s journey from a young refugee to a renowned poet shows how his childhood helped shape his poetry)
April 2025
Laurie Halse Anderson, Rebellion 1776, Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, Age 10-14 (historical fiction adventure about a girl struggling to survive amid a smallpox epidemic, the public’s fear of inoculation, and the seething Revolutionary War)
Jenny Andrus, illus. Julie Downing, Elsa’s Chessboard, Neal Porter, Age 4-8 (a tale of resilience, human connection, and potential of women in male-dominated fields, set in 1900s Vienna)
Nydia Armendia-Sánchez, illus. by Loris Lora, Frida Kahlo’s Flower Crown, Abrams BfYR, Age 5-8 (a picture book biography of celebrated artist Frida Kahlo, told through the language of flowers)
Marie Benedict, Courtney Sheinmel, The Secrets of Lovelace Academy, Aladdin, Age 8-12 (a historical adventure about a young girl plucked from a London orphanage to begin attending a boarding school with more secrets than she could imagine)
Jennifer Bohnhoff, In the Shadow of Sunrise, Kinkajou Press, Age 9-12 (Earth Shadow joins the clan’ s adults on the annual Walk Around and hunt)
Chris Callaghan, When the War Comes In, Collins, Age 8-12 (WWII story set in 1944 in the dockyards of Wallsend, Tyneside)
Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, Shell Song, Beach Lane, Age 4+ (based on the author’s true family history, picture book about Japanese American incarceration in Hawai’i during World War II is a moving tribute to the importance of finding hope in dark times)
Amalie Howard, Lady Knight, Random House/Joy Revolution, YA (follows the daughter of a duke, defying the rules of high society in regency-era London)
Susanna Isern, illus. Esther Gili, The Girl Who Wore Pants, NubeOcho, Age 5-8 (fictionalised picture book biography of Puerto Rican activist Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922) who broke society rules by wearing pants in 1915)
Emily Jones, Nahia, Holiday House, YA (historical fantasy coming-of-age story set in Spain, 8000 years ago)
Hiba Noor Khan, The Line They Drew Through Us, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (three best friends are born on the same day experience Partition around their twelfth birthday)
Jane Kurtz, Claire Messer, Clara the Triumphant Rhinoceros, Beach Lane Books, Age 4-8 (picture book of the true story of Clara in the late 1700s)
Josh Lacey, illus. Garry Parsons, The Maya Sacrifice, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (the time travel twins borrow Grandad’s time machine and travel back to the time of the Mayas)
Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illus. Alisha Monnin, On the Wings of Eagles, Apples & Honey, Age 5-8 (picture book dramatizes the story of Haila, a Yemenite girl, who with her family was airlifted to safety during Operation Magic Carpet)
Irene Marchesini, trans. Carla Roncalli Di Montorio, illus. Carlotta Dicataldo, Rebis: Born and Reborn, First Second, YA (medieval story about the friendship between a runaway child and a mysterious witch)
Geraldine McCaughrean, Under a Fire-Red Sky, Usborne, YA (with WWII looming, four young people sit on a train waiting to be evacuated…but instead, they climb out of the carriage and head back home)
Nora Neus, illus. Julie Robine, Renegade Girls, Little, Brown Ink, YA (graphic imagining based on real-life undercover reporter Nell Nelson and photography pioneer Alice Austen)
Ginger Park and Frances Park, illus. Tiffany Chen, Suka’s Farm, Albert Whitman, Age 4-8 (story set in Japanese-occupied Korea in 1941 portrays an unlikely friendship between a hungry child and an old farmer)
Zachary Pullen, Casey Rislov, A Home for Steamboat, Mountain Stars Press, Age 5-7 (inspirational story based on the famous horse Steamboat’s life)
Alice Roberts, Wolf Mountain, Simon & Schuster UK, Age 8-12 (discover the history of our lifetimes in a story of friendship, courage and survival, based on real archaeological discoveries)
Barb Rosenstock, American Spirits: The Famous Fox Sisters, Calkins Creek, YA (a true tale of the 19th-century Fox sisters whose claims to communicate with ghosts launched a spiritualism craze)
Lupe Ruiz-Flores, The Pecan Sheller, Carolrhoda Books, Age 10-14 (in 1930s San Antonio, thirteen-year-old Petra dreams of going to college and becoming a writer)
Leah Schanke, illus. by Oboh Moses, Freedom at Dawn: Robert Small’s Voyage Out of Slavery, Albert Whitman Age 4-8 (true story of one man’s brave plan to free his family from slavery)
Laurie Schneider, Gittel, Fitzroy Books, Age 11+ (the Borensteins and twelve other Jewish families have left behind the deadly pogroms of Eastern Europe only to find life nearly as harsh in 1911 Mill Creek, Wisconsin)
May 2025
María Teresa Andruetto, trans. Elisa Amado, illus. Martina Trach, Clara and the Man with Books in his Window, Greystone Kids, Age 5+ (tale about friendship and about the world available to us when we open a book; set in rural 1920s Argentina)
Taylor Banks, Billions to Burn, Melissa de la Cruz, Age 8-12 (Zeus and his friends uncover long-buried secrets about the Harlem Renaissance, Black history, and Zeus’s own family)
Terry Lee Caruthers, Red and Me, Star Bright Books, Age 8-12 (1930s rural Tennessee; a tale of family, friendship, and the bond between a girl and her dog)
Antonio Farías, In the Company of Wolves, Arte Publico/Piñata, YA (a boy on the cusp of manhood observes the importance of family, respect for the natural world and the impact of war)
Jacqueline Halsey, Joe and the Wreck of the Tribune, Nimbus Children’s, Age 8-12 (inspired by the real 18th-century shipwreck off Halifax Harbour, and the local boy who risked his life to save those on board)
Sandra W. Headen, Roi and Me and the Double V: A WWII Story, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (best friends Marvel and Roi help out on the WWII homefront, as racial injustice threatens their community)
K. M. Huber, Call of the Owl Woman, SparkPress, YA (coming-of-age story set in 6th-century Peru)
Penny Parker Klostermann, illus. by Anne Lambelet, The Spider Lady, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (fictional biography of Nan Songer who collected and bred spiders in her home and found new ways to use their silk to help the U.S. win the war)
Torben Kuhlmann, trans. David Henry Wilson, Earhart: The Incredible Flight of a Field Mouse Around the World, NorthSouth, Age 8-12 (illustrations and fictional story inspired by Amelia Earhart encourages young readers to pursue their passions–despite all obstacles)
Kaija Langley, illus. TeMika Grooms, A Century for Caroline, Simon & Schuster BfYR/Denene Millner, Age 4-8 (a great grandma imparts the wisdom gained over her one hundred years to an eager little girl)
Jenny Pearson, Shrapnel Boys, Usborne Publishing, Age 8-12 (novel about the friendship and courage of a group of young boys living through the Second World War)
Padma Prasad Reddeppa, Flying in Colors, Lee & Low, Age 9-13 (multigenerational story set in 1975, Tamil Nadu, South India)
Tomato Soup, A Witch’s Life in Mongol, Yen Press, YA (the story of how a “witch,” wielding knowledge as her only weapon, came to hold the greatest empire in the palm of her hand)
June 2025
Cass Biehn, Vesuvius, Peachtree Teen, YA (historical fantasy set in the days before Mount Vesuvius destroys Pompei. LGBTQ)
Jessie Burton, Hidden Treasure, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 9+ (Bo, whose dad is dead, and Billy, an orphan, are both from poor families and have never met, but now they have each found half of a priceless treasure, given up by the river Thames)
Phil Earle, The Dawn of Adonis, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (twelve-year-old Nettie Beecroft finds herself embroiled in a dangerous rescue attempt where she encounters toshers, bone grubbers and gangsters in 1911 London)
Heather M. Herrman, Lady or the Tiger, Nancy Paulsen, YA (dark anti-hero origin story, starring a teenage killer whose trial in the Wild West is upended when her first victim arrives alive with a story to tell)
Anna James, illus. David Wyatt, Alice With a Why: Chronicles of Whetherwhy, HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Age 9-12 (fantasy series in a war-torn Wonderland, beginning in 1924, when Alyce is sent to live with her grandmother after her father is killed in WWI)
Anna Rose Johnson, The Blossoming Summer, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (when English Rosemary is evacuated to her grandmother in America at the start of World War II, she discovers that her heritage is Anishinaabe passing as white)
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, Lady’s Knight, HarperCollins, YA (funny, unapologetically queer feminist romp through the England of medieval legend)
Elizabeth Laird, My Enemy, My Friend, Macmillan Children’s, Age 9-11 (Adam grabs the chance to join the Crusade to reclaim Jerusalem, and Salim is sent to work for a travelling doctor to protect him from a crusader attack on Acre)
Costantia Manoli, illus. Leah Giles, The Fig Tree, Roaring Brook Press, Age 4-8 (war separates two sides of an island, and a solitary tree brings together two children across the divide)
Karen B. McCoy, illus. Lena Mulberg, The Etiquette of Voles, Artemesia Publishing, Age 11-14 (middle grade adventure set in Victorian London)
Neridah McMullin, illus. Astred Hicks, Evie and Rhino, Walker Books AU, Age 8-13 (a young girl with a tragic past and a rhinoceros facing life in captivity form an unlikely bond after a fateful storm and a shipwreck in 1891 bring them together)
Judith McQuoid, Giant, Little Island Books, Age 9-11 (fictionalised exploration of the childhood of C. S. Lewis)
Ross Montgomery, I Am Rebel, Walker US, Age 8-12 (adventure told from a dog’s perspective as he travels across a pseudo-Civil War Britain on his loyal mission)
Shane Peacock, Show, Cormorant, YA (in an alternate 1899, farm boy Solomon Hunt leaves home to seek income for his family, only to stumble into the adventure of a lifetime)
Caroline L. Perry, illus. Jennifer Bricking, The Memory Cake, Holiday House, Age 6-8 (a grandmother shares her experience of growing up in Malta during World War II)
Brooks Whitney Phillips, The Grove, Viking BfYR, YA (coming-of-age novel set in the 1960s, where two sisters in a struggling family only have each other to rely on)
Erica Ridley, The Protégée, Delacorte, YA (dark historical thriller set in mid 19th-century Paris)
Michael P. Spradlin, Threat of the Spider, Margaret K. McElderry, Age 8-12 (a twelve-year-old boy searches for his father and fights for free press amid the chilling rise of Hitler’s Germany)
Lucie Stevens, R.I.P. Nanny Tobbins, Harper Collins AU, Age 9+ (historical ghost story set in 1851, during Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition)
Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem, trans. by Kristen Gehrman, Daughter of Doom, Levine Querido, YA (Denmark 870; follows the unlikely friendship between Yrsa, the daughter of a Danish helmsman and Sister Job, a nun)
July 2025
David Brayley, George’s Fateful D-Day, Y-Lolfa, YA (teen rugby genius George and young GI and quarterback Oliver, become friends after discovering their shared family bereavements and love of sports)
Eli Brown, Karin Rytter, Mooncussers, Walker Books US, Age 10-14 (dark fantasy set in an alternate American past as war continues to rage between the fledgling Unified States and Napoléon Bonaparte)
Jackie French, The Mushroom in the Sky, HarperCollins AU, YA (French explores the dropping of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which ended World War 2)
Eva Ibbotson, A Song for Summer, Picador, YA (Australia, 1937; a love story set in the shadow of gathering war)
S. Isabelle, The Great Misfortune of Stella Sedgwick, Storytide, YA (romance follows a young Black woman in 1860s England who yearns for a writing career and independence rather than love and marriage)
Zohra Nabi, Deep Dark, Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, Age 9-11 (supernatural adventure set in Victorian London; a Cassia Thorne Mystery, book one)
Daniela I. Norris, The King of Montréal, Lodestone, YA (a story of adventure, resilience and mystery, set in 1800, Montréal, Canada)
Karuna Riazi, Sabrena Swept Away, Greenwillow, Age 8-12 (reimagining of One Thousand and One Nights is a tale about fate, choice, and being torn between them)
Toni Runkle, Steve Webb, The Pirate’s Curse: Weight of Souls, Black Rose Writing, YA (16-year-old Bonnie has narrowly saved the Brigands of the Compass Rose from annihilation by Calico Jack Rackham, but her fight is far from over)
Julia Rust and David Surface, Saving Thornwood, Yap Press, YA (in the cemetery at Thornwood Asylum, two girls meet when a door opens between the 19th and 21st centuries)
Al Sirois, Imhotep and the Quest to Kush, Fitzroy Books, YA (sequel to Murder in Mennefer in which challenges and dangers introduced in the first novel ratchet up to more perilous heights)
Jordyn Taylor, The Rebel Girls of Rome, HarperCollins, YA (novel about Lilah, a girl looking to reconnect with her grandfather over his mysterious past during a trip to Rome, and Bruna, a queer Jewish woman who escapes the Nazis in Italy and joins the resistance during World War II)
August 2025
Hailey Alcaraz, Rosa by Any Other Name, Viking BfYR, YA (Romeo and Juliet-inspired retelling set during the civil rights era, where a Mexican American girl is joins a movement for justice after her two friends are murdered)
Claire Andrews, A Beautiful and Terrible Murder, Little, Brown BfYR (historical murder mystery follows Irene Adler as she teams up with Sherlock Holmes to discover who is murdering Oxford’s elite students)
Ryan James Black, The Dark Times of Nimble Nottingham, Nancy Paulsen, Age 10+ (set during World War II, a twelve-year-old orphan accidentally unleashes a shadow monster onto the streets of London)
James Lincoln Collier, After My Brother Sam, Scholastic, Age 9-12 (picks up the story of My Brother Sam Is Dead in another examination of patriotism, family, and what it means to be an American)
Alyssa Colman, Where Only Storms Grow, Farrar, Straus & Giroux BYR, Age 8-12 (a hopeful middle grade historical novel set during the Dust Bowl)
Terry Deary, Terrible True Tales: Tudors, Bloomsbury Education, Age 8-12 (a funny collection of Tudor tales based on true stories)
Terry Deary, Terrible True Tales: Vikings, Bloomsbury Education, Age 8-12 (a funny collection of Viking tales based on true stories)
Bea Fitzgerald, A Beautiful Evil, Penguin, YA (a re-imagining of the Pandora myth)
Shana Keller, illus: Laura Freeman, CeeCee: Underground Railroad Cinderella, Charlesbridge, Age 4-8 (Cinderella retelling with a young enslaved girl on a Maryland plantation)
Clara Kumagai, Songs for Ghosts, Tundra, YA (coming-of-age about a boy who becomes obsessed with a diary written by a young woman living in Nagasaki in 1911)
Ruby Lal, illus. Molly Crabapple, Tiger Slayer, Norton YR, YA (story of an ambitious young empress who was the only woman to ever rule the Mughal Empire)
Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (an adventure in faraway places set against the backdrop of World War II)
Catherine L. Osornio, Danger on Martin Mountain, Jolly Fish, Age 7-9 (a 15-year-old girl whose friend is accused of sabotaging the WW II wartime effort in her Arizona community, must face Nazi prisoners and spies to prove her friend’s innocence)
Uri Shulevitz, author and illustrator, The Sky Was My Blanket, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR), Age 10-14 (true story of a young Polish exile fighting to survive in war-torn Europe)
Lauren Stringer, author and illustrator, An Abundance of Light, Beach Lane, Age 4-8 (Henri Matisse searches for light and inspiration in Morocco in the year 1912)
Andrew Varga, The Spartan Sacrifice, Imbrifex Books, YA (fourth book in which Dan and partner Sam jump through time, this time to ancient Greet on the eve of the Battle of Thermopylae)
Andrea Wang, Youa Vang, Worthy: The Brave and Capable Life of Joseph Pierce, Levine Querido, Age 4-6 (picture book story of a boy who was sold by his father in mid 19th-century, and adopted into a family in America)
Anna Woltz, trans. Michelle Hutchinson, The Tunnel, Rock the Boat (four teenagers meet in September 1940, deep in the tunnels of the London Underground)
Evelyn Wong, illus. Sarah Ang, Reach for the Sky, Plumleaf Press, Age 5-9 (in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown, Robert and Tommy built a single-seat plane during the Great Depression)
September 2025
María Dolores Águila, A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez, Roaring Brook Press, Age 8-12 (San Diego, 1931; based on a true story, novel in verse about one young child’s courage to stand up for what is right, and the determination of the Mexican community)
Sufiya Ahmed, Under Fire, Bloomsbury Education (a WW2 adventure featuring a brave and determined preteen who uncovers injustice and secret messages)
Kathleen S. Allen, The Resurrectionist, Roaring Brook Press, YA (a young Victorian woman unwittingly unleashes a monster into being in this gothic tale of mystery and suspense)
Derrick Barnes, The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze, Viking BfYR, Age 10-12 (spanning the 1800s to today, a story of America’s obsession with relegating Black people to labor or entertainment)
Julie Berry, If Looks Could Kill, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (true crime-turned mythic odyssey pits Jack the Ripper against Medusa in 1888 London)
Ann Brashares, & Ben Brashares, Into the Fire, Simon & Schuster BfYR, Age 8-12 (second book in the Westfallen trilogy that asks what present-day America would be like if Germany had won World War II)
J. Anderson Coats, The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (Colorado, 1910; novel about self-determination, community, and what it means to belong)
Sam Cooke, illus. Nikkolas Smith, A Change Is Gonna Come, Little Bee, Age 4-8 (written as an ode to the struggles of Black Americans living under Jim Crow, “A Change Is Gonna Come” became a rallying cry for justice and equality)
Katherine Corr and Elizabeth Corr, Daughter of the Underworld, Candlewick, YA (feminist story set in ancient Greece and inspired by the often cruel and bloodthirsty legends of Greek gods)
Angelica Del Campo, illus. Liniers, The Ghost of Wreckers Cove, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (ghost story recreates the world of 19th century lighthouse keepers, inspired by the real-life story of a young woman who tended an isolated Maine lighthouse)
Louise Erdrich, author and illustrator, The Bone Tribe, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (book about Anak, as she grapples with the devastating effects of the near extinction of the buffalo population while navigating her identity. Birchbark House, book 6)
Karina Yan Glaser, The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, Allida, Age 8-12 (dual stories of two young people—one in 731 China, and one in 1931 Chinatown—on perilous journeys to save their families)
Alan Gratz, illus. Syd Fini, Refugee: The Graphic Novel, Graphix, Age 9-12 (a graphic format edition of the 2017 novel, set in 1930, 1994 and 2015)
Nat Harrison, The Girl Who Raced the World, Piccadilly Press, Age 9-12 (a timeless adventure of travel, treachery and trust, set in 1872, with a nod to Around the World in Eighty days)
Michelle Kadarusman, Seabird, Pajama Press, Age 8-12 (a story of resilience, friendship, and fighting for change inspired by the true story of a nineteenth century feminist)
Shafaq Khan, Zeyna Lost and Found, Carolrhoda, Age 9-13 (follows 12-year-old Zeyna as she searches for her parents who have gone missing in 1970 Pakistan)
Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illus. Anita Barghigiani, Rembrandt’s Blessing, Kar-Ben, Age 5-9 (story inspired by the friendship between Rembrandt and Rabbi Menashe Ben Israel)
Erica Lyons, illus. Bonnie Pang, Lily’s Hong Kong Honey Cake, Apples & Honey, Age 4-6 (based on the history of Jewish refugees in Asia and spanning multiple years during World War II)
K.G. Mach, Present, Still Missing, Golden Bridges, YA (in this post-WWII story, one girl must find the courage to help her father heal from the invisible wounds of war)
Andy Marino, Escape from the USS Indianapolis, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (high stakes adventure when the USS Indianapolis is struck by a torpedo)
Carol Matas, A Storm Unleashed, Scholastic Canada, Age 9-12 (a hopeful tale about a girl and her dog set in World War 2)
Daniel Miyares, How To Say Goodbye in Cuban, Anne Schwartz Books, Age 8-12 (coming-of-age graphic novel of 12-year-old Carlos, his life during the Cuban Revolution, and his family’s escape to America)
Abdi Nazemian, Exquisite Things, HarperCollins, YA (spanning one hundred and thirty years of love and longing, this tale of immortal beloveds is a celebration of queer love and community)
James Patterson, Tad Safran, The Time Travel Twins: The Pharaoh’s Tomb, jimmy Patterson, Age 8-12 (the time-traveling twins chase time’s greatest villain to Ancient Egypt)
Anita Fitch Pazner, illus. Sophie Casson, Words Matter, House of Anansi/Groundwood, Age 9-12 (relating the story of Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Resistance, a student group that produced and covertly distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets during World War II)
Patricia Santana, Yoli’s Favorite Things, Margaret Ferguson, Age 9-12 (family story set against a historical backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement)
Julie A. Swanson, North of Tomboy, SparkPress, Age 8-12 (novel set in 1973 about a child who feels more boy than girl and is frustrated that people act blind to that)
SD Youngwolf, illus. Shonto Begay, The Echo People, Lee & Low, Age 4-6 (thought-provoking Indigenous picture book about the ways we create our own realities through words and actions)
October 2025
Caroline Adderson, illus. Lauren Tamaki, A Pond, a Poet and Three Pests, Groundwood, Age 4-6 (inspired by one of Japan’s most famous haikus, Bashō, a 17th-century poet takes an evening walk)
Kate Blair, We Bury Nothing, Cormorant/DCB, YA (dual timeline novel set in 1943 and present day)
Candy Gourlay, Wild Song, CarolRhoda, YA (in 1904, Luki, who has lived a tribal life in the mountains of the Philippines isn’t ready to give up her dream of becoming a hunter)
Alan Gratz, War Games, Scholastic Press, Age 9-12 (a high-stakes take on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, also known as the “Nazi Olympics”)
Carol Heilman, Becoming Hattie Mae, Black Rose Writing, YA (Appalachia, 1929; a young mountain girl wants to escape her birthplace during the Great Depression era)
Karen McCombie, My Family the Enemy, Bloomsbury Education, Age 8-12 (based on historical events in London, 1914, this tale is perfect to explore themes of refuge, kindness and empathy)
Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, The Nazi Conspiracy, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (young readers edition, subtitled The Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill)
Qurratulayn Muhammad, Blood and Breath, Page Street, YA (Jazz Age fantasy tale of a Black girl who makes a deal with the devil)
Na’kuset and Judith Henderson, illus. Onedove, I Am My Name, Knopf BfYR, Age 6-9 (autobiographical picture book about Cree activist Na’kuset’s life as a young girl taken from her home during the 1960s)
Sean O’Brien, illus. Karyn Lee, White House Clubhouse: White House Undercover, Norton YR, Age 8-12 (following First Daughters Marissa and Clara as they travel through time and solve a mystery at the heart of Depression-era Washington. Next in series)
Martin Seneviratne and Krystal Sutherland, Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, Picadilly Press, Age 9+ (a funny time-travel adventure with twelve-year-old twins Pearl and Patrick who know everything about every historical period)
Colby Cedar Smith, The Siren and the Star, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (a promising young singer recovers from a traumatic experience by traveling to Venice and connecting with the work of a 17th-century female composer)
November 2025
Finbar Hawkins, Ghost, Zephyr (something calls across the centuries to three girls drawn together to lay to rest an ancient evil in the woods)
Hayley Kiyoko, Where There’s Room for Us, Wednesday Books, YA (sapphic Regency romance)
Kendall Kulper, A Time Traveler’s History of Tomorrow, Holiday House, YA (in which a gifted girl and a runaway accidentally set off the apocalypse at Chicago’s 1934 World’s Fair and find themselves falling back in time to 1893)
Morgan H. Owen, Gladiator, Goddess, Gallery YR, YA (sapphic romantasy set in ancient Rome featuring Gia who dreams of being a female Gladiator)
Tirzah Price, A Matter of Murder, Storytide, YA (follows Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries series)
Andrea Shapiro, illus. Valerya Milovanova, A Place Called Galveston, Apples & Honey, Age 6-8 (poetic picture book tells the stories of the immigrants who came through the port of Galveston, Texas in early 20th-c)
John Spray, illus. Scot Ritchie, Lucky Dog Comes Home, Pajama Press, Age 5-8 (story of one man, and a few dogs, who have the power to bring joy back to a grieving community after WWII)
Ali Standish, The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall: The Valley of Lies, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (in this third installment, Arthur has made it into the esteemed Circle of Light and Professor Sherlock Holmes believes he has tremendous talent)
December 2025
MJ Pankey, Messenger of Truth: Book 1: The River of Truth, Muse and Quill, Age 8-12 (Iris is tasked with helping to solve a mystery whereby she must go to the dark and dangerous Underworld)
Jewell Parker Rhodes, illus. Setor Fiadzigbey, Ghost Boys: The Graphic Novel, Little, Brown Ink, YA (graphic adaptation of 2019 novel where a 12-year-old who is shot by police meets Emmett Till, a boy from a very different time but similar circumstances)
Lauren Tarshis, I Survived the Dust Bowl, 1935, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (story of one boy’s journey to survive the conditions of the Dust Bowl)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18, set in eras from ancient times to the mid 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ) using publisher descriptions and recommended age suitability.
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Lucille Abendanon, The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree, Jolly Fish, Age 8-12 (historical coming-of-age set in Asia)
H. F. Askwith, A Cruel Twist of Fate, Penguin YR, YA (a gothic mystery-thriller with an eccentric family hiding secrets)
Laura Bates, Sisters of Sword and Shadow, Simon & Schuster Children’s, YA (what if the Knights of the Round Table had a female counterpart? Arthurian historical fantasy)
Crystal J. Bell, The Lamplighter, Flux, YA (19th century historical horror)
Libba Bray, Under the Same Stars, FSG BfYR, YA (a mystery surrounding the disappearance of two teen girls during World War II, that unfurls across three time periods)
Linda Crotta Brennan, The Selkie’s Daughter, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (an imaginative fantasy, steeped in Celtic mythology)
Anitra Butler-Ngugi, illus. Jane Pica, Nina Under Arrest, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (a Girls Survive graphic novel of the 1963 Birmingham children’s crusade survival story)
Judi Curtin, Sally in the City of Dreams, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (it’s 1911 and young sisters Sally and Bridget are sailing to New York to find work, leaving behind everything they know in Ireland)
Linda DeMeulemeester, Ephemia Rimaldi: Circus Performer Extraordinaire, Red Deer Press, Age 9-12 (suffragist movement and early circus life serve as a backdrop for a feisty heroine in early 20th-century)
Hayley Dennings, Bittersweet Poison, Sourcebooks Fire, YA (first book in historical fantasy duology set in a darkly twisted 1920s Harlem)
Fabrice Erre, illus. Sylvain Savoia, Magical History Tour: Gladiators, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (graphic novel series takes young readers on a journey to meet the gladiators of Ancient Rome)
Francesca Ficorilli, illus. Julie Gilbert, Cora and the Terrible Twister, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (a Girls Survive graphic novel of the 1925 tri-state tornado)
Gary Golio, illus. E. B. Lewis, Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (picture book biography of photographer Roy DeCarava)
Lydia Gregovic, The Monstrous Kind, Delacorte BfYR, YA (fantasy inspired by Sense and Sensibility and set in an alternate England)
Miriam Halahmy, A Boy from Baghdad, Green Bean Books, Age 8+ (a tale about the power of perseverance, friendship and family in the face of hardship, set in 1951)
Ritu Hemnani, Three Colors of Hope, Balzer + Bray, Age 8-12 (a coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Raj’s journey during the 1947 Partition of India)
Veera Hiranandani, Amil and the After, Kokila, Age 8-12 (at the turn of the new year in 1948, Amil and his family are trying to make a home in India, now independent of British rule)
Kelly Hollman, Charlotte Sherman, This Opening Sky, Milk + Cookies, Age 8-12 (novel in verse, about an unlikely friendship in the aftermath of the American Civil War)
Liz Kessler, Code Name Kingfisher, Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, Age 9-12 (when Liv finds a secret box from her grandmother’s childhood she uncovers an war-time story of bravery, betrayal and daring defiance)
Susan Kusel, illus. Sean Rubin, The Passover Guest, Neal Porter Books, Age 4-8 (a story to introduce the holiday traditions to young readers, set in Washington, D.C., in spring 1933)
Yi Shun Lai, A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic, Atheneum BfYR, YA (1914; a teen’s fight for suffrage turns into a fight for survival, when her crew’s Antarctic expedition ship gets stuck in the ice)
Iszi Lawrence, illus. Elisa Paganelli, City of Spies, Bloomsbury Education, Age 9-11 (spy adventure set in New York during the American revolution, 1780)
Lina Maslo (author & illustrator), Threads: Zlata’s Ukrainian Shirt, FS&G BfYR, Age 4-7 (picture book about a girl’s survival during the Ukrainian Genocide of the 1930s carrying a message for the future)
L. L. McKinney, Escaping Mr. Rochester, HarperTeen, YA (reimagining of Jane Eyre in which Jane and Bertha Mason must save each other from the machinations of Mr. Rochester in this Black queer young adult romance)
George Myerson, illus. Daniel Duncan, My Brother Plato, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (say hello to Potone who lives in Athens with her mum, her stepdad and her incredibly annoying brother, Plato)
Sally Nicholls, Yours from the Tower, Walker US, YA (1896; a story of three best friends who share very different lives)
Gabe Cole Novoa, Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix, Feiwel & Friends, YA (a gender bending romance set in London, 1812)
Deborah Noyes, illus. Melissa Duffy, We Walked in Clouds, Little, Brown Ink, YA (a graphic history of the 1600s Salem witch trials)
Sajni Patel, A Drop of Venom, Rick Riordan Presents, YA (feminist retelling of the Medusa myth steeped in Indian mythology)
Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had, Kokila, YA (spans four time periods and four generations of Filipino American boys as they grapple with identity, assimilation, and masculinity)
Hayley Rocco, illus. John Rocco, Wild Places, Putnam BfYR, Age 4-7 (picture book biography of the naturalist, broadcaster, and documentarian, David Attenborough)
Danielle Smith-Llera, illus. Juan M. Moreno, Cocuyo Lights the Way, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (a diary from 1493 to 1496 about how life changes with the arrival of Europeans on the island of Quisqueya)
Linda Leopold Strauss, illus. Tim Smart, Everybody’s Book: The Story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, Age 4-8 (a picture book story from inquisition Spain, to Nazi treasure stealing, to 1990s Bosnia)
Robin Talley, Everything Glittered, Little, Brown, YA (sapphic YA thriller set at an elite boarding school in Washington, D.C., circa 1927)
Mindy Nichols Wendell, Light and Air, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (set in the fully realized world of a 1930s hospital, during a tuberculosis outbreak, novel offers a tender glimpse into a historical epidemic and its treatment)
February 2024
Sufiya Ahmed, The Time Travellers: Adventure Calling, Little Tiger, Age 8-12 (Suhana, Mia and Ayaan are transported back to 1911)
Ruth Behar, Across So Many Seas, Nancy Paulsen, Age 10-12 (tells the stories of four girls from different generations of a Jewish family)
Anna Bright, The Hedgewitch of Foxhall, HarperTeen, YA (fantasy romance in which a rebellious witch undertakes a last-ditch quest to restore magic to medieval Wales)
Anna Ciddor, A Message Through Time, A & U Children’s, Age 8-13 (time-slip adventure that carries step-siblings Felix and Zoe back to Ancient Roman times and accidentally, drags a Roman girl into the present)
Melanie Dickerson, Lady of Disguise, Thomas Nelson, YA (romantic fairytale of buried treasure, set in England and Scotland in 1388)
Caroline Fernandez, illus. Dharmali Patel, Asha and Baz Meet Katia Kraft, Common Deer Press, Age 6-9 (fourth book in the Asha and Baz series, where the duo time-travel to 1973)
Adam Gidwitz, Max in the House of Spies, Dutton BfYR, Age 8-12 (humorous WWII story with a dash of magic and a lot of heart)
Alan Gratz, Heroes: A Novel of Pearl Harbor, Scholastic Press, Age 8-12 (WWII story with themes of bravery, prejudice, and what it means to stand up for what’s right)
Jarrett Keene, Decide and Survive: Attack on Pearl Harbor, Milk + Cookies, Age 8-10 (story of the surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941)
Joanna Lapati, Guts for Glory, Eerdmans BfYR, Age 7-12 (illustrated story introduces young readers to Civil War soldier, Rosetta Wakeman, who was determined to claim her own place in history)
Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod, illus. Jaimie MacGibbon, The Peacock, Orca, Age 6+ (post-WWII novel where young Barbara’s dad’s company has a plan to give Jewish refugees jobs as tailors so they can immigrate to Canada with their families)
Richard Michelson, illus. Sarah Green, One of a Kind, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (picture book biography of Sarah Brenner, a girl from New York City’s Lower East Side, who became Sydney Taylor — dancer, actress, & children’s book author)
Pip Murphy, To Halt a Heist, Sweet Cherry, Age 8-12 (a cosy historical crime mystery in the Christie and Agatha Detective Agency series)
Estelle Nadel with Sammy Savos, illus. Bethany Strout, The Girl Who Sang, Roaring Brook, Age 10-14 (a graphic memoir about a young Jewish girl’s fight for survival in Nazi-occupied Poland)
Jamie Pacton, The Absinthe Underground, Peachtree Teen, YA (a sapphic friends-to-lovers romantic fantasy set in a Belle Époque-inspired city)
NoNieqa Ramos, illus. by Nicole Medina, Best Believe: The Tres Hermanas, a Sisterhood for the Common Good, Carolrhoda, Age 6-10 (picture book story of three woman from Puerto Rico who grew up to become leaders in their Bronx community)
Rhian Tracey, Hide and Seek, Piccadilly Press, Age 9+ (mystery adventure based on true historical events. Part of the Bletchley Park Mystery series)
Ryan G. Van Cleave, Decide and Survive: Agent 355, Milk + Cookies, Age 8-10 (young readers can imagine themselves as the intrepid and brave spy and American patriot during the American Revolution)
Sylvia Whitman, Decide and Survive: Destruction of Pompeii, Milk + Cookies, Age 8-10 (interactive series featuring great moments in history – starting with the destruction of Pompeii)
Tsuyoshi Yasuda, The Blue Wolves of Mibu, Kodansha Comics, YA (1863; Samurai series manga spotlights the founding of the Shinsengumi by men fighting for justice)
March 2024
K. Ancrum, Icarus, HarperTeen, YA (retelling of the Greek myth)
Leila Boukarim, illus. Sona Avedikian, Lost Words, Chronicle Books, Age 5-8 (picture book follows an Armenian boy as he flees the Armenian Genocide)
Ann E. Burg, illus. Sophie Blackall, Force of Nature, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (story of how a young impassioned naturalist grows up to change the world)
Eileen Charbonneau and Jude Pittman, Spectral Evidence, BWL Publishing, YA (a Canadian Indigenous mystery story set in 1692, around the Salem Witch trials)
Sophie Cleverly, The Violet Veil Mysteries: A Case of High Stakes, HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Age 9-12 (third title in a new Victorian gothic detective series)
Lesa Cline-Ransome, One Big Open Sky, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (three women narrate a perilous wagon journey westward in this intergenerational verse novel that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement)
Piu DasGupta, Secrets of the Snakestone, Nosy Crow, Age 8-12 (an adventure, set in 19th-century Paris, filled with magic and steeped in legends from colonial India)
M. M. Downing & S. J. Waugh, The Adventures of the Flash Gang: Treasonous Tycoon, Regal House, Age 8-12 (fast paced humorous gangster adventure set in Pittsburgh)
Rosalyn Eves, An Unlikely Proposition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR, YA (Regency drama that captures the sparkle of London, thrill of friendship, and swoon of new love)
Candace Fleming, The Enigma Girls, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (story of the brave young women who helped turn the tides of World War II at Bletchley Park)
Sundee Frazier, Might Inside, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (a book about racism in the South in the 1960s and being as strong on the outside as on the inside, in standing firm on what is right)
Brooke Hartman, illus. John Joseph, All Aboard the Alaska Train, Red Comet Press, Age 4-7 (picture book about the legendary train journey from Seward to Fairbanks with Alaskan animal passengers that join en route)
Sandra W. Headen, Warrior on the Mound, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (a story of racial unrest in prewar North Carolina ends with a dramatic match between white and Black little league teams)
June Hur, A Crane Among Wolves, Feiwel & Friends, YA (novel based on a true story from Korean history; set in Joseon, 1506)
Anna Rose Johnson, The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (a spirited French-Ojibwe orphan is sent to the stormy waters of Lake Superior to live with a mysterious family of lighthouse-keepers)
Erica Lyons, illus. Siona Benjamin, On a Chariot of Fire, Levine Querido, Age 5-8 (a picture book story of the legendary origin of the Bene Israel Jews of India)
Michael Morpurgo, When Fishes Flew: The Story of Elena’s War, HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Age 9-12 (journey back in time to the Second World War)
Jennifer A. Nielsen, Uprising, Scholastic Press, Age 8-12 (thriller based on the true story of a young Polish girl who participated in the Warsaw city uprising, and took a stand in the name of freedom)
Claire Annette Noland, illus. Angela C. Hawkins, Nancy Bess had a Dress, Gnome Road, Age 4-8 (story set in the late 1930’s featuring a crafty girl with a gift for repurposing her favorite daisy print)
Johan Rundberg (trans. A. A. Prime), The Queen of Thieves, Amazon Crossing Kids, Age 10-14 (1880 Stockholm: Mika will do what it takes to uncover a string of thefts in the city—and keep her fellow orphans safe)
Kate Saunders, A Drop of Golden Sun, Faber & Faber, Age 9-12 (it’s 1973 and 12-year-old Jenny is about to experience a life-changing summer in the spotlight)
Tim Walker, The Prisoner of Bhopal, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (finding a secret WWI journal, Amil and the journal’s author – his great-grandfather, Sanjiv – share a magical gift)
April 2024
Ann Bausum, illus. Marta Sevilla, The Bard and the Book, Peachtree, Age 8-12 (the unlikely true story of why we know the name William Shakespeare and the four-hundred-year-old book that made it possible)
Dustin Brady illus. Dave Bardin, World’s Worse Time Machine: Treasure in the White City, Andrews McMeel, Age 7-11 (2nd installment where Elsa and Liam follow the legend that says an eccentric millionaire hid a treasure somewhere inside the “White City” at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago)
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, The Night War, Dial, Age 8-12 (set in World War II France, where a Jewish girl who has lost everything but her life, must decide whether to risk even that to bring others to freedom)
Jacqueline Chio-Lauri, illus. Kristin Sorra, Mami King: How Ma Mon Luk Found Love, Riches, and the Perfect Bowl of Soup, Millbrook Press, Age 7-11 (rejected by the parents of the girl he loves, Ma Mon Luk strikes out from China and boards a steamship headed for the Philippines in 1918)
Leon Erickson, illus. Michelle Simpson, Mai and the Strangers, Orca, Age 6-8 (historical-fiction picture book celebrating Dakelh culture and language)
Brian Gallagher, illus. Dermot Flynn, The Case of the Vanishing Painting, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (when friends Deirdre, Tim, and Joe try to unmask a thief they come up against a dangerous, powerful enemy)
Sue Ganz-Schmitt, illus. Iacopo Bruno, Skybound, Starring Mary Myers as Carlotta, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (picture book biography of an aeronaut and inventor whose work improved our understanding of flight)
Cambria Gordon, Trajectory, Scholastic Press, YA (WWII story of one young woman who must find a way to overcome her deepest fears to unlock the secret that will help America and the Allies to victory)
Joshua M. Greene, The Girl Who Fought Back, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (the true story of a young Jewish woman who was instrumental in the uprising as a smuggler of messages and weapons into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto)
Kerisa Greene, I am Both: A Vietnamese Refugee Story, Feiwel & Friends, Age 4 – 8 (picture book inspired by the author’s family’s journey on the last flight out of Saigon)
Robin Ha (author & illustrator), The Fox Maidens, Balzer + Bray, YA (set in 16th century Korea and infused with Korean folklore; a story about fighting for your place in the world, even when it seems impossible)
Kathy Kacer, illus. Gabrielle Grimard, Two Pieces of Chocolate, Second Story Press, Age 9-12 (picture book story about kindness set in Bergen-Belsen Nazi prison camp in 1945)
Deborah Lakritz, Things That Summer, Kar-Ben, Age 8-12 (two friends bond over their parents’ struggles with PTSD in spring, 1973)
Lois Lowry, Tree. Table. Books, Clarion, Age 8-12 (a young girl hears stories of war, hunger, cruelty, and ultimately love from an elderly friend who is beginning to have trouble with her memory)
Makiia Lucier, Dragonfruit, Clarion Books, YA (an historical romantic fantasy researched and inspired by Pacific Island mythology)
Skye Melki-Wegner, The Deadlands: Survival, Henry Holt BfYR, Age 8-12 (finale of the middle-grade action-adventure series about five outcasts who are their warring dinosaur kingdoms only hope)
Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Eyes Open, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (a young woman fights for justice in Portugal, 1967, when all her plans for her future are upended)
E. L. Norry, Fablehouse: Heart of Fire, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, Age 8-12 (fantasy story about children finding their power with the guidance of the Black Knight from King Arthur’s Round Table)
Kim Michele Richardson, illus. David Gardner, Junia, The Book Mule of Troublesome Creek, Sleeping Bear, Age 6-9 (Richardson reimagines her own adult novel from the perspective of Junia, the brave mule of a Kentucky packhorse librarian)
Heather Stemp, Beyond Amelia, Nimbus, YA (story about the sacrifices so many young people made to turn the tide in a terrifying war)
Terrill Sullivan, Endurance: The Frozen Keep, Black Rose Writing, YA (first of a two-volume series weaving Ernest Shackleton’s voyage in Antarctica: a teenager’s fight for environmental justice; and an adventure on the high seas; set against World War I waging in Europe)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. by Brian Churilla, I Survived the Battle of D-Day, 1944, Scholastic Graphix, Age 8-12 (a boy, whose mother is in the French Resistance, finds himself in the middle of the battle of D-Day. Presented in new graphic format)
Jenni L. Walsh, Operation: Happy, Zonderkidz, Age 8-12 (featuring a dog’s POV and inspired by real-life WWII experiences of a young Pearl Harbor survivor)
Andrea Wang, illus. Youa Vang, The Brave and Capable Life of Joseph Pierce, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (based on a true story of a Chinese boy who was sold into slavery, worked to free himself, and became a corporal during the American Civil War)
Cedar Wang (author & illustrator), Codebreaker Charlotte, Clavis, Age 6-11 (Charlotte discovers important details about the role her great-grandmother played in the Second World War)
Brittany N. Williams, Saint-Seducing Gold, Amulet, YA (second book in a YA historical fantasy trilogy set in London in Elizabethan times)
May 2024
Miya T. Beck, Through a Clouded Mirror, Balzer + Bray, Abe 8-12 (time-travel fantasy set in a magical imperial Japan)
Crystal J. Bell, The Lamplighter, Flux, YA (as villagers vanish under her watch as lamplighter, Tempe discovers unsettling truths about the village and her own beloved father. Set in 19th-century)
Jasbinder Bilan, Nush and the Stolen Emerald, Chicken House, Age 9-12 (when her father, the Maharaja, decides to visit Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, Nush goes too – determined to bring back the gem that can heal her country)
Lauren Blackwood, The Dangerous Ones, Wednesday Books, YA (romantic historical fantasy set in the American Civil War with vampires and people with demigod-like abilities)
Elise Broach, illus. Ziyue Chen, Duet, Christy Ottaviano Books, Age 8-12 (a history-rich mystery that links composer Frederic Chopin, author George Sand, and painter Eugene Delacroix)
Vera Brosgol, Plain Jane and the Mermaid, First Second, YA (a 13-year-old girl’s quest to rescue a friend who is kidnapped from their 18th-century maritime village)
Lydia Corry, Wildflower Emily, Laura Godwin Books, YA (graphic novel based on the childhood of poet Emily Dickinson)
Jillian Dobson, illus. Genevieve Simms, Girl Takes Drastic Step!, Nimbus, Age 4-8 (an inspiring picture book biography of the pioneering mid-century female visual artist)
Sarah Beth Durst, Spy Ring, Clarion Books, Age 8-12 (a blend of Revolutionary War history and contemporary storytelling)
Caroline Fernandez, Plague Thieves, DCB, Age 9-12 (1665; Rose and Lem hope to protect themselves against the sickness, but as word about their special oil blend spreads, they must protect themselves against thieves)
Rosena Fung, Age 16, Annick Press, YA (coming-of-age graphic novel exploring how adolescence affects three women in the same family, from Guangdong in 1954 to Hong Kong in 1972, and Toronto in 2000)
Brian Gallagher, illus. Dermot Flynn, The Case of the Vanishing Painting, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (when friends Deirdre, Tim, and Joe try to unmask a thief they come up against a dangerous, powerful enemy)
Ritu Hemnani, Lion of the Sky, Balzer + Bray, Age 8-12 (historical debut novel in verse about a boy and his family who are forced to flee their home and become refugees after the British Partition of India)
Monica Hesse, The Brightwood Code, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (sheds light on hidden history and the brutality of being a woman in a war built by men)
Dianne Hofmeyr, illus. Simona Mulazzani, The Most Famous Rhinoceros, Otter-Barry Books, Age 5-7 (picture book story inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut print of the rhinoceros sent from India to Portugal in 1515)
Traci Huahn, illus. Michelle Jing Chan, Mamie Fights to Go to School, Crown BfYR, Age 8-12 (inspired by the real-life story of Mamie Tape, an 8-year-old Chinese American girl who fought to attend the all-white school in her San Francisco neighborhood in the 1880s)
Hiba Noor Khan, Safiyyah’s War, Clarion/Allida, Age 8-12 (WWII; when her father is arrested, can Safiyyah find the courage to enter the catacombs under Paris and lead the Jews to safety?)
Josh Lacey, illus. Garry Parsons, The Stone Age Clash, Andersen Press, Age 8-11 (the time-travel twins will need to keep their wits about them to survive their visits to the Stone Age!)
Elizabeth Laird, The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown, Macmillan, Age 9-11 (witty coming-of-age story set in post WWII Britain)
Erica Lyons, illus. Yinon Ptahia, Saliman and the Memory Stone, Apples & Honey, Age 4-8 (a fictionalization of the real 1881 emigration of hundreds of Yemeni Jews to Jerusalem)
Robyn McGrath, illus. Liz Wong, A Mind of Her Own, Beach Lane, Age 5-8 (inspiring and mysterious true story of world-renowned detective novelist Agatha Christie’s journey to authorship)
Anna-Marie McLemore, Flawless Girls, Feiwel & Friends, YA (novel about a young woman who discovers a terrifying history at her prestigious finishing school, which won’t give up its secrets easily)
Michael Boulware Moore, illus. Bryan Collier, Freedom on the Sea, Henry Holt BYR, Age 4-8 (story of Robert Smalls and the Confederate ship he used to liberate himself, his family, and others from enslavement in 1862)
Michael Morpurgo, Twist of Gold (c.2007), Farshore, Age 8-12 (two children have one chance to escape the potato famine and plague in Ireland)
Tom Palmet, Angel of Grasmere, Barrington Stoke, Age 9-13 (1940; Tarn grapples with the loss of her brother at Dunkirk as she faces the threat of Nazi invasion in the Cumbrian countryside)
Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, City of Stolen Magic, Puffin, Age 9-14 (an historical fantasy set in India, 1855)
James Persichetti, illus. L. Biehler, A Tale of Two Knights: Tristan and Lancelot, HarperAlley, YA (a queer reimagining of Arthurian legend in which Lancelot and Tristan set out on a quest to find the missing magician Merlin)
Pat Lamondin Skene, illus. Sabrina Gendron, Lights Along the River, Orca, Age 6-8 (1952, Patsy Lamondin wakes to the day electricity will finally be connected to her small town along the Magnetawan River)
Tammar Stein, illus. Barbara Bongini, The Treasure of Tel Maresha, Apples & Honey, Age 8-10 (story of two similar girls and their struggle to reckon with the changes in their lives on the same spot, 2,000 years apart)
Cheyenne M. Stone and Glenda Armand, illus. by Katie Dorame, Toypurina: Tongva Leader, Medicine Woman, Rebel, Little Bee, Age 4-8 (picture book story about Toypurina, who organized a rebellion in 1785 against the Spanish rule in Tongva)
Sylvia Maultash Warsh, The Orphan, Auctus Publishing, YA (set in 1844 against the backdrop of slavery and an important presidential election, the novel stars 15-year-old Samuel whose life is saved by an experimental drug)
June 2024
Kimberly Ashley, The Seven Stones, Anamacara Press, YA (in this pre-historic adventure, teenagers Kadya and Ruark search for their family after their village is attacked)
Emma Carlson Berne, illus. Markia Jenai, Prudence Under Suspicion, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (1692 Salem Witch Trial graphic novel)
Matthew Cody, Colleen AF Venable, Marcie Colleen, illus. Chad Thomas, Time Buddies, Andrews McMeel, Age 8-12 (graphic time-travel adventure to ancient Egypt, the Wild West and the Renaissance)
Julie Kathleen Gilbert, illus. Wendy Tan Shiau Wei, Bonnie and the Fiery Crash, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (1937 story of the Hindenburg disaster)
Dan Gutman, The (Mostly True) Story of Cleopatra’s Needle, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (follows five kids from different historical periods involved in creating Cleopatra’s Needle in ancient Alexandria and its move to New York’s Central Park in the 19th century)
Natasha Hastings, The Sea Queen, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (sequel to The Frost Fair follows Thomasina and her friend Anne as they face a new threat to London)
Deron R. Hicks, The Dark Skies Mystery, Clarion Books, Age 8-12 (WWII-era mystery full of art and military history, spies and intrigue, in which a young journalist uncovers a secret at a famous mansion)
Kim Johnson, The Color of a Lie, Random House BfYR, YA (in 1955, caught between two worlds, a teen boy puts his family at risk as he uncovers racist secrets about his suburb)
Stacey Lee, Kill Her Twice, Putnam BfYR, YA (in 1930s Los Angeles’ Chinatown three Chinese American sisters investigate the murder of their neighborhood friend)
Natasha Mac a’Bháird, illus. Lauren O’Neill, The Tower Ghost, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (a Sycamore Hill mystery set in Donegal, 1963)
Keith Negley, author and illus., The Running Machine, Balzer + Bray, Age 4-8 (story of pluck and determination inspired by the real events of 1815–17, when a young man named Karl Drais invented the first bicycle)
Deborah Noyes, illus. M. Duffy, An Outbreak of Witchcraft, Little, Brown Ink, YA (graphic novel visually imagines the haunting details behind the Salem witch trials)
Eden Royce, The Creepening of Dogwood House, Walden Pond, Age 8-12 (a middle grade Southern Gothic story based on the hoodoo practice of hair burning, about a boy’s adoption by a kind couple with an enormous, creepy house)
Amy Rubinate, illus. Isabelle Duffy, Annie and the Unsinkable Ship, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (April, 1912; a peaceful journey across the sea comes to an end when Irish orphan Annie is awakened to discover the ship is sinking)
Caitlin Schneiderhan, Medici Heist, Feiwel & Friends, YA (in 1517 Florence Italy, a sharp-witted teenage thief leads a team of misfits, including the artist Michelangelo, in a plot to rob a dangerous and corrupt Medici Pope)
Judd Shaw, Sterling the Knight and the Slonefall Tournament, Morgan James Kids, Age 4-6 (picture book series of medieval adventures)
Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie, Pearl, Scholastic Graphix, YA (a Japanese American girl questions her loyalty when she is enlisted to translate English radio transmissions for the Japanese military after the attack on Pearl Harbor)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. David Shepherd, I Survived the Destruction of Pompeii, AD 79, Scholastic Graphix, Age 8-12 (a new graphic novel adaptation)
July 2024
Tina Athaide, Wings to Soar, Charlesbridge Moves, Age 8-12 (told in verse, story follows a resilient girl and the friendships she forges during the early 70s)
Andrew Beattie, The Angel Player, Sweet Cherry, Age 8-12 (part of the Tales From the Middle Ages series)
Ying Chang Compestine, illus. by Xinmei Liu, Growing Up Under a Red Flag, Rocky Pond, Age 8-12 (inspired by the author’s story of her childhood during the Cultural Revolution in China)
Sally Denmead, illlus. Alleanna Harris, A Song for August, Levine Querido, Age 4-8 (a picture book ode to one of America’s foremost Black playwrights)
Anna Fargher, Delta and the Lost City, Macmillan Childrens, Age 8-12 (historical adventure drawing on the legend of the Hero dog of Pompeii)
Bea Fitzgerald, The End Crowns All, Penguin, YA (YA Greek myth re-imagining about Cassandra and Helen)
Rosena Fung, Age 16, Annick Press, YA (coming-of-age graphic novel set in Guangdong, 1954, Hong Kong, 1972, and Toronto, 2000)
Kelly Hollman, Charlotte Watson Sherman, This Opening Sky, Milk + Cookies, Age 8-12 (novel in verse, following an unlikely friendship in the aftermath of the American Civil War)
Hayley Hoskins, The Whisperling Twins, Puffin, Age 9-12 (fantasy adventure set in Gloucestershire, 1918)
Wade Hudson, illus. Don Tate, The Day Madear Voted, Nancy Paulsen, Age 4-7 (inspired by the author’s mother voting for the first time as a Black American in 1969)
S. J. King, The Timekeepers: The Tesla Trap, DK Children, Age 7-9 (history-themed adventure stories to discover people and events that shaped our world)
Catherine Norton, Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars, HarperCollins, Age 10+ (in 1866, eleven-year-old Hester wins a place at Addington’s Nautical Navigation Academy, where she will learn to navigate by the stars)
Gita Ralleigh, The Voyage of Sam Singh, Zephyr, Age 9+ (second magical middle grade adventure set in a parallel colonial India)
Sarah Webb, The Weather Girls, The O’Brien Press, Age 9-12 (tale of bravery, adventure and friendship, inspired by true events from World War II)
August 2024
Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illus. Stacey Dressen McQueen, An Etrog From Across the Sea, Kar-Ben, Age 4-10 (in Colonial times, Papa brings home the perfect etrog for his children from across the sea)
Hayley Dennings, This Ravenous Fate, Sourcebooks Fire, YA (first book in fantasy duology set in 1926 Jazz Age Harlem, where at night the dance halls come to life—and death waits in the dark)
Gayle Forman, Not Nothing, Aladdin, Age 8-12 (a boy who has been assigned to spend his summer volunteering at a senior living facility learns unexpected lessons when he meets a 107-year-old Holocaust survivor)
Erica George, Witty in Pink, Entangled: Teen, YA (a sexy historical rom-com with a modern voice)
Adalyn Grace, Wisteria, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (the conclusion of the Gothic-infused historical Belladonna fantasy series)
Alexis Kossiakoff, Scott Forbes Crawford, The Phoenix and the Firebird, Earnshaw Books, Age 8-12 (historical fantasy melds the turmoil of 1920s China with Slavic and Chinese myth)
Barbara Lowell, illus. Antonio Marinoni, A Fine Little Bad Boy, Creative Editions, Age 4-7 (Quentin may be the “littlest Roosevelt,” but he soon rivals his father, the famous Teddy, as the biggest personality in the White House of the early 1900s)
Dionna L. Mann, Mama’s Chicken and Dumplings, Margaret Ferguson, Age 8-12 (growing up in segregated 1930’s Charlottesville, ten-year-old Allie is determined to find a man for her mama to marry)
Freeman Ng, Bridge Across the Sky, Atheneum BfYR, YA (novel in verse about a Chinese teen who immigrates to the United States with his family and endures mistreatment at the Angel Island Immigration Station)
Trinka Hakes Noble, illus. Amanda Calatzis, Just One Girl: A Fight for Equal Rights, Sleeping Bear Press, Age 7-8 (early 70s America; after hearing about the discrimination experienced by her mother, Jillian steps up to help. Tales of Young Americans series)
William Ritter, Rook, Algonquin YR, YA (standalone adventure set in the world of the historical Jackaby series)
Caitlin Schneiderhan, Medici Heist, Feiwel & Friends/Atom, YA (1517; a teenage thief leads a team of misfits in a daring heist for fortune, freedom and revenge against a corrupt Pope in Renaissance Italy)
Sherri L. Smith, illus. Christine Norrie, Pearl, Scholastic Graphix, Age 8-12 (a Japanese-American girl must survive years of uncertainty and questions of loyalty in Hiroshima during World War II)
Carolyn Ward, illus. Beatriz Castro, Bella Bright and the Witch Tree, Welbeck, Age 9+ (spooky mystery where Bella and friends get lost in a maze and sent back to 17th-century England)
Jonah Winter, illus. by Brad Holland, It Happened in Salem, Creative Editions, Age 9—12 (presenting a modern retelling of the Salem Witch trials)
September 2024
Kwame Alexander, Black Star, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 10+ (a story of struggle, determination, and the faith of an American family, set during the turbulent segregation era and the beginning of The Great Migration)
Marcie Flinchum Atkins, One Step Forward, Versify, YA (novel in verse about Matilda Young—the youngest suffragist to be arrested and imprisoned for lawful protests during the time leading up to the passage of the nineteenth amendment)
Bret Baier, illus. Marvin Sianipar, Duel Across Time, Aladdin, Age 8-12 (series about kids who use their love of history to thwart an evil time traveler’s scheme to change the past–what would have happened if Alexander Hamilton had lived and Aaron Burr had died?)
Ann Brashares, Ben Brashares, Westfallen, Simon & Schuster BfYR, Age 8-12 (alternate history thriller that asks what it would be like to wake up in present-day America if Germany had won World War I)
Alena Bruzas, To the Bone, Rocky Pond, YA (love story is an honest look at Colonial America, set during the “Starving Time” in Jamestown, 1609)
Veronica Chambers, Ida, in Love and in Trouble, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (story about courageous Ida B. Wells as she navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader)
Nancy Churnin, illus. Bethany Stancliffe, A Teddy Bear for Emily ―and President Roosevelt, Too, Albert Whitman, Age 4-8 (a historically inspired story of a girl who helps her immigrant parents create the original teddy bear to honor a kind president)
Lesa Cline-Ransome, illus. James E. Ransome, They Call Me Teach, Candlewick, Age 5-8 (picture book story in which an enslaved young man uses his ability to read and write to educate others in the pursuit of freedom)
Judi Curtin, Sally and the Lost Photograph, The O’Brien Press, Age 9+ (in NYC, Sally and her sister Bridget don’t know how to help, when their friend Betty commits a crime out of poverty and desperation)
Monique Duncan, illus. Oboh Moses, Freedom Braids, Lantana, Age 6-8 (picture book of love, liberation, and legacy inspired by the true story of enslaved African women in Colombia)
Margarita Engle, Eloísa’s Musical Window, Atheneum BfYR, Age 4-7 (a picture book about a music-loving girl in 1930s Cuba who discovers the melodies in the world outside her window)
Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (first installment in a planned nine-book series chronicling one hundred years in the life of one Ojibwe family)
Gabriele Goldstone, Waltraut, Heritage House/Wandering Fox, Age 8-12 (story of a first-generation-Canadian girl growing up in the shadows of the Second World War)
Annelise Gray, Circus Maximus: Return of the Champion, Zephyr, Age 8-12 (conclusion of the Circus Maximus series set in Ancient Rome full of adventures and an unforgettable heroine called Dido)
Alice Hoffman, When We Flew Away, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (fictionalized account of the increasingly desperate years that preceded the famous Anne Frank diary)
Michele C. Hollow, Jurassic Girl, Ulysses BfYR, Age 4+ (discover the fascinating life of 12-year-old Mary Anning, a fossil hunter who would grow up to be a famous paleontologist)
Anna James, illus. David Wyatt, The Age of Enchantment: Chronicles of Whetherwhy, HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Age 9-12 (first in a fantasy series beginning post-war in 1924)
Gordon Korman, illus. Hannah Templer, 39 Clues: One False Note, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (39 Clues series now in graphic format)
Sidura Ludwig, Swan, Nimbus, Age 8-12 (reimagines the childhood of Nova Scotia giantess Anna Swan)
Erica Lyons, illus. Siona Benjamin, On a Chariot of Fire: The Story of India’s Bene Israel, Levine Querido, Age 4-8 (featuring the other side of the Hanukkah story, this follows the Bene Israel community, as they flee Israel to find a new home in India)
Andy Marino, Escape from Alcatraz, Scholastic, (historical thriller about a daring prison break from Alcatraz Island in 1962)
Jennifer Maruno, The Go-Between, Red Deer Press, Age 9-12 (a Japanese Canadian girl living in Vancouver in 1926, takes her older sister’s place so that Yoshi can go to summer school to become a dressmaker)
Namita Moolani Mehra, illus. Beena Mistry, Veena and the Red Roti, Kids Can Press, Age 4-8 (set during the Partition of India, a story about a girl who helps others by cooking up a small taste of home)
Marta Palazzesi, trans. Denise Muir, illus. Ambra Garlaschelli, Feather & Claw, Piccadilly Press, Age 9+ (middle-grade fantasy adventure in 1914 Valencia)
James Patterson, Tad Safran, The Time Travel Twins, jimmy patterson, Age 8-12 (all that stands between an evil villain and world domination is a pair of twelve-year-olds who just learned they’re time travelers. What could go wrong!)
Anna Rosner, Eyes on the Ice, Groundwood, Age 9-12 (Czechoslovakia, 1963; hockey-crazy Lukas must make decisions that may endanger his family and his friends, as he faces tough questions about what loyalty really means)
Samantha San Miguel, Fathomless, Union Square Kids, Age 8-12 (full of hijinks, mystery, sequel to Spineless brings readers into the world of nineteenth century Gilded Age Florida)
Michael P. Spradlin, Rise of the Spider, Margaret K. McElderry, Age 8-12 (witness the rise of Hitler’s Germany through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy)
Sam Subity, Valor Wings, Scholastic Press, Age 8-12 (fantasy WWII adventure that reimagines the evacuation of Dunkirk… with dragons)
Robin Talley, Everything Glittered, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (1927; society girls try to find a murderer in a city filled with secrets and stunted by shame, in this queer historical thriller)
S. J. Taylor, Madsi the True, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (fantasy adventure set in 1700s Norway)
Andrew Varga, The Mongol Ascension, Imbrifex Books, YA (Mongolia, 1179; timeslip novel in which Dan lands on the Mongolian steppes, and encounters a brave Mongol teen on a daring mission to rescue his kidnapped wife)
A.R. Vishny, Night Owls, HarperCollins, YA (paranormal fantasy which brings to life history, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Jewish immigration, and Yiddish theatre)
Lee Wind, illus. Jieting Chen, Love of the Half-Eaten Peach, Reycraft Books, Age 8-12 (lyrical take on Yuan, Duke Ling of Wei, and his beloved, Mi Zi Xia, who shared a peach circa 500 BCE, inspiring people to use the expression to describe romantic love between men)
Tovah S. Yavin, Walking West, Menucha, Age 10-14 (young readers will walk west with David in 1883, as this little-known period in American Jewish history comes to life)
Jane Yolen, illus. Felishia Henditirto, The Many Problems of Rochel-Leah, Apples & Honey, Age 4-7 (19th-century Russia; once upon a time girls were not allowed to learn to read. This is the story of a girl who decided to change that)
Jane Yolen, illus. Laura Barella, Rebecca’s Prayer for President Lincoln, Kar-Ben, Age 8-12 (when President Lincoln, who brought an end to American slavery is shot, a Jewish girl in New York City mourns with her country)
October 2024
Sufiya Ahmed, Adèle Geras; Melvin Burgess; Berlie Doherty; Mary Hooper; Anne Fine; Matt Whyman; Theresa Breslin; Sally Nicholls; Rowena House, War Girls, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (collection of short stories present a portrait of loss and grief and of hope)
Avi, Lost in the Empire City, Quill Tree, Age 8-12 (young Santo gets separated from his family at Ellis Island & falls in with a group of boy thieves)
Nuria Gómez Benet (trans. Elisa Amado), illus. Santiago Solís Montes de Oca, Montezuma’s Tantrum, Greystone Kids, Age 9-13 (Emperor Montezuma’s court tries everything to cure his bad mood in this humourous story that sheds light on life in the Aztec empire)
Rachelle Burk, illus. Chiara Fedele, A Mitzvah for George Washington, Creston Books, Age 7-11 (Bella’s father has an important role to play when President George Washington comes to visit the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island)
Hari Conner, author & illus., I Shall Never Fall in Love, HarperAlley, YA (LGBT graphic format Regency romance)
Lydia Corry, author and illus., Wildflower Emily, Godwin Books, Age 7-10 (delves into Emily Dickinson’s childhood exploring her hometown of Amherst, Mass)
Loni Crittenden, The Ancient’s Game, HarperCollins, YA (historical fantasy with 1920s World’s Fair–inspired setting and inspiration from African Diasporic folklore)
Kevin Crossley-Holland, illus. Chris Riddell, King Alfred and the Ice Coffin, Candlewick Studio, Age 10+ (tale within a tale, focused on a heroic West Saxon king who championed the power of storytelling)
Adi Denner, The Kiss of the Nightingale, Tundra Books, YA (a stolen magical gem transforms an orphan’s destiny in a romantasy novel set in an alternative 1890 historical Paris)
Dr. Edith Eva Eger, The Ballerina of Auschwitz, Atheneum BfYR, YA (Edie is a talented dancer and a skilled gymnast with hopes of making the Olympic team. But life in Hungary in 1943 is dangerous for a Jewish girl)
David Ferraro, A Vile Season, Page Street, YA (supernatural Regency romance set in a world where race and sexual identity are not at issue)
Megan Hill, illus. Chiara Fedele, Fritz and the Midnight Meetup, B&H Kids, Age 4-8 (picture book retelling of the true story of a children’s prayer meeting during the German revival of 1860)
Marjolijn Hof (trans. Bill Nagelkerke), illus. Annette Fienieg, The Curse of Madame Petrova, Levine Querido, Age 9-11 (historical middle grade novel in which it is predicted that twins will one day be the cause of each other’s demise)
Mavasta Honyouti, Coming Home: A Hopi Resistance Story, Levine Querido, Age 7-9 (the story of the author’s grandfather’s experience at a residential boarding school and how he returned home to pass their traditions down to future generations)
Susan Hood, Lifeboat 5, Simon & Schuster BfYR, Age 8-12 (a World War II novel-in-verse about two very real girls who clung together for dear life when their evacuee ship was torpedoed)
Deborah Hopkinson, They Saved the Stallions, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (true story of the fight to save the world-famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna and its Lipizzaner horses during World War II)
J. Kasper Kramer, Eyes on the Sky, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (middle grade novel about a budding young scientist in 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, who fears her weather balloon experiment has been mistaken for a flying saucer)
Sacha Lamb, The Forbidden Book, Levine Querido, YA (set against a backdrop of literary censorship and growing Jewish political consciousness, in 1870, novel is an exploration of identity, survival, and hope)
Karen Levine, Sheila Baslaw, illus. Alice Priestley, The Light Keeper, Second Story Press, Age 6-8 (an enterprising boy helps bring light to his shtetl and help his family in 1900s Eastern Europe)
Meagan Mahoney, The Time Keeper, Cormorant YR, Age 9-12 (Edinburgh, 1902; a clockmaker’s apprentice races against time to solve the puzzle of the broken watch and to save his loved ones)
Amber McBride, Onyx & Beyond, Feiwel & Friends, Age 8-12 (based in part on the author’s father’s story of growing up during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s)
Tanisia Moore, illus. Robert Paul, When Black Girls Dream Big, Scholastic, Age 4-8 (a young child discovers her place in her heritage, as she meets twelve extraordinary Black women)
Alan Nolan, illus. Shane Cluskey, The Riddle of the Disappearing Dickens, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (a Bram Stoker and Molly Malone mystery set in Dublin and London 1859)
Sean O’Brien, illus. Karyn Lee, White House on Fire!, Norton YR, Age 8-12 (latest White House Clubhouse time-traveling series, in which Marissa and Clara find themselves in James Madison’s presidency, with the White House and capital city set on fire by invading British troops)
Ayo Oyeku, illus. Lydia Mba, What Happened on Thursday?, Amazon Crossing Kids, Age 7-9 (told from a child’s pov, follows a family through the Nigerian Civil War as they lose their home, travel the country, and settle in a refugee camp)
Randi Pink, Under the Heron’s Light, Feiwel & Friends, YA (dual timeline novel follows a 21st century college student as she learns of her family’s deep supernatural roots in the Great Dismal Swamp and her grandmother as a former enslaved girl in the 1700s)
Mélisande Potter, illus. by Giselle Potter, Togo to the Rescue, Christy Ottaviano, Age 4-8 (retelling the story of Togo and the fellow sled dogs that transported life-saving serum to the community of Nome, Alaska in 1925)
Trina Rathgeber, illus. Alina Pete, Lost at Windy River, Orca, Age 9-12 (1944; story of 13-year-old Ilse Schweder who got lost in a snowstorm in northern Canada and endured nine days alone in the unforgiving barrens)
Gloria Respress-Churchwell, illus. Laura Freeman, Follow Chester!, Charlesbridge, Age 6—9 (story of civil rights hero Chester Pierce’s game-changing role as the first Black college football player to compete south of the Mason-Dixon Line)
J. P. Rose, Birdie, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (a story about the magic of animals, set in 1950s Leeds)
Ellen Schwartz, illus. Alison Mutton, Friends to the Rescue, Apples & Honey, Age 8-12 (inspired by a true story, dual timeline narrative takes place in Fossa, Italy, a small mountain village that offered refuge to Jews during World War II)
Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, The Bletchley Riddle, Viking BfYR/Rock the Boat, Age 10+ (historical adventure follows two siblings at Bletchley Park, the home of WWII codebreakers, as they try to unravel a mystery surrounding their mother’s death)
Ali Standish, The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall: The Sign of the Five, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (in Book 2 Arthur battles new foes and journeys to find answers to save a poisoned Sherlock Holmes and others before it’s too late)
Lauren Tarshis, I Survived the Black Death, 1348, Scholastic Inc, Age 8-12 (travels to medieval England when the deadliest disease in world history sweeps across Europe and parts of Asia and Africa)
Chris Vick, Shadow Creatures, Zephyr, YA (middle grade story of bravery, resilience, rivalries and shadow creatures in the night during WWII in Norway)
November 2024
Kevin Crossley-Holland, illus. Chris Riddell, King Alfred and the Ice Coffin, Candlewick Studio, Age 8-12 (tale focused on a heroic West Saxon king who championed the power of storytelling)
Lex Croucher, Not For the Faint of Heart, Wednesday Books, YA (a queer historical romance, with all you’d expect from a story about the granddaughter of Robin Hood and the girl she’s accidentally kidnapped)
Tom Holland, illus. by Jason Cockcroft, The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks, and the Gods, Candlewick Studio, Age 9-11 (weaving myth and history, novel features a retelling of the Persian Wars)
Isabel Ibañez, Where the Library Hides, Wednesday Books (1885; historical fantasy set in Egypt filled with adventure, and a rivals-to-lovers romance)
Krystal Marquis, The Davenports: More than This, Dial, YA (book 2 of an escapist romance about a wealthy Black family in 1910s Chicago)
Katharine McGee, A Queen’s Game, Random House BfYR, YA (historical romance inspired by true events wherein three princesses struggle to find love and end up vying for the hearts of two future kings)
Katrina Nannestad, All the Beautiful Things, ABC Books AU, Age 10+ (a WWII story of loyalty and love, family and friendship and understanding and tolerance)
Tirzah Price, In Want of a Suspect, HarperTeen, YA (Lizzie and Darcy are back with more suspense, danger, and romance in this first in a duology spinoff of the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries)
Ella Schwartz, illus. by Juliana Oakley, Violin of Hope, Lerner, Age 6-11 (story of a violin which brings hope to the world with its World War II historical connection)
December 2024
Seb Duncan, The Book of Thunder & Lightning, Roundfire Books, YA (ghost story set in London, 1888)
Gigi Griffis, We Are the Beasts, Delacorte, YA (historical horror inspired by the unsolved mystery of the Beast of Gévaudan)
Lorna Gutierrez, illus. Adriana Gutierrez, Trailblazers: Into the Locker, Golden Bridges, Age 8-12 (time-travel adventure in which Noah inputs his locker combination, 18-6-2, and lands in 1862 Edinburgh, where he meets a fifteen-year-old Alexander Graham Bell)
Antony Barone Kolenc, The Devil’s Ransom, Loyola Press, Age 10-13 (a group of teens in medieval England voyage by sea to a Muslim-ruled city, where they must confront evil forces. Book six of the Harwood Mysteries)
Nadine Pinede, When the Mapou Sings, Candlewick Press, Age 14+ (novel in verse that weaves magical realism into a thriller about a young woman whose best friend goes missing)
Patricia Polacco, A Sea of Gold, S&S/Paula Wiseman, Age 4-8 (picture book following one Ukrainian family’s history through the generations)
Steve Watkins, Wolves at the Door, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (August, 1944; the Soviet Red Army reaches the edge of Hitler’s empire, and Asta leaves with her family hoping to reach the Baltic Sea and a transport ship)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for historical novels set in eras from ancient times to the mid 1970s. Details are based on publishers’ descriptions and are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Sam Adams, Jac, Y Lolfa (set in a coal mining valley in south Wales, during WWII, novel is about first friendships among boys from the perspective of the youngest and smallest, Jac)
Cheryl Adnams, Heart of the River, HQ Fiction (romance set against the environmental threats and deep family secrets. Set in Northern Victoria in 1956)
Emma R. Alban, Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend, Avon (debut queer Victorian romance in which two debutantes distract themselves from having to seek husbands and find their perfect match in each other)
Suzanne Allain, The Ladies Rewrite the Rules, Berkley (romantic comedy set in Regency England about a widow who takes high society by storm)
Lisa Ard, Brighter Than Her Fears, Creative James Media (story set in 1880s, Asheville, featuring a farming wife who tries to promote education for all)
Lucy Ashe, The Sleeping Beauties, Magpie/Union Square (May 1945; a chance meeting with a Sadler’s Wells ballet dancer changes everything for Rosamund and her dance-obsessed daughter, Jasmine)
Lelita Baldock, The Baker’s Secret, Storm Publishing (in Nazi-occupied Latvia, two sisters are forced to make an impossible choice)
Mally Becker, The Paris Mistress, Level Historia (a Revolutionary War mystery set in 1781 France)
Stephen Black, The Famine Witch, Quill and Crow (on the brink of the Irish famine, a sister and brother get caught up in a centuries-old feud)
Sue Bristow, The Fair Folk, Europa Editions (historical fantasy coming-of-age, about magic and the choices that define future generations, set in 1959)
Amy Brown, My Brilliant Sister, Scribner AU (when author Stella Miles Franklin took on the world, her sister Linda led a short, domestic life as a wife, mother and sister)
E. Joe Brown, A Cowboy’s Fortune, Artemesia (in 1919, cowboy and the love of his life will be tested by something they never expected)
Maggie Campbell, Nurse Kitty’s Unbreakable Spirit, Orion (next instalment of saga about love, courage and change in post-war Britain)
Nancy Campbell Allen, Protecting Her Heart, Shadow Mountain (mystery romance set in London, 1887)
Talia Carner, The Boy with the Star Tattoo, William Morrow (novel spanning postwar 1946 France, when Israeli agents roamed the countryside to rescue hidden Jewish orphans, to the 1969 daring escape of the Israeli boats of Cherbourg)
Deborah Carr, The Poppy Sisters, One More Chapter (two sisters, divided by war, face daily battles to save the lives of the wounded soldiers in their care)
Andrea Chalupa, illus. Ivan Rodriguez, In the Shadow of Stalin, Oni Press (tale of true-life of journalist Gareth Jones who traveled to the Soviet Union in the height of the 1930s Soviet Holodomor Famine. Graphic novel)
Vanessa Chan, The Storm We Made, Hodder & Stoughton/S&S Marysue Rucci (novel about a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII)
Michael J. Chaplin, A Fallen God, The Book Guild (set in thirteenth-century France, a retelling of the myth traditionally known to us as Tristan and Isolt)
Rory Clements, Munich Wolf, Zaffre (in Munich, 1935, Detective Sebastian Wolff is ordered to solve the murder of a high-born English girl)
Daniel Colter, Blood of Lions, Sapere (third book in the Knights Templar Thrillers series featuring military adventures set during the Medieval era)
Mary Connealy, D.J. Gudger, Becca Whitham, Kimberley Woodhouse, The Legacy of the Rocking K Ranch, Barbour (four generations of women in Wyoming experience love, loss, grace, adoption, struggles with the law, and relationships with natives)
Christina Courtenay, Shadows in the Ashes, Headline Review (dual-time novel travels from the present day to the fires of ancient Pompeii)
Sinéad Crowley, A Maid on Fifth Avenue, Aria (a dual timeline novel set in 1920s New York and post pandemic Ireland)
Avery Cunningham, The Mayor of Maxwell Street, Hyperion Avenue (love story explores the American Dream between Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the original Black upper class, and the violence of 1920s Chicago)
Neil Denby, Optio, Sapere (Quintus Roman Thrillers book 3)
Jude Deveraux, My Heart Will Find You, MIRA (dual narrative time-slip story in which a woman dreams she’s a mail-order bride, married to a handsome but guarded rancher in the 1870s)
Renita D’Silva, The Spice Maker’s Secret, Bookouture (dual timeline story set in 1939 India and 1990 London)
Jane Dunn, A Scandalous Match, Boldwood (Regency romance between a Covent Garden actress and an upstanding widowed lord)
Elizabeth Dunne, The Murderous Misses of Concord, Level Best (after a publishing success, Louisa May Alcott is drawn into a murder mystery)
Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer, You Dreamed of Empires, Riverhead/Harvill Secker (brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. Set in 1519)
Donna Everhart, When the Jessamine Grows, Kensington (novel set in North Carolina during the Civil War, as one woman fights to keep her family united and neutral during the most devastating and divisive period in American history)
Louise Fein, The London Bookshop Affair, William Morrow (about a London bookshop involved in an espionage network, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis)
Jennie Felton, The Coal Miner’s Wife, Headline (family saga set in Somerset, 1911)
P. W. Finch, Battle Lord, Canelo (AD 1066. Cerdic is a prisoner of war, captured after the Battle of Hastings, and whose survival depends on his ability to convince his captors of his value)
Laura Frantz, The Seamstress of Acadie, Revell (caught between the warring French and English on Canada’s shores in 1755, Sylvie Galant is forced from her Acadian home and family)
Mariah Fredericks, The Wharton Plot, Minotaur (follows novelist Edith Wharton, in the twilight years of the Gilded Age in New York, as she tracks a killer)
Helen Fripp, The Girl from Provence, Bookouture (WWII story of the sacrifices ordinary people are forced to make each day in wartime)
Temim Fruchter, City of Laughter, Grove Press (debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood and half-hidden secrets)
Daisy Goodwin, Diva, St. Martin’s/Aria (a story of the love affair between opera singer Maria Callas and multi-millionaire, Aristotle Onassis)
R. L. Graham, Death on the Lusitania, Macmillan (WW1 historical novel set aboard the ill-fated ocean liner)
Gordon Greisman, The Devil’s Daughter, Blackstone (noir thriller set in New York City in the 1950s)
Amy Lynn Green, The Foxhole Victory Tour, Bethany House (in World War II, worlds collide when performers across the United States unite to tour North Africa in a USO variety show)
Molly Green, Wartime Wishes at Bletchley Park, Avon (third in series set in Munich 1938 and Bletchley Park 1939)
Allison Grey, The Lady Thief of Belgravia, Storm Publishing (London, 1879; a romance grows between notorious pickpocket, Della Rose and the man who offers her money to steal from his arch nemesis)
Barbara Hambly, The Nubian’s Curse, Severn House (the unexpected arrival of a friend from his past plunges musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January into an old, unsolved case)
Kenneth W. Harmon, In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, Regalo (when the spirit of an American airman befriends a Japanese woman and her daughter in the days before the Hiroshima bomb, he races against time to save the ones he loves)
Anastasia Hastings, Of Hoaxes and Homicide, Minotaur (second Dear Miss Hermione Mystery where fielding questions from both irate housekeepers and heartbroken mothers is par for the course for the best-loved Agony Aunt in Britain)
Kent Heckenlively, The King of Italy, Arcade (family saga spanning World War II and Italy’s political intrigue)
Monika Helfer, trans. Gillian Davidson, Library for the War-Wounded, Bloomsbury (a daughter’s intimate portrait of her father, a man wounded by war in body and spirit)
Catherine Hokin, The Children We Lost, Bookouture (World War Two novel about the power of a mother’s love)
Liu Hong, The Good Women of Fudi, Scribe (story of loves lost and gained set during the aftermath of the Opium Wars)
Olivia Horrox, The Dancer’s Promise, Embla Books (novel about the bond between sisters and a changing world)
B. M. Howard, Blood of the Knights, Canelo (a whodunnit set during the height of Napoleon’s European conquests)
Maria Hummel, Goldenseal, Counterpoint (dual timeline novel of two estranged friends who reunite to confront each other and the devastating betrayal that tore them apart)
Rayda Jacobs, Eyes of the Sky, Apollo (explores the complex and interconnected lives of the settlers and the enslaved in eighteenth century South Africa)
Elizabeth Gonzalez James, The Bullet Swallower, S&S/Hodder & Stoughton (set in 1895 and 1964; a magical realism western follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family)
Tania James, Loot, Harvill Secker (a tale of plundered treasure, savage empire, lasting love and a young man’s dream to make his mark on the world)
Dan Jones, Wolves of Winter, Viking/Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (second book following Essex Dogs, set during the siege of Calais in 1300s mediaeval France)
Luisa A. Jones, The Broken Vow, Storm (a young woman pours her energy into turning Plas Norton into a healing place for her fiancé, Eustace, and other war-weary soldiers, until a mysterious stranger threatens it all)
Heather Kaufman, Up from Dust, Bethany House (a narrative of Martha’s life in a story of love, loss, and the promise of redemption)
Shubnum Khan, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, Viking/Magpie (novel about a ruined mansion, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previously)
Matthew Kneale, The Cameraman, Atlantic (a road trip like no other through a rapidly changing 1930s Europe)
Marion Kummerow, The Berlin Wife’s Resistance, Bookouture (a WWII story of determination and courage. Part of the German Wives series)
Lizzie Lane, Dark Shadows Over Coronation Lane, Boldwood (historical saga set in Bristol, just before WWII)
Natasha Lester, The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard, Forever (story of fashion icon Astrid Bricard who disappeared at the legendary Versailles designer show-down in 1973)
Melanie Levensohn, trans. Jamie Lee Searle, A Jewish Girl in Paris, Macmillan UK (in Paris, 1940, under German occupation, Christian, son of a bank director, falls in love with a Jewish girl)
Lindsay Lovise, Never Blow a Kiss, Forever (witty Victorian romance, in which a governess spy falls for an ex-soldier turned railroad magnate
H. B. Lyle, Spy Hunter, Mobius (historical Holmsian spy thriller)
Jeanne Mackin, Picasso’s Lovers, Berkley/Headline (portrait of the women caught in Picasso’s orbit through the affairs, the scandals, and the art)
Michele Mari, trans. Brian Robert Moore, Verdigris, And Other Stories Publishing (at the end of the 1960s, thirteen-year-old Michelín spends his summers at his grandparents’ Nasca estate, where he encounters the mysterious groundskeeper, Felice)
Karl Marlantes, Cold Victory, Grove Press (novel in which loyalty, friendship, and love are put to the ultimate test; set in Helsinki, 1947)
Beezy Marsh, Queen of Clubs, William Morrow (second in series about a ring of all-female gangsters in 1950s London)
Edward Marston, Murder in Transit, Allison & Busby (on a dark evening on the Isle of Wight, Agnes Raybould and her companion strangle a middle-aged man and Inspector Colbeck is called in to investigate)
Faith Martin, Murder By Candlelight, HQ (a village murder mystery set in The Cotswolds, 1924)
Mimi Matthews, The Lily of Ludgate Hill, Berkley (a confirmed spinster accepts a favor from the wicked gentleman who haunts her dreams)
Kathleen McGurl, The Lost Child, HQ Digital (dual timeline novel set aboard Carpathia in 1912 and a contemporary archivist piecing together a centuries-old mystery)
Frances McNamara, Three-Decker Murder in a Nutshell, Level Best Historia (second in a series of fictional stories roughly based on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death)
Ellie Midwood, I Have to Save Them, Bookouture (inspired by the true story of Orli Reichert)
Derek B. Miller, The Curse of Pietro Houdini, Avid Reader Press (World War II art-heist-adventure tale)
Vanessa Miller, The American Queen, Thomas Nelson (the unsung true history of a kingdom built as a refuge for the courageous people who dared to dream of a different way of life. Set in the enslaved South, 1869)
Fernando J. Múñez, The Cook of Castamar (c.2019), Apollo/Bloomsbury US (an unlikely romance set in an early 18th-century world of royal duties, sordid affairs and complicated politics)
Donald S. Murray, The Salt and the Flame, Saraband (novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World, beginning in 1923)
Hester Musson, The Beholders, Fourth Estate (gothic murder mystery set in 1878)
Kitty Neale, A Wife’s Courage, Orion (London, 1944; keeping the Battersea Tavern open is no easy feat for owner Winnie Berry – but the community needs the warmth and familiarity)
Andie Newton, The Secret Pianist, One More Chapter (when a British RAF Whitley plane comes under fire over the French coast, a spy messenger pigeon finds its way into unlikely hands)
Jamie Ogle, Of Love and Treason, Tyndale House (Christian historical romance novel retelling the legend of St. Valentine)
Helen Parusel, The Austrian Bride, Boldwood (story of the strength of women and the unwavering courage of those who seek a better world)
Candice Sue Patterson, The Day the Waters Raged, Barbour (6 stories featuring historic American disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives. First story set May 31, 1889)
Andrea Penrose, The Diamond of London, Kensington (the triumph and tragedy of the Regency-era adventuress, Lady Hester Stanhope)
Pepetela, trans. David Brookshaw, The Utopian Generation, Biblioasis (first English translation of a novel of African decolonization set in Lisbon, 1961)
Tyler Perry, Echo Brown, A Jazzman’s Blues, Atria (tale of love and family secrets set in Georgia in the 1940s)
Andrew X. Pham, Twilight Territory, W. W. Norton (novel of love, war, and resistance in post–World War II Japanese-occupied Vietnam)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch, Fleet (story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War)
MJ Porter, Clash of Kings, Boldwood (next installment in The Brunanburh Series, set in AD 937)
Lynette Rees, The Winter Waif, Boldwood (1884; saga of a young girl who flees to the working district of Merthyr Tydfil to escape her father’s new wife)
Nancy Revell, The Widow’s Choice, Penguin (historical saga set in 1949, County Durham)
Ian Roberts, The Celestials, Arden (novel begins in Canton during the Opium Wars and expands in the Australian Gold Rush of the 19th century)
Tara Karr Roberts, Wild and Distant Seas, W. W. Norton (narrative follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston)
Angela Rodel, trans. Vera Mutafchieva, The Case of Cem, Sandorf Passage (first English-language translation of a Bulgarian classic presents a series of depositions by historical figures before a court)
Linda Margolin Royal, The Star on the Grave, Affirm Press (novel inspired by the true story of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who secretly issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees in WWII)
Lynda Rutledge, Mockingbird Summer, Lake Union (literary coming of age novel)
Michelle Salter, Murder at the Merewood Hospital, Boldwood (1916; mystery at a hospital believed cursed, either by a dead nurse or by the patients who perished from their war wounds)
Lydia San Andres, The Return of His Caribbean Heiress, Harlequin Historical (Leandro and heiress Lucia meet up again after five years apart)
Jonathan Santlofer, The Lost Van Gogh, Sourcebooks Landmark (story alternates between a perilous hunt for a painting, and a history of stolen art and stolen lives)
Audrey Schulman, The Dolphin House, Europa Editions (based on the true story of a 1960s experiment; a meditation on what makes us truly human)
Nisi Shawl, Kinning, Tor (sequel to Everfair, an alternate history fantasy which imagines what might have happened to colonization if the African natives of the Congo had developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors)
Lauraine Snelling, A Season of Harvest, Bethany House (inspirational romance bringing the Leah’s Garden series to a close)
Mary-Lou Stephens, The Chocolate Factory, HQ Fiction (love, friendship and secrets in the early years of Cadbury’s Tasmanian factory)
Julian Stockwin, Sea of Treason, Mobius (following his recovery after a savage wounding in America, Kydd returns to England to re-assume command of Thunderer, which is sent to the remote station of Bermuda)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Duelling Dukes, Sapere (sixth Victorian crime thriller in the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series)
Embassie Susberry, Code Name Butterfly, Avon (novel inspired by the true story of Josephine Baker who worked for the French Resistance in WWII)
ReShonda Tate, The Queen of Sugar Hill, William Morrow (fictional portrait of Hattie McDaniel, one of Hollywood’s most prolific but underappreciated stars—and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar)
Teresa Trent, Listen, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Level Best (1964; murder mystery with an amateur sleuth who works at a radio station)
Johanna Van Zanten, The Imposter, Addison & Highsmith (family drama of a headstrong girl who falls in love, marries and bears children, but whose loyalty is tested when the Nazis invade)
Leo Vardiashvili, Hard By a Great Forest, Riverhead/Bloomsbury (novel about the individual and collective trauma of war, and the indomitable spirit of a people determined to survive)
Alexandra Walsh, The Secrets of Crestwell Hall, Boldwood (a gunpowder plot dual timeline novel set in 1605 and present day)
Jenni L. Walsh, Unsinkable, Harper Muse (novel spanning WWI and WWII about a stewardess and wartime nurse who survives a shipwreck on the Olympic and the sinking of both the Titanic and Britannic)
Steve Weddle, The County Line, Lake Union (set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, novel is a celebration of community and opportunity in 1933 America)
Jeri Westerson, The Twilight Queen, Severn House (court jester Will Somers is drawn into another mystery when malevolent forces strike again at the court of Henry VIII)
Rob Wills, Plague Searchers I: Red Wands and Plague Searchers II: Flee Quick, Go Far, Arden (tale of friendships, feuds, plots and betrayals, paints life and death on the perilous streets of plague-struck London, 1665)
Marty Wingate, A Body on the Doorstep, Bookouture (book one in the London Ladies’ Club Golden Age Mystery series)
Marty Wingate, A Body at the Séance, Bookouture (book two in the London Ladies’ Club Golden Age Mystery series)
C. J. Wray, The Excitements, William Morrow/Orion (humorous drama about two female World War II veterans who survived the unthinkable)
February 2024
Sara Ackerman, The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, MIRA (dual timeline story of a female pilot who embarks on an air race across the Pacific in the golden age of aviation, & the woman who uncovers her buried history 60 years later)
Leah Angstman, Falcon in the Dive, Regal House (thriller which parallels the tumultuous years of the French Revolution and present day)
Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Del Rey/Century (during the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise)
Lynn Austin, All My Secrets, Tyndale House (1898; fiction set in Gilded Age New York, where three generations of women must reckon with the choices they have made and their hopes for the future)
Ellen Baker, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson, Mariner (multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make; set in 1924 and 2015)
D. R. Bailey, The Sunrise Raiders, Sapere (4th book of the Spitfire Mavericks Thrillers, set in 1941)
Kirsten Bakis, King Nyx, Liveright (set in 1918 on the island estate of an eccentric millionaire, novel reimagines the life of Anna Filing Fort in a mystery about the fate of women & girls in the orbit of self-important men)
Angela Bell, A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure, Bethany House (when Clara Stanton’s ex-fiancé spreads rumors that her family suffers from hereditary insanity, it’s all Clara can do to protect them)
S. J. Bennett, A Death in Diamonds, Zaffre (murder mystery set in London 1957)
Baron Birtcher, Knife River, Open Road Media (a sheriff fighting to keep the peace in 1970s Oregon faces a shocking secret from his town’s past)
Cecily Blench, Secrets of Malta, Zaffre (an unlikely bond develops between two women, and strange secrets emerge, during an urgent quest to unmask a spy)
Jacquie Bloese, The Golden House, Hodder & Stoughton (in genteel late-Victorian Brighton, Ellen and Reynold Harper are portrait photographers, but illicit photographs taken after hours are what keeps their business afloat)
J. C. Briggs, The Legacy of Foulstone Manor, Sapere (a dual timeline Gothic mystery set in England between the 1970s and the 1920s, exposing family secrets and trauma from WWI)
Sylvia Broady, The Gunner Girls; Evie’s Story, Joffe Books (1942; romance in which three girls leave home to become Ack Ack Gunner Girls, defending Britain from Luftwaffe attacks)
Benedict Brown, The Hurtwood Village Murders, Storm (cozy 1920s mystery with a series of threatening letters, a forgotten figure from the past, and a killer out to settle scores)
Denny S. Bryce, The Other Princess, Allison & Busby (portrait of an African princess raised in Queen Victoria’s court and adapting to life in Victorian England—based on the real-life story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta)
Jessica Bull, The Hapless Milliner, Union Square/Michael Joseph (murder mystery featuring Jane Austen as an amateur sleuth—first in a series)
Joanne Burn, The Bone Hunters, Sphere (novel of ambition, obsession and betrayal set in Lyme Regis, 1824)
Annie Burrows, The Countess’s Forgotten Marriage, Harlequin Historical (a Regency reunion of a husband with his wife who has been away following a traumatic event)
Elizabeth Camden, While the City Sleeps, Bethany House (Katherine Schneider’s workaday life as a dentist in 1913 New York is upended when a patient reveals details of a deadly plot while under the influence of laughing gas)
Anna Canic, Sophia and Cassius, Addison & Highsmith (presents well-known stories about the lost paradise and the decadence of ancient civilization, focusing on religious, philosophical and esoteric themes)
Francesca Capaldi, Dark Days at the Beach Hotel, Hera (saga set in World War One)
Catherine Cavendish, Those Who Dwell in Mordenhyrst Hall, Flame Tree (a gothic thriller set in 1920s)
Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife, Henry Holt/Quercus (Manchuria, 1908; novel about a winter full of mysterious deaths, a mother seeking revenge, and old folktales that may very well be true)
Amanda Churchill, The Turtle House, Harper (dual timeline 1990s and WWII literary debut about a grandmother and granddaughter who connect over a beloved lost place and the secrets they carry)
Alys Clare, The Stranger in the Asylum, Severn House (London, 1882; private investigators Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham hunt down an escapee from a French asylum)
Mary Connealy, Chasing the Horizon, Bethany House (adventurous historical novel of survival, sacrifice, and romance on the Oregon Trail)
Iris Costello, The Story Collector, Penguin (tells the story of three people divided by time and circumstance yet bound by a long-held secret – story set in London, 1915, Germany, 1918 and present-day Cornwall)
Claire Coughlan, Where They Lie, S&S UK/Harper Perennial (literary thriller set in 1960s Dublin about an ambitious young journalist whose investigation takes her through misty streets into the tangled underworld)
Dilly Court, The Lucky Penny, HarperCollins (a young woman’s life is changed by a twist of fate in this romantic saga)
Michael Crummey, The Adversary, Doubleday/Knopf (a dark novel about love and its limitations, the corruption of power and the power of corruption)
Lindsey Davis, Voices of Rome, Hodder & Stoughton (four tales of Ancient Rome)
Sebastien de Castell, Crucible of Chaos, Mobius (a mortally wounded magistrate faces his deadliest trial inside an ancient abbey where the monks are going mad in this historical fantasy)
Jennifer Deibel, The Irish Matchmaker, Revell (Catriona Daly makes grand plans for herself at the annual Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival, but doesn’t expect a shy, widowed sheep farmer to distract her from her goal)
Rachel Donohue, The Whispering House, Corvus (dual timeline 20th-century tale of two sisters haunted by the presence of a long-dead father and the terrible secrets he kept)
David Downing, Union Station, Soho Crime (British journalist John Russell’s research into a wartime conspiracy brings him face-to-face with the perilous instability of a post-Stalin Berlin)
Viktoria G. Duda, Twenty-Five Centuries Without You, Addison & Highsmith (novel takes readers on a metaphysical journey from Ancient Greece to modern times)
Morag Edwards, The Jacobite’s Plight, Bloodhound (tale of a woman buffeted by war, loyalty and rivalries. Sequel to The Jacobite’s Wife)
Malayna Evans, Neferura, Sourcebooks Landmark (a novel of the forgotten daughter of a legendary Egyptian pharaoh and the path she must take to escape her own dangerous fate)
Robert Fabbri, Forging Kingdoms, Corvus (fifth book in a series about the fight to regain Alexander the Great’s empire after his untimely death)
Ellen Feldman, The Trouble With You, St. Martin’s Griffin (in post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each)
Jean Findlay, The Queen’s Lender, Scotland Street Press (offers insight into 17th century Edinburgh and London, and the intrigue-ridden courts of James Stuart and his Danish consort, Anna)
Andrew Finkel, The Adventure of the Second Wife, Even Keel (the strange case of Abdülahamid and Sherlock Holmes)
Dominique Fortier, trans. Rhonda Mullins, Pale Shadows, Coach House Books (the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows)
David Gilman, To Kill a King, Head of Zeus — an Aries Book (eighth adventure in the Master of War series set in fourteenth-century Europe)
Robert Goswitz, The Dragon Soldier’s Good Fortune, Open Road Media (in Vietnam, 1971, Private Ed Lansky seeks protection from evil from the Dragon Spirit)
James Grady, The Smoke in Our Eyes, Pegasus (set in 1959, a rural noir that captures an intimate story and volatility of mid-century America)
Lilly Graham, The Only Light in London, Bookouture (romance set in London, 1939 at the beginning of WWII)
Kristin Hannah, The Women, St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan UK (the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s)
Aleksandar Hernon, The World and All That it Holds, Picador (a cross-continental tale of a powerful love that conquers the Great War, revolution and even death)
Austin Hernon, The Abandoned Queen, Sapere (Berengaria of Navarre Medieval Trilogy Book 2)
Kate Hewitt, The Girl on the Boat, Bookouture (first book in Emerald Sisters series that follows four brave young women, as they forge their futures against the backdrop of WWII)
Elisabeth Hobbes, My Fair Lord, One More Chapter (a Gilded Age Retelling of My Fair Lady)
Charlie N. Holmberg, Boy of Chaotic Making, 47North (a boy like no other embarks on a transformative journey of magic and self-discovery in the next Whimbrel House novel. Historical fantasy)
Emily Howes, The Painter’s Daughters, Simon & Schuster/Phoenix (novel of Gainsborough’s daughters, one of whom has a tendency to fall into mental confusion, and the other who knows that no one must find out)
Anna Lee Huber, Sisters of Fortune, Kensington (based on the true story of the Fortune sisters and how the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic in 1912 would transform their lives)
Helen Humphreys, Followed by the Lark, Farrar, Straus & Giroux/HarperCollins (a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, following the life of Henry David Thoreau)
Amanda Jayatissa, Island Witch, Berkley (set in 19th century Sri Lanka and inspired by local folklore, the daughter of a traditional demon-priest tries to solve the mysterious attacks that have been terrorizing her coastal village)
Jane Jesmond, A Quiet Contagion, Verve Books (novel that blends the past and the present to create a dual timeline historical mystery)
Alexandra Joel, The Artist’s Secret, HarperCollins (saga of strong heroines and family secrets, set in 1965 and 1987)
William W. Johnstone; J.A. Johnstone, The Forty-Niners, Kensington (an Old West saga of the great American Gold Rush)
Isabella Kamal, The Temple of Persephone, Blackstone (historical Regency romance)
M.R.C. Kasasian, The Montford Maniac, Canelo (quirky Victorian caper. Second in Lady Violet Thorn series)
Francesca Kay, The Book of Days, Swift Press (1546; novel set at the end of Henry VIII’s reign and amidst the religious upheaval that followed)
Suzanne Kelman, The Last Day in Paris, Bookouture (first novel in the Paris Sisters series; a WWII story of two brave women and a secret that will tie them together forever)
Paulette Kennedy, The Devil and Mrs. Davenport, Lake Union (mines the subtle horrors of 1950s America in a novel about a woman under pressure―from the living and the dead)
Laurie R. King, The Lantern’s Dance, Allison & Busby/Bantam (Sept, 1925; the secrets of the past appear to be reaching into the present when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive at his son’s house to find the Adler’s have fled)
Amitava Kumar, My Beloved Life, Knopf / Picador (novel that traces the arc of a man’s life, starting from his 1935 birth in a small village in India)
Mariely Lares, Sun of Blood and Ruin, Harper Voyager (reimagining of Zorro weaves Mesoamerican mythology and Mexican history into a historical debut fantasy with magic, intrigue, treachery, and romance)
Samantha Larsen, Once Upon a Murder, Crooked Lane (England, 1784; Miss Tiffany Woodall must sleuth the slaying of a footman to clear her beloved’s name)
Amanda Lees, The Paris Spy’s Girl, Bookouture (1943; WWII novel of love, courage and sacrifice in wartime Paris)
Margot Livesey, The Road From Belhaven, Knopf (novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in late 19th century Scotland)
Toby Lloyd, Fervour, Sceptre (post-war look at the politics of a dysfunctional Jewish family where the perfect daughter begins to come undone)
Hannah Lynn, A Spartan’s Sorrow, Sourcebooks Landmark (feminist retelling of one of Ancient Greece’s most ferocious women, Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon)
Elle Machray, Remember, Remember, HarperNorth (an alternative history story of conscience, conspiracy, queer identity and courage in the face of injustice. Set in 1770)
Beezy Marsh, Queen of Diamonds, Orion (third in a crime saga series about real-life gang girl, Alice Diamond)
Sarah Marsh, A Sign of Her Own, Park Row/Tinder (1878; the story of Ellen Lark, a deaf woman and favorite student of Alexander Graham Bell, in his race to invent the telephone)
Imogen Martin, To the Wild Horizon, Storm (novel set in Missouri, 1846, shows the true strength and resilience of a woman’s heart in an inspiring story of love and courage)
Valerie Martin, Mrs. Gulliver, Doubleday/Serpent’s Tail (1954; tale of female subversion and agency in a patriarchal world)
Beryl Matthews, Beautiful Innocence, Alison & Busby (Victorian Saga of triumph over adversity, set in London, 1900)
Melanie Maure, Sisters of Belfast, Harper (story beginning in World War II, about orphaned twin sisters in Ireland whose lives diverge for decades, until fate reunites them in their twilight years)
Patrice McDonough, Murder by Lamplight, Kensington (1866; a female physician and a Scotland Yard detective reluctantly team up to stop a sadistic killer)
Lesley McDowell, Clairmont, Wildfire (retelling of the story of Lord Byron and the Shelleys, from the perspective of Claire Clairmont)
M. A. McLaughlin, The Lost Dresses of Italy, Alcove Press (two stories of love and deceit intertwine nearly a hundred years apart in Verona, Italy; set in Verona 1947 & 1864)
Edward McSweegan, The Fever Hut, Fireship Press (two men race against antiquated ideas, foreign competitors, and each other to find a cure for yellow fever and claim a place in history)
Katherine Mezzacappa, The Maiden of Florence, Fairlight Books (Florence, 1584; based on true events, novel gives a voice to a woman cast aside by history)
Fenella J. Miller, Army Girls, Boldwood (romantic saga in which Grace runs away to the safety of the army to escape an enforced marriage)
Liz Milliron, The Secrets We Keep, Level Best/Historia (1943; a soldier home from Europe on medical furlough wants Betty Ahern to find his birth mother)
Jessica Mills, Rosalind, Legend (biographical novel that explores how women have been written out of the history books, and how women’s ideas are often co-opted in male-dominated fields such as science)
Tonya Mitchell, The Arsenic Eater’s Wife, Bloodhound (a young woman convicted of murdering her husband is freed 15 years later and sets out to find who framed her)
Caroline Montague, The Pieces of Us, Orion (historical mystery romance with a past dating back to WWII)
Thomas Mullen, The Rumor Game, Minotaur/Abacus (a determined reporter and a reluctant FBI agent face off against fascist elements in this historical thriller set in World War II-era Boston)
Kiyoko Murata, A Woman of Pleasure, Counterpoint (novel of fearless women banding together to pursue the lives they want, inspired by the real-life historic Japanese courtesan strike)
Pamela Norsworthy, War Bonds, Black Rose Writing (WWII thriller set in 1939 Poland)
Benjamin Myers, Cuddy, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England)
Anne O’Brien, A Court of Betrayal, Orion (Johane de Geneville is married to Roger Mortimer, who deposes Edward II and rules England alongside Queen Isabella)
Robin Oliveira, A Wild and Heavenly Place, Putnam (story of star-crossed lovers and the birth of Seattle)
Diane Oliver, Neighbors and Other Stories, Grove Press (debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism)
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Knopf (traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family)
Allison Pataki, Finding Margaret Fuller, Ballantine (reimagining of the life of Margaret Fuller—America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation)
Elba Iris Pérez, The Things We Didn’t Know, Gallery (cross-cultural coming-of-age debut explores a young girl’s childhood between 1950s Puerto Rico and a small Massachusetts factory town)
Lizzie Pook, Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge, Picador/S&S (1850; Maude must step into London’s dark underbelly to deliver justice for her missing sister)
Eilish Quin, Medea, Atria (Medea’s side of the story through a fresh and feminist lens)
Kate Quinn, Janie Chang, The Phoenix Crown, William Morrow (narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles)
Angela Ransom, Death Foretold, Sapere (trusted lady-in-waiting Catrin Surovell investigates another murder mystery)
Jeffrey Richard, We Are Only Ghosts, John Scognamiglio (saga about a teenage boy’s complicated relationship with a Nazi officer in a WWII death camp, which is resurrected in 1960s New York City)
Anthony Riches, Clash of Legions: Empire XIV, Hodder & Stoughton (Marcus Aquila and his patron Rutlius Scaurus are tasked with rooting out a spy ring, placing the two friends at great risk)
Maurice Carlos Ruffin, The American Daughters, One World/Random House (novel about a spirited girl who joins a sisterhood working to undermine the Confederates)
Justin Scott, The Sister Queens, Severn House (England 1600; with no heir to the Elizabethan throne, Will Shakespeare uncovers a deadly plot)
Irina Shapiro, The Highgate Cemetery Murder, Storm (mystery set in Victorian London)
Sara Sheridan, The Secrets of Blythswood Square, Hodder & Stoughton (1846; Glasgow is a city on the cusp of great social change, but rumours of improper behaviour spread like wildfire on the respectable Blythswood Square)
Leslie Shimotakahara, Sisters of the Spruce, Caitlin Press (drawing on inspiration from the author’s ancestors, novel weaves a tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival during WWI)
Douglas Skelton, A Grave for a Thief, Canelo (1716; Jonas Flynt – thief, gambler, killer – is tasked with finding a lawyer who knows too many secrets)
Jill Eileen Smith, The Ark and the Dove, Revell (knowing that God’s judgment is coming soon, Noah and his wife Emzara dedicate themselves to God’s command to build an ark)
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz, Scribner (tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently)
Sarah Sundin, Embers in the London Sky, Revell (after fleeing the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, Aleida’s search for her missing child sets her on a collision course with a charismatic BBC radio correspondent)
Paul Theroux, Burma Sahib, Mariner (novel explores George Orwell and the early years as an officer in colonial Burma that transformed him from Eric Blair, the British Raj policeman, into Orwell the anticolonial writer)
Kate Thompson, The Wartime Book Club, Forever/Hodder & Stoughton (a story of everyday bravery and resistance, full of romance, drama, and camaraderie in WWII)
Liz Tolsma, What I Promise You, Barbour (dual timeline novel featuring family secrets buried by atrocities in WWII)
Sarah Tomlinson, The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, Flatiron (debut about the complicated legacy of a legendary rock band and the ghostwriter telling their story)
Martha Waters, To Woo and to Wed, Atria (final installment in the Regency Vows series follows the heir to a dukedom and a young widow as they reunite to fake an engagement for the benefit of her sister)
Heather Webb, Queens of London, Sourcebooks Landmark (a look at Britain’s first female crime syndicate, the ever-shifting meaning of justice, and the way women claim their power)
Eric Z. Weintraub, South of Sepharad, History Through Fiction (fleeing death by the Spanish Inquisition, a Jewish doctor makes an impossible choice between home and faith)
Amanda Wen, The Rhythm of Fractured Grace, Kregel (inspirational dual time line story set in present day and on the western frontier in the nineteenth century)
Phillip B. Williams, Ours, Viking/Granta (novel set in mid-nineteenth-century America about the spiritual costs of a freedom that demands fierce protection)
Sheila Williams, No Better Time, Amistad (novel about a little known aspect of World War II—the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black WACs to serve overseas during the conflict)
Gerry Wilson, That Pinson Girl, Regal House (told against the backdrop of World War I, the influenza epidemic, and the burden of generations of betrayal, novel illuminates timeless issues of racism, sexism, and poverty)
Mary Winters, Murder in Masquerade, Berkley (Victorian Countess turned advice columnist Amelia Amesbury finds herself playing the role of sleuth when a night at the theater turns deadly)
Robert Young, Murder in a Minor Key, At Bay Press (Winnipeg, 1935. Murder mystery featuring blind Detective Inspector Sidney Baxter, the finest Detective with the Winnipeg Police Force)
Zhang Ling, trans. Shelly Bryant, Aftershock, Amazon Crossing (summer 1976; a catastrophic disaster in China triggers a mother’s heartbreaking choice and a daughter’s reconciliation with the past)
March 2024
Anita Abriel, The Philadelphia Heiress, Lake Union (in pursuit of happiness in 1927, a young woman’s dreams extend beyond money and marriage)
Jenny Adams, A Deadly Endeavor, Crooked Lane (debut historical mystery set in Philadelphia, 1921, where a serial killer is on the loose)
K.D. Alden, Lady Codebreaker, Forever (novel based on the true story of the woman who used her codebreaking skills to bring down Prohibition gangsters and WWII Nazis)
Larry Alexander, Shattered Jade, Blackstone (novel of World War II, told through the eyes of soldiers on both sides of the firing line)
Rose Alexander, A Letter from Italy, Bookouture ( a tragic love affair in WW II and how a daughter lost for decades finally follows her heart home)
Susan Allott, The House on Rye Lane, The Borough Press (multi time period narrative about the many ways the past can echo into the present)
Steve Anderson, Lines of Deception, Open Road Media (4th book in The Kaspar Brothers series)
Jennifer Ashley, Speculations in Sin, Berkley (to save an innocent man’s life, amateur sleuth and cook Kat Holloway must expose a financial scam that could ruin the most powerful aristocrats in Victorian-era London)
Stefania Auci, trans. Katherine Gregor and Howard Curtis, The Triumph of the Lions, HarperVia (against a background of the Belle Epoque novel dives into the history of a family that, for decades, sat high above Italian society)
C. J. Barker, Hungry Ghosts, The Book Guild (set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, novel explores the intergenerational impact of war on the relationships between fathers and sons)
Erin Bartels, The Lady with the Dark Hair, Revell (dual-timeline story takes readers from the sleepy Midwest to the sultry Mediterranean on a search for truth, identity, and the freedom to follow one’s dreams)
Rowan Beaird, The Divorcées, Flatiron/Manilla Press (novel set at a 1950s Reno “divorce ranch,” about the complex friendship between two women who dare to imagine a different future)
Audrey Blake, The Woman With No Name, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel about a young woman who is recruited as Britain’s first female sabotage agent and sent to France in 1942)
Gary Born, The File, Addison & Highsmith (a graduate student, on a scientific expedition in Africa, stumbles upon a cache of WWII Nazi files)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, In Sunshine or in Shadow, Minotaur (retired detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is back in latest mystery set in New York, 1907)
Verity Bright, A Death in Venice, Bookouture (in 1924, Lady Eleanor Swift is having a jolly good time on her Italian vacation, until a gondola ride is cut murderously short)
Robert Brighton, Current of Darkness, Ashwood Press (a tale of industrial espionage, love, and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Gilded Age Niagara Falls)
Elizabeth Brooks, The Woman in the Sable Coat, Tin House (WWII novel tells the story of two families fatally entangled in one another’s darkest secrets)
Horace Brown, Whispering City, Véhicule Press (vintage noir set in old Quebec City)
Sophie Buchaillard, Assimilation, Honno Press (one family’s story set against the backdrop of some of the biggest political and humanitarian events of the century)
Rachel Burton, The Mystery of Haverford House, Aria (dual timeline romantic mystery set in 1933 and 2003)
Sarah Burton, Jem Poster, Eliza Mace, Duckworth (new Victorian mystery series featuring young would-be detective Eliza Mace)
Ryan Byrnes, My Dear Antonio, Walrus Publishing (inspired by the love story of Byrnes’ great-grandparents— children of the Sicilian diaspora separated from their families on the Mediterranean coast. Beginning in 1912)
Deborah Carr, Neighbours At War, One More Chapter (when German forces invade the Channel Islands, the islands’ residents bond together to resist the enemy)
Flora Carr, The Tower, Doubleday/Hutchinson Heinemann (Scotland, 1567; a feminist debut novel, reimagining Mary, Queen of Scots’ darkest hour)
Tim Chant, The Guns of Zanzibar, Sapere (a Marcus Baxter naval thriller, book 4, set in 1914)
Kerry Chaput, Daughter of Snow and Secrets, Black Rose Writing (final installment in Defying the Crown trilogy; adventure through the world of Paris and Versailles)
Adrienne Chinn, In the Shadow of War, One More Chapter (sisters Etta, Jessie and Celie Fry try to determine their futures after the Great War, as whispers of a new war make their way across the land)
Meagan Church, The Girls We Sent Away, Sourcebooks Landmark (set against the 1960s Baby Scoop Era, following one southern girl and her fight against a system that’s determined to take her child away from her)
Garrard Conley, All the World Beside, Riverhead (novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England)
Rebecca Connolly, Hidden Yellow Stars, Shadow Mountain (based on the true story of two WW II heroines who risked everything to save Jewish children from the Gestapo by hiding them throughout Belgium)
Donovan Cook, Thor’s Revenge, Boldwood (new entry in the Charlemagne’s Cross Viking series)
Lorna Cook, The Lost Memories, Avon (dual timeline story of love, sacrifice, and destiny, where the past and present collide to rewrite the future)
Nicola Cornick, The Other Gwyn Girl, Boldwood (dual timeline tale of treachery and treason, love and loyalty, set in 1671 and present day)
Elizabeth Crowens, Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles, Level Best (humorous mystery set in the Golden Age of Hollywood)
Sebastien de Castell, Play of Shadows, Jo Fletcher (historical fantasy featuring swordplay, magic, intrigue and friendship)
Helena Dixon, Murder at the Island Hotel, Bookouture (spring 1936; can Kitty Underhay and her friend Alice catch the culprit in time for tea? Cosy mystery)
Rhonda Dragomir, When the Flames Ravaged, Barbour (a story of danger, courage, and romance set in Hartford, Connecticut)
Stephanie Dray, Becoming Madam Secretary, Berkley (novel about American heroine Frances Perkins, who pulled the nation out of the Great Depression)
JC Duncan, Raven Lord, Boldwood (1034 AD; Harold Hardrada, mercenary, exile, warlord – can he survive the battles, the hostile land, and the ambition of a vengeful queen)
May Ellis, The Clarks Factory Girls at War, Boldwood (a saga of romance and friendship set in 1939)
Elizabeth Everett, The Love Remedy, Berkley (a stoic private investigator finds himself employed by a bright apothecary whose business is brimming with tinctures to cure any ailment)
Percival Everett, James, Doubleday/Mantle (reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view)
Amanda Flower, To Slip the Bonds of Earth, Kensington (new historical mystery series inspired by the real sister of the Wright Brothers)
Maria Frances, Daughters of Warsaw, Avon (World War II time-slip, weaving in the true story of Irena Sendler)
Jackie French, The Sea Captain’s Wife, HQ Fiction (story of murder, mystery, and mutiny on the high seas)
Caroline Frost, The Last Verse, William Morrow (novel set in 1970s Nashville, about a struggling musician who writes a hit song that both promises her long-sought-after fame, and implicates her in a heinous crime)
George Guida, The Uniform, Guernica (a New York City cop’s clash with protestors during the 1968 Columbia University student uprising nearly kills him, forcing him to confront his inherited bigotry and fear)
C. P. Giuliani, A Deadly Complot, Sapere (the fourth in a series of espionage adventures set in England 1586)
Holly Green, A Call to Home, Hera (romantic saga set during WWII)
Also: A Call to Service
Lucille Guarino, Elizabeth’s Mountain, Black Rose Writing (dual timeline multi-generational romance that interweaves two women’s chance at a future)
Carmel Harrington, The Lighthouse Secret, HarperCollins UK (a secret kept since 1951 in Ireland, reveals itself in 2023 Maine)
Cristina Henriquez, The Great Divide, Ecco/Fourth Estate (novel of the construction of the Panama Canal exploring the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers)
Holly Hepburn, The Missing Maid, Boldwood (1932; cosy mystery in which a woman hired to go through correspondence addressed to the fictional Sherlock Holmes, takes one case for herself)
Rosie Hewlett, Medea, Bantam (retelling of one of mythology’s darkest heroines)
Susan Higginbotham, The Queen of the Platform, Onslow Press (based on the life of Ernestine Rose, whose fearless advocacy helped bring about the rights women enjoy today)
Kelly Hill, A Home for Friendless Women, Vintage (novel about a home run by benevolent benefactors, with a mission to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives)
Lucy Holland, Song of the Huntress, Redhook/Macmillan (retelling of the magical story of Herla and the Wild Hunt into a dark feminist fantasy set in the early ancient Cornwall, 60 AD)
Justinian Huang, The Emperor and the Endless Palace, MIRA (genre-bending romantic fantasy thriller set in three time frames)
Douglas Jackson, Blood Roses, Canelo (forced to work for the occupiers while gathering information for the Polish resistance, former chief investigator, Jan Kalisz, is on the trail of a psychopathic killer. First in new series)
Anna Jacobs, Diamond Promises, Hodder & Stoughton (third book in the new Jubilee Lake series)
Jane Johnson, The Black Crescent, S&S US/Apollo (story of murder, magic and divided loyalties set in 1950s Morocco)
Sophie Jordan, The Duchess, Avon (The Scandalous Ladies of London series chronicles the lives of a group of affluent ladies reigning over Regency-era London, vying for position in the hierarchy of the ton)
Parul Kapur, Inside the Mirror, Univ. of Nebraska Press (a story of a displaced family in post-Partition, 1950s India)
Christian Klaver, Sherlock Holmes and Dorian Gray, Titan (Holmes learns Gray is hiding much more than his involvement in a murder)
Eliza Knight, Denny S. Bryce, Can’t We Be Friends?, William Morrow (novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and movie star Marilyn Monroe)
Mark Knowles, Hades, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (saga taking place decades after the voyage of the fabled Argo)
Eleanor Kuhns, On the Horns of Death, Severn House (Ancient Crete, 1450 BC.; a young bull leaper finds the newest member of the bull leaping team, dead in the bull pen)
Andrey Kurkov, trans. Boris Dralyuk, The Silver Bone, HarperVia/MacLehose (mystery introducing rookie detective, Samson Kolechko, in Kiev, tackling his first case, set against real life details of early twentieth century)
Richard Kurti, Requiem of Revenge, Sapere (historical thriller based on the true crime mystery surrounding the death of J S Bach)
Brianna Labuskes, The Lost Book of Bonn, William Morrow (a novel about a librarian’s quest to return a precious book, stolen by the Nazis, to its rightful owner)
Soraya Lane, The Sapphire Daughter, Bookouture (dual timeline story of family mysteries and true love that lasts a lifetime)
Shauna Lawless, Dreams of Fire, Ad-Astra (prequel historical fantasy introducing medieval Ireland as it was a century before The Children of Gods and Fighting Men)
Edward Y. C. Lee, The Laundryman’s Boy, HarperAvenue (coming-of-age story that examines race, immigration, duty and friendship, in an enduring tale about early newcomers to Canada and their struggle to succeed against all odds)
Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits, Henry Holt/Fig Tree (set in Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War but told in contemporary Irish dialect, the novel asks big questions about war and its aftermath)
Jonathan Lunn, The Road to Poitiers, Canelo (September 1356; Martin Kemp and his troop of archers ride with the Black Prince’s army as it burns and plunders its way across France ten years after Crécy)
L. A. MacRae, And Now the Light is Everywhere, Hodder & Stoughton (a woman accidentally unravels a different story of her grandmother, who boarded a ship for Canada after the war, bringing to light secrets perhaps buried for a reason)
Julia Malye, Pelican Girls, Harper/Headline Review (captures the never-before-told journey of the Baleine Brides: a ship full of young women plucked from a Paris asylum and sent to marry settlers in North America’s rough Louisiana Territory)
Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black, Tordotcom (equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, set in 1920s Appalachia)
Natalie Marlow, The Red Hollow, Baskerville (Warwickshire, 1934; when Private Enquiry agent, William Garrett, is called in to a male-only sanitorium, he becomes trapped in a world of madness, the occult, and grisly murder)
Violet Marsh, Lady Charlotte Always Gets Her Man, Forever (historical romcom)
Victoria Mas, trans. Frank Wynne, The Island of Mists and Miracles, Doubleday (dual timeline novel in which world media descends on a small island, opening old wounds and unleashing a chain of events)
Emily Matchar, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier, Putnam (multigenerational Jewish family saga set around the iconic Greenbrier hotel)
Imogen Matthews, The Girl With the Red Hair, Bookouture (WWII novel inspired by the true-life story of a young Dutch woman who fought for justice and freedom)
Anna Mazzola, The Book of Secrets, Orion (Rome 1659; inspired by real events that took place in 17th century Italy, prosecutor Stefano Bracchi why men are dying in unnatural numbers)
J. J. McAvoy, Hathor and the Prince, Quercus (romance in which Hathor fights to make a name of her own, despite society’s expectations of her)
Maria McDonald, The Keeper of Secrets, Bloodhound (1917; saga in which one lie changes a family’s path for generations, and finally brings them back to Ireland)
Clare McHugh, The Romanov Brides, William Morrow (novel about young Princess Alix of Hesse—the future Alexandra, last Empress of Imperial Russia—and her sister, Princess Ella)
Laura McNeal, The Swan’s Nest, Algonquin (tells the life and love story of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Noah Medlock, A Botanical Daughter, Titan Books (tale of two Victorian gentlemen, hiding their relationship away in a botanical garden, who embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment with unexpected consequences)
Mary Monroe, Double Lives, Dafina (Depression-era Alabama saga tells the tale of identical twin sisters with a talent for switching lives and hiding the results)
Keith Moray, The Minstrel’s Malady, Sapere (historical murder mystery set in Yorkshire. Book 5 in the Sand Castle series)
Ellen Birkett Morris, Beware the Tall Grass, Columbus State Univ. Press (mid 1960s Vietnam era; explores the power of love and mercy with grace and sensitivity in a world where circumstances often occur far beyond our control)
Joel H. Morris, All Our Yesterdays, Putnam (novel set in 11th century Scotland about the ambition, power, and fate that define one of literature’s most notorious figures: Lady Macbeth)
Sidney Morrison, Frederick Douglass, Hawthorne (encompasses the life and times of the most famous American anti-slavery activist)
Tara Moss, The War Widow, Verve Books (1946; tale of courage and secrecy set in 1940s Sydney)
Harini Nagendra, A Nest of Vipers, Pegasus (1921; Bangalore Detectives Club series finds amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy involved in a dangerous plot that endangers the life of the visiting Prince of Wales)
Tristan Nettles, The Shepherd, Addison & Highsmith (a Bronze Age tale about a young shepherd boy taken and made slave by an invading army)
Nadine Nettmann, The Bootlegger’s Daughter, Lake Union (in Prohibition-era Los Angeles, two women on opposite sides of the law must take control of their lives)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Secrets of a Scottish Isle, Kensington (1927; on an isolated isle off the western coast of Scotland, Jane Wunderly investigates a secret society where esoteric rituals blur the line between what’s real and what’s deadly)
Chris Nickson, The Scream of Sins, Severn House (thief-taker Simon Westow uncovers an evil lurking in the underbelly of Leeds)
Kelly Oliver, Murder in Moscow, Boldwood (a humorous Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane Mystery set in Moscow, 1918)
Kathleen Perrin, How to Solve Your Own Murder, Dutton/Quercus (fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder)
Tracie Peterson, A Love Discovered, Bethany House (invited by a friend to help establish the newly formed town of Cheyenne, Edward Vogel approaches his friend Marybeth with a proposition of marriage)
Santiago Posteguillo, trans. Frances Riddle, I Am Rome, Ballantine (77 BC; novel animates the moments that shaped young Julius Caesar’s fate—and in so doing, changed the course of history)
Melissa Pritchard, Flight of the Wild Swan, Bellevue Literary Press (novel of Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence, and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicine)
Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table, Little, Brown (spanning more than five decades of one family’s pursuit of the American dream, novel explores our consistent proximity to violence and its effect over time)
Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery, Berkley (Victorian murder mystery in which Veronica and Stoker discover that not all fairy tales have happy endings, and some end in murder)
Clare Reddaway, Dancing in the Shallows, Fairlight Books (story told through the lives of four generations, all linked by their connection to water, and exploring family relationships and generational inheritance)
Virginia Reeves, illus. Kyle Hobratschk, Once in the Blue Moon, Deep Vellum (presents a young girl’s point of view on a crucial turning point in her family’s life in rural, World War II-era Oklahoma)
M. J. Rose, Forgetting to Remember, Blue Box Press (straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her career and her father from scandal in the present, while trying to save her lover’s life in 1867)
Jeffrey Round, The Sulphur Springs Cure, Cormorant Books (dual timeline novel set just before WWII and present day)
Henry Rozycki, Walk the Earth as Brothers, Addison & Highsmith (the story of two pawns in a titanic world war; a story of bravery, random chance, kindness, betrayal, and love in WWII)
Anastasia Rubis, Oriana, Delphinium (biographical fiction about Oriana Fallaci, the brilliant and glamorous Italian journalist who blazed a trail for women in the 1970s with her hard-hitting interviews of world leaders)
Rachel Rueckert, If the Tide Turns, Kensington (set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the aftermath of the Salem witch trials; novel inspired by the true story of pirate Samuel Bellamy, and one young woman determined to choose her own path)
Donna Russo, Vincent’s Women, Next Chapter/Magnum Opus (the untold story of Vincent van Gogh’s loves and how they shaped his life, his art, and his death)
Jennifer Ryan, The Underground Library, Ballantine/Macmillan (when the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library)
Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet, Lake Union (in the final days of World War I, an aspiring artist’s journey is just beginning)
Cathy Sharp, The Lost Evacuee, HarperCollins (when orphan Julie Miller is sent to Canada to keep her safe from the WWII bombing, she hopes this will be the start of a happier life, but it is just the beginning of a long journey to find home)
Natasha Siegel, The Phoenix Bride, Dell (tale of plague, fire, and forbidden love in seventeenth-century London)
Helen Signy, Maya’s Dance, S&S AU (dual timeline novel of survival, resilience and enduring love, based on a true Holocaust story)
Candace Simar, Sister Lumberjack, North Star Press of St. Cloud (three lives intersect at Starkweather Timber, a haywire 1880s logging camp, where everything goes wrong)
Clayton B. Smith, A Seal of Salvage, Breakwater Books (literary coming-of-age novel, about unrequited love between adolescent boys, that slips between history and mythology; set in 1950s Newfoundland)
Roger A. Smith, The Blackmailer, Milford House (book three of Rian Krieger’s journey, set in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1838 and in Philadelphia, US during the Depression)
David Starkey, Poor Ghost, Keylight (novel of art, ambition, and the ephemeral nature of fame)
Jón Kalman Stefánsson, trans. Philip Roughton, Your Absence is Darkness, Biblioasis (saga about the inhabitants and inheritors of one rural Iceland community)
Anna Stuart, The War Orphan, Bookouture (1945; post-war story of a sixteen-year-old orphan who must decide whether to stay in Poland, or start a new life in England)
E. S. Thomson, Under Ground, Constable (Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered in the back room of a brothel)
Chris Harding Thornton, Little Underworld, MCD (Omaha, 1930; a novel which mines Omaha’s sordid past, melding fact and fiction into a tale of danger and deceit)
Simon Turney, Agricola: Invader, Aries (58 AD; Agricola soon learns the brutality of life on the very edges of the empire, for the Celtic tribes of Britannia are far from vanquished)
Pamela Ungashick, Somebody Knows, Red Adept (a story of a dysfunctional family in 1940s rural America)
Gabriel Valjan, The Big Lie, Level Best (Shane Cleary is hired by a gangster to find a lost poodle)
Bridget Walsh, The Innocents, Gallic Books (follow-up to The Tumbling Girl, follows Minnie and Albert on a new crime-solving quest in the world of a Victorian music hall)
Jennie Walters, What We Did in the War, Bloodhound (1944; two people are thrown together in the chaos of war, but events drive them apart as secrets surface)
Roseanna M. White, A Noble Scheme, Bethany House (set in Edwardian-era England — glamor, intrigue, and romance amongst high society’s most elite—and most dangerous—families)
Amy Willoughby-Burle, Even If Nothing Else is Certain, Fireship Press (in rural Kentucky, 1937, Pack Horse librarian Ruby Foster dreams of being a nurse)
Gary D. Wilson, The Narrow Window, Roundfire Books (as the turbulent 1960s draw to a close, an inexplicable crime forces two young Americans who are teaching in Africa, to confront issues of motivation, culture and belonging)
Karen Witemeyer, If the Boot Fits, Bethany House (this Western reimagining of the classic Cinderella fairy tale is a story of courage, family, and the power of true love)
Kimberley Woodhouse, Set in Stone, Bethany House (transports readers to the nineteenth-century Bone Wars era where adventure and romance combine)
Julie Wright, An Inconvenient Letter, Shadow Mountain (1828; complications arise when Marietta’s secret love letters are accidentally found by the wrong man)
Qiu Xiaolong, The Shadow of the Empire, Severn House (the legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in seventh-century China)
Felicity York, The Secret Sister, HarperNorth (second novel in the Stately Scandals series unearthing true stories about the most rebellious women to have lived in the stately homes of 19th-century northern England)
Marina Yuszczuk, trans. Heather Cleary, Thirst, Dutton (across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, and mortality)
Karen Spears Zacharias, No Perfect Mothers, Mercer Univ. Press (explores characters, historical and imagined, who were parties to the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927)
April 2024
Michelle Collins Anderson, The Flower Sisters, John Scognamiglio (twin storylines fifty years apart explore the effect of split-second decisions, small-town tragedy, and the ways family secrets reverberate through generations)
Rebecca Anderson, The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall, Shadow Mountain (1887, Cornwall; botanist Hyacinth Bell is set on solving a mystery in a ghostly estate with a secretive caretaker)
Diane Armstrong, The Wild Date Palm, HQ Fiction (novel of espionage, passion and sacrifice set in the Middle East during WWI)
Camille Aubray, The Girl From the Grand Hotel, Blackstone (inspired by true events and the histories of three great hotels on the Côte d’Azur during WWII)
Tilly Bagshawe, The Secret Keepers, HarperCollins UK (from the French Riviera to the Cornish cliffs, a novel about the fates and fortunes of the Challant family and secrets that echo through the years)
David Baldacci, A Calamity of Souls, Grand Central (a courtroom drama set in 1968 Richmond Virginia)
Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar, Viking (a novel beset with peril and dark deeds in the Spanish Golden Age)
Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, The Sugar Girls of Love Lane, S&S UK (a social history saga of the post-war era casting a nostalgic look back at Tate & Lyle, one of the most iconic factories in the north)
Susanna Bavin, The Home Front Girls, Bookouture (WWII story of friendship and romance)
Clare Beams, The Garden, Doubleday (tale of women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated)
Vicki Beeby, A Wedding for the Bomber Girls, Canelo (romance, friendship and action abounds in the second in the series focusing on the vital role WAAFs played in winning the war)
Sallie Bingham, Taken by the Shawnee, Turtle Point Press (in an unusual portrait of early America, a young mother’s years in captivity with the Shawnee prove to be the best years of her life)
Tavi Taylor Black, Serabelle, Black Rose Writing (a story where the strict lines between servants and masters are crossed in 1913)
Rose Blythe, The Fates, Quercus (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos are captivated by the human lives of the mortals, especially the warrior Atalanta and her ill-fated lover, Meleager)
Parris Afton Bonds, The Brigands, Motina Books (an adventure set during the Texican campaign for independence)
Chad V. Broughman, The Fall of Bellwether, Anamcara Press (in a small town where prejudice and judgment prevail, five life paths collide and a saga of survival, defiance, and human spirit unfolds)
Denny S. Bryce, The Trial of Mrs. Rhinelander, Kensington (story of a pioneering Black journalist, a secret interracial marriage among the New York elite, and the divorce case that ignited a battle over race and class)
Elizabeth Buchan, Bonjour, Sophie, Corvus (coming of age novel set in Paris, 1959)
Nathan Burrage, The Final Shroud, IFWG Publishing (historical dual timeline fantasy — 2nd book in The Salt Line series after The Hidden Keystone)
Joy Callaway, What the Mountains Remember, Harper Muse (a story of the ordinary people behind extraordinary beauty—and the question of who gets to tell their stories. Set in 1913)
Colleen Cambridge, A Murder Most French, Kensington (postwar Paris is surging back to life, but as chef-in-training Julia Child discovers, celebrations can quickly go awry when someone has murder in mind)
Kristy Cambron, The British Booksellers, Thomas Nelson (dual timeframe set in 1914 and 1940 — when a new war comes to Coventry, can British booksellers set aside bookshop wars and unite to save their future a second time?)
Megan Campisi, The Widow Spy, Atria (novel based on the true story of the first female Pinkerton detective whose next assignment could end the Civil War)
Paul Carlucci, The Voyageur, Swift Press (1830s Canada — novel set on the margins of British North America, where the real wilderness may not be in the surrounding landscape but in the hearts of men)
Katrina Carrasco, Rough Trade, MCD (a queer, gender-bending historical thriller sequel to The Best Bad Things, set in late 19th-century)
Myriam J. A. Chancy, Village Weavers, Tin House (confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, and envisions two girls who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust)
Janet Skeslien Charles, The Librarians of Rue de Picardie (UK) / Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade (US), Headline Review/Atria (based on the true story of Jessie Carson—the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France)
K. J. Charles, Death in the Spires, Storm Publishing (1905; a decade after the grisly murder of an Oxford student, the case remains unsolved and best friend Jem becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth)
Lauren Chater, The Beauties, S&S AU (17th-century; a story of rivalry, artistic passion and a woman bold enough to wield her beauty as a weapon)
Elizabeth Chatsworth, Grand Tour, Camcat (gaslamp romp across an alternate 1890s Europe where bickering heroes may just be the bad guys)
Fliss Chester, Death in the Crypt, Bookouture (fifth installment of the Honourable Cressida Fawcett cosy mysteries, set in the 1920s)
Lora Chilton, 1666, Sibylline Press (the imagined story of the indigenous Patawomeck women who lived through the decimation of their tribe in the summer of 1666)
Chanel Cleeton, The House on Biscayne Bay, Berkley (Miami, 1920s; as death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide)
Leela Corman, Victory Parade, Schocken (tale of love, loss, and trauma, set during World War II in Brooklyn, New York and in Buchenwald. Graphic novel)
Joanna Courtney, Cleopatra & Julius, Piatkus (romance between a young queen and a great emperor who could have ruled the world together)
Buffy Cram, Once Upon an Effing Time, Douglas & McIntyre (explores the fuzzy lines between sanity and insanity, magic and reality, love and duty)
Siobhan Curham, The Stars Are Our Witness, Bookouture (a story of bravery, family ties and the power of hope, set in Auschwitz in 1943)
Ellie Curzon, The Wartime Vet, Bookouture (England, 1941; when the country is most in need of food, the farms of the village come under attack from something other than bombs)
Carys Davies, Clear, Scribner/Granta (novel about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to “clear” the last remaining inhabitant)
Lindsey Davis, Death on the Tiber, Hodder & Stoughton/Minotaur (in first century Rome, a murder victim found in the Tiber leads to a brutal gang war and Flavia Albia to a confrontation with her long-hated nemesis. Book 12 in series)
Felicity Day, The Game of Hearts, Blink (novel featuring stories with insight into the competitive world of the Regency marriage mart)
Katie Daysh, The Devil to Pay, Canelo (two diplomats vanish enroute to Malta in 1802, & companions Courtney and Nightingale must find them. Second in the series)
Michael Deeb, Duty and Honor, Addison & Highsmith (second novel in the Drieborg Chronicles Series In the summer of 1862, when the United States is torn by Civil War)
Elizabeth Delo, Becoming Liz Taylor, Atlantic/Allen & Unwin (a story of baby abduction, which examines motherhood, grief and the legacy of melancholy, set in the present and the 1970s)
Francesca De Tores, Saltblood, Bloomsbury (1685; weaves a tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, through the story of Mary Read, one of history’s most remarkable figures)
Margaret Dickinson, A Mother’s Sorrow, Macmillan (saga involving two families set around WWI)
Sara Donati, The Sweet Blue Distance, Berkley (in 1857 a young midwife braves the journey west from New York City to Santa Fe)
Kirsty Dougal, Wartime on Sanctuary Lane, Penguin (as the Great War rages across Europe, twenty-one-year-old Ruby Archer decides to ‘do her bit’ at an East End munitions factory)
Robert Dugoni, A Killing on the Hill, Thomas & Mercer (thriller set in Seattle, during the Great Depression)
Lynn Ellen Doxon, The Moonlight Cavalry, Artemesia (WWII story told with a less usual Pacific backdrop)
Sarah M. Eden, The Best of Friends, Covenant (two long time acquaintances engage in a friendly game which leads to love)
Cynthia Ellingsen, The Lost Letters of Aisling, Lake Union (a post WWII story unfolds when Rainey discovers a collection of seventy-year-old letters in a trunk)
Ann S. Epstein, The Sister Knot, Vine Leaves Press (weaves the resilient bond of a female friendship against the backdrop of history)
Anne Fleming, Curiosities, Knopf Canada (a gender-bending dual time-period historical novel with a modern twist)
Hester Fox, The Book of Thorns, Graydon House (historical fantasy set against the Napoleonic Wars, where two sisters who never knew the other existed meet on opposite sides of the battlefield and must solve the mystery of their mother’s death)
Nell Freudenberger, The Limits, Knopf (novel set in colonial French Polynesia and present-day New York City, about nation, race, class, and family)
Michelle Gable, The Beautiful People, Graydon House (set against the 1960s Jet Set, a novel about a failed west coast debutante whose job as assistant to society photographer Slim Aarons takes her into the inner circle of Palm Beach socialites)
Felicity George, A Debutante’s Desire, Orion (when wealthy John Tyrold’s young ward, Flora, runs away, he seeks help from the ravishing and secretive debutante, Georgiana)
Elizabeth Gill, The Lost Girl From Far Away, Quercus (a lost and frightened orphan is taken in by a woman, who vows to keep her safe from the tragedy of the girl’s family’s past)
Elliott Gish, Grey Dog, ECW Press (1901; a literary horror novel about shame, trauma, sexuality, and misogyny at the dawn of the twentieth century)
John J. Gobbell, Danger’s Ebb, Severn River (tale of loyalty and sacrifice, where decisive actions possess the power to alter the course of history)
Donald Goines, Eldorado Red, Holloway House (historical thriller set in 1970s Detroit)
Genevieve Graham, The Secret Keeper, Simon & Schuster (World War II novel about two sisters who join the war effort—one as a codebreaker and the other as a pilot)
D. J. Green, No More Empty Spaces, She Writes (a timely novel to make you think about how you relate to yourself, your family, and the Earth and its ever-changing processes)
Michelle Griep, The Sleuth of Blackfriars Lane, Barbour (Christian inspirational historical romance)
Annie Groves, Secrets for the Three Sisters, HarperCollins (saga set in autumn 1940, during the Blitz over London, with the three sisters, Rose, Clover and Daisy, all active in the war effort)
Lisa Grunwald, The Evolution of Annabel Craig, Random House (a young Southern woman sets out on a journey of self-discovery as the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial tests her faith and her marriage)
Stacey Halls, The Household, Manilla Press (in 1847, Urania Cottage offers a second chance at life, and a refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute)
Edward Hamlin, Sonata in Wax, Green City Books (the mystery of a lost masterpiece unfolds during WWI and a century later)
C. B. Hanley, Blessed Are the Dead, The Mystery Press (eighth book in the series of mediaeval mysteries, set in 1219)
Amy Harmon, The Outlaw Noble Salt, Lake Union (romantic tale of risk, redemption, and what happens when America’s most famous outlaw falls in love)
C. S. Harris, What Cannot Be Said, Berkley (a summer picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes the bloody slayings of a mother and her young daughter fourteen years earlier. Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery book 19)
Tessa Harris, The Tuscan Daughter, HQ Fiction (story of one woman’s resilience in the face of fascism, set in Italy, 1942)
Alis Hawkins, The Skeleton Army, Canelo (when a Salvation Army soldier is murdered, Non Vaughan and Basil Rice step in. Second in the series)
Victoria Hawthorne, The Darkest Night, Quercus (a haunting story of family secrets – and the lengths some will go to protect them)
Linda Stewart Henley, Kate’s War, She Writes (at the start of World War II, twenty-year-old Kate is devastated when she’s forced to postpone her dream of a singing career to help out at home)
Austin Hernon, An Empire Lost, Sapere (the third book in the Berengaria of Navarre medieval trilogy)
Kate Hewitt, The Girl With a Secret, Bookouture (WWII story about hope, second chances and the resilience of the human spirit)
Van Hoang, The Monstrous Misses Mai, 47North (a young woman in 1950s Los Angeles walks a darker city than she ever imagined in a novel about the power to make dreams come true)
Tim Hodkinson, Sword of the War God, Aries (the Huns, led by Attila, have become the deadliest enemies of Rome. Attila seeks the Burgundars’ treasure, and the legendary Sword of the War God, said to make the bearer unbeatable)
Sophia Holloway, To Catch a Husband, Allison & Busby (in danger of losing the family estate, Mary Lound directs her energies into catching Sir Rowland, the new owner, as a husband)
Leslie Howard, The Celestial Wife, S&S (a young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the 1960s)
Piper Huguley, American Daughters, William Morrow (novel delves into the friendship of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt)
Ava January, The Mayfair Dagger, Crooked Lane (witty, feminist mystery set in 19th century London, featuring an intrepid woman detective)
Elyse John, Orphia and Eurydicius, HarperCollins (gender-flipped retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth with a luminous ode to women’s voices, grief and unconventional love)
Flora Johnston, The Paris Peacemakers, Allison & Busby (1919; story follows three Scots as they pick up the pieces of their lives while the fabric of Europe is stitched together for good or ill)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, The Oregon Trail, Kensington (a pioneering journey into the dangers of the unsettled West)
Kathleen Maple Kalb, A Fatal Reception, Level Best (Gilded Age Ella Shane and her Duke are headed for the altar…but they’ll confront a murder on the way)
M. R. C. Kasasian, The Montford Maniac, Canelo (a Victorian mystery of a crazed killer and a town in terror. Part of the Violet Thorn series)
Katrina Kendrick, A Touch Wicked, Aria (romantic story of an eligible bachelor earl and a penniless nobody who is infatuated with him)
Des Kennedy, Commune, Harbour Publishing (story of six young dreamers who set out from Vancouver in the seventies to haphazardly establish a back-to-the-land commune on a small island)
Averil Kenny, The Mistress of Dara Island, Echo Publishing (mystery romance fantasy set in 1960s)
Ashton Lattimore, All We Were Promised, Ballantine (the paths of three young Black women in pre-Civil War Philadelphia unexpectedly collide)
David Laws, For the Children, Bloodhound (a young British war widow embarks on a dangerous journey that will change her life)
Cynthia LeBrun, Black Sunflowers, Fitzhenry & Whiteside (a vivid account of the brutal realities of life in Ukraine under Stalin, beginning in 1928)
Cara Lopez Lee, Candlelight Bridge, Flowersong Press (1910; twelve-year-old Candelaria Rivera and her family flee across the Chihuahuan Desert to America to escape the rising storm of the Mexican Revolution)
Amy Licence, Lady of Misrule, Sapere (fourth book in the Marwood Family Tudor series, set in 1528, as King Henry petitions for divorce)
Max Ludington, Thorn Tree, St. Martin’s (weaves the idealism and the darkness of late 1960s, glossy Los Angeles celebrity today, and the mania of Charles Manson and other cults, into a story of two men with secrets to hide)
K. J. Maitland, A Plague of Serpents, Headline Review (conclusion of Daniel Pursglove Jacobean historical thriller series, set in 1608)
Emer Martin, Thirsty Ghosts, Lilliput Press (challenges the history of silence, institutional lies, evasion and the mistreatment of women across mid twentieth-century Ireland)
Maggie Mason, The Fortune Teller’s Daughters, Sphere (1939; third tale in The Fortune Tellers series, with threat of war looming)
Rachel Scott McDaniel, Walking on Hidden Wings, Kregel (romance set in the 1920s, takes the reader on an aviation adventure highlighting the barnstorming era)
Lisa Medved, The Engraver’s Secret, HarperCollins AU (debut art history thriller set around the life and times of Paul Rubens)
Robert Lockwood Mills, Michael Deeb, Investigating the Kennedy Assassination, Addison & Highsmith (biographical political fiction which reveals the reasons so many elites were determined to stop the Kennedy agenda)
Robbie Morrison, Cast a Cold Eye, Bantam/ Macmillan (in 1930s Glasgow, partners Jimmy Dreghorn and Archie McDaid face a danger that threatens to set their city aflame)
Niklas Natt och Dag, trans. Ebba Segerberg, 1795: The Order of the Furies, Atria (last part of a historical trilogy following two unlikely allies as they struggle to end the reign of a powerful cabal in 18th-century Stockholm)
Aslak Nore, trans. Deborah Dawkin, The Sea Cemetery, MacLehose (a dark family saga which leads back to the sinking of the SS Prinsesse Ragnhild, lost to a British mine in 1940)
Donna Norman-Carbone, Of Lies and Honey, Red Adept (a revealed secret forces each of three women to make choices that will alter their roles as mothers and daughters forever)
Elizabeth O’Connor, Whale Fall, Picador (1938; a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world on the edge of great tumult)
Leeanne O’Donnell, Sparks of Bright Matter, Eriu Publishing (a tale about spirit and matter, love and lust, and reality and magic set in 18th-century London)
Lizzie Page, A Child Far From Home, Bookouture (England 1939: story of a mother and daughter separated by war, and finding hope)
Ingrid Persaud, The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, Faber & Faber (the lives of four women, connected and controlled by the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh)
Gary Phillips, Ash Dark as Night, Soho Crime (in 1965 Los Angeles, photographer Harry Ingram is once again on the hunt for the truth: this time, a missing persons case in the center of the Watts Rebellion)
Jo Piazza, The Sicilian Inheritance, Dutton/HQ (dual timeline novel about a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect)
Nicolette Polek, Bitter Water Opera, Graywolf Press (debut novel about art, solitude, family, and faith in a world without it. Set in 1967)
Joanna Davidson Politano, The Elusive Truth of Lily Temple, Revell (a layered tale that treads the crooked line between real and make-believe, set in Edwardian England in 1903)
MJ Porter, Enemies of Mercia, Boldwood (Tamworth AD835; Icel is sent to hunt down the enemy of Mercia and discover who seeks to conspire against the throne)
Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time, Swift Press (love story about a young reindeer herder and a minister’s daughter in the 19th century Arctic Circle)
Tony Rea, Bouncer’s Battle, Sapere (first book in a fighter pilot adventure series set in WWII)
Valentina Cano Repetto, Sanctuary, CamCat (in 1930s Italy, a woman must battle the sinister forces threatening her life and sanity in the run-down, isolated watermill she calls home)
Astrid Roemer, trans. Lucy Scott and David McKay, Off-White, Two Line Press (novel illuminates Suriname in the 1960s, through the history of the Vanta family)
SJ Rozan, John Shen Yen Nee, The Murder of Mr. Ma, Soho Crime (two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants)
Kim Vogel Sawyer, The Songbird of Hope Hill, WaterBrook (inspirational Christian fiction in which a woman, who believes she’s past saving, seeks God’s redemption)
Constance Sayers, The Star and the Strange Moon, Redhook/Piatkus (the lives of a young starlet and an obsessed film student become irrevocably linked in this tale of ambition, mystery, and the magic of film; set in 1968 and 2015)
Timothy Schaffert, The Titanic Survivors Book Club, Doubleday (tale about the life-changing power of books and second chances)
Ellee Seymour, The Royal Station Master’s Daughters in Love, Zaffre (Norfolk, 1919, the Saward family rally to help a family who lose their home on the Sandringham estate)
Sam Siciliano, The Gentleman Burglar, Titan (Sherlock Holmes and his cousin, Vernier, have been hired by the Baron of Creuse to find the legendary treasure of the kings of France)
Jen Silverman, There’s Going to be Trouble, Random House (a woman is pulled into a love affair with a radical activist, risking the foundations of her future)
Shaina Steinberg, Under the Paper Moon, Kensington (two former spies who shared more than just missions during WWII reunite in 1948 Los Angeles)
Mary E. Stibal, A Sister in Rubies, Level Best (loosely based on the real theft from the Duchess of Windsor in the UK in 1946)
Susan Stokes-Chapman, The Shadow Key, Harvill-Secker (Meirionydd, 1783; secrets from the past bind two people’s destinies together in ways neither thought possible)
Keith Stuart, Love is a Curse, Sphere (a young woman investigates letters, diaries and paintings of generations of women of her family to discover if a curse is real)
Barbara Sumner, The Gallows Bird, Pantera Press (1830s; a young woman falls into love and crime, and finds herself transported to the ends of her known world)
Rose Sutherland, A Sweet Sting of Salt, Dell/Random House Canada (queer reimagining of the classic folktale The Selkie Wife)
Lynne Marie Taylor, Death in Valletta, Bloodhound (an Edinburgh police detective is summoned to the island of Malta in this murder mystery set in 1880)
Pamela Taylor, The Rest of His Days, Black Rose Writing (set against the death of Edward II of England, this is a tale of power struggles, finding redemption, and the true meaning of honor)
Sam Taylor, The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, Faber & Faber (story about how tragedy, choice and life-altering love shape our future)
Sarah Loudin Thomas, These Tangled Threads, Bethany House (novel of friendship, artistry, restoration, and second chances)
Will Thomas, Death and Glory, Minotaur (book #16 in the Barker & Llewelyn detective series set in Victorian London)
Victoria Thompson, Murder in Rose Hill, Berkley (midwife Sarah Malloy and her private investigator husband, must catch the fiend who killed a young reporter in Victorian-era New York)
Katie Tietjen, Death in the Details, Crooked Lane (mystery inspired by the real-life mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee, and featuring a sleuth in post-WWII Vermont)
Joanna Toye, The Little Penguin Bookshop, Penguin (WWII story about the power of books and how they can bring people together)
Varaidzo, Manny and the Baby, Scribe (reflects the experience of being Black and British through a dual-narrative about two sisters in 1930s London and two young men in Bath of 2012)
Sasha Vasilyuk, Your Presence is Mandatory, Bloomsbury (debut novel about a Ukrainian Jew with a secret that could land him in the Gulag. Inspired by true events)
Betty Walker, Victory for the Cornish Girls, Avon (sixth saga installment asks will the Cornish girls come out on top once the war finally ends?)
Betty Webb, The Clock Struck Murder, Poisoned Pen (1924, Paris; expat Zoe Barlow is caught up in the murder of a clock seller after she finds her own flea-market purchases wrapped in a Chagall painting)
Douglas Westerbeke, A Short Walk Through a Wide World, Avid Reader Press (novel charts the adventurous life of one woman as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving)
Marty Wingate, A Body at the Dance Hall, Bookouture (1922; amateur sleuth Mabel Canning chaperones a young American woman to a dance, where a murder takes place)
Daisy Wood, The Royal Librarian, Avon (a bookish WWII novel about the royal family, set in Windsor 1940 and present-day Philadelphia)
Jaime Jo Wright, Night Falls on Predicament Avenue, Bethany House (a sinister dual time line story set in 1910 and a century later)
Monika Zgustova, trans. Julie Jones, A Revolver to Carry at Night, Other Press (biographical fiction of the life of Véra Nabokov, who dedicated herself to advancing her husband’s writing career)
May 2024
Allison Alsup, Foreign Seed, Keylight (traces the investigation into a missing American botanical explorer from the Yangtze River in 1918)
Joseph Andras, Faraway the Southern Sky, Verso (fictional retelling of Ho Chi Minh’s immigration and life in underground Paris in the 1920s)
Rosie Andrews, The Puzzle Wood, Raven Books (an isolated forest becomes the backdrop to a tale of myths, memory and murder)
Kelley Armstrong, Disturbing the Dead, Minotaur (latest in the Rip Through Time time-slip series with one foot in the 1860s and the other in the present day)
Lisa Barr, The Goddess of Warsaw, Harper (tale of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret about her life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Dual timeline set in 1943 and 2005)
Natania Barron, Queen of None, Solaris (first in a female-led Arthurian fantasy romance trilogy)
Susanna Bavin, Courage For the Home Front Girls, Bookouture (saga set in Manchester, during the 1940 Blitz)
Vanessa Beaumont, The Other Side of Paradise, Magpie (1920; novel of a mother’s desperate attempt to protect her sons from a secret that will destroy them)
Ginny Bell, Return to the Dover Café, Zaffre (World War II saga series of family, secrets and lies)
Julia Bennet, The Worst Woman in London, Union Square (humorous Victorian romance featuring a defiant heroine who fights to escape a bad marriage)
Julie Bennett, The Lost Letters of Rose Carey, S&S AU (dual timeline story of love, glamour and betrayal, inspired by the life of 1920s Australian film icon Annette Kellerman)
Sian Ann Bessey, A Provincial Peer, Covenant (shared childhood memories and a precocious four-year-old draw two childhood friends together)
Charlotte Betts, The Italian Garden, Piatkus (1919; a discovery at the Lake Como uncovers buried truths that have haunted a family for decades)
Jerry Borrowman, An Ocean of Courage and Fear, Shadow Mountain (novel opens days after the attack on Pearl Harbor and details three years of sea battles between Hawaii and the shores of Okinawa)
Kelly Bowen, Tomorrow Is For the Brave, Forever (World War II novel about a courageous woman who risks it all for what is right)
Kate Braithwaite, The Scandalous Life of Nancy Randolph, Lume Books (born into a wealthy plantation family, Nancy Randolph’s life is upended when she is suspected of having a child with her sister’s husband: story of love, loyalty, power, and penance in post-colonial America)
Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Phantom Skiers, Constable (further adventures in a humorous historical mystery series)
Frances Brody, Six Motives for Murder, Piatkus (second historical mystery in the Brackerley Prison series)
Benedict Brown, The Castleton Affair, Storm (1920s murder mystery which combines the feel of a classic spy novel with a twisting whodunit)
Taylor Brown, Rednecks, St. Martin’s (historical drama based on the Battle of Blair Mountain, pitting a multi-ethnic army of 10,000 coal miners against mine owners, state militia, and the US government)
Fiona Buckley, To Seize a Queen, Severn House (secret agent Ursula Blanchard takes on a dangerous new mission involving mysterious disappearances and murder in Cornwall)
Michael Callahan, The Lost Letters from Martha’s Vineyard, Mariner (novel of two women bound by blood but divided by a long-buried secret)
Jan Casey, The War Artist, Aria (based on the true story of a female war artist in World War II)
Wendy Chen, Their Divine Fires, Algonquin Books (family saga that begins at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution and spans 100 years to trace the intricate lives of four generations)
Eve J. Chung, Daughters of Shandong, Berkley (novel about a mother and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China)
David Ciminello, The Queen of Steeplechase Park, Forest Avenue Press (the almost-true story of burlesque queen Belladonna Marie Donato)
Bridget Collins, The Silence Factory, The Borough Press (story set in 1800s of gothic suspense about a powerful family, and the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon)
Jody Cooksley, The Small Museum, Allison & Busby (London, 1873; a wife of a collector of natural curiosities is framed for a crime she didn’t commit)
Anne Corlett, The Theatre of Glass and Shadows, Black & White (in a world where illusions abound and powerful men control the narrative, how far will people go to make sure certain stories are never told)
Ben Creed, Man of Bones, Mountain Leopard Press (thriller set in Leningrad in the winter of 1953)
Victoria Darke, The House in the Water, Boldwood (dual timeline novel about a couple who purchase a house on an island in the Thames, that was a place of rehabilitation for trauma cases during WWII)
William Deverell, The Long-Shot Trial, ECW Press (protagonist Arthur Beauchamp writes a memoir that he hopes will set the record straight about a murder case he fought as a young lawyer in 1966)
Lianne Dillsworth, House of Shades, Hutchinson Heinemann (London, 1833; a doctor is offered a life-changing reward if she can cure the ailing health of the mysterious owner of a foreboding house in Fitzrovia)
Helena Dixon, Murder on the French Riviera, Bookouture (late spring, 1936; Kitty Underhay stumbles across a body while on a stroll in Nice)
John Enright, The Coast, Black Heron Press (portrait of the Bay Area, as it was during the 1960s and ’70s, seen through the lens of various relationships)
Hannah Evans, The Mapmaker’s Wife, Orion (1954 and 2015; dual timeline love story which explores identity, friendship and family)
Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Two, Fantagraphics (dark mysteries past and present continue to abound in the violent Chicago summer of 1968. Graphic format novel)
David Field, The Slaughtered Widow, Sapere (mystery set in Tudor England, 1592)
George Michelsen Foy, The Last Green Light, Guernica Editions (novel in which the working people of The Great Gatsby get to tell their own tale)
Lynne Francis, The Reluctant Bride, Piatkus (Kent 1822; a woman tries to find a way to escape the marriage of convenience her father wishes to force her into)
Elizabeth Fremantle, Firebrand, S&S (shows the darker side to the marriages of Henry VIII, and the wife who survived)
Ann H. Gabhart, The Song of Sourwood Mountain, Revell (story of the unexpected blessings that can come when we dare to follow the Lord’s leading. Inspirational novel set in 1910)
Chris Glatte, The Light After the Storm, Severn River (the lives of the Cooper family intertwine within the tapestry of WWII)
Julia Golding, The Persephone Code, One More Chapter (in 1812; Hellfire Caves house a pleasure palace for the idle rich – a secret society steeped in satanism, opium and debauchery)
Adrian Goldsworthy, Hill 112, Aries (story of friendship and division set against the D-Day campaign of the Second World War)
Nathan Gower, The Act of Disappearing, MIRA (alternating between present-day Brooklyn and Kentucky in early 1960s, Julia races to find answers to an old photograph picturing a woman on a bridge)
Anne Gracie, The Heiress’s Daughter, Berkley (a witty new Regency romance)
R. L. Graham, Death on the Lusitania, Macmillan UK (historical fiction novel set on board the doomed RMS Lusitania ocean liner, in 1915)
Juliet Greenwood, The Secret Daughter of Venice, Storm Publishing (England, 1941; Kate discovers a secret stash of drawings hidden in the pages of an old volume of poetry, which could unlock the secret of who she really is)
Michael Hartnett, Windmill Bluff, Black Rose Writing (dual timeline tale that mines America’s turbulent past taking readers back to FDR’s clandestine programs)
Barbara Havelocke, Estella’s Revenge, Hera (a gothic story of Miss Havisham, the jilted bride from Great Expectations)
Sarah Hawkswood, Litany of Lies, Allison & Busby (book 12 in the Bradecote & Catchpoll medieval mystery series, set in Worcestershire, 1145)
Virginia Heath, All’s Fair in Love and War, St Martin’s Griffin (Regency romance about a governess who believes in cultivating joy in her charges)
Gordon Henderson, David Bouchard, Out of the Shadows, At Bay Press (equal parts spy thriller and love triangle, set during the Red River Resistance of 1869-1870 and the birth of Manitoba)
Grace Hitchcock, To Catch a Coronet, Kregel (a sea captain heir to an earldom is torn between staying put to protect an intriguing lady, and the endless call of the ocean)
Ann Hood, The Stolen Child, W. W. Norton (an unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate)
Angela Hunt, The Sisters of Corinth, Bethany House (story of love, sacrifice, and the quest for power set against the backdrop of ancient Corinth. The Emissaries, book two)
Damion Hunter, Birds of Prey, Canelo (Roman novel dealing with themes of family, war, and the pressures of loyalty)
Conn Iggulden, Nero, Michael Joseph/Pegasus (first novel in a trilogy that finds Empress Agrippina and her young son, Nero, fending off ambitious rivals while shaping their own destiny)
Anna Jacobs, The Nurses of Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (in this romantic saga, Rachel qualifies as nurse because she wants to help others, but she is also running from a past life that must stay hidden)
Meredith Jaeger, The Incorrigibles, Dutton (dual timeline novel about two women whose lives intersect as one resists the gentrification in 1970s, and the other fights for her freedom in nineteenth-century America)
Natalie Jenner, Every Time We Say Goodbye, St. Martin’s/Allison & Busby (exploration of trauma and tragedy set in 1955)
Mai Jia, trans. Dylan Levi King, The Colonel and the Eunuch, Apollo (a coming-of-age story, a family saga, and an exploration of what makes a hero)
Kase Johnstun, Cast Away, Torrey House Press (Veronica Chavez and her great nephew Chuy immigrate from Mexico to the US, their journeys seventy years apart. Set in 1922 and 2000s)
Ben Kane, Stormcrow, Orion (first Viking adventure featuring thirteen-year-old Finn, who embarks on a quest for revenge with his oldest friend, the shaman Vekel)
Joseph Kanon, Shanghai, S&S UK (pre-World War II Shanghai, where glamour and squalor exist side by side and murder is just a cost of doing business)
T. E. Kinsey, An Assassination on the Agenda, Thomas & Mercer (book 11 of the Lady Hardcastle Mystery series)
Marion Kummerow, The Berlin Wife’s Vow, Bookouture (a WWII story of one woman’s promise to protect the people she loves)
Lizzie Lane, New Doctor at Orchard Cottage Hospital, Boldwood (new series about a country town in need of a good Doctor)
Soraya M. Lane, The Berlin Sisters, Lake Union (story of bravery, sacrifice and resilience in war-torn Berlin—and two sisters who will risk it all to make a difference)
Sue Lawrence, Lady’s Rock, Saraband (drama explores love, ambition and betrayal and highlights the precarious position of 16th-century women in the Scottish Highlands)
Blandine Le Callet, illus. Nancy Peña, Medea, Dark Horse Comics (graphic novel reimagining the story of one of the biggest female figures in ancient Greek mythology)
Judith Lindbergh, Akmaral, Regal House (drawn from legends of Amazon women warriors from ancient Greece, novel is a tale about a powerful woman who must make peace with making war)
A. M. Linden, The Sheriff, She Writes (book 3 of The Druid Chronicles introduces Stefan, a Saxon warrior who is sent into exile as a sheriff of a remote community, where his fate becomes entangled with the Druids)
Hannah Linder, The Girl From the Hidden Forest, Barbour (a Gothic style Regency in which Eliza and Felton must work together to uncover the identity of a killer who has stayed silent for fourteen years)
Eimear Lawlor, Kitty’s War, Aria (Kilkenny, 1939; a young woman fights to carve her own way despite all odds being stacked against her)
Megaera C. Lorenz, The Shabti, CamCat (1934; former medium Dashiel Quicke travels the country debunking spiritualism, but is terrified when a haunting takes a dangerous turn)
Carmella Lowkis, Spitting Gold, Atria (19th-century Paris, blending gothic mystery with a sapphic romance — two estranged sisters—celebrated (and fraudulent) spirit mediums—come back together for one last con)
Hannah Lynn, Queens of Themiscyra, Sourcebooks Landmark (the story of two Amazon queens and the lengths they’ll go to protect what’s theirs)
Carol MacLean, Kathy’s Courage, Hera (character-led historical romance follows the lives of some of those living in a fictional Glasgow tenement during WWII)
Susan Elia MacNeal, The Last Hope, Bantam (finale to the Maggie Hope series as the intrepid spy teams up with fashion designer—and possible double agent—Coco Chanel)
Maureen Marshall, The Paris Affair, Grand Central (queer historical romantic suspense novel about a young engineer working for Gustave Eiffel caught in a web of deceit)
Val McDermid, Queen Macbeth, Polygon (a tale of marriage and multiple murder, showing how one strong, charismatic woman was able to survive)
Ava McKevitt, Queen of Heaven, Sapere (a tale of Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses)
Catriona McPherson, The Witching Hour, Hodder & Stoughton (Lady Dandy Gilver’s oldest friend, Daisy, is at the centre of a murder investigation)
Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History, W. W. Norton (set over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, novel is the story of a family born on the wrong side of history)
Gabrielle Meyer, For a Lifetime, Bethany House (identical twin sisters born with the ability to time-cross between 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and 1912 New York City. will have to choose one life to keep and one to leave behind)
Fenella J. Miller, Army Girls: Behind the Guns, Boldwood (new series romantic saga beginning in September, 1942)
Jessica Moor, Hold Back the Night, Manilla Press (multi-timeline novel about following rules, complicity and atonement)
Graham Moore, The Wealth of Shadows, Random House (an ordinary man joins a secret mission to bring down the Nazi war machine by crashing their economy)
Syd Moore, The Grand Illusion, Oneworld/Magpie (1940; a novel of occultists, surrealists, and other eccentrics co-opted to the war effort, to avert invasion on British shores)
Amita Murray, Unladylike Rules of Attraction, Avon (second novel in the Marleigh Sisters series, following Anya as she must marry in order to inherit a fortune)
Annie Murray, Homecoming for the Chocolate Girls, Macmillan (WWII; conclusion to the family saga about love, war and chocolate)
Anna Noyes, The Blue Maiden, Grove Press (1825; novel of two sisters growing up on an isolated Northern European island in the shadow of their late mother and the Devil)
Florence Ọlájídé, The Stolen Daughter, Bookouture (story about facing your fears, overcoming hardship, and the courage and strength of women in a world ruled by men. Set in West Africa, 1848)
A. D. O’Neill, Circus Maximus, Black & White (A.D. 69; two champions, formally friends, fight for supremacy during the final races of the Plebeian Games)
Charles Palliser, Sufferance, Guernica Editions (Eastern Europe WWII; psychological novel about the hideous decisions that people are forced to make when living under tyrannical regimes)
C. A. Parker, Song of the Samurai, Running Wild Press (an exploration of feudal Japan and the complexities of the human spirit, set in 1745)
Vaishnavi Patel, Goddess of the River, Orbit/Redhook (reimagining of the story of Ganga, goddess of the river, and her doomed mortal son)
Angela Petch, The Sicilian Secret, Bookouture (time split historical novel about how wartime secrets can stretch across the generations)
Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, With Each Tomorrow, Bethany House (romance set in Montana, in which Ellie and Carter are drawn together on a journey that tests the depths of their feelings and their faith in God)
Hesse Phillips, Lightborne, Atlantic (Tudor-era novel about outsiders caught in a relentless cycle of bloodshed and betrayal)
Victoria Purman, The Radio Hour, HQ Fiction (a humorous look at the golden years of radio broadcasting in post-war Australia)
Ted Riccardi, The Undiscovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Bloodhound (stories which fill an enigmatic gap in the great detective’s career)
Diane Richards, Ella, Amistad (reimagines the turbulent and triumphant early years of Ella Fitzgerald, arguably the greatest singer of the twentieth century)
Sheila Riley, A Safe Haven on Beamer Street, Boldwood (next book in the Beamer Street series set around Liverpool Docks in 1924)
Vanessa Riley, A Gamble at Sunset, Zebra (first in a new Regency romance trilogy featuring a duke, three sisters, and a bet with rich rewards)
Jane Loeb Rubin, Threadbare, Level Best (recounts the story of a tenacious young girl who chooses marriage to a lonely widower, and follows her work in the garment industry of the 1890s)
Doina Rusti, trans. James Christian Brown, The Book of Perilous Dishes, Neem Tree Press (tale of dark magic and epic adventure that traverses Europe at the turn of the 18th century)
Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates, Bookouture (a nurse in Dachau, 1942, discovers one of her patients is her childhood sweetheart whom she must try to keep alive at all costs)
Jennifer Saint, Hera, Wildfire/Flatiron (tale of a powerful Greek goddess maligned in both myth and ancient history)
Beatrice Salvioni, trans. Elena Pala, The Cursed Friend, HarperVia (a life-changing friendship will lead two young girls from different worlds to rebel against the sexism, prejudice, and injustice they face living in 1930s Italy)
Carly Schabowski, The Winter Child, Bookouture (wartime novel tells a story of courage, hope and the endurance of the human spirit during WWII)
Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky, Avon (queer mid-century romance about grief and found family)
Jeff Shaara, The Shadow of War, St. Martin’s (a novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis)
Jessica Shattuck, Last House, William Morrow (1950s and 60s; spanning multiple generations novel tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and great downfalls, set against the backdrop of US history)
Ezra Harker Shaw, The Aziola’s Cry, History Through Fiction (love, tragedy, and the pursuit of literary greatness test the resilience of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Kuchenga Shenjé, The Library Thief, Hanover Square/Sphere (mystery about a white-passing bookbinder in Victorian England and the secrets lurking on the estate where she works)
Leslie Shimotakahara, Sisters of the Spruce, Caitlin Press (story of female adventure, friendship, and resilience, set against the landscape of a WWI-era logging camp on Haida Gwaii)
Helen Simonson, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, Dial Press (a young woman’s life is forever changed after World War I when she befriends a group of independent, motorcycle-riding women)
Martin Sixsmith, My Sins Go With Me, S&S UK (a story of heroism and betrayal in the Dutch resistance)
Amanda Skenandore, The Medicine Woman of Galveston, Kensington (a female doctor in a traveling medicine show is forced to weather the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and its aftermath, in a hostile town desperate for their help)
Leïla Slimani, trans. Sam Taylor, Watch Us Dance, Faber & Faber (family saga set in Morocco, 1968)
Luanne G. Smith, The Wolf’s Eye, 47North (under the full moon of World War I, a curse threatens to tear apart a witch’s found family)
Willow Smith & Jess Hendel, Black Shield Maiden, Del Rey (an historical novel about an African warrior in the world of the Vikings)
Slobodan Šnajder, trans. Celia Hawkesworth, The Brass Age, Mountain Leopard Press (historical novel about the destiny of those shackled by history, and the generations doomed to inherit the contradictory fates of their forebears)
Jonathan Spencer, Hazzard’s Convoy, Canelo (fourth book in the saga of Hazzard’s Egypt and his personal war with Napoleon Bonaparte)
Linda Stratman, Sherlock Holmes and the Mycroft Incident, Sapere (1877; a trusted government courier has gone missing after delivering some secret documents)
Bonnie Suchman, Stumbling Stones, Black Rose Writing (based on the true story of a woman driven to achieve at a time of persecution and hatred)
Defne Suman, Summer Heat, Apollo (set alternately between 2003 and 1974, during the Turkish Army’s invasion of Cyprus, novel tells of one woman’s place in her country’s devastating history)
Barbara J. Taylor, Rain Breaks No Bones, Kaylie Jones (set in 1955, final installment in Scranton Trilogy explores a family’s legacy of loss)
Sandy Taylor, Return to the Irish Boarding House, Bookouture (Dublin, 1956; story of second chances and the power of friendship)
Janyre Tromp, Darkness Calls the Tiger, Kregel (a young woman seeks vengeance for the devastation wrought upon her country and her people, by war)
Gwen Tuinman, Unrest, Random House Canada (brash, duplicitous women, murder and mayhem, and illicit love abound in this adventure set in Bytown, Canada in 1836)
Misty Urban, The Painter Takes an Earl, Oliver Heber (book three of Ladies Least Likely series)
Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, Eva Marie Everson, Ahoti: A Story of Tamar, Paraclete Press (retelling of Tamar’s story of redemption, faith, healing, and justice)
Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep, Avid Reader Press (tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women during the summer of 1961)
Johanna van Veen, My Darling Dreadful Thing, Poisoned Pen Press (takes place in the Netherlands, post WWII, In a world where the dead can wake and walk among us)
Megan Walker, Highcliffe House, Shadow Mountain (the daughter of a wealthy investor and a handsome young businessman clash in 1813, Brighton, England)
Chrissie Walsh, Weaver Street at War, Boldwood (despite the toll of WWII, the friendships and community keep the women of Weaver Street smiling)
Nancy Warren, Murder at the Paris Fashion House, Storm Publishing (a cosy mystery featuring a Chicago news reporter chasing her big break in jazz-age Paris)
Ashley Weaver, Locked in Pursuit, Minotaur (fourth instalment in the series following safecracker Electra McDonnell fighting Nazis as World War II looms over London)
Denise Weimer, When Hope Sank: April 27, 1865, Barbour (first in a new series of novels featuring historic American disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives)
Alison Weir, Mary I, Queen of Sorrows (UK) / The Passionate Tudor (US), Headline Review/Ballantine (the tale of how a princess with such promise, loved by all who knew her, became the infamous Bloody Mary)
Tim Wendel, Rebel Falls, Three Hills (a forgotten chapter of the Civil War is revealed in a character-driven narrative about a consequential struggle in the shadow of Niagara Falls’ dramatic beauty)
Iona Whishaw, Lightning Strikes the Silence, Touchwood (Lane Winslow book 11, set post WWII)
Peggy Joque Williams, Courting the Sun, Black Rose Writing (a young woman is surprised by an invitation to Versailles to serve as maiden of honour to Louis XIV’s mistress)
Susan C. Wilson, Clytemnestra’s Bind, Neem Tree Press (novel centres on one of Greek mythology’s most reviled characters)
Glenda Young, The Toffee Factory Girls, Headline (in 1915 three women start work at a toffee factory in the market town of Chester-le-Street, Durham. First in a new trilogy)
June 2024
Molly Aitken, Bright I Burn, Canongate (Ireland, 13th-century; inspired by the first recorded person in Ireland to have been condemned as a witch)
Maria Àngels Anglada, trans. Ara H. Merjian, Aram’s Notebook, Swan Isle Press (a mother and son’s fictional journey to escape the Armenian Genocide and start anew)
Jess Armstrong, The Curse of Penryth Hall, Allison & Busby (a mystery steeped in the lore and legend of Cornwall in 1922)
Tammy Armstrong, Pearly Everlasting, HarperAvenue (set during the Great Depression, a novel about a girl and a bear raised as sister and brother in a remote logging camp)
Paula J. Beavan, Among the Grey Gums, HQ Fiction (a woman must track down a murderer to save her brother from the hangman’s noose)
Misty M. Beller, Rocky Mountain Journey, Bethany House (masquerading as a man, Faith Collins embarks on a perilous journey through the Rocky Mountain wilderness, in search of the Blackfoot woman who saved her father’s life)
Franco Bernini, trans. Oonagh Stransky, The Throne, Europa Editions (first of a planned trilogy recounts the enigmatic life of Niccolò Machiavelli, political strategist)
Katherine Blake, The Unforgettable Loretta Darling, Viking/Harper (novel showcasing the backlot of Tinseltown which may have bitten off more than it can chew with Loretta)
Sarah Blaydes, The Last Secret of Lily Adams, Lake Union (the death of a legendary golden age actress reveals Hollywood secrets in a novel about betrayal, rivalry, and the punishing brutality of fame)
Verity Bright, Murder in Mayfair, Bookouture (Golden Age whodunnit set in London)
Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, W&N (set onboard the Trans-Siberian Express at the end of the 19th-century)
Briony Cameron, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye, Atria (tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean)
Essie Chambers, Swift River, Dialogue Books (a story spanning the twentieth century that reveals a large picture of prejudice and love, of devotion and abandonment)
Eve Chase, The Midnight Hour, Michael Joseph (from London to Paris to an old English country house, a story about a family with a hidden past and a woman trying to turn back the hands of time before it’s too late)
Tracy Chevalier, The Glassmaker, Viking/The Borough Press (story that follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to present day)
Mary Connealy, Toward the Dawn, Bethany House (a tale of love, danger, and resilience set in the untamed West)
John Copenhaver, Hall of Mirrors, Pegasus (when a popular mystery novelist dies suspiciously, his writing partner must untangle the author’s connection to a serial killer; novel set in 1950s McCarthy-era Washington, DC)
Charles Cordell, The Keys of Hell and Death, Myrmidon Books (military adventure set in The West Country, July 1643, during England’s bloody civil war)
Liana De la Rose, Isabel and the Rogue, Berkley (a British war hero makes it his new mission to protect a Mexican heiress who defies Victorian society to protect her country)
Karen Dickson, Strawberry Field Girls at War, S&S UK (WWII historical family saga)
Lianne Dillsworth, House of Shades, Harper (London, 1833; a doctor is offered a life-changing reward if she can cure the ailing health of the mysterious owner of a foreboding house in Fitzrovia)
Victor Dixen, trans. Françoise Bui, The Court of Miracles, Amazon Crossing (a fearless young heroine ventures into a Parisian underworld court of conspiring vampires)
Christina Dodd, A Daughter of Fair Verona, John Scognamiglio (Romeo and Juliet’s daughter is a clever, rebellious, independent young woman in fair Verona. New series)
Hannah Dolby, How to Solve Murders Like a Lady, Aria (a lady detective, who spends her time solving mysteries and unveiling scandals in Hastings, a popular seaside spot for the Victorian middle classes)
Stuart Douglas, Death at the Dress Rehearsal, Titan Books (first in The Lowe and Le Breton Mysteries series, set in Shropshire, 1970)
Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains, Bethany House (1948; ghosts of the past entangle with the courage of the present in a story of a woman determined to forge a new life in a time-forgotten Colorado haven)
Imogen Edwards-Jones, The Witch’s Daughter, Aria (tale of women rising from the ashes of an empire; based on a true story)
Jessica Ellicott, Murder at an English Séance, Kensington (in post–World War I England, foul play at a suspicious séance provokes sleuths Beryl Helliwell and Edwina Davenport to dig up some dirt)
Mario Escobar, The Forgotten Names, Harper Muse (based on the true WWII story of one woman who risked everything to reunite Jewish children with their true names)
Loren D. Estleman, Iron Star, Forge (set against the landscape of the Wild West, adventure follows a man on a journey to set his legacy, and the men dedicated to bringing his story to life)
F. L. Everett, Murder on Stage, Bookouture (WWII murder mystery. Edie York book 3)
Jess Everlee, A Bluestocking’s Guide to Decadence, Carina Adores (London 1886 – a member of London’s underground queer community meets her match in this Sapphic opposites-attract romance)
Jentry Flint, To Love the Brooding Baron, Shadow Mountain (sparks fly as Arabella falls for a baron who lives under the shadow of a scandalous family secret)
Brooke Lea Foster, All the Summers in Between, Gallery Books (set in 60s and 70s; novel about two estranged friends whose unexpected reconnection in the Hamptons forces them to finally confront the terrible event that drove them apart)
Kate Foster, The King’s Witches, Mantle (1589; historical novel gives voice to the women at the heart of the real-life witch trials in sixteenth-century Scotland)
Dianne Freeman, An Art Lover’s Guide to Paris and Murder, Kensington (former Countess of Harleigh, Frances Hazelton, is among a throng of pleasure seekers and art lovers in the City of Lights)
Marius Gabriel, The German Daughter, Embla Books (dual timeline novel set in Norway 1940 and England 1968)
Alex Gerlis, Every Spy a Traitor, Canelo (first novel in new Double Agent espionage series, set in 1937)
C. P. Giuliani, A Snare of Deceit, Sapere (book 5 in the Tom Walsingham Mysteries, set at the Tudor court in 1537)
Alex Gough, Caesar’s General, Canelo (story of Roman history retold from Mark Antony’s perspective)
Linda Grant, The Story of the Forest, Virago (family saga about the European Jewish experience from WWI to the present day)
Claudia Gray, The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Vintage (third book in the Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney Mystery series, which finds the amateur sleuths facing their most daunting challenge yet)
Jocelyn Green, The Hudson Collection, Bethany House (an ornithologist, a gardener and a salvage dealer embark on a hunt for a missing relic intended to safeguard the servants’ futures before their country mansion place of work is sold)
Laura Lee Guhrke, Lady Scandal, Forever (romance featuring a haughty businessman and the headstrong event planner who steals his heart)
Lisa Hall, The Case of the Singer and the Showgirl, Hera (time-slip murder mystery set in Las Vegas, 1950s)
Robert J. Harris, Redfalcon, Polygon (July, 1942; veteran adventurer Richard Hannay is called into action on a mission to stop the Nazis from taking control of Malta)
Sarah Henstra, The Lost Tarot, Doubleday (dual timeline novel in which a lost tarot card is the key to unravelling decades of secrets)
James Holland, Alvesdon, Bantam (stretching from the summer of 1939 to the Battle of Britain, this is a fictional portrait of how the war changed everything for one family and their community)
Mary Horlock, The Stranger’s Companion, John Murray (1933; the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot on the island of Sark)
Anna Lee Huber, A Deceptive Composition, Berkley (a story of long-buried family secrets that threaten to unravel lives)
Kelsey James, Secrets of Rose Briar Hall, John Scognamiglio (Gilded Age gothic in which a wealthy young newlywed in early 20th century New York is isolated within her empty mansion by her controlling new husband)
Carol Jameson, Adam and Leonora, She Writes (a novel about the power of dreams, the creative process, and the surreal, told through multiple voices in multiple time periods)
Adele Jordan, Murder at Greenwich Palace, Sapere (first in historical espionage thriller series, during King Henry VIII’s reign, featuring a feisty female lead)
Hiromi Kawakami, trans. Ted Goossen, The Third Love, Granta (novel that moves between Japan past and present to tell a time-bending story about desire and destiny)
Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Society and Secrets, Crooked Lane (London, 1923; botanist Saffron Everleigh agrees to go undercover at a government laboratory, risking her career and her safety)
Eliza Knight, The Queen’s Faithful Companion, William Morrow (novel told from the multi-narrative viewpoints of a young Queen Elizabeth; Hanna Penwyck, the fictionalized Keeper of the Queen’s dogs; and Susan, the Queen’s Corgi)
Giles Kristian, Arthur, Bantam (Saxons are now lords of Britain yet the bards still sing of Arthur who will come again when they need him most)
Poppy Kuroki, Gate to Kagoshima, Magpie (while researching her Japanese ancestors, a vicious typhoon hurls Isla back to 1877, amid the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion)
Eimear Lawlor, Kitty’s War, Aria (Kilkenny, 1939; a young woman fights to carve her own way despite all odds being stacked against her)
Rosalie M. Lin, Daughter of Calamity, St. Martin’s (historical fantasy set in 1930s Shanghai)
Zülfü Livaneli, trans. Brendan Freely, On the Back of the Tiger, Other Press (this literary account of an Ottoman sultan’s life in exile is also a powerful indictment of the hypocrisies of the West)
Ellery Lloyd, The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby, Harper (mystery involving a cursed wealthy family and a Surrealist painting which holds the key to three suspicious deaths over the course of a century)
Robert J. Lloyd, The Bedlam Cadaver, Melville House (in late 17th Century London rich young women are being kidnapped and murdered and Harry Hunt, falsely accused, must clear his name)
Maxim Loskutoff, Old King, W. W. Norton (novel which spotlights the birth of the modern environmental movement, and the accelerating dominion of technology in American life)
Elizabeth Macneal, The Burial Plot, Picador (Gothic thriller about murder, manipulation, and a young woman trying to wrestle power from the hands of a dangerous man)
Edward Marston, Spring Offensive, Allison & Busby (Detective Inspector Harvey Marmion faces an uphill battle to solve a perplexing case in March 1918)
Regina McBride, Stranger From Across the Sea, Green City Books (literary fiction explores place, displacement and exile in 1973 between two friends, both with Irish mothers; and again in 1986)
Carol McGrath, The Lost Queen, Headline Accent (1191; medieval story of high adventure, survival, friendship and the enduring love of a queen for her king)
Edward McSweegan, The Cottage Industry, Wild Rose Press (a pilot for the French Army during the Great War, returns to Connecticut after wandering post-war France with shell shock)
Rosie Meddon, These Wartime Dreams, Canelo (Second World War saga about family, friendship and following your heart)
Roland Merullo, The Light Over Lake Como, Lake Union (two lovers separated in war-torn Italy struggle to reunite)
Simon Michael, Death, Adjourned, Sapere (an urban legal thriller set in 1969)
Marianne K. Miller, We Were the Bullfighters, Dundurn Press (1923; sent to cover bank robber Red Ryan’s daring prison break, a young Ernest Hemingway becomes fascinated with the convicts)
Anne Montgomery, Your Forgotten Sons, Next Chapter (WWII story about a man assigned to the Graves Registration Service, as the US prepares to enter the war in 1943)
Walter Mosley, Farewell, Amethystine, Mulholland (LA, 1970; LAPD Black detective Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia)
Jennifer Murgia, When I Was Alice, CamCat (a present-day librarian awakens in 1953, where she is mistaken for a rising star who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances)
Patrick Nathan, The Future Was Color, Counterpoint (exploration of postwar American decadence, reinventing the self through art, and the psychosis that lingers in a world that’s seen the bomb)
Claire North, The Last Song of Penelope, Redhook (novel that breathes life into ancient myth and gives voice to the women who stand defiant in a world ruled by ruthless men)
Maggie Nye, The Curators, Curbstone Books 2 (blend of historical fiction and magical realism, set in 1915 Atlanta)
Chigozie Obioma, The Road to the Country, Hogarth (an odyssey of brotherhood, love, and courage set during one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of Africa)
Irenosen Okojie, Curandera, Dialogue Books (dual timeline novel set in the mountainous town of Gethsemane, 17th-century Cape Verde, and in present-day London)
Gail Ward Olmsted, Katharine’s Remarkable Road Trip, Black Rose Writing (in fall of 1907, a 77-yr-old woman takes a roadtrip from Newport, Rhode Island to her new home in Jackson, New Hampshire)
Alyssa Palombo, The Assassin of Venice, Crooked Lane (a Renaissance courtesan must choose between love and duty in this 16th-century mystery)
Wendy Parkins, An Idle Woman, Legend Press (based on the true story of Frances Dickinson who braved public disgrace to expose a brutal marriage and assert her right to a life and a voice of her own in the 19th-century)
Ben Pastor, The Venus of Salò, Bitter Lemon Press (8th in the Martin Bora series, set in the Republic of Salò, the last Fascist stronghold held by Mussolini)
Leslye Penelope, Daughter of the Merciful Deep, Redhook (historical fantasy that shines a light on the drowned Black towns of the American South)
Valérie Perrin, trans. Hildegarde Serle, Forgotten on Sunday, Europa Editions (story about an unlikely friendship and about healing the wounds of a broken past)
Patricia Raybon, Truth Be Told, Tyndale (1924; in a narrative driven by secrets, romance, and lies, amateur sleuth Annalee must unravel a high-stakes case)
Sarah Rayne, The Murderer Inside the Mirror, Severn House (the thieving Fitzglen family are back in this second instalment of the Theatre of Thieves gothic mystery series set in Victorian England)
Lucy Ribchester, Murder Ballad, Black & White (dark tale set in Edinburgh, 1791, of the awakening of retribution for a long-buried secret)
Ted Riccardi, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Bloodhound (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson traverse the British Isles and the Italian peninsula in a new series of adventures)
Karen Robards, Some Murders in Berlin, MIRA(set against the chaos of 1943 Berlin, a Danish woman is forced to help German police hunt for a serial killer–and keep the killings secret from the public)
Erika Robuck, The Last Twelve Miles, Sourcebooks Landmark (set in the Prohibition Rum Wars, two women masterminds try to outwit each other in a game of ambition)
Lori Roy, Lake Country, Thomas & Mercer (set in 1950s, Southern Gothic thriller reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, tying her fate to a dreamy teenager whose boyfriend runs afoul of the mob)
Erika Rummel, What They Said About Luisa, Dundurn (a telling of the complex life of Luisa Abrego, who forges a new life after freedom from slavery in colonial Mexico)
Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Gretel and the Great War, FSG (novel that shows us the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna)
Katherine Schellman, The Last Note of Warning, Minotaur (third in the mysterious, and queer Nightingale mystery series set in 1920s New York)
Ann Schlee, Rhine Journey, McNally Editions (on a Victorian pleasure cruise, in 1851, a chance encounter opens the floodgates to regret, desire, and possibility)
Irina Shapiro, Murder at Traitors’ Gate, Storm (Tate and Bell Victorian murder mystery, book 2)
Peter Sherlock, The Mask of Merryvale Manor, Fairlight (a choice between family or principles is at the centre of a mid-1960s murder on the wealthy Drummond estate)
Wilbur Smith, Warrior King, Zaffre (historical saga set in South Africa, 1820)
A. L. Sowards, Beneath a Crescent Shadow, Shadow Mountain (after an arranged marriage, Konstantin and Suzana must find a way to meet the demands of a conquering Ottoman sultan in 1373)
Cindy K. Sproles, Coal Black Lies, Kregel (inspirational fiction exploring forgiveness, set in the Appalachian Mountains)
Lee Swanson, She Serves the Realm, Merchant’s Largesse (fourth entry in the gender-bending medieval romance series, set in 1311, in the reign of Edward II. Sequel to Her Dangerous Journey Home)
Sherry Thomas, A Ruse of Shadows, Berkley (Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position)
Trisha R. Thomas, The Secret Keeper of Main Street, William Morrow (1954; In 1950s oil-rich Oklahoma, a dressmaker with the gift of “second sight,” reluctantly reveals the true loves and intentions of her socialite clients)
Dawn Tripp, Jackie, Random House (a window into the many worlds of Jackie Kennedy, nicknamed Jacks, Jacqueline, Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Onassis, and Jackie O)
Jeri Westerson, The Mummy of Mayfair, Severn House (private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson take on an unusual case in Victorian London)
Alexandra Weston, The Hollywood Governess, Boldwood (a forbidden love story set in Hollywood, 1937)
Rolf Wicks, Summer Skies, the Road Ahead, Koehler Books (a backpacking trip across America by two college students in summer of 1970)
Beatriz Williams, Husbands & Lovers, Ballantine (two women—separated by decades and continents—reclaim family secrets and lost loves. Dual timeline, New England 2022 and Cairo 1951)
G. J. Williams, The Wolf’s Shadow, Legend Press (Doctor John Dee and Margaretta, assisted by his pupil Christopher, are charged with unravelling the mystery of a body hanging in a tree at Hatfield House)
Lisa Wingate, Shelterwood, Ballantine (inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought to protect children caught in the storm of land barons hungry for power and oil wealth)
Jacqueline Winspear, The Comfort of Ghosts, Soho Crime (psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future. Final installment in series)
Jack Winter, That Business at Brody, At Bay Press (a tale of survival despite best laid plans, the novel is told by a variety of narrators and focuses on transient life, propelled by the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander)
Kenneth Wishnia, From Sun to Sun, PM Press (literary crime novel that presents two parallel stories separated by twenty-five centuries)
Mary Wood, The Guernsey Girls Go to War, Pan (1940; Harriet and her family make their way back to Guernsey for refuge, but, when they get there, the Germans have invaded)
David Wroblewski, Familiaris, Blackstone (following The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, this is the origin story of the Sawtelle family and the remarkable dogs that carry the Sawtelle name)
Lai Wen, Tiananmen Square, Spiegel & Grau (coming-of-age novel about young love and lasting friendships forged in the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square student protests)
Futaro Yamada, trans. Bryan Karetnyk, The Meiji Guillotine Murders, Pushkin Vertigo (a pair of sleuths investigate a series of murders in 19th century Tokyo)
July 2024
Nekesa Afia, A Lethal Lady, Berkley (a woman working in a parfumerie and enjoying Paris nightlife, is drawn into the mystery of a young artist who has gone missing)
Merryn Allingham, Murder at Cleve College, Bookouture (cosy mystery set in Sussex, 1958. Book nine of the Steele and Carrington series)
M. T. Anderson, Nicked, Pantheon/Penguin Random House (genre-defying, queer adventure debut about the quest to steal the mystical bones of a long-dead saint)
Lelita Baldock, The Girl Who Crossed Mountains, Storm (tale of survival, family bonds and the power of love to persevere against all odds, set in 1936)
Mary Balogh, A Matter of Class, Hachette (a tale rife with dark secrets, deception, and the trials of love, in which very little is as it seems)
Biyi Bandele, Yorùbá Boy Running, Hamish Hamilton (fictionalized retelling of African linguist and clergyman, Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s, journey from slave to liberator, and from boy to man)
Kevin Barry, The Heart in Winter, Doubleday/Canongate/Knopf Canada (funny and romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana)
Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard, The Seaforth Heiress, Black Rose Writing (a century-old curse shadows the woman destined to be Clan Mackenzie’s only female chief)
Sian Ann Bessey, A Kingdom to Claim, Shadow Mountain (Aisley lost everything in a Viking attack. Now she works alongside the one man she trusts to fight for her people in Wessex, AD 878)
Georgie Blalock, The Windsor Conspiracy, William Morrow (reimagined fictional portrait of Wallis Simpson through the lens of her cousin who is engaged to spy on the duchess for her alleged Nazi sympathies)
Maxime Raymond Bock, trans. Mélissa Bull, Morel, QC Fiction (human portrait of one man and his time, as he uncovers a story of Montreal that has been buried under years of urban renewal and modernization)
Paula Brackston, The Haunting of Hecate Cavendish, St. Martin’s (magic-infused series about Hecate Cavendish, an eccentric and feisty young woman who can see ghosts)
Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Flatiron (historical fantasy novel set on a grand express train, about a group of passengers on a dangerous journey across a magical landscape)
Amanda Cabot, Into the Starlight, Revell (a tale of family and friendship; Sweetwater Crossing book 3)
Costanza Casati, Babylonia, Michael Joseph/Sourcebooks Landmark (novel based on a legend which tells of an orphan born into a life of toil and anonymity who rises from nothing to rule kingdoms and command armies)
KJ Charles, The Duke at Hazard, Orion (Regency-era gay romance)
Toby Clements, A Good Deliverance, Faber & Faber (1468; prison tale of a man at odds with his past and the events that inspired him to write the first great work of prose fiction in English – Sir Thomas Malory)
Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms, Amistad (England, 1840; saga with supernatural undertones set in Victorian England)
Diney Costeloe, The Girls They Left Behind, Aria (a wartime nurse brings hope in the dark during WWI)
Siobhan Daiko, Daughters of Tuscany, Boldwood (WWII tale of love, loss and hope in times of strife)
Janet Dailey, Calder Country, Kensington (early 20th romantic western saga)
J. D. Davies, The Cursed Shore, Canelo (age of sail Philippe Kermorvant thriller)
Juno Dawson, Queen B, HarperVoyager/Penguin (1536; fantasy series set in the reign of Henry VIII about the origins of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven under the bewitching Anne Boleyn)
D. L. Douglas, Dr. Spilsbury and the Cursed Bride, Orion (September, 1920; Spilsbury and his assistant, Violet, investigate the murder of a young bride on her wedding day)
Darrin Doyle, Let Gravity Seize the Dead, Regal House (an intergenerational literary dual timeline horror in which the stories from 1907 and 2007 braid and merge together)
Emily Dunlay, Teddy, Harper/Fourth Estate (in Rome 1969, Teddy Carlyle is caught on film in the arms of the American ambassador and has to recover the photographs whilst keeping her fragile reputation intact)
Lesley Eames, Evacuees at the Wartime Bookshop, Penguin (book 4 in the WWII saga series, set in 1942)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Lord’s Station, Allison & Busby (March, 1941. WWII and the Blitz are well underway, as Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are called to Lord’s Station)
Jen Fawkes, Daughters of Chaos, The Overlook Press (inspired by the story of Nashville’s attempt to exile its prostitutes during the Civil War, novel journeys through Ancient Greece, Renaissance Venice, and 19th-Century America)
Josie Ferguson, The Silence In Between, Doubleday UK (features a daring plan to escape East Berlin in 1961)
Andres Forbes, McCurdle’s Arm, Invisible Publishing (southern Ontario, 1892; an account of a man in his particular time, playing a version of baseball devoid of the comforts of the modern game, and rife with violence)
Jean Fullerton, Felicity’s War, Corvus (saga about the unlikely romance between a passionate journalist and a detective during WWII)
Annie Garthwaite, The King’s Mother, Viking (from the Wars of the Roses to the dawn of the Tudor age, a story of mothers and sons and of maternal ferocity and female ambition)
Doug Gold, The Dressmaker & the Hidden Soldier, Allen & Unwin (based on the true story of New Zealand soldier Peter Blunden; Thalia Christidou, the young Greek dressmaker; and Tasoula Paschilidou, the resistance heroine)
Jennifer Gold, Polite Calamities, Lake Union (during a hazy 1960s Rhode Island summer, three disparate lives converge and combust in a story of the empowerment of women)
Juliet Grames, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia, Knopf (Calabria, 1960; novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy)
Ryan Graudin, The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois, Redhook (transports readers to early 1900s Paris, a place of enchanted salons, fortune tellers and doorways that can take you to the most unexpected places)
Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword, Viking (historical fantasy sheds a fresh light on Arthur’s Britain, a diverse, complex nation struggling to come to terms with its bloody history)
Jim Gulledge, Green Forest, Red Earth, Blue Sea, Koehler Books (from Reconstruction to the modern age, family saga speaks to what binds families together and tears them apart)
Anita Heiss, Dirrayawadha, Simon & Schuster AU (shows the resistance leader, Windradyne, as the remarkable figure he was and surrounds him with fascinating figures otherwise lost to history)
Charlotte Hinger, Mary’s Place, Bison Books (tribute to the rural families who weathered one of the worst agricultural disasters in American history)
John Hinman, Strong Vincent, Koehler Books (tells the story of Gettysburg’s unheralded hero, a common man trying to navigate life and romance in the midst of war)
Alan Hlad, Fleeing France, John Scognamiglio (an American nightclub singer turned ambulance driver races to evacuate a British pilot and a Jewish orphan across more than 4,000 miles; inspired by real wartime events)
Catherine Hokin, The Secret Hotel in Berlin, Bookouture (story of a Jewish woman running a hotel in Berlin and hiding Jews in the wine cellar, while protecting her daughter, after her husband goes missing)
India Holton, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, Berkley/Penguin (rival ornithologists hunt through England for a rare magical bird in this historical-fantasy rom-com with manners, tea, and helicopter parasols)
Graham Hurley, Dead Ground, Head of Zeus/Aries (a young British nurse experiences the devastating Spanish Civil War and the dark side of the espionage game)
Celia Imrie, Meet Me at Rainbow Corner, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (follows the lives of Dot, Lilly and their friends, hostesses at Rainbow Corner, a huge dance hall where all the luxuries are available even during wartime)
Eva Izsak, Songs My Mother Taught Me, She Writes (tale that spans from Transylvania in the 1930s through Scarsdale, NY to present-day Europe — giving voice to those who grew up in the aftermath of their parents’ trauma)
Claire M. Johnson, Fog City, Level Best (with her boss at the Moore Detective Agency more interested in his bootlegger, secretary Maggie Laurent takes a case and soon finds herself up to her neck in murder)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, Beans, Bourbon and Blood, Pinnacle (new series in which Luke Jensen teams up with chuckwagon cook Dewey “Mac” McKenzie)
Jennie Jones, The Girls from Fitzroy, HQ Fiction (an unlikely friendship between two young women from opposite ends of Fitzroy sparks lifechanging transformations they could never have anticipated)
Barbara Josselsohn, The Forgotten Italian Restaurant, Bookouture (dual time line love story set in Italy, 1943 and present day)
Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran, Gallery (novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran)
Minsoo Kang, The Melancholy of Untold History, William Morrow (inspired by East-Asian mythology, and told in multiple voices, novel reveals a people and its individuals who seek to confront the hardships of life through storytelling)
Sophie Keetch, Le Fay, Magpie (second instalment in the feminist retelling of the story of the misunderstood villainess Morgan Le Fay)
Léonie Kelsall, The Homestead in the Eucalypts, Allen & Unwin (dual timeline romance set in the rural outback of southern Australia)
Cathryn Kemp, A Poisoner’s Tale, Bantam/Transworld Digital (legendary figure of notorious 17th-century Italian poisoner, Giulia Tofana, is brought to life in this feminist retelling)
Manoj Kuroor, trans. J. Devika, The Day the Earth Bloomed, Bloomsbury IN (set seventeen centuries ago, novel tells the intertwined stories of lute-player Koumban and his children, drawing on the celebrated poems of classical Tamil)
Kathryn Lasky, Mortal Radiance, Severn House (painter and amateur sleuth Georgia O’Keeffe investigates a tragic death when she returns to Taos in a mystery set in the 1930s)
Pam Lecky, Under a Lightning Sky, Avon (novel set during the Blitz in 1940)
Jenny Lecoat, Beyond Summerland, Polygon/Graydon House (set in the aftermath of the liberation of Jersey in June 1945, a tale of long-buried family secrets, of mothers and daughters, and of how innocent young people get caught up in the tide of war)
Amanda Lees, If I Can Save One Child, Bookouture (based on the true stories of the women and men who risked everything to save thousands of innocent lives during WWII)
David Lewis, A Jewel in the Crown, John Scognamiglio (new historical series featuring a gifted young socialist-turned-counterespionage spy on a World War II mission orchestrated by Winston Churchill himself)
Norman Lock, The Caricaturist, Bellevue Literary Press (a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century)
Angélica Lopes, trans. Zoë Perry, The Curse of the Flores Women, Amazon Crossing (in a novel about the enduring bonds of womanhood, a young girl weaves together the truth behind her family history)
Katie Lumsden, The Trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst, Michael Joseph (witty novel of manners and gossip, class and family, scandal and romance set in 1841)
Sean Lusk, A Woman of Opinion, Doubleday (novel which gives a voice to the unremembered life of pioneering poet and feminist, Mary Wortley Montagu)
Hannah Lynn, Daughters of Olympus, Sourcebooks Landmark (a daughter pulled between two worlds and a mother willing to destroy both to protect her)
Annie Lyons, A Girl’s Guide to Winning the War, Headline Review (tale of unexpected friendship, community and two women who change the course of the war)
A. J. Mackenzie, City of Woe, Canelo (Book 2 in the Simon Merrivale medieval mysteries series)
A. J. Martin, The Night in Venice, W & N (historical novel, set in Venice, 1911, features Monica, a fourteen-year-old girl with a disturbing imagination)
Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at Vinland, Kensington (August 1901; reporter and sleuth Emma Cross Andrews must stop a bold poisoner who is targeting the society wives of the Four Hundred in Gilded Age Newport, Rhode Island)
Steven A McKay, Sword of the Saxons, Canelo (second historical adventure set in the time of Alfred the Great)
Mary McMyne, A Rose by Any Other Name, Redhook/Orbit (1603; the story behind Shakespeare’s sonnets, as told by his mysterious Dark Lady)
Tom Mead, Cabaret Macabre, Mysterious Press (Joseph Spector, a magician-turned-sleuth in pre-war London, investigates a mystery at a grand estate in the English countryside)
Nicole M. Miller, Until Our Time Comes, Revell (drawn from true events of World War II, a debut story of escape, capture, resistance, and love)
Allison Montclair, Murder at the White Palace, Minotaur (a Sparks and Bainbridge post WWII mystery)
Katy Moran, My Lady’s Secrets, Aria (after being caught spying during the Peninsula War, Cressida must decide if it is too late for she and her estranged husband to fight for one another at last)
Michelle Moran, Maria, Dell/Random House UK (based on the real life of Maria von Trapp, beyond the story immortalised by Hollywood)
Eliza Morton, The Children Left Behind, Pan (20th-century saga set in 1940, Liverpool)
Donna Mumma, The Women of Wynton’s, Barbour (four women’s loyalties, vanity, friendship, and detective skills are put to the test at a 1950’s department store)
Howard Norman, Come to the Window, W. W. Norton (drama of murder, love, and redemption set in Nova Scotia in the final year of World War I)
Tracie Peterson, A Choice Considered, Bethany House (book 2 in The Heart of Cheyenne series; a tale of romance, resilience, and self-discovery amid the evolving landscapes of the American West)
Scott Phillips, The Devil Raises His Own, Soho Crime (dark historical adventure captures the beginnings of the Hollywood studio system and the “blue movie” industry that grows up alongside it)
Rosanna Pike, A Little Trickerie, Fig Tree (a tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, set in a Tudor England rarely seen)
Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies, Avid Reader/Fig Tree (inspired by true events—featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that will change the course of literature)
David Putnam, The Blind Devotion of Imogene, Level Best (1973; a race to uncover a real killer as Imogene dodges gangsters, family and a publisher on a quest to find the truth)
Kate Quinn, The Briar Club, William Morrow (1950; story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era)
Tony Rea, Bouncer’s Blenheim, Sapere (a WWII mediterranean adventure set after the Battle of Britain)
Philip Reari, Earth Jumped Back, Black Rose Writing (a historical, time-bending novel based on events in Santa Barbara, CA, that occurred during the same period of generational upheaval as the Manson murders)
Mary Renault, The Persian Boy, Virago (queer reimagining of the last years of Alexander the Great, told through the eyes of his lover)
Sofia Robleda, Daughter of Fire, Amazon Crossing (for a young woman coming of age in 16th-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit)
Mandy Robotham, The Hidden Storyteller, Avon (post war story set in Hamburg, 1946)
M. J. Robotham, The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux, Aria (a rollercoaster ride through the latter half of the twentieth century)
O. O. Sangoyomi, Masquerade, Forge/Solaris (in a reimagined 15th century West Africa, tale explores the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future)
Fiona Schneider, The Paris Affair, Penguin (Paris 1942; a woman disappears in the middle of the night, leaving behind the man she loves)
Ben Shattuck, The History of Sound, Viking (interconnected stories, set mostly in New England, exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history can echo over centuries)
G. Eldon Smith, Murder on Money Mountain, Koehler Books (murder mystery set in the old-time days of Cripple Creek, Colorado)
Sally Smith, A Case of Mice and Murder, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (1901; barrister Gabriel Ward finds the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England dead on his doorstep, and takes up the art of sleuthing. First of new series set in Edwardian London)
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson, The Road to Heaven, Dundurn (noir mystery introducing young detective Patrick Bird, set in Toronto’s Parkdale during the tumultuous ’60s)
Laraine Stephens, Lies and Deception, Level Best (1925; fourth in Reggie da Costa Mysteries in which Reggie embarks on a crusade to rid Melbourne of confidence men and ‘snake oil’ salesmen, while tracking down a killer)
Jane Sullivan, Murder in Punch Lane, Echo (a dark crime novel that maps the sins and secrets of nineteenth-century Melbourne)
Karen Swan, The Lost Lover, Macmillan UK (book three in the historical Wild Isle romance series)
Denis Thériault, The Samurai of the Red Carnation, Pushkin Press (a story of romance, adventure, love and betrayal, that takes Samurai-in-training Matsuo across medieval Japan, culminating in his ultimate test at the uta awase)
Lydia Travers, Death in a Scottish Castle, Bookouture (1912; when Maud McIntyre and her assistant Daisy travel to a remote Scottish castle, the last thing they expect to find is a locked room murder mystery)
Louisa Treger, The Paris Muse, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (fictionalized retelling of the disturbing love story between Dora Maar, a talented French photographer, painter and poet, and Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso)
Yaroslav Trofimov, No Country for Love, Abacus (novel about a young Ukrainian girl arriving in Kharkiv in 1930, determined to contribute to the future of her country)
Jen Turano, Meeting Her Match, Bethany House (romance in which a woman, who has vowed never to marry, finds her match)
Bryn Turnbull, The Berlin Apartment, MIRA(dual perspective love story follows a young couple whose lives are irrevocably changed when they’re separated overnight by the construction of the Berlin Wall)
Chloe Turner, Blue Hawk, Deixis Press (explores the power of passion, the price of ambition, and the beauty of courage in 17th-century Gloucestershire)
Alexandra Vasti, Ne’er Duke Well, St. Martin’s Griffin/Corvus (matchmaking doesn’t go according to plan for society’s most proper debutante)
Sonia Velton, The Nightingale’s Castle, Harper Perennial/Abacus (reimagining of the story of Erzsébet Báthory, the infamous sixteenth-century Hungarian aristocrat known as the “Blood Countess”)
Anneka R. Walker, The Lady Glass, Covenant (Regency Romance)
Pam Weaver, A Sister’s Promise, Avon UK (two stepsisters find they need each other more than ever as they forge their own path in the world after their father’s death)
Rachel Wesson, A Song of Courage, Storm (WWII based on the true story of two unsung heroines who defied the odds to save countless lives)
A. J. West, The Betrayal of Thomas True, Orenda Books (1715; a carpenter hiding a double life, searches for a traitor who is betraying the secrets of the mollies)
Douglas Westerbeke, A Short Walk Through a Wide World, Jonathan Cape (in Paris, 1885, 9-year-old Aubry Tourvel succumbs to a mysterious illness which begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition)
Patrick Worrall, The Exile, Bantam (prequel to The Partisan, set in 1951)
Bart Yates, The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl, John Scognamiglio (blends historical fact and fiction in a saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man, beginning in 1920s Utah)
Don Zancanella, Animals of the Alpine Front, Delphinium (Italy, WWI; story of two young people whose paths cross and recross as they are first impelled by parents, then forced by sweeping world events to leave their childhood homes)
August 2024
Emma R. Alban, You’re the Problem, It’s You, Avon (enemies-to-lovers queer Victorian romance)
Kaia Alderson, In a League of Her Own, William Morrow (1930s New York City; untold story of Effa Manley, a black businesswoman in the male dominated baseball industry)
Skye Alexander, Running in the Shadows, Level Best (fourth installment in the Lizzie Crane mysteries set in 1926, Salem)
Jane Alison, Villa E, Liveright (novel inspired by the collision of Irish designer Eileen Gray and famed Swiss architect Le Corbusier)
Diane Allen, Wartime in the Dales, Pan (a tale of two young girls doing all they can to get home in 1939 Yorkshire)
Allison Alsup, Foreign Seed, Keylight (China 1918; follows newly minted Vice Consul Samuel Sokobin’s first case as he investigates the disappearance of Frank Meyer, when he disappears from a steamship on the Yangtze River)
Donna Jones Alward, When the World Fell Silent, One More Chapter (a novel of the 1917 Halifax explosion)
Lainie Anderson, The Death of Dora Black, Hachette AU (cosy murder mystery inspired by the true story of Australia’s pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks)
Jessica Anthony, The Most, Doubleday (tale about a 1950s American housewife)
Lindsay Jayne Ashford, Through the Mist, Lake Union (two women disturb the dark history of a deceptively quiet postwar Cornish village)
Stefania Auci, trans. Katherine Gregor and Howard Curtis, Fall of the Florios, HarperVia (third installment tells the story of Italy’s most powerful and notorious family as it faces its dramatic end)
D. R. Bailey, Tip and Run, Sapere (a Spitfire Mavericks Thriller set during WWII)
Gina Maria Balibrera, The Volcano Daughters, Pantheon (debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, and their flight from genocide)
Pat Barker, The Voyage Home, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin (continues the story of the captured Trojan women as they set sail for Mycenae with the victorious Greeks. Third in series centres on the fate of Cassandra, daughter of Priam and priestess)
Karen Barnett, Where Trees Touch the Sky, Kregel (dual timeline novel is set against the backdrop of a national park in 1920s and 1972)
Clare Beams, The Garden, Atlantic Books (tale of women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated)
Johanna Bell, Hope for the Blitz Girls, Hodder & Stoughton (next in series about the brave women who protected the streets of London during the Blitz)
Ann Bennett, The Orphan List, Bookouture (dual timeline WW2 novel of one woman’s courage in war)
Rachel Blackmore, Costanza, Renegade Books/Dialogue Books (Rome, 1636; based on a true story, a historical novel that brings to life a feminist icon who has been written out of history)
Del Blackwater, Dead Egyptians, Black Rose Writing (transports the reader into turn of the century Cairo, while also addressing the atrocities of colonialism)
Meihan Boey, The Formidable Miss Cassidy, Pushkin ONE (an intriguing brew of magic, romance and mystery set in 1890s Singapore)
Rhys Bowen, The Rose Arbor, Lake Union (an investigation into a girl’s disappearance uncovers a mystery dating back to World War II)
Rachel Brimble, The Home Front Nurses, Boldwood (WWII story of unbreakable bonds of friendship in times of strife and heartbreak)
Robert Bruton, Empire Resurgent, Addison & Highsmith (historical fiction about Belisarius and Justinian that showcases their wives Theodora and Antonina)
Susan Buttenwieser, Junction of Earth and Sky, Manilla Press (a coming of age in 1940s England unfolds in multiple timelines)
Jane Campbell, Interpretations of Love, Grove Press/Riverrun (debut novel that explores complicated love, secrets, and familial misunderstandings)
Ella Carey, The Venetian Daughter, Bookouture (WWII historical novel that will transport you to the canals of Venice and remind you to always hold onto hope)
Clare Chambers, Shy Creatures, W & N (period piece about secrets and lies in postwar Britain, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient)
J’nell Ciesielski, The Winged Tiara, Thomas Nelson (after a hasty wartime marriage and an even quicker divorce, two jewel thieves risk it all to obtain the grandest prize of all)
Joanne Clague, The House of Hope, Canelo (Victorian saga set in winter, 1885. Book 1 in The Help for Friendless Girls series)
Oliver Clements, The Queen’s Lies, Atria/Leopold & Co. (series follows John Dee and his wife working together in an act of espionage that may turn out to be treason)
Bridget Collins, The Silence Factory, William Morrow/The Borough Press (story set in 1800s of gothic suspense about a powerful family, the magical and dangerous silk their fortune is built upon)
Sara Goodman Confino, Behind Every Good Man, Lake Union (a wronged wife goes toe to toe with her cheating husband at the polls in the early 1960s)
Harriet Constable, The Instrumentalist, S&S/Bloomsbury UK & ANZ (debut set in eighteenth-century Venice, about the woman written out of the story of one of history’s greatest musical masterpieces)
Tea Cooper, The Naturalist’s Daughter, Harper Muse (two women, living a century apart, find themselves entangled in the mystery surrounding a scientific controversy of the nineteenth century)
Connilyn Cossette, Shield of the Mighty, Bethany House (tale of vengeance, justice, and healing set in ancient Israel)
Amanda Cox, Between the Sound and Sea, Revell (in overseeing the restoration of a lighthouse, Josephina sifts through decades of rumors and legends of a love story that’s not yet over)
Polly Crosby, The House of Fever, HQ (novel set in 1935, in Hedoné House, a luxurious sanatorium for the creative elite dedicated to the groundbreaking treatment of tuberculosis)
Simon Delaney, Watching Over You, Rare Bird (explores the provenance of a collection of paintings hidden from the plundering Nazis during World War II and the fate of the families entangled in the search for the lost artworks)
Caro De Robertis, The Palace of Eros, The Borough Press/Atria (retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros)
Renita D’Silva, The Secret Keeper, Boldwood (1938; Rani, daughter of an Indian Crown Prince finds a sense of belonging with a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, but is pressed to pass on secrets by a young man whose heart he says she broke)
Martin Edwards, The House on Graveyard Lane (US) / Sepulchre Street (UK), Poisoned Pen Press/Aries (fourth in the Rachel Savernake Golden Age crime fiction, an artist commits suicide right after hiring Rachel to find her murderer)
Barbara Erskine, The Story Spinner, HarperCollins (tale of love, ambition, and secrets that have lain silent for over a thousand years. Set in 382 AD and 2024)
Betty Firth, A Wartime Christmas in the Dales, Hera (a wartime saga set in 1941. Book three of the Made in Yorkshire series)
Rachel Fordham, Beyond Ivy Walls, Thomas Nelson (in historic small-town America, a wealthy reclusive bachelor and an unlikely ally join forces to solve a family secret)
Christopher Fowler, The Foot on the Crown, Bantam (set during the Dark Ages, a story of London that’s filled with myths reimagined, legends retold, seductions, deceits, betrayals and perhaps a little hope)
Clare Flynn, The Artist’s War, Storm (1916; from the trenches of France to the Home Front in rural England & London, story of a society in the midst of devastating upheaval)
Molly Fumia, The Crush of Wine and War, Black Rose Writing (set in Austria, 1938, where two couples struggle with the terrifying prospect of opposing the Nazis)
Rebecca Godfrey and Leslie Jamison, Peggy, Knopf Canada (novel about Peggy Guggenheim—a story of art, family, love, and becoming yourself)
A. E. Goldin, Murder in Constantinople, Pushkin Vertigo (when a shocking discovery turns a troublesome 21-year-old’s life upside-down, he journeys halfway across the world to Constantinople, on the eve of the Crimean War)
Iona Grey, The Housekeeper’s Secret, St. Martin’s (romance set in a crumbling mansion at the turn of the 20th century)
Nataly Gruender, Medusa, Grand Central (coming-of-age retelling about Medusa, the infamous gorgon of Greek mythology)
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Gathering Storm, Sphere (return of the Morland Dynasty series, book 36, set in England, 1936)
Esther Hatch, A Proper Façade, Covenant (a rival to companion Regency Romance)
Jody Hedlund, Saved by the Matchmaker, Bethany House (A Shanahan Match, book 2, set in 1800s St. Louis)
Tom Holm, Panther Creek, Univ. of New Mexico Press (J. D. Daugherty and Hoolie Smith 1928 mystery in which a sadist is preying on young women, especially Native American girls)
Jenny Holmes, The Ballroom Girls Hit the Big Time, Transworld (saga of three friends who liven up their lives during WWII)
Carole Hopson, A Pair of Wings, Henry Holt (novel inspired by the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation)
Emma Hornby, A Sister’s Fight, Transworld (Lancashire, 1943; Livvy and her friend make some easy money by selling themselves on the street, to support their families, until one US soldier takes too much interest in her)
Alex Howard, The Ghost Cat, Hanover Square (follows a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and its inhabitants over centuries)
Laila Ibrahim, Falling Wisteria, Lake Union (as America enters WWII, two women on the home front strive to stay strong for hope, friendship, and family)
Jessica Ilse, The Majestic Sisters, Vagrant Press (dual-timeline fiction following the lives of two estranged sisters, once the most famous performers in mid-century Halifax, who must save their beloved theatre from ruin)
Kristopher Jansma, Our Narrow Hiding Places, Ecco (an elderly woman recounts her Dutch family’s survival during the final years of Nazi occupation)
Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman, Beacon Press (tale set in the Post WWII South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal)
Ghada Karmi, Murjana, Interlink (a tale of love and passion in medieval Baghdad, set in spring of the year 830)
Susanna Kearsley, The King’s Messenger, Simon & Schuster UK (story of treachery, betrayal and love set in 1613 when James I/VI’s son and heir dies plunging the nation into mourning)
Suzanne Kelman, The Bookseller of Paris, Bookouture (second novel in the Paris Sisters series; a story of two women’s bravery in the face of the darkness of the Second World War)
Andrey Kurkov, trans. Reuben Woolley, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, HarperVia (ode to the cultural capital of western Ukraine, with a cast of eccentrics who make up the beating heart of the city)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance, Kensington (Miss Caroline Morton, lady’s companion, has a chance to claim what’s rightfully hers, but the one obstacle in her way is a dangerous murder mystery)
Chris Lloyd, Banquet of Beggars, Orion (new crime novel in the Occupation series, featuring Detective Eddie Giral)
Greer Macallister, The Thirteenth Husband, Sourcebooks Landmark (tearing through millions of dollars, a collection of husbands, and multiple run-ins with a psychic, real-life 19th-century heiress Aimee Crocker blazes a trail of public notoriety and private pain)
Kirsty Manning, The Hidden Book, William Morrow/Allen & Unwin (novel based on a true story of a WWII European heirloom that brought down war criminals and travelled through history … found in an Australian country shed in 2019)
Titti Marrone, The Children of Lingfield House, Manilla Press (based on a true WWII story of 25 child survivors of the Holocaust)
Gordon McAlpine, After Oz, Crooked Lane (retelling of The Wizard of Oz where one little girl is forced to face head on the prejudices of the Midwest in the late 19th century)
Patricia McBride, A Christmas Gift for the East End Library Girls, Boldwood (tale of resilience and determination set as WWII continues and the library girls prepare for a visit from the king and queen to the East End)
Rachel Scott McDaniel, Allison Pittman, Susie Finkbeiner, Something Borrowed, Kregel (three inspirational stories trace generations of wartime romances through a special wedding dress)
Ava McKevitt, A Goddess Scorned, Sapere (Hera is tired of history favouring men and demeaning the women suffering beside them, so now she tells her side of the story)
Diane C. McPhail, Follow the Stars Home, John Scognamiglio (draws on the little-known history of Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt, the young woman whose role in the early 1800s helped redefine America)
Nicholas Meyer, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram From Hell, Mysterious Press (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson cross the Atlantic at the height of World War I in pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram)
Attilio Micheluzzi, The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume, Fantagraphics (first act of two-part adventure takes place in Beirut in 1941, when journalist Marcel Labrume crosses paths with American millionaire Carol Gibson)
Ellie Midwood, When the World Went Silent, Bookouture (WWII novel about a woman’s bravery and determination to save millions)
Jessica Mills, The English Chemist, Pegasus (story of one of the twentieth century’s most famed scientists, Rosalind Franklin)
Ferenc Molnár, trans. Annabel Barber, Venetian Angel, Blue Danube (in summer of 1933, young and naïve Irma Lietzen, is given a tour of Venice by a man once employed by her father)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Seventh Veil of Salome, Del Rey/Arcadia (a young woman wins the role of a lifetime in a film about a legendary heroine—but the real drama is behind the scenes)
Stacie Murphy, The Witch’s Secret, Pegasus (a young witch discovers a murderous plot to turn the tide of the Civil War)
B. R. Myers, The Third Wife of Faraday House, William Morrow (1816; gothic fiction, featuring two brides who must band together to unravel the ghostly secrets at the heart of a crumbling island manor)
Gosia Nealon, The Code Breaker Girl, Bookouture (inspired by the true story of the brave Polish mathematicians who worked on the Enigma code)
Andrés Neuman, trans. Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, Once Upon Argentina, Open Letter (a political story of a family that comes from everywhere, and of a country’s wandering, migratory culture)
Yoko Ogawa, trans. Stephen B. Snyder, Mina’s Matchbox, McClelland & Stewart (tale of friendship, family secrets, and coming of age set in early 1970s Japan)
Gill Paul, Scandalous Women, William Morrow/Avon (novel about Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann, two dynamic, groundbreaking writers renowned for their scandalous and controversial novels)
S. W. Perry, Berlin Duet, Corvus (novel which endures the devastations of war from early Hollywood to pre-war Vienna to the ruins of Soviet Berlin)
Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name, Ballantine (a novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name)
Magdaléna Platzová, trans. Alex Zucker, Life After Kafka, Bellevue Literary Press (novel of Felice Bauer begins in 1935 as Felice and her children flee from Hitler’s Berlin, following her family and members of Kafka’s entourage)
Michelle Porter, A Grandmother Begins the Story, Algonquin (story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women)
MJ Porter, Kings of Conflict, Boldwood (AD 942; final instalment in The Brunanburh Series)
Mark Pryor, A Blood Red Morning, Minotaur (in 1941, Paris detective Henri Lefort, must solve a complex case when a man is murdered on the policeman’s own doorstep)
Mary Jo Putney, Golden Lord, Kensington (second in historical romance series set on the rugged Cornish coast and in war-torn France)
Alejandro Puyana, Freedom is a Feast, Little, Brown (a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause and receives a late-life chance at redemption)
Kate Quinn, Ruth Downie, Stephanie Dray, Eliza Knight, Vicky Alvear, SJA Turney, Russell Whitfield, A Year of Ravens, William Morrow (a novel of Boudica’s rebellion against the might of Rome)
Ruthvika Rao, The Fertile Earth, Flatiron/Oneworld (debut that is equal parts historical, political, and human, about the enduring ties of love and family loyalty)
Heather Redmond, Death and the Visitors, Kensington (1814; stepsisters Mary and Jane are caught up in a mystery involving a drowned Russian and missing diamonds, while falling for the charms of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron)
Ava Reid, Lady Macbeth, Del Rey (a reimagining of Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice that transforms the story men have written for her)
Alix Rickloff, The Last Light Over Oslo, William Morrow (follows one of the first female US Ministers, Daisy Harriman, and her fictional niece as the two are unexpectedly caught up in the German invasion of Norway)
Abigail Rose-Marie, The Moonflowers, Lake Union (an artist unravels her mysterious family history and its generations of women who depended on each other to survive)
Emma Royal, The Palace Girl’s Secret, Penguin (1952; Helen holds the key to royal secrets that could lead to a front-page story for an eager journalist)
Michael Russell, The Dead City, Constable (garda detective Stefan Gillespie searches for an Irishman trapped in Berlin who has betrayed his country, in this crime thriller set in Berlin, 1944)
S. E. Rutledge, A Promise to my Sister, Bookouture (WWII story restores faith in the power of love, family and sisterhood to triumph over evil)
Jennifer Saint, Hera, Flatiron (tale of a powerful Greek goddess maligned in both myth and ancient history)
Michelle Salter, A Corpse in Christmas Close, Boldwood (Christmas, 1923; when reporter Iris Woodmore is sent to cover the Prince of Wales’ visit to historic Winchester, she discovers more than just royal gossip)
Katharine Schellman, A Scandal in Mayfair, Crooked Lane (London 1817; socialite Lily Adler must race against time to catch a killer)
Sarah Seltzer, The Singer Sisters, Flatiron (novel moves between ’60s folk clubs and ’90s music festivals, chronicling the ups and downs of stardom)
Diabou Mai Sennaar, They Dream in Gold, Picador (two children abandoned by their mothers from opposite sides of the Black Atlantic, find each other in New York in 1968 and set about making music)
Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky, Knopf (dual time-frame narrative entwines three outsiders with a single drop of water which remanifests across centuries, featuring the Tigris and the Thames, which transcend history and fate)
Laura Shepperson, The Heir of Venus, Alcove Press/Sphere (reimagines the story of Aeneas and the women once left at the fringes of his story)
Wilbur Smith, Fire on the Horizon, Zaffre (new Ballantyne family sequel to The Triumph of the Sun and King of Kings, set in South Africa, 1899)
Sarah Stewart Taylor, Agony Hill, St. Martin’s (novel set in rural small-town Vermont in the volatile 1960s)
S. M. Stirling, To Turn the Tide, Baen (a time travel military adventure in which a professor and his students go back to the late Roman Empire; historical sci-fi fantasy)
Anna Stuart, The Resistance Sisters, Bookouture (World War Two novel inspired by the true stories of the brave women who fought in the Warsaw Uprising)
Embassie Susberry, The Game Changer, Avon UK (novel, set in New York, 1950. about bravery, hard work, the quest for success and two women’s stand against prejudice in all its forms)
Marielle Thompson, The Last Witch in Edinburgh, Kensington (blends witchcraft, queer love, a vibrant Edinburgh setting, and Scottish folklore in a story exploring what it means to resist the patriarchy and find your voice)
Lavie Tidhar, Six Lives, Apollo (six lives, connected through blood and history, a look to the future and what it might hold)
S. J. A. Turney, Loki Unbound, Canelo (Wolves of Odin book Five, set in AD1044 when the Wolves set sail for Britain and head for Jorvik)
Misty Urban, The Mad Baron’s Bride, Oliver Heber (romance set in 1800. Book 4 of the Ladies Least Likely series)
Fiona Valpy, The Sky Beneath Us, Lake Union (story of love and loss, courage and adventure, set in 1930s and 2020)
James Wade, Hollow Out the Dark, Blackstone (a gothic adventure set against a Depression-era landscape where a whiskey war threatens to decimate a small Texas town)
Boo Walker, An Echo in Time, Lake Union (historical romance in which a woman delves into a centuries-old murder to find the truth behind her self-destructive behavior)
Christine Wells, The Paris Gown, William Morrow (tale of three young women in 1950s Paris who share a single dazzling Christian Dior gown)
J. P. White, The Last Tale of Norah Bow, Regal House (a story about family secrets, self-reliance, and the complicated nature of memory, set in 1926, during Prohibition)
Amanda Willimott, Winter of the Wolf, Penguin AU (Eastern France, 1572; a tale of family secrets, betrayal and the abuse of power, set in a time when women’s lives were not their own)
Emily H. Wilson, Gilgamesh, Titan Books (second book in the Sumerians trilogy, as Gilgamesh is soon to be crowned King of Uruk)
Shelley Wood, The Leap Year Gene, HarperCollins (1916; story follows the lives of the McKinleys, a family forever altered by a daughter’s secret)
September 2024
Foluso Agbaje, The Parlour Wife, One More Chapter (Lagos, 1939; story of a young Nigerian woman, living with the consequences of a war her country didn’t choose)
Molly Aitken, Bright I Burn, Knopf (Ireland, 13th-century; inspired by the first recorded person in Ireland to have been condemned as a witch)
Feurat Alani, trans. Adriana Hunter, I Remember Fallujah, Other Press (novel of memory, identity, and generational trauma, painting a layered portrait of Iraq from the 1950s to the 2000s)
Tasha Alexander, Death by Misadventure, Minotaur (Lady Emily must solve a string of high stakes “accidents” while trapped in a lavish villa in the Bavarian Alps)
Belinda Alexandra, The Masterpiece, HarperCollins (Paris, 1946; novel about a wartime betrayal and a secret hidden in a painting)
Jenny Ashcroft, Secrets of the Watch House, HQ (to escape from her father’s ruined reputation, a young woman accepts employment from a wealthy widower in Cornwall, 1934)
Libby Ashworth, The Market Girl, Penguin (romance saga set in Lancashire)
Jina Bacarr, Sisters of the Resistance, Boldwood (two sisters in Paris must choose – save themselves, or fight the Nazis to the very end)
Ethan Bale, The Knight’s Redemption, Canelo (fifth book featuring veteran mercenary and Plantagenet henchman Sir John Hawker and his unlikely band of misfits)
Ronald H. Balson, A Place to Hide, St. Martin’s (WWII-era; explores the deeply-moral actions of an ordinary man who resolves, under perilous circumstances, to make a difference)
Biyi Bandele, Yorùbá Boy Running, Harper (fictionalized retelling of African linguist and clergyman, Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s, journey from slave to liberator, and from boy to man)
Catherine Bardon, trans. Tina Kover, The Ogre’s Daughter, Europa Editions (turbulent life story of Flor de Oro Trujillo, the eldest child of one of the world’s most brutal dictators)
Joanna Barker, So True a Love, Shadow Mountain (London 1803; danger and passion collide when a plucky young woman becomes embroiled in a Bow Street investigation alongside a handsome officer)
Ron Base and Prudence Emery, Princess of the Savoy, Douglas & McIntyre (reluctant Canadian crime-fighter Priscilla Tempest joins forces with her would-be lover on an adventure to untangle a deadly web of conspiracy)
Susanna Bavin, Christmas for the Home Front Girls, Bookouture (uplifting romantic saga set in Manchester in December 1940)
Louis Bayard, The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts, Algonquin (a story about Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright’s imprisonment for homosexuality)
James R. Benn, The Phantom Patrol, Soho Crime (1944, German border; an investigation into a gang of Nazi-affiliated art thieves leads Billy Boyle and his comrades directly into the line of fire)
Nina Berkhout, This Bright Dust, Goose Lane (a story of hope and disillusionment, of disaster and the cultivation of joy, set in 1939, as the Great Depression winds down and war in Europe looms)
D. V. Bishop, A Divine Fury, Macmillan (Cesare Aldo thriller set against the backdrop of the Medici dynasty in 1530s Renaissance Florence)
Andrew Boden, When We Were Ashes, Goose Lane (set against the backdrop of the Second World War, novel takes us to one of the darkest chapters in the history of Nazi Germany)
Dermot Bolger, Hide Away, New Island Books (behind the walls of a Mental Hospital in 1941, four lives collide, all afflicted by the human cost of wars, betrayals and trauma)
William Boyd, Gabriel’s Moon, Viking (on the streets of sixties London, to Cadiz and Warsaw, an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession)
Graham Brack, The Moers Murders, Sapere (1688, The Netherlands; (eighth historical murder investigation in the Master Mercurius Mystery series)
Kay Brellend, East End Orphan, Piatkus (second in a trilogy where a boy, forced to make his own way in the world, falls in with a gang of petty thieves)
Verity Bright, Murder on the Nile, Bookouture (twisty 1920s murder mystery set in Egypt)
Fiona Britton, Violet Kelly and the Jade Owl, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, 1930; a centuries-old curse, a house of secrets and a young woman determined to find out the truth. Debut historical crime)
Jennifer S. Brown, The Whisper Sister, Lake Union (coming-of-age story set in Prohibition-era New York, tracing one immigrant family’s fortunes and a young girl’s journey from schoolyard to speakeasy)
Ciar Byrne, A Deadly Discovery, Headline Accent (when a young man is murdered, writer Virginia Woolf and her artistic sister, Vanessa, are forced to take the investigation into their own hands in this cosy mystery)
Maia Caron, The Last Secret, Doubleday Canada (novel centering on a Ukrainian resistance fighter in 1944 Ukraine and a reclusive artist on Salt Spring Island in 1972 and their inextricable link to each other)
Deborah Carr, Neighbors at War, One More Chapter (when German forces invade the Channel Islands and the citizens of Jersey are cut off from the rest of the UK, the island residents bond together to resist the enemy)
Elizabeth Chadwick, The Royal Rebel, Sphere/Mobius (1338; first in duology of Joan of Kent, cousin to Edward III, and her romance with Thomas Holland)
Fliss Chester, Death in the Mayfair Hotel, Bookouture (a body is floating in the fountain outside London’s glamorous Mayfair Hotel and Cressida assigns herself to the case)
Elaine Chiew, The Light Between Us, Neem Tree Press (Southeast Asian historical romance that defies time and space as an archivist explores Singapore’s tumultuous past through a supernatural connection. Present day and 1920s)
Carryl Church, The Forgotten Life of Connie Harris, Joffe (1951 and 1996; discovery of an abandoned film reel in a dilapidated cinema reopens the mystery of a missing usherette and the fiancé she left behind)
Genevieve Cogman, Elusive, Tor UK (historical fantasy follow-up to Scarlet, Revolutionary France run by aristocratic vampires)
Donovan Cook, Valhalla’s Fury, Boldwood (conclusion to the Dark Ages adventure series)
Diney Costeloe, The Girls Who Dared to Love, Aria (a wartime nurse brings hope in the dark time of WWI)
Angela K. Couch, When the Mountain Crumbled, Barbour (fourth of six novels featuring historic disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives)
Siobhan Curham, The Resistance Bakery, Bookouture (forbidden love and family secrets in World War Two)
Ellie Curzon, Wartime Wishes for the Land Girls, Bookouture (tale of friendship, romance and bravery during World War Two)
Janis Robinson Daly, The Path Beneath Her Feet, Black Rose Writing (1936; sequel to The Unlocked Path finds Dr. Eliza Edwards intensifying her commitment to effect social change)
Stevie Davies, Earthly Creatures, Honno Press (an idealistic young woman is conscripted by the Nazi War Labour Service to a teaching position in East Prussia)
Allison A. Davis, But Not For Me, Bronzeville Books (1958, San Francisco; as an influx of organized crime and redevelopment transforms the city, racial and political tensions rise when a Black real estate magnate is murdered)
Anita Davison, Murder at Midwinter Manor, Boldwood (cosy mystery set at Christmas, 1916)
Sarah Day, Night Climbing, Legend Press (inspired by the true story of ‘The Black Forest Tragedy’, in April 1936, when a group of schoolboys on a trip from London left their youth hostel in Freiburg to go hiking)
Michael Deeb, Duty Accomplished, Addison & Highsmith (third installment in Drieborg Chronicles series, delves into the tumultuous years of the American Civil War)
Neil Denby, Centurion, Sapere (fourth book in the Julius Quintus Quirinius military adventure series)
Andrea Jo DeWerd, What We Sacrifice for Magic, Alcove Press (coming-of-age novel following three generations of witches in the 1960s)
Shirley Dickson, The Orphan With No Name, Bookouture (story of a little girl who loses everything and her journey to finding a place she can call home)
Helena Dixon, Murder in the Countryside, Bookouture (on a meandering drive on a beautiful day, Kitty Underhay just found a dead farmer)
Donna Douglas, Nurses on Call, Century (thirteenth entry in the Nightingales series)
Lesley Eames, A Foundling at the Wartime Bookshop, Transworld (fifth entry in the WWII series)
Martin Edwards, Hemlock Bay, Aries (convinced that there is something sinister lurking at Hemlock Bay, Rachel Savernake books a cottage there, where she meets a mysterious doctor called Seamus Doyle)
Lissa Evans, Small Bomb at Dimperley, Doubleday (a love story and a portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal)
Matthew Francis, Nocturne with Gaslamps, Neem Tree Press (historical crime fiction novel set in Victorian London’s gaslit theatre scene, where murder takes centre stage)
Stephen Fry, Odyssey, Michael Joseph (final chapter in the retelling of the adventures of Odysseus, King of Ithaca)
Elizabeth Gifford, The Mischief Makers, Corvus (in the wilds of Cornwall, Daphne du Maurier must confront the dark truth that lurks beneath the fantasy of Peter Pan and the secret life that has plagued her since she found fame)
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, The Haunting of Moscow House, Berkley (gothic horror tale set in post-revolutionary Russia where two formerly aristocratic sisters race to uncover their family’s long-buried secrets in a house haunted by a dangerous past)
Ruth Goldstraw, The Witchfinder’s Assistant, One More Chapter (a tale of murder and witchcraft, set during the English Civil War, Shropshire, 1643)
Rosie Goodwin, Our Fair Lily, Zaffre (everything turns upside down for parlor maid, Lily, when she becomes lady’s maid to her aristocratic employers’ daughter, who is pregnant with her lover’s illegitimate child)
Molly Green, Courage for the Cabinet Girl, Avon (1941; a short-hand typist is transferred to the basement war office of Churchill’s cabinet)
Asha Greyling, The Vampire of Kings Street, Crooked Lane (gothic fantasy novel in which a newly minted lawyer in 19th century New York, finds her first client is a vampire accused of murder)
Michelle Griep, Of Gold and Shadows, Bethany House (1888 Victorian England; a tale of love, mystery, and intrigue set against the backdrop of the gaslit streets of Oxford, England)
Jay G. Grubb, Land of Sins and Promise, BQB Publishing (second son of a Yorkshire baron becomes a foreign correspondent in New York, covering low-life stories, but a scandal threatens to destroy his identity)
Genni Gunn, The Cipher, Literary Press Group Canada (WWII tale of love, resilience, and the power of the truth — and who you trust with it)
Barbara Hambly, Saving Susy Sweetchild, Severn House (murder mystery set in Hollywood, 1924)
William C. Hammond, A Return to Duty, McBooks (eighth volume in the Cutler Family Chronicles series set in Massachusetts and the Far East in the 1850s during the aftermath of the First Opium War between China and Great Britain)
Liz Harris, The Silken Knot, Heywood Press (sequel to The Loose Thread)
Robert Harris, Precipice, Harper/Hutchinson Heinemann (story of passion, intrigue, and betrayal set in England in the months leading to the Great War)
Julie Hartley, Her Secret Soldier, Bookouture (wartime novel, set in 1940 England, about the power of love and sacrifice)
Anne Hawk, The Pages of the Sea, Biblioasis (on a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration)
Kate Heartfield, The Tapestry of Time, HarperVoyager (can the Sharp sisters’ extrasensory gifts prevent the Nazis from using the Bayeux tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?)
Rosie Hewlett, The Witch of Colchis, Sourcebooks Landmark (retelling of Medea’s story with a strong feminist twist)
Sam K. Horton, Gorse, Solaris (folkloric dark fantasy of faith, magic and belief, set in 18th century Cornwall)
Anna Lee Huber, The Cold Light of Day, Kensington (amid the glamour of 1920s high society, Secret Service agent Verity Kent embarks on her most dangerous mission yet)
Seth Hunter, The Force of Fate, McBooks (the 1806 Battle of the Atlantic reaches the mouth of the Chesapeake, during one of the worst hurricanes in history. Nathan Peake 9)
Lee Jackson, Into the Cauldron, Severn River (in the vast theater of World War II, the fate of one family weaves into the larger tapestry of the fight)
Dietrich Kalteis, Crooked, ECW Press (fictionalised true crime story based on the infamous Barker-Karpis Gang who begin a spree of robberies that leave a wake of terror in their path, including two dead cops)
Wayne Karlin, The Genizah, Publerati (author’s reimagining of his family’s lives, if they had not come to America but stayed in his mother’s village in Poland where the rest of her extended family were murdered by the Nazis in 1941)
Ghada Karmi, Murjana, Interlink (spring, 830; tale of love and passion in medieval Baghdad)
Brian Kaufman, Dread Tribunal of Last Resort, Black Rose Writing (loyalty and love is put to the ultimate test when the country is divided by the Civil War)
Catrin Kean, Lace, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (sequel to Salt (2020); in early 1900s in Wicklow, Ireland, the lives of six year old Mary and her siblings are torn apart when their father dies leaving the family penniless)
Jenni Keer, The Ravenswood Witch, Boldwood (1885 and a young woman is on the run, knowing if she’s caught, she’ll be hanged for murder)
Lee Kelly, Jennifer Thorne, The Starlets, Harper Muse (1958; two longtime rival starlets discover a dark side to the glamour of old Hollywood on a remote Italian island)
Mairi Kidd, The Specimens, Black & White (when stealing cadavers turns to murder, Burke & Hare became two of the most notorious serial killers of their time)
Crystal King, In the Garden of Monsters, MIRA(Italy, 1948; novel of the model and muse for Salvador Dali)
Noémi Kiss-Deáki, Mary and the Rabbit Dream, Coach House (feminist reimagining of the story of Mary Toft, the rabbit-birthing hoaxer)
Malcolm Knox, The First Friend, Allen & Unwin (chilling black comedy imagines a gangster mob in charge of a global superpower)
Sarah E. Ladd, The Cloverton Charade, Thomas Nelson (a house party in Regency England provides the perfect opportunity for two rival antiquity brokers to scope out a potentially valuable collection and a romance)
Soraya Lane, The Paris Daughter, Bookouture (WWII dual timeline novel about family secrets and forbidden love)
Shauna Lawless, The Land of the Living and the Dead, Ad-Astra (Ireland, 1011 AD; third in historical fantasy series set in medieval Ireland)
Donna Coffey Little, Wofford’s Blood, Mercer Univ. Press (family saga based on the true history of James Daugherty Wofford, who led a detachment on the Trail of Tears)
Gemma Liviero, An Age of Winters, Lake Union (in 1625, in the Franconian village of Eisbach, Reverend Zacharias Engel, is appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism)
Shawntelle Madison, The Fallen Fruit, Amistad (a woman travels through time to end a family curse that has plagued her ancestors for generations)
Laura Martin, The Dead Curate, Sapere (Jane Austen solves a gripping murder case in 1798, England)
Madeline Martin, The Booklover’s Library, Hanover Square (WWII story about a mother and daughter in wartime England and the power of books that bring them together)
Michelle McGill-Vargas, American Ghoul, Blackstone (supernatural murder mystery where suspicion surrounds two newcomers to a small town in post-Civil War Indiana)
Shannon McNear, Virginia, Barbour (the colony at Roanoke disappeared into the shadows of history. But, what if at least one person survived?)
Catriona McPherson, The Witching Hour, Mobius (new entry in the Lady Dandy Gilver and Alec Osbourne murder mystery series)
R. C. Mogo, Innocents of Marbella, Black Rose Writing (adventure set in 15th-century France)
Moira Millán, trans. Charlotte Whittle, Train to Oblivion, Lake Union (story of love and loss across three generations as the railroad came to Patagonia, forever changing the landscape and its peoples)
J. M. Miro, Bringer of Dust, Flatiron (Agrigento, Sicily, 1883; sequel to Ordinary Monsters moves from the underworld of the London exiles, to the mysteries of nineteenth-century Sicily, to the catacombs hidden under Paris)
Heather B. Moore, Lady Flyer, Shadow Mountain (set against the backdrop of WWII, a young woman’s love of flying becomes an epic fight for identity and equality)
Michelle Moran, Maria, Dell (novel based on the inspirational story of Maria von Trapp, a reminder that the truth is usually more complicated—and more compelling—than the stories immortalized by Hollywood)
Ginny Kubitz Moyer, A Golden Life, She Writes (a journey to 1930s California in which a woman must choose between friendship and her own secrets)
Julie Owen Moylan, Circus of Mirrors, Michael Joseph (1926 romance featuring two sisters and the Babylon Circus where reality and fantasy merge)
Elizabeth Murphy, The Weather Diviner, Breakwater Books (1942; a story of self-discovery—not just for one young woman, but for Newfoundland itself)
John Neeleman, Children of Saturn, Open Books (historical novel of the French Revolution chronicles the dramatic conflict of social unrest that haunts France—and the world—to this day)
Chris Nickson, Them Without Pain, Severn House (Simon Westow, the city’s thief-taker, must confront betrayal, history and murder in 19th-century Leeds)
Graham Norton, Frankie, Coronet/ HarperVia (travelling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York, Frankie shares a world in which friendship and chance encounters collide)
Lizzie Page, The Wartime Nursery, Bookouture (Norfolk, 1940; in the dark days of the war, Emmeline’s nursery is the only thing giving mothers hope)
Cheryl Parisian, The Unweaving, Tidewater Press (in 1869, threatened by encroaching colonialism, one Métis family struggles to protect their way of life in the new Dominion of Canada)
Elizabeth Bass Parman, The Empress of Cooke County, Harper Muse (set in a gossipy small town during the 1960s, a novel about found family, what it means to be loved)
Pier Paolo Pasolini, The City of Mist, Rare Bird (a tale of a night of desperate and cruel bravado, set in Milan, 1959)
Andrea Penrose, Murder at King’s Crossing, Kensington (Wrexford and Charlotte must risk all they hold dear to deconstruct a sinister conspiracy in book 8 of the series)
Nicola Pittam, The Rebel Pianist of Majdanek, Mardle Books (inspired by a true story, a fictionalised account of piano virtuosa Mosha Gebert’s struggles in the Nazi death camp)
Cynthia Reeves, The Last Whaler, Regal House (a beluga whaler, and his wife, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station when they misjudge ice conditions)
Lucinda Riley, Harry Whittaker, The Hidden Girl, Macmillan (from the ghettos of Europe during WWII to New York’s Fifth Avenue, novel traces the life of Leah Thompson, who rises from humble beginnings to take the modelling world by storm)
Vanessa Riley, Murder in Berkeley Square, Kensington (historical mystery series follows a resourceful heroine whose notorious past and detecting talent crosses paths with a killer)
Ian Ross, King’s Enemy, Hodder & Stoughton (Adam de Norton faces his greatest trial yet, after the Battle of Evesham)
Gareth Rubin, Holmes and Moriarty, S&S UK (Holmes and Watson, have been hired by an actor who needs to find out why the audience who comes to see him perform every night are the same people, only wearing disguises)
Aimie K. Runyan, Mademoiselle Eiffel, William Morrow (novel set in 19th-century Paris tells the story of Claire Eiffel, a woman who played a significant role in maintaining her family’s legacy to the city of Paris)
Lynsay Sands, The Highlander’s Return, Avon (newest installment of the Highland Brides series brings a tale of betrayal, clan secrets, and slow burning passion)
Mara Schiffren, The Mistake, Woodhall Press (early 2nd century CE; a tale of family dynamics and personal growth against the backdrop of a world on the cusp of change)
Will Self, Elaine, Grove (a portrait of motherhood and sublimated desire, where a woman pushes back against the strictures of 1950s America by undertaking a disastrous affair)
Jim Schutze, Pontiac, Deep Vellum Publishing (1960; in the inner sanctum of an elite boarding school, boys test their boundaries and class when they welcome an outsider)
Jock Serong, Cherrywood, 4th Estate AU (a darkly playful delight about legacy, community, wonder, love and reinvention. Dual timeline set in 1916 and 1993)
Stella Shephard, The Baby Train, Acorn Press (the shameful legacy of forced and coerced adoption in Eastern Canada is brought to life in this sequel to Ashes of Our Dreams)
Dottie Sines, Where the Stars Cross, Wild Rose Press (romance set during the Great Depression)
Mel Starr, The Way of the Wicked, Marylebone House (The Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, Surgeon, book 17 – medieval murder mystery)
Susan Stokes-Chapman, The Shadow Key, Harper Perennial (on an isolated estate in late-eighteenth-century rural Wales, a young English doctor uncovers dangerous secrets that may threaten his own life)
Michael J. Summers, Cherry Blossoms in Winter, Black Rose Writing (account of camaraderie among soldiers, multi-cultural love, and heartbreak set against the colorful backdrop of post-war Japan and the battle for “Rat Mountain”)
Aurélie Thiele, The Paris Understudy, Alcove Press (debut novel brings to life the choices Parisians had to make under Nazi occupation)
Jane Thynne, Midnight in Vienna, Quercus (historical espionage thriller set in 1938 in London and Vienna, told against a backdrop of uncertainty and fear as World War Two threatens)
Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Empusium, Riverhead (set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas)
Ayelet Tsabari, Songs for the Brokenhearted, Random House (a young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a journey through lost family stories)
Carrie Turansky, A Token of Love, Bethany House (dual-time tale weaves a story of two eras bridged by the quest for love and truth; set in 1885 and present-day London)
Simon Turney, Terra Incognita, Aries (AD 61 under Emperor Nero; historical adventure featuring many historical figures from the classical era)
J. M. Varese, The Company, Baskerville (set against the backdrop of the real-life arsenic wallpaper controversy of the late 19th century, novel gives readers a slice of dark gothic Victoriana)
Erica Vetsch, A Thieving at Carlton House, Kregel (inspirational romance in which unlikely alliances form when there’s a killer on the loose)
Galina Vromen, Hill of Secrets, Lake Union (in a desert outpost, in 1943, nuclear scientists and their families face the toll of the secrets they keep from the world and from each other)
Nina Wachsman, The Courtesan’s Pirate, Level Best/Historia (1614; Belladonna is reunited with Isaak, a pirate captain, on the island of Jamaica but risks everything, including her own safety, to save him)
Laura Jensen Walker, Death of a Flying Nightingale, Level Best (story of courageous women who found solace and camaraderie in the lasting friendships forged in war)
Terry Watada, Hiroshima Bomb Money, NeWest Press (novel delves into the Pacific War, looking at WWII from a Japanese perspective)
F. J. Watson, Lies of the Flesh, Polygon (Scotland, 1314; an exploration of what happens when identities – gender, social position or nationality – are challenged within the crucible of war)
Jamie West, Murder at the Matinee, Brabinger (gay playwright detective Bertie Carroll returns for the second book in golden-age-style whodunnit, set in the theatreland of 1930s London)
Jen Wheeler, A Cure for Sorrow, Lake Union (novel about the power of science, the nature of love, and the enigma of the supernatural, set in Gilded Age Manhattan)
Roseanna M. White, Christmas at Sugar Plum Manor, Bethany House (Edwardian-era historical romance is a tale of holiday spirit, love, and the power of family and friendship)
Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister, Sourcebooks Landmark (shines a spotlight on one of the most overlooked women in history, and the sacrifices she made so that others might fly)
Kimberley Woodhouse, A Hope Unburied, Bethany House (journey through the landscapes of the Bone Wars era, where love and ambition collide)
Caroline Woods, The Mesmerist, Doubleday (in 1894 Minneapolis, three very different women must work together to stop a killer)
Barbara Wright, Anny in Love, Onslow Square (based on Anne Thackeray’s diaries and letters, a fictionalized account of a fiercely independent, quirky young woman after the death of her famous father William Thackeray)
October 2024
Anna Abney, The Prisoner of Measham Hall, Duckworth (1690; Sir William Hawthorne’s steward has died and the new man soon has everyone dancing to his tune)
Mesu Andrews, Brave: The Story of Ahinoam, Bethany House (biblical-era series weaves a narrative of resilience and the transformative power of faith)
John Banville, The Drowned, Hanover Square/Faber & Faber (mystery about a woman’s sudden disappearance in a small coastal town in Ireland, where nothing is as it seems)
Pepper Basham, Hope Like Wildflowers, Barbour (story returns to the mountains of 1910s Appalachia)
Vicky Beeby, Christmas for the Bomber Girls, Canelo (WWII saga; with the men missing in action, will the bomber girls find a way to bring them home?)
Michelle Bennington, Widow’s Fire, Level Best/Historia (second murder mystery in the Widows and Shadows Mystery series)
Jude Berman, The Vow, She Writes (feminist historical fiction brings 18th-century painter Angelica Kauffman to life)
Richard Blaine, The Emerald Frame, Level Best-Historia (mystery set in late September 1948, in which LA private detective Michael Garrett is hired to find another detective who has gone missing)
Dodie Bishop, The Violin Maker’s Wife, Next Chapter (historical novel inspired by real-life characters, set in 18th century Italy)
Robin Blake, Spoiler’s Prey, Severn House (summer 1748; a coroner Titus Cragg and doctor Luke Fidelis murder mystery)
Tania Blanchard, An Undeniable Voice, HarperCollins AU (1907, London; as the winds of change sweep across the world, Hannah Rainforth and her friends take to the streets to fight for the vote for women)
Emily Bleeker, When We Chased the Light, Lake Union (during WWII a Hollywood legend rises from canteen dream girl to starlet to bona fide legend, all in the shadow of her past and the guilt, longing, and buried truths)
Giles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death, Hodder (Victorian murder mystery series featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle)
Robert Brighton, The Phantom of Forest Lawn, Ashwood Press (a story of romance, mystery and intrigue which combines Gothic creepiness with a bit of humor)
Kimberly Brock, The Fabled Earth, Harper Muse (a story of family lore and the power of finding your own voice as Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide with a changing world)
Jason Brown, Outermark, Paul Dry Books (ferries the reader between the 1980s, and the 18th & 19th centuries, days of sailing ships to the East Indies and conflicts between the earliest Natives and new colonial settlers)
Colleen Cambridge, Murder Takes the Stage, Kensington (Phyllida Bright, Agatha Christie’s esteemed housekeeper, discovers a killer stalking the stages of London’s illustrious theaters)
Marlene Campbell, Name Your Game, Acorn Press (story about family, and community and the ties that bind them; set in 1956 Prince Edward Island)
Caroline Cauchi, Queen of the Mist (US) / The Woman Who Went Over Niagara Falls in a Barrell (UK), One More Chapter (historical novel inspired by a true story)
Diana R. Chambers, The Secret War of Julia Child, Sourcebooks Landmark (story explores the unlikely world of a woman in World War II spy station who has no idea of the impact she’ll eventually impart)
Rosie Clarke, Dark Secrets on Dressmaker’s Alley, Boldwood (London’s East End 1924; on Dressmakers’ Alley business is thriving and yet women are being attacked and robbed whilst several businesses have been burgled)
Naomi Clifford, 13 Park Lane, Bloodhound (gothic murder mystery set in London, 1872 in a house full of secrets)
Ryan C. Coleman, Billy the Kid, Blackstone (from orphan to outlaw to killer, the untold story behind the legend of Billy the Kid)
Mary Connealy, Into the Sunset, Bethany House (tale of danger, romance, and second chances on the Western frontier. Third in the A Western Light trilogy)
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Storm, HarperCollins UK (19th-century military adventure series with the iconic hero Richard Sharpe)
Diney Costeloe, The Girls Who Dared to Love, Aria (a wartime nurse brings hope in the dark days of WWI)
Dilly Court, The Snow Angel, HarperCollins (outside Abbotsford vicarage on Christmas Eve, Rose Northwood finds a child lying in the manger of the town’s nativity display)
Richard Cullen, Rebellion, Boldwood (start of a new historical adventure series introducing The Black Lion in 1213 AD, after the death of Richard the Lionheart)
Julie C. Dao, Now Comes the Mist, Podium Publishing (first book of a gothic romance duology that retells Dracula from the point of view of Lucy Westenra)
Patrick Dearen, The Big Dry, TCU Press (explores race relations against the backdrop of the Big Dry, a devastating drought in the 1880s in Texas)
Adi Denner, The Kiss of the Nightingale, Dialogue Books (1890, Lutèce; romantic fantasy set in an alternative historical Paris)
Cécile Desprairies, trans. Natasha Lehrer, The Propagandist, New Vessel Press (novel gives rare insight into a French female proponent of fascist ideology during WWII)
Angus Donald, Blood of the Bear, Canelo (Viking epic of rebellion and revenge, set in AD781. Book five in series)
Anna Dowdall, The Suspension Bridge, Radiant Press (a literary whodunit set in an unreliable 1962, in a Canadian river city that sets about building the world’s biggest bridge)
John Drake, Fletcher and the Constitution, Lume Books (next in series set in 1805, when Admiral Sir Jacob Fletcher faces his most dangerous mission yet)
Susen Edwards, Lookin’ For Love, She Writes (beginning in 1963, novel follows a young mother from the go-go bars of the 1970s to a place of forgiveness, faith, and love through recovery)
Loretta Ellsworth, The French Winemaker’s Daughter, Harper (WWII story told in in the voices of two women, generations apart, who find themselves connected by a valuable bottle of wine stolen by the Nazis)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Paris Inheritance, Bookouture (dual timeline story set in France 1940 and 2014 about family secrets and the bonds that hold people together)
Elaine Everest, A Christmas Wish at Woolworths, Pan (tale of friendship, resilience and community, set in London, 1953)
Francine Falk-Allen, A Wolff in the Family, She Writes (saga of prejudice, passion, and revenge, based on a true story)
Joanne Fedler, The Whale’s Last Song, HarperCollins AU/ 4th Estate (a fable on what we are prepared to do for those we love)
Lily Fielding, Orphan of the Storm, Transworld (19th-century saga about found family, romance and triumph over adversity)
Jaima Fixsen, The Specimen, Poisoned Pen Press (1826; based loosely on the Burke and Hare murders, story of a man who terrorized the streets of Edinburgh… and the woman determined to stop him)
Eric Flint and Jody Lynn Nye, 1635: The Weaver’s Code, Baen (new Ring of Fire series entry; a young gentlewoman finds her fate twisted into the lives of the up-timers when she meets the Americans imprisoned in the Tower of London)
Katie Flynn, The Winter Runaway, Century (first installment of a new saga series)
Jillian Forsberg, The Rhino Keeper, History Through Fiction (based on the true story of a Dutch sea captain who traveled with an Indian rhinoceros called Clara across 18th century Europe)
Nada Gašic, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursac, Water, Spiderweb, Sandorf Passage (the 1964 Sava River flood sets in motion this literary thriller)
Hazel Gaynor, Heather Webb, Christmas with the Queen, William Morrow (1952; as the nation eagerly awaits the Queen’s first televised Christmas speech, there is one final gift for the Christmas season to deliver)
Julia Golding, The Elgin Conspiracy, One More Chapter (fresh from exposing the Hell Fire Club, actress Dora Fitz-Pennington and ex-army doctor Jacob Sandys, are employed to go undercover again)
Suzanne Goldring, The Twins on the Train, Bookouture (WWII novel about two women who risked everything for the innocent victims of war)
Eliza Graham, The Weight of Goodbye, Storm (a young woman’s wartime secrets threaten to unravel her carefully rebuilt life)
John MacLachlan Gray, Mr. Good-Evening, Douglas & McIntyre (1920s-era murder mystery; third in series called Raincoast Noir)
Allison Grey, A Brush With Scandal, Storm (1882; an artist from the notorious Seven Dials paints her way into London‘s heart in this historical romance)
Mortada Gzar, trans. Luke Leafgren, The River Knows My Name, Amazon Crossing (novel about a girl’s liberating self-discovery in early 20th century Basra, Iraq)
Matthew Harffy, Dark Frontier, Aries (a historical adventure set in the American west of the late nineteenth century)
Arlem Hawks, Across the Star-Kissed Sea, Shadow Mountain (1811; a lady’s maid at sea must navigate rough waters, deadly combat, and unexpected love)
Holly Hepburn, The Cursed Writer, Boldwood Books (Harriet White, ensconced in the basement of the Baker Street building society, her job — to reply to the mail they receive on behalf of Sherlock Holmes)
Yuri Herrera, trans. Lisa Dillman, Season of the Swamp, Graywolf Press (New Orleans, 1853; a young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at the port city. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas)
Kate Hewitt, The Girl Who Risked It All, Bookouture (France, 1939; third book in the Emerald Sisters series tells a story of courage, second chances and finding love)
Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings, Knopf Canada/Picador/Random House (novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence)
Mike Hollow, The Soho Murder, Allison & Busby (Blitz Detective DI John Jago uncovers a hidden world of obsessive book collectors and unscrupulous dealers in December 1940)
Emily Hourican, A Kennedy Affair, Hachette Books Ireland (a story of forbidden love and family discord, based on historical events between wars)
Joanne Howard, Sleeping in the Sun, She Writes (two visitors arrive at a boarding house in India where an American boy is coming of age during the British Raj, challenging the family’s sense of home)
Jonathan L. Howard, The Shadow on the Glass, Aconyte (1891; when two spiritist swindlers accidentally summon something horrific, they must thwart a sinister time-spanning plot in this gaslight historical fantasy)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Pick-Pocket’s Plight, Boldwood (19th-century saga of friendship, heartbreak and joy)
Luis Jaramillo, The Witches of El Paso, Atria/Primero Sueno Press (1943 and present day; a lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child)
Maureen Jennings, March Roars, Cormorant (fourth installment in the Paradise Café Mysteries featuring Private Investigator Charlotte Frayne and set in Depression-era Toronto)
Adele Jordan, Death at the Tower, Sapere (adventure at the court of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII. Shadow Cutpurses series, Book 2)
Joy Jordan-Lake, Echoes of Us, Lake Union (story of an unlikely friendship formed between men during war and the legacy that will live on)
Ariel Kaplan, The Republic of Salt, Erewhon (sequel to The Pomegranate Gate, set in 1500s Spain, in which Toba, Naftaly, and their allies must defend a city under siege)
Lauren Keegan, All the Bees in the Hollows, Affirm Press AU (folkloric mystery set in a remote Lithuanian bee-keeping community in the 16th-century)
Julia Kelly, Betrayal at Blackthorn Park, Minotaur (former typist Evelyne Redfern is eager for her first assignment as a field agent helping Britain win the war, but things become complicated by a murder)
Vanessa Kelly, Murder in Highbury, Kensington (new series in which Emma Knightley entertains a different role in Highbury—going from clever matchmaker to Regency England’s shrewdest sleuth)
Katrina Kendrick, The Wayward Duke, Aria (in a chase through London’s ballrooms and back alleys, Julian and estranged wife Caroline must catch a killer-before he catches them first)
John Keyse-Walker, Santo Domingo Stakeout, Severn House (1965; a novel of pitch-black noir, the sequel to the crime thriller, Havana Highwire)
Kathe Koja, Catherine the Ghost, Clash books (historical gothic horror remix of Wuthering Heights)
Daniel M. Lavery, Women’s Hotel, HarperVia (funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City)
Christy K. Lee, The Roads We Take, Blackstone (novel set in 1885 spotlights Canada’s first female physicians and the struggles they faced in the 19th-century)
Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Love Elixir of August Stern, St. Martin’s (dual timeline story in which eighty-year-old Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past and how her plan went so wrong)
Robert W. Mackay, The Forgotten, Literary Press Group Canada (story of nineteen-year-old Charlie Black who, in 1950, joins the Canadian Army’s Special Force as part of the United Nations forces defending South Korea)
A. J. Mackenzie, City of Woe, Canelo (Simon Merrivale accompanies an English delegation to Florence but when disaster strikes, Merrivale finds a dozen different factions out for his blood. Second in the series)
Emily Maguire, Rapture, Allen & Unwin (ninth-century Mainz; at eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes, a girl with a deep love of God, disguises herself as a man and devotes her life to the study she is denied as a woman)
José Ángel Mañas, trans. Brendan Riley, Guerrero, Univ. of New Mexico Press (1512; novel based on real-life Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Guerrero, who defied Cortez and fought against Spain with his adopted Mayan tribe)
Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James, Hodder & Stoughton (dual timeline novel inspired by true stories of courageous women and the German resistance during WWII)
Moshe Zvi Marvit, Nothing Vast, Acre Books (multigenerational tale spanning 1932 to 1973 follows two families—one Moroccan, one Polish—filled with Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, and reactionaries)
Imogen Matthews, The Wartime Nurse, Bookouture (inspired by the true story of a brave young woman who would stop at nothing to fight for her country in WWII)
Fiona McIntosh, The Fallen Woman, Penguin eBooks AU (1902; story of a woman who finds that in her darkest hour she can harness her greatest strength)
Desideria Mesa, Bindle Punk Jefe, Harper Voyager (sequel to Bindle Punk Bruja in which Earth witch Rose Lane’s secret life comes to a breaking point as Prohibition is in full swing)
Randy Susan Meyers, The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone, Koehler (delves into the intricate dance of familial love and communal ties through the lens of sociopolitical upheaval from the 1960s to the present day)
Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter, Sceptre (1962; when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, the harshest in living memory, two ordinary couples find their lives beginning to unravel)
Larry Millett, Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul, Univ. of Minnesota Press (tales of murder and revenge: the early exploits of detective Shadwell Rafferty)
Ada Moncrieff, Murder at Midwinter, Vintage (cosy mystery in which amateur sleuth Daphne attempts to solve a murder at her school reunion which seems to be tied to an unsolved kidnapping twenty years before)
Alan Moore, The Great When, Bloomsbury (new historical fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in post-WWII London)
Susan J. Morris, Strange Beasts, Bindery Books (gothic tale, part historical fantasy, part mystery where the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes collide in an exploration of feminine power)
Kate Mosse, The Map of Bones, Mantle (dual timeline conclusion to The Joubert Family Chronicles, set in southern Africa in 1688 and 1862)
Luigi Natoli, trans. Stephen Riggio, Sicilian Avengers, Radius Book Group (Sicilian saga about the legendary secret sect purported to be forerunners of the Mafia, translated into English for the first time)
Leonora Nattrass, The Bells of Westminster, Viper (in London, 1774, the opening of a royal tomb will end in murder)
Dale Neal, The Woman With the Stone Knife, Addison & Highsmith (imagines the life of a Cherokee woman exiled for 20 years in Georgian England, torn between two worlds and two choices)
Shelley Noble, The Colony Club, William Morrow (novel about the inception of the Colony Club, the first women’s club of its kind, set against the backdrop of Gilded Age New York)
Hanna Nordenhök, trans. Saskia Vogel, Caesaria, Book*hug Press (19th-century; part fairytale, part gothic novel in which a renowned obstetrician keeps a young girl that he once carved out of her mother’s body)
Laurie Notaro, The Murderess, Little a (true-crime novel about Winnie Ruth Judd, one of the twentieth century’s most notorious and enigmatic killers)
H. G. Parry, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, Redhook (1921; magical historical fantasy full of secret scholarship, faerie curses, and spells, set after the fae broke free on the battlefields on WWI)
Robert G. Penner, The Dark King Swallows the World, Radiant Press (historical fantasy set in WWII Cornwall)
Hesse Phillips, Lightborne, Pegasus (Tudor-era novel about outsiders caught in a relentless cycle of bloodshed and betrayal)
Anna Rasche, The Stone Witch of Florence, Park Row/Legend Press (debut that follows a young woman who harnesses the ancient magic of gemstones to investigate a series of crimes in plague-stricken Florence)
Don Reid, Among the Ashes, Mercer Univ. Press (a modern narrator tells the story of a local legend about a church which burned to the ground in a small town in central Virginia, in 1958)
Alyson Richman, The Time Keepers, Union Square (sheds light on the personal stories of those whose lives were forever impacted by the devastation of war)
Debbie Rix, The Telegram, Bookouture (story of the importance of family and the power of love and forgiveness, spanning WWI & WWII)
Rachel Robbins, The Sound of a Thousand Stars, Alcove Press (historical debut where two Jewish physicists form a bond amidst fear and uncertainty)
Terry Roberts, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, Turner (third part of The Stephen Robbins Chronicles, set in 1920s Asheville)
Lev AC Rosen, Rough Pages, Forge (1950s San Francisco; Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has to find a carefully guarded list of subscribers to queer books)
Del Sandeen, This Cursed House, Berkley/Michael Joseph (Southern gothic horror debut, in which a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans)
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, trans. Steven Rendall and Addie Leak, Paradises Lost: The Passage Through Time, Europa Editions (destined to live forever as an immortal, Noam travels through the centuries in search of the meaning of life)
Irina Shapiro, Murder at the Foundling Hospital, Storm Publishing (third Tate and Bell gaslit Victorian mystery)
Michelle Shocklee, All We Thought We Knew, Tyndale (two women must come face-to-face with their own assumptions about what they thought they knew about themselves and others in this dual timeline novel set in 1942 and 1969)
David Spaner, Keefer Street, Ronsdale Press (story of coming of age in an immigrant neighborhood and a life forever changed by fighting fascism in Spain)
Admiral James Stavridis, The Restless Wave, Penguin Press (novel that charts the coming-of-age of a gifted but immature young naval officer as he is tested in the crucible of World War II in the Pacific)
Naomi Stephens, The Burning of Rosemont Abbey, Bethany House (1956; an Agatha Christie type whodunnit about love and redemption in a quaint British village)
Neal Stephenson, Polostan, William Morrow (set against the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, this historical epic is the first in a trilogy of intrigue and international espionage)
Julian Stockwin, Admiral, Mobius/Hodder & Stoughton (next installment in the Thomas Kydd series, after Sea of Treason)
Joseph J. Swope, Dark Age Monarch: Uther Pendragon, Black Rose (second in series blends Arthurian legend, historical fact, and elements of fantasy to re-imagine the landscape of Britain under siege following the exodus of the Roman Empire)
Klaus Teuber, Catan, Blackstone (Norway, 860; left with no other choice, three Viking half-brothers depart their home, sailing for new shores finally reaching Catan, Land of the Sun)
Julia Park Tracey, Silence, Sibylline Press (literary Puritan tale of loss and redemption, based on the author’s own ancestor)
Peter Tremayne, Prophet of Blood, Severn House (Sister Fidelma returns in the thirty-fifth Celtic mystery set in AD 672)
James Tucker, The Paris Escape, Lake Union (an heiress, her escort, and a young orphan must stick together during the tumultuous beginnings of World War I)
Douglas Unger, Dream City, Univ. of Nevada Press (unconventional tale of Las Vegas during the two delirious boom decades before the bust of the Great Recession)
Carrie Vaughn, The Naturalist Society, 47North (1880; tale of self-discovery about young widow who taps into the power that will change the world—if the man’s world she lives in doesn’t destroy her and her newfound friends first)
Sharon Virts, The Grays of Truth, Flashpoint (murder mystery set in Reconstruction-era Baltimore)
Anneka R. Walker, The Gentleman’s Confession, Shadow Mountain (1822; Jemma turns to her best friend, Miles, for guidance on how to win a man’s heart)
Betty Walker, A New Hope for the Cornish Girls, Avon (new post war installment in the Cornish Girls series)
David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson, Big Jim and the White Boy, Ten Speed Graphic (follows Jim, an enslaved man on a journey towards freedom, and his sidekick, Huck, in the antebellum South, in graphic format)
Minette Walters, The Players, Allen & Unwin (a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes. Sequel to The Swift and the Harrier)
Terry Watada, Hiroshima Bomb Money, NeWest Press (through the lives of three siblings living in Hiroshima, Japan, novel explores the sweep of history during the years 1930 to 1945)
Alison Weir, The True and Terrible Tale of Perotine Massey, Headline (dark novella set in Guernsey, 1556)
Allan Weiss, Bread & Stone, Black Rose, Canada (combines the story of the Winnipeg General Strike, with the spiritual journey of a young man growing to understand who he is)
Fiona White, Let These Things Be Written, Lightning Books (tale of 7th-century religious and political life with 7-year-old Wilfrid, whose life is turned upside down when he is given away to the monks of the island monastery of Lindisfarne)
Marty Wingate, Murder of a Suffragette, Bookouture (when a suffragette is killed, only amateur sleuth Mabel Canning can halt a murderer’s campaign)
Kate Wiseman, The Red Tunic, Neem Tree Press (history and gender issues are intertwined in a WW1 historical romance)
Samantha Greene Woodruff, The Trade Off, Lake Union (a brilliant and ambitious young woman strives to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street)
Jaime Jo Wright, Specters in the Glass House, Bethany House (1921 and present day; weaves a tale of mystery, legacy, and the relentless pursuit of truth across two distinct eras)
Marina Yuszczuk, trans. Heather Cleary, Thirst, Scribe UK (across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, and mortality)
November 2024
Anna Abney, The Secret Christmas, Duckworth (1653; festive prequel to The Master of Measham Hall is a tale of a small rebellion)
Tessa Afshar, The Queen’s Cook, Bethany House (left destitute and adrift by her father’s death, Roxannah approaches a Jewish physician to help her find employment in Queen Esther’s kitchens)
Adriana Allegri, The Sunflower House, St. Martins (family secrets come to light as a young woman tries to save herself, and others, in a Nazi-run baby factory during World War II)
Amanda Allen, Murder at the Hacienda, Severn House (1920s cosy murder mystery with amateur sleuth Madeline Vaughn-Alwin)
Merryn Allingham, Murder in an English Castle, Bookouture (Sussex, 1959; amateur detectives Flora Steele and Jack Carrington are called to a castle to unearth the clues of a murder)
Radwa Ashour, trans. Kay Heikkinen, Granada: The Complete Trilogy, Hoopoe (trilogy of novels available in English for the first time — Granada, Maryama and The Departure)
D. R. Bailey, Sisters for Victory, Sapere (new WWII series featuring women at war in the air)
Michael Ball, A Backstage Betrayal, Zaffre (1926; times are hard at The Empire so the proprietor arranges a talent contest which goes well until tragedy strikes)
Jim Beane, The Deadening, Mandel Vilar Press (set in the early 1920s, a story of two American doughboys, both casualties, back from the WWI and the paths they travel — literal and existential)
Ann Bennett, The Stolen Sisters, Bookouture (dual timeline story in which two sisters are torn apart by war)
Xavier Bosch, trans. Samantha Mateo, What the Light Touches, Amazon Crossing (dual timeline novel about a woman on the cusp of middle age, set in 1940 and 2008)
Rhys Bowen, We Three Queens, Berkley (late 1936, England; Lady Georgiana “Georgie” Rannoch finds herself trying to separate fact from fiction when a murder occurs while a film is being made on her estate. Royal Spyness series)
Rita Bradshaw, Saffron Skies and New Beginnings, Pan (Second World War historical novel)
Benedict Brown, A Body at the Grand Hotel, Storm (second murder mystery in the Marius Quin series, set in 1920s Torquay)
Michelle Cameron, Napoleon’s Mirage, She Writes (saga of love set during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt that explores loyalty, cultural failures, and a potentially history-altering military defeat)
Francesca Capaldi, Love and Loss at the Beach Hotel, Canelo (inspirational WWI romantic saga; Beach Hotel Series, Book 4)
Clare Chambers, Shy Creatures, Mariner (period piece about secrets and lies in postwar Britain, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient)
Monica Chenault-Kilgore, The Jewel of the Blues, Graydon House (spotlights the romance, danger and drama in the backstage life of a young performer in Jazz Age America)
Patricia Clough, Trail to Treason, Rising Action (based on a true WWI story, an era where war rages not just across battlefields but within the very souls of those caught in its grasp)
Celeste Connally, All’s Fair in Love and Treachery, Minotaur (Regency-era mystery series with a feminist spin)
Vivian Conroy, Last Dance in Salzburg, One More Chapter (book 4 in Miss Ashford cosy crime series that captures the glamour of the 1930s)
Michael J. Cooper, Crossroads of Empire, Koehler Books (continuing the story of Evan Sinclair that began in Wages of Empire, Evan is left with amnesia after barely surviving the sinking of a hospital ship)
Tea Cooper, The Golden Thread, HQ AU (1889; threads from the past and the present bind together a yellow silk dress, lost gold and a missing grandmother)
Yvette Manessis Corporon, Daughter of Ruins, Harper Muse (tale steeped in history, culture, and myths of Greece, that follows three women as they fight to become the women they were meant to be)
Angela K. Couch, Carolyn Miller, Naomi Musch, Kari Trumbo, Courting the Country Preacher, Barbour (four inspirational historical stories of faith, hope and falling in love)
Emily Critchley, The Undoing of Violet Claybourne, Zaffre (set against the winter of 1938, a novel of family secrets, desperate ambition and the deepest betrayal)
Elizabeth DeLozier, Eleanore of Avignon, Dutton (story of a woman who is unwilling to bend to the limitations her society places upon her when she becomes the unlikely apprentice to the pope’s physician)
Emma Denny, All the Painted Stars, HQ (historical romance set in Oxfordshire, 1362)
Helena Dixon, Murder in New York, Bookouture (winter 1936; Kitty Underhay and husband Matt travel to New York in book 18 in cosy series)
Hélène Dorion, trans. Jonathan Kaplansky, Not Even the Sound of a River, Book*hug Press (tale of love as shared through the relationships between three generations of mothers and daughters)
Sarah M. Eden, Snapdragons, Covenant (romance in which two individuals fighting for opposing futures find in each other the happiness they dream of)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Whitechapel Road Station, Allison & Busby (1941; when Coburg and Lampson examine a murder scene, they surmise the victim could be one of Jack the Ripper’s kills)
Sharon Lynn Fisher, Grimm Curiosities, 47North (in Victorian England, a young woman inherits her father’s curiosity shop and all its ghostly secrets)
J. M. Frey, Time and Tide, Wattpad (a modern bisexual woman is thrown into Regency England and must figure out how to survive)
Kate Furnivall, The Crash, Hodder & Stoughton (Paris, 1933; historical fiction about identity, revenge and survival)
Nicole Glover, The Improvisers, Harper Voyager (1930s America; the tale of Velma, a barnstorming pilot and former magic bootlegger, who pursues dangerous enchanted items and a mystery through time)
Sarah Hendess, A Capital Christmas, Wild Rose Press (romance between director the Smithsonian Institution Library in Columbia in 1859 and a Quaker who runs a Friends’ orphanage in Georgetown)
David Hewson, When the Germans Come, Bloodhound (a thriller about the murky dark heart of wartime Britain, 1940)
Keiichiro Hirano, trans. Brent de Chene, trans. Charles De Wolf, Eclipse, Columbia Univ. Press (in late 15th-century, a young Dominican friar journeys from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy)
Elizabeth Hobbs, Misery Hates Company, Crooked Lane (a young woman is invited to a mysterious relative’s estate and winds up entangled in a murder investigation)
Tim Hodkinson, Eye of the Raven, Head of Zeus (alone in a foreign land, Viking warrior Einar must choose his loyalties in the face of war, in new instalment of the Whale Road Chronicles)
K. J. Holdom, The End and the Beginning, Simon & Schuster (based on the true story of a fourteen-year-old boy’s experience fleeing a Hitler youth camp with his best friend)
Kristen Holt-Browning, Ordinary Devotion, Monkfish (interwoven medieval and modern stories of an anchoress, her handmaiden, and the adjunct professor searching for them across centuries)
Morgan Howell, The Moon Won’t Talk, Regal House (1966; coming-of-age cross-genre fantasy in 1960s South Carolina featuring a bored teenager with a vivid imagination who assists his mysterious neighbour to recover the soul of his dead lover)
Isabel Ibañez, Where the Library Hides, Hodderscape (1885 Egypt; historical fantasy filled with adventure, and a rivals-to-lovers romance. Sequel to What the River Knows)
Douglas Jackson, Blood Sacrifice, Canelo (1943; as hunger grips the Warsaw ghetto, is a cannibal loose on the streets? Book two in the Warsaw Quartet)
Anna Jacobs, The Secrets of Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (Rachel and Joss are married and keen to continue the hard work to rebuild Eastby End, in this next installment)
Kristi Jones, Murder in the Ranks, Crooked Lane (World War II debut mystery filled with spies, murder, and a touch of romance)
Theodor Kallifatides, trans. Marlaine Delargy, Mothers and Sons, Other Press (autofiction of the author’s family history through the 20th century, told through the aging writer’s reminiscences to his elderly mother)
Stacy Kean, The Nazi Housewife of Queens, New York, Level Best (two lives intersect in 1950s America—an ordinary Queens housewife harboring a dark Nazi past and a survivor seeking justice)
Vaseem Khan, City of Destruction, Hodder & Stoughton (new mystery featuring Persis Wadia, set in Bombay 1951)
Ann Hanigan Kotz, Moonshine by Moonlight, BookPress (weaves a fictional story of the bootlegging era in 1923 Iowa, while exposing the power struggle between the law and the lawless)
Snorri Kristjánsson, The Silent Emperor, Solaris (second instalment in the historical fantasy of a secret order of Roman monster-hunters)
Jerry Lathan, Steven Manchester, You Will Be Peter, Forefront Books (a story that transports readers to the first-century world, and shares an age-old story told from a new set of eyes. Christian historical)
Hannah Linder, Never Forgotten, Barbour (a gothic style Regency romance)
Posy Lovell, Victory for the Sewing Factory Girls, Orion (saga series set in 1916 Scotland)
Sharon Maas, The Last Agent in Paris, Bookouture (novel inspired by true story of Noor Inayat Khan, the first female radio operator sent by SOE into Nazi-occupied France)
J. C. Maetis, The Fortune Teller of Berlin, Penguin (story of one woman’s fight to overturn Hitler, inspired by true events)
Paulette Mahurin, Two Necklaces, Black Rose (1933; story of the rise of Nazism and a German girl who dares to think for herself at a time when that very act was dangerous and life-threatening)
Robert Marro, Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Love, Post Hill Press (follows Ebenezer Scrooge’s quest to rediscover true love after his harrowing Christmas Eve)
Isolde Martyn, The Lady of Mirascon, Sapere (romantic adventure set against the backdrop of the Crusades in 1208)
Lori G. Matthews, Outlaw Hearts, Bella Books (a sapphic romance filled with danger, adventure, and the majesty of the wild west)
Mimi Matthews, The Muse of Maiden Lane, Berkley (a silver-haired equestrienne and a charismatic artist make a scandalous bargain)
Frank McAdams, California Rain, Blank Slate (Los Angeles, 1950; a noir set against the infamous Hollywood Blacklist)
Clara McKenna, Murder at Glenloch Hill, Kensington (on a weekend trip to the Scottish countryside, a prestigious golf tournament becomes a deadly game of murder)
Ava McKevitt, Nemesis of the Gods, Sapere (historical adventure set during the time of myth and legend in Ancient Greece)
Gabrielle Meyer, Across the Ages, Bethany House (a time-slip novel of romance and adventure set in 1727 and 1927)
Denzil Meyrick, The Christmas Stocking Murders, Bantam (it’s just before Christmas, 1953 and Grasby and Juggers are investigating a puzzling murder in the remote village of Uthley’s Bay)
Franceska Michalska, trans. Sean Gasper Bye, Stubborn Life, World Editions (memoir of the Russian occupation of Ukraine in the 1930s and the mass deportation of Poles from the region)
Fenella J. Miller, Wartime Arrivals at Harbour House, Boldwood (WWII tale of courage, duty and bravery, set in London, 1939)
Laura Morelli, The Keeper of Lost Art, William Morrow (during World War II, a girl makes a connection with a boy sheltering in her family’s Tuscan villa, where the treasures of the Uffizi Galleries are hidden)
Sacha Naspini, trans. Clarissa Botsford, The Bishop’s Villa, Europa Editions (a story of love, redemption, and resistance set in Italy during WWII)
Carolyn Newton, The Refugee’s Daughter, Bloodhound (winter 1945; a traumatised and mute girl is rescued by a disabled veteran who is hiding in the woods)
Max Nightingale, Murder in Tinseltown, HarperNorth (interactive novel full of multiple outcomes and clues set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s Golden Age)
Dominic Nolan, White City, Headline (historical crime novel set in London of the 1950s)
David Peace, Munichs, W. W. Norton (1958; novel of tragedy and hope inspired by one of the greatest disasters in sporting history)
Glynis Peters, The Orphan’s Secret Library, One More Chapter (the stories young orphan Alice cherishes, provide solace and escape into a world that is more hopeful than 1942 England)
Tracie Peterson, A Truth Revealed, Bethany House (an inspirational Christian frontier fiction romance)
Jacquie Pham, Those Opulent Days, Atlantic Monthly (a classic historical murder mystery centered around the glamor, violence, wealth, and opium of 1920’s French-colonial Vietnam)
Michelle Rawlins, Steel Girls in the Blitz, HQ Fiction (WWII saga set in Sheffield, 1940)
A. D. Rhine, Daughters of Bronze, Dutton (spotlights the stories of the key women of Troy – Andromache, Rhea, Helen and Cassandra)
Lia Riley, Puck and Prejudice, Avon (marriage of convenience romance between a pro hockey player who accidentally travels back in time to Regency Era England and the brazen contemporary of Jane Austen)
Mike Ripley, Mr Campion’s Christmas, Severn House (Christmas, 1962; the Campions are drawn into a fiendish web of espionage as the Cold War comes chillingly close to home)
Elaine Roberts, The Foyles Bookshop Girls’ Promise, Boldwood (saga about London’s Foyles Bookshop set in 1918)
Stephen Ronson, The Berlin Agent, Hodder & Stoughton (WWII thriller set in England, 1940)
Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan, The Liberty Scarf, Harper Muse (in the midst of a seemingly endless war, a scarf connects three women in the winter of 1917)
Noelle Salazar, The Lies We Leave Behind, MIRA (story follows a nurse who must leave love behind when duty calls her back to the front)
Simon Scarrow, Revenge of Rome, Headline (military adventure that pits Roman army heroes Macro and Cato against Boudica, the fearsome Queen of the Britons. Eagles of the Empire, book 23)
Carly Schabowski, The Girl with the Red Ribbon, Boldwood (novel in which a young woman vows revenge on the Nazis after her family is murdered. Based on a true story)
Peter Selgin, A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space, Regal House (spotlights a little-known footnote of WWII, when thousands of German POWs were interred in camps across the US, while fictionalizing the saga of one German POW who remained in hiding for decades)
James D. Shipman, A Time for Defiance, Kensington (a tale of sisterhood, survival, and resistance, featuring a young woman in Nazi-occupied Holland who joins a unique taskforce within the Dutch Resistance)
Rosemary Simpson, Death Takes the Lead, Kensington (when mysterious deaths plague a new Scottish play, Prudence and her partner Geoffrey are called in to investigate at one of Broadway’s theatres)
Douglas Skelton, A Thief’s Blood, Canelo (a serial killer thriller set amidst the dirt and grime of Georgian London. Company of Rogues series)
Michael Stewart, Black Wood Women, HQ (Yorkshire, 1649; as the last wolf in England hunts for prey, she fears for the litter of pups she carries, and the men who seek to wipe her out)
Ashley E. Sweeney, The Irish Girl, She Writes (19th-century family saga about the Irish immigrant experience spanning New York, Chicago, and Colorado)
Lulu Taylor, The Last Song of Winter, Macmillan (two narratives intertwine, offering a tale of heartbreak, romance and redemption)
James Treadwell, A Fire Beneath the World, Hodder & Stoughton (1791; when his friend Arabella Farthingay, falls prey to a sinister seducer, Mr. Peach’s fading powers are called on once more)
Glennis Virgo, City of Silk, Allison & Busby (sixteenth-century Bologna comes to life as a young seamstress fights for justice and for her ambition to enter the male-dominated world of tailoring)
Chrissie Walsh, The Workhouse Lass, Boldwood (family saga where seven-year-old Lissie must make her own way in the world when a tragedy strikes their family)
Raymond Wemmlinger, The Queen’s Rival, Sapere (1553; biographical historical novel of Lady Margaret Clifford, a young woman of royal heritage who struggles to gain power and influence at Queen Mary’s court)
Roseanna M. White, An Honorable Deception, Bethany House (three people involved in a private investigation firm soon learn that the gentry isn’t always noble . . . and truth isn’t always honorable. The Imposter series book 3)
Clare Whitfield, Poor Girls, Aries (1922; novel exposes the hidden underbelly of the ‘roaring twenties’)
Niall Williams, Time of the Child, Bloomsbury (December 1962; a novel about the Christmas season that transforms the small Irish town of Faha, spotlighted in previous book This is Happiness)
Susan Wilson, Helen’s Judgement, Neem Tree Press (uncovers the complexities of Helen of Troy—a woman tormented by the blame placed on her by others, and tortured by her own guilt)
Qiu Xiaolong, The Conspiracies of the Empire, Severn House (Judge Dee Renji returns in this combination of mystery, history and ancient Chinese politics)
Yáng Shuang-zi, trans. Lin King, Taiwan Travelogue, Graywolf Press (1938; story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power)
December 2024
Jane A. Adams, Cold Bones, Severn House (historical mystery that explores social prejudice and rural traditions in 1930s England)
Rochelle Alers, Home and Away, Dafina (spanning eighty years, from Nashville in the 1930s and 1940s to present-day Chicago novel draws on the turbulent history of the Negro Baseball Leagues)
Suzanne Allain, The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right, Berkley (when a young woman trades places with her noble cousin, their innocent ruse leads to true love)
Jess Armstrong, The Secret of the Three Fates, Minotaur/Allison & Busby (American heiress Ruby Vaughn returns in a new mystery where the Scottish Hills hold ghosts of the past that threaten Ruby’s present)
William Boyd, Gabriel’s Moon, Atlantic Monthly (on the streets of sixties London, to Cadiz and Warsaw, an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession)
J. C. Briggs, The Inheritors of Moonlyght Tower, Sapere (gothic mystery set during and after WWI)
Verity Bright, A Midwinter Murder, Bookouture (Golden Age murder mystery set in a country house on the Yorkshire moors in 1924. Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery, book 20)
Nick Allen Brown, Beneath the Estate, Keylight Books (unfolds across intertwining narratives—the investigation of the machine in the present day and its creation back in 1906)
Alys Clare, The Chrysanthemum Tiger, Severn House (physician-sleuth Dr Gabriel Taverner faces a serious danger from the East that threatens not just his life, but everyone he loves!)
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Storm, Harper US (19th-century military adventure series with the iconic hero Richard Sharpe)
Paul Doherty, Murder’s Snare, Severn House (London, 1382; friar-sleuth Brother Athelstan must uncover the truth behind numerous gruesome murders)
A. Rae Dunlap, The Resurrectionist, Kensington (combines fact and fiction in a tale of the risks and rewards of scientific pursuit, the passions of its boldest pioneers, and the anatomy of human desire. Set in Edinburgh, 1828)
Rosa Kwon Easton, White Mulberry, Lake Union (debut set against the backdrop of WWII about a young Korean woman who passes as Japanese to save her and her son’s life)
Jennie Felton, Rosie’s Dilemma, Headline (novel about a woman who returns to her hometown as WW2 breaks out, and must contend with her heartbreak and fate)
Darry Fraser, The Night on the Darling River, HQ Fiction AU (1894, Victoria, Australia; adventure about one woman’s journey from a life of isolation to one of love and acceptance)
Kathy George, The Scent of Oranges, HQ Fiction AU (a retelling of one of Oliver Twist, from the point of view of Nancy)
Anne Gracie, The Secret Daughter, Berkley (when two strangers meet under false pretenses during a week in the French countryside, they’ll each need to face the truth to find one other again)
Matthew Harffy, Shadows of the Slain, Aries (Warlord Beobrand travels to holy Rome… but sinister plots and bloody conflict line his path once more. Bernicia Chronicles AD 652)
Chelsea Iversen, The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt, Sourcebooks Landmark (a magical gothic Victorian fantasy in which a sinister plot involving her father’s disappearance threatens Harriet’s whole world)
Angela Jackson-Brown, Untethered, Harper Muse (Alabama, 1967; novel delves into the complexities of love, family, and self-discovery in a time of transformation and upheaval)
Fabienne Josaphat, Kingdom of No Tomorrow, Algonquin (tells a story of Black love, self-determination, and the importance of revolution in the midst of injustice, in 1968)
Steve Kelton, John Bradshaw, The Familiar Stranger, Forge (a Hewey Calloway adventure set in 1904 West Texas)
Julie Klassen, The Seaside Homecoming, Bethany House (on the Devonshire coast the Summers sisters navigate romance, second chances, and the enduring strength of sisterhood)
Tom Kratman, Kacey Ezell, Justin Watson, 1919: The Romanov Rising, Baen (campaign to defeat the Bolsheviks and rescue Russia from a dark and terrible path continues, in a new alternate history)
Svenja Leiber, trans. Alta L. Price, Kazimira, Seagull Books (saga that traces the lives of five generations of resilient women from the late nineteenth century to the dawn of the twenty-first)
Kate MacIntosh, The Champagne Letters, Gallery (novel follows Mme. Clicquot as she builds her legacy, and the modern divorcee who looks to her letters for inspiration)
Charif Majdalani, trans. Ruth Diver, A History of the Big House, Other Press (family saga chronicles the rise and fall of the Nassar clan, as they navigate the 20th century, from the Ottoman Empire to the French Mandate)
Peter May, The Night Gate, riverrun (spans three generations, taking us from war-torn London, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Berlin and Vichy France, to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020)
Patricia McBride, A Better Tomorrow for the East End Library Girls, Boldwood (the library girls rally for their community towards the war’s end)
Terri Nixon, The Watchers of Pencarrack Moor, Piatkus (new spinoff following Bertie’s journey to become a pilot)
Anna Normann, The Silent Resistance, Allison & Busby (dual timeline story of wartime hardship and hope set in Norway, 1944 and London, 1952)
Rob Osler, The Case of the Missing Maid, Kensington (Chicago, 1898. Harriet Morrow is a new junior detective in the Windy City—and her first case proves more scandalous than a woman trading skirts for trousers)
Signe Pike, The Shadowed Land, Atria (Kingdom of Gododdin, AD 580; King Arthur and his contemporaries are reimagined in this series that resurrects historical figures who inspired one of our most enduring legends)
Candace Robb, A Snake in the Barley, Severn House (Owen Archer unearths a series of troubling secrets and a dangerous foe intent on retribution when his good friend goes missing)
Renee Ryan, The Last Fashion House in Paris, Love Inspired (in the heart of occupied WWII Paris, an elegant fashion house is the unlikely headquarters of a daring resistance network)
Lisa Sandlin, Sweet Vidalia, Little, Brown (novel explores marriage, community, and the power of dignity for a fifty-seven-year-old woman forced to rebuild her life in 1960s Texas)
Renee Schaeffer, Ageless, CamCat Books (historical fantasy in which a woman born in the 1850s finds herself thrust unwillingly into an immortal life, whereby she must hide who she is through the centuries)
Rani Selvarajah, Golden Apple, One More Chapter (historical romance set in New York, 1965)
Sharon Short, Trouble Island, Minotaur (1932; a locked room mystery, and a portrait of a woman in crisis, suspense debut is inspired by a real island in Lake Erie)
Joanna Shupe, The Gilded Heiress, Avon (a story full of secrets and betrayal, set among the streets of New York City’s Gilded Age)
Kay Smith-Blum, Tangles, Black Rose (Cold War home-front tale reveals the devastating costs of the birth of the nuclear age)
Lyn Squire, Fatally Inferior, Level Best/Historia (a tale of retribution cast against the greatest debate of its time –Darwin’s theory of evolution)
Sarah Steele, The Last Letters from Villa Clara, Headline Review (sweeps readers from an Italy simmering on the brink of war through to 1960s London at a time of shadows and Russian spies)
Pamela Taylor, From Tickhill, 1348, Black Rose (a story of intrigue and conflict set in the early years of the Hundred Years War)
Liz Tolsma, What I Left For You, Barbour (dual timeline story set in 1939 and 2023; third in the Echoes of the Past Series)
Andrea Tompa, trans. Bernard Adams, Omertà: A Book of Silences, Seagull Books (explores the indomitable human spirit against the backdrop of Romania’s complex history in the 1950s and ’60s)
Lily Tuck, The Rest is Memory, Liveright (story of a young Catholic girl transported to Auschwitz in 1942)
Richard Walter, Deadpan, Skyhorse (story is set during the world-wide oil crises of the 1970s, satire follows the misadventures of a vaguely anti-semitic West Virginia Buick dealer)
Lilian West, Pretty Dead Things, Crooked Lane (dual timeline novel exposes one family’s secrets and the twisted lies that are hidden in small towns. Set in 1953 and present day)
Darcie Wilde, The Matter of the Secret Bride, Kensington (Set in Regency London, this Jane Austen-inspired mystery series features Rosalind Thorne, a young woman with a talent for helping ladies of the ton)
Mary Winters, Murder in Season, Severn House (countess-turned-advice-columnist Amelia Amesbury tries to juggle a new Season and a new murder in this witty historical mystery)
Karen Witemeyer, Cloaked in Beauty, Bethany House (a romantic fairy tale retelling that explores the power of true love conquering even the darkest of nights)
Mary Wood, The Guernsey Girls Find Peace, Pan (final instalment of The Guernsey Girls wartime trilogy, set in 1941)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18. Books are set in eras up to the early 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard using publisher descriptions and recommended age suitability.
Other than short excerpts, please remember to link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Patience Agbabi, The Circle Breakers, Canongate, YA (14-yr-old Elle and her friends end up in 1880, face-to-face with the criminal mastermind of The Vicious Circle – Millennia’s Leapling ancestor)
Kwame Alexander, illus. Dare Coulter, An American Story, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book that tells the story of American slavery through the voice of a teacher struggling to help her students understand its harrowing history)
Glenda Armand, illus. Keisha Morris, All Aboard the Schooltrain: A Little Story from the Great Migration, Scholastic, Age 4-8 (picture book of one young girl caught in racially tense times)
Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert, illus. Colin Bootman, Papa’s Mark, Holiday House, Age 4-8 (a father and son help their community claim the right to vote in the post Civil-War South)
Alfreda Beartrack-Algeo, The Roan Stallion, 7th Generation, YA (adventure set on a Dakota prairie farm in 1929)
Rachel Bithell, illus Eric Freeberg, Brave Bird at Wounded Knee: A Story of Protest on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Jolly Fish, Age 8-12 (during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a Lakota girl reconnects with her heritage, and determines who she wants to be)
Tameka Fryer Brown, illus. Nikkolas Smith, That Flag, Age 6-10 (fictional picture book challenges the meaning behind the still-waving Confederate flag through the friendship of two young girls)
Brittany Cavallaro, Manifest, Katherine Tegen, YA (conclusion to YA duology set in an alternate history American monarchy)
Tami Charles, illus. Bryan Collier, We Are Here, Orchard Books, Age 4-8 (picture book that celebrates the rich history of Black and brown men and women)
Lesa Cline-Ransome, Loud and Proud, Paula Wiseman, Age 4-8 (inspirational picture book story of Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress)
Lisa Cline-Ransome, For Lamb, Holiday House, YA (an interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this novel set in the Jim Crow South)
Joy Michael Ellison, illus: Francesca Ficorilli, Flor Fights Back: A Stonewall Riots Survival Story, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (after Flor’s mother dies in early 1969, she is left with her grandmother who refuses to accept Flor’s identity as a trans girl)
Brian Falkner, Blitzkrieg, Scholastic Inc, YA (WWII novel inspired by real events)
Susan Griner, illus. Wendy Tan Shiau Wei, Fumiko and a Tokyo Tragedy, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (survival story of the Great Kanto Earthquake which struck Tokyo on September 1, 1923)
Antonio Iturbe (trans. Lilit Thwaites), adap. Salva Rubio, illus. Loreto Aroca, The Librarian of Auschwitz: The Graphic Novel, Henry Holt BYR, YA (inspired by the true story of Dita Kraus who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. Adapted for young readers)
Stephen Krensky, Daniel Boone, Crabtree Crown, Age 10-12 (fictional fantasy stories featuring science & nature in the Great Explorers series)
Also in series: Henry Hudson; John Wesley Powell; Kit Carson; Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Iszi Lawrence, illus. Elisa Paganelli, Blackbeard’s Treasure, Bloomsbury Education, Age 9-11 (a pirate tale set in the eighteenth century during the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean)
Krystal Marquis, The Davenports, Dial, YA (series set in 1910 Chicago offers a glimpse into a period of African American history often overlooked)
Katherine Marsh, The Lost Year, Roaring Brook, Age 8-12 (middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s)
Kyrie McCauley, All the Dead Lie Down, Katherine Tegen, YA (queer gothic romance in which a newly orphaned teen girl accepts a nanny position only to discover that the estate is drowning in its history)
DoanPhuong Nguyen, Méo and Bé, Tu Books, Age 8-12 (historical novel about a girl who, after being sold by her stepmother, follows a precocious kitten through the war-torn streets of Vietnam)
Richard O’Neill, A Different Kind of Freedom: A Romani Story, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (a football-filled adventure based in the Romani community of 19th-century Sheffield)
Jean E. Pendziwol, illus. Nicolas Debon, The Red Sash, Groundwood, Age 5-8 (story of a young Metis boy who lives near the fur trading post of Fort William, on Lake Superior, nearly 200 years ago)
Corinne Purtill, illus. Marina Muun, Ada Lovelace Cracks the Code, Rebel Girls, Age 8-12 (story based on the real-life adventures of Ada Lovelace, one of the world’s first computer programmers)
Matt Ralphs, Little Sure Shot, Andersen Press, Age 10-12 (novel based on the life of sharpshooting star Annie Oakley)
Virginia Frances Schwartz, Among the Fallen, Holiday House, YA (historical novel, full of real characters, celebrates the strength and resilience of young women throughout history)
Lucy Strange, Sister of the Lost Marsh, Chicken House, Age 8-12 (story of six sisters who must fight against circumstance and fate)
Kim Taylor, A Flag for Juneteenth, Neal Porter, Age 5-8 (story depicts a close-knit community of enslaved African Americans on a plantation in Texas, the day before the 1865 announcement is made that all enslaved people are free)
Sarah Todd Taylor, illus. Beatriz Castro, A Spoonful of Spying, Nosy Crow, Age 8-12 (second book in the Alice Éclair, Spy Extraordinaire series)
Carole Boston Weatherford, illus. E.B. Lewis, You Are My Pride, Astra YR, Age 4-8 (historical picture book written in the voice of Mother Africa, who speaks to all her children)
Laura Wood, The Agency for Scandal, Scholastic, YA (an all-female detective agency rights wrongs at the end of the nineteenth century by infiltrating a scandalous upper-class world)
February 2023
Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, Little Rosetta and the Talking Guitar, Doubleday, Age 4-7 (picture book biography of guitarist and musical prodigy Rosetta Tharpe)
Kalynn Bayron, My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix, Feiwel & Friends, YA (London 1885 — a teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend’s disappearance and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic stranger)
Miya T. Beck, The Pearl Hunter, Balzer + Bray, Age 8-12 (debut fantasy novel about pearl divers in pre-Shogun era Japan)
Debra Amirault Camelin, Nathalie: An Acadian’s Tale of Tragedy and Triumph, Ronsdale, YA (1755, Nova Scotia; a heroic coming-of-age story for 13-year-old Acadian Nathalie Belliveau)
Anna Ciddor, The Boy Who Stepped Through Time, A & U Children, Age 8-12 (an accidental trip back to the Roman Empire sets off a race against time to save a friendship)
James Klise, I’ll Take Everything You Have, Algonquin YR, YA (follows the life-changing summer of sixteen-year-old Joe Garbe as he discovers queer community in 1930s Chicago)
Lois Lowry, The Windeby Puzzle, Clarion, Age 10+ (blend of fiction and history, transporting readers to the Iron Age and exploring the mystery and life of the 2,000-year-old Windeby bog body)
Krystal Marquis, The Davenports, Penguin, YA (follows four young Black women as they discover the courage to steer their own path in life-and love)
Denene Millner, illus. Salini Perera, Madam C. J. Walker Builds a Business, Rebel Girls, Age 8-12 (story based on the life of America’s first female self-made millionaire)
Daniel Nayeri, illus. Daniel Miyares, The Many Assassinations of Samir the Seller of Dreams, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (middle grade adventure through the Silk Road narrated a boy whose only protector, Samir, has many mortal enemies)
Jerdine Nolen, Hope’s Path to Glory, S & S Paula Wiseman, Age 8-12 (adventure about an enslaved girl’s journey on the Overland Trail to California during the Gold Rush, and how she took the chance to fight for freedom)
Gabe Cole Novoa, The Wicked Bargain, Random House BfYR, YA (Latinx pirate fantasy starring a transmasculine nonbinary teen with a mission of revenge, redemption, and revolution)
Nancy Ohlin, illus. Montse Galbany, Junko Tabei Masters the Mountains, Rebel Girls, Age 8-12 (historical novel based on the life of the first female climber to summit Mount Everest)
Richard Panchyk, Escape ’56, Triangle Square, YA (a novel of escape during occupation and wartime and of starting life over in a new country)
Victoria Princewill, The Diary of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Scholastic, YA (retelling of the life of an orphaned African princess who was gifted to Queen Victoria)
Corinne Purtill, illus. Josefina Preumayr, Alicia Alonso Takes the Stage, Rebel Girls, Age 8-12 (historical novel based on the life of a world-renowned prima ballerina from Cuba)
Lyssa Mia Smith, Revelle, Balzer + Bray, YA (inspired by Moulin Rouge and set on an island in a magical version of Prohibition-era New York)
Ora Smith, Trading Thomas: Jamestown’s Boy Interpreter, Lighten Press, YA (biographical novel, set in 1606, of a boy who longs to be a great explorer)
Sasha Peyton Smith, The Witch Hunt, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (sequel to The Witch Haven follows Frances and her fellow witches to the streets of Paris)
Lee Renwick Steele, Griselda Rella, The Wild Rose Press, YA (a reimagining of the Cinderella story)
Caren Stelson, illus. Selina Alko, Stars of the Night, Carolrhoda Books, Age 7-11 (story of the Czech Kindertransport, which rescued 669 children from Nazi persecution on the eve of World War II)
Gretchen Woelfle, illus. Rebecca Gibbon, A Take-Charge Girl Blazes a Trail to Congress, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (picture book biography of Jeannette Rankin, the first US congresswoman)
March 2023
Jeff Alt, illus. Hannah Tuohy, The Adventures of Bubba Jones: Time Traveling Through Yellowstone National Park, Beaufort Books, Age 9-12 (a brother and sister duo travel back hundreds of years on a mission to preserve and protect our national parks)
Julie Berry, Burglars and Bluestockings, Sourcebooks YR, Age 8-11 (Maeve Merritt and her friends visit Oxford University and encounter an astounding scientific discovery)
Elisa Boxer, illus. Amy June Bates, Hidden Hope, Abrams BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book true story of how a toy duck smuggled forged identity papers for Jewish refugees during WWII)
Jairo Buitrago, illus. Rafael Yockteng, Afterward, Everything Was Different: A Tale of the Pleistocene, Greystone Kids, Age 4-8 (almost wordless picture book set in the dawn of human life imagines how art and storytelling were born from the power of one young girl’s observation)
Dominic Carrillo, Acts of Resistance, Santa Monica Press, YA (based on the true story of a heroic effort by the citizens of Bulgaria to save almost 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the Holocaust in 1943 and 1944)
Tziporah Cohen, illus. Yaara Eshet, Afikomen, Groundwood, Age 4-6 (wordless picture book in which three children at a Passover seder visit ancient Egypt to help baby Moses find his way safely to Pharaoh’s daughter)
Lindsay Eagar, The Family Fortuna, Candlewick, YA (debut welcomes us backstage at the Family Fortuna circus to challenge our every notion of what it means to be different)
L. M. Elliott, Bea and the New Deal Horse, Katherine Tegen, Age 10+ (novel, set during the Great Depression, is a tale of the spirit of American persistence, found family, and the magical partnership between girl and horse)
Bonnie Farmer, illus. Marie Lafrance, Oscar Lives Next Door, Owlkids, Age 4-8 (set in Oscar Peterson’s childhood neighborhood of St-Henri, picture book provides a strong sense of this 1930s neighborhood where much of Montreal’s Black working class population lived)
Kristen Mai Giang, illus. Dow Phumiruk, Last Flight, Age 4-8 (picture book story of a family’s escape from Saigon, Vietnam, just before its fall)
Candy Gourlay, Wild Song, David Fickling Books, YA (a companion novel to Bone Talk, the history of the Bontok, an Igorot people in the Philippines)
Kimberly Annece Henderson and Ciara LeRoy, Dear Yesteryear, Dial, Age 4-7 (a picture book letter connecting Black history with the present)
Ysabelle Lacamp (trans. Emma Ramadan), George Sand: No to Prejudice, Triangle Square, YA (tells the story of George Sand’s courageous fight for women’s rights in the 19th century)
Margaret Littman, illus. by Sara Luna, It’s Her Story: Irena Sendler, Sunbird, (graphic novel of Sendler, who worked with the Polish resistance during WWII to smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto)
Joy McCullough, Enter the Body, Dutton BfYR, YA (in the room beneath a stage’s trapdoor, all of Shakespeare’s tragically dead teenage girls compare their experiences and retell the stories of their lives)
Mireille Messier, illus. Anna Bron, No Horses in the House!, Orca, Age 6-8 (picture book biography based on the life of the pioneering, feminist and queer artist Rosa Bonheur)
Jennifer A. Nielsen, Iceberg, Scholastic Press, Age 8-12 (story of a girl who stows away on the Titanic)
Nimrod (trans. Emma Ramadan), Aimé Césaire: No to Humiliation, Triangle Square, YA (tells the story of Aimé Césaire and the crusade for Black African and Caribbean independence from colonial rule)
Aida Salazar, illus. Molly Mendoza, Jovita Wore Pants, Scholastic Press, Age 6-9 (a true story of Jovita Valdovinos, a Mexican revolutionary who disguised herself as a man to fight for her rights!)
Dana Schwartz, Immortality: A Love Story, Wednesday Books, YA (Hazel seems doomed to rot in prison until a message says she has been specifically requested to be the personal physician of Princess Charlotte, daughter of King George IV. Sequel to Anatomy: A Love Story)
Matt Tavares, Hoops, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (novel dramatizes the historic struggle for gender equality in high school sports)
Alan Titley, illus. Eoin Coveney, The Tain: The Great Irish Battle Epic, Little Island Books, Age 8-12 (new translation of Ireland’s national epic myth)
Rhian Tracey, I, Spy, Piccadilly Press, Age 8-12 (twelve-year-old Robyn has grown up in Bletchley Park. Then the war begins and everything at Bletchley changes)
Sarah Underwood, Lies We Sing to the Sea, Harper Teen/Electric Monkey, YA (historical fantasy romance reinvents an ancient story of Ithaca))
Andrew Varga, The Last Saxon King, Imbrifex Books, YA (sixteen-year-old Dan accidentally transports himself to England in 1066 & must battle a band of malevolent time jumpers whose lust for wealth and power)
Elizabeth Wein, Stateless, Penguin Teen/Little Brown BfYR/Bloomsbury Children’s, YA (1937; a spectacular air race around Europe seeks to promote unity among a group of young pilots, but distrust and animosity are rife)
Diane Zahler, Wild Bird, Roaring Brook Press, Age 8-12 (middle-grade adventure following Rype, an abandoned girl in 14th-century Europe, as she walks from Norway to England looking for safety from the plague)
April 2023
Robert Beatty, Serafina and the Black Cloak, Disney Hyperion, Age 8-12 (gothic fantasy about an unforgettable heroine now in graphic novel format)
M. A. Bennett, The Mona Lisa Mystery, Welbeck, Age 8-12 (third book in the Butterfly Club time-traveler series)
Hanh Bui, illus. Minnie Phan, The Yellow Áo Dài, Feiwel & Friends, Age 4-6 (picture book about a little girl who connects to her Vietnamese heritage when she accidentally rips her late grandmother’s ceremonial dress)
Anne Bustard, Far Out!, Simon & Schuster BfYR, Age 8-12 (middle grade novel about a young, alien-loving girl trying to clear her grandmother’s name in this mystery set in 1964)
Jason Cockcroft, A Song of Sun and Sky, Henry Holt BYR, Ages 4-8 (picture book about an imaginary chance meeting between a little girl and the artist Georgia O’Keeffe)
Kevin Crossley-Holland, illus. Chris Riddell, Arthur, the Always King, Candlewick Studio, Age 10+ (Carnegie Medalist Kevin Crossley-Holland and former British Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell welcome another generation to Camelot)
Melissa de la Cruz, Snow and Poison, Putnam BfYR, YA (retelling of “Snow White” set in 17th-century Bavaria)
DK, The Timekeepers: First Flight, DK Children, Age 7-9 (adventure in which the Timekeepers are whirled back in time to 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where Orville and Wilbur Wright are trying to fix their airplane)
Also: The Timekeepers: Ancient Olympics
Arthur Conan Doyle, adapt. & illus. Hannes Binder (trans. David Henry Wilson), Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem, North South, Age 10+ (Sherlock Holmes’ most famous adventure, now in a graphic novel format)
Fabrice Erre, Magical History Tour #12: The Samurai, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (Annie and Nico will peel back the curtains on the Samurai mystery and explain their origins)
Rosalyn Eves, An Improbable Season, FSG BfYR, YA (Regency Romance)
J. M. Farkas and Emily Vizzo, illus. Jasmin Dwyer, Starflower, Cameron Kids, Age 4-8 (lyrical picture book biography about American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s childhood and the two sisters who inspired her)
Michael Foley, The Children of Croke Park: Bloody Sunday 1920, The O’Brien Press, YA (the story of Bloody Sunday, when a gaelic football match in Croke Park was the scene of slaughter by British forces and three children died)
Melissa Geissinger, Nothing Left But Dust, Arken Press, YA (tale of love, loss, and hope set against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake)
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Running Out of Time (c.1995), Katherine Tegen, Age 8-12 (time-bending adventure set in Clifton, Indiana, 1840)
Amalie Howard, Queen Bee, Joy Revolution/Random House, YA (Ela disguises herself as an heiress to infiltrate the ton and get back at her backstabbing bestie)
Peggy Janicki, illus. Carrielynn Victor, The Secret Pocket, Orca, Age 6-8 (true story of how Indigenous girls at a Canadian residential school sewed secret pockets into their dresses to hide food and survive)
Matthew Lasley, illus. Jacob Souva, Max and Ed Bike to Nome, Alaska Northwest Books, Age 5-8 (picture book inspired by the true story of Ed Jesson’s famous bike ride during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1900)
Martine Leavitt, Buffalo Flats, Margaret Ferguson, YA (based on true-life histories, novel shares the coming of age of Rebecca Leavitt as she searches for her identity in the Northwest Territories of Canada during the late 1800s)
Camilo Moncada Lozano, Codex Black, IDW, YA (graphic novel series set in 15th-century Mesoamerica where a Zapotec girl goes on a harrowing journey to find her father)
Heather B. Moore, Allison Hong Merrill, The Paper Daughters of Chinatown, Shadow Mountain, Age 10+ (adapted for young readers; based on the true story of two friends who unite to help rescue immigrant women in the most dangerous corners of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the late 1890s)
Susan Lynn Meyer, A Sky Full of Song, Union Square, Age 8-12 (North Dakota, 1905; after fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, a family of Jewish immigrants, starts a new life on the prairie)
Jessica S. Olson, A Forgery of Roses, Inkyard Press, YA (Gothic fantasy based in magic, romance and murder)
Karyn Parsons, Clouds over California, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 8-12 (novel about how one girl’s family and friendships are turned upside down, just as the world is changing in 1970s Los Angeles)
Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals, Wednesday Books, YA (World War I-inspired fantasy in which two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection)
Gavriel Savit, Come See the Fair, Knopf BfYR, Age 10-12 (story of magic, mediums, and séances set during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893)
Joan Schoettler, The Honey Jar, Bushel & Peck, Age 8-12 (based on a true story, only some members of a family escape the Armenian genocide and one boy must return to find a sister who was left behind)
Brittany N. Williams, That Self-Same Metal, Amulet, YA (fantasy debut about a Black girl, and sword expert, fighting a Fae uprising in Shakespearean London)
Jane Yolen, illus. Alexandra Badiu, The Horseback Librarians, Albert Whitman, Age 4-8 (picture book story of the real-life horseback librarians who helped keep the love of books alive in Appalachia during the Great Depression)
May 2023
John Agard, illus. Sophie Bass, Windrush Child: The Tale of a Caribbean Child Who Faced a New Horizon, Candlewick, Age 4-7 (recalls the journey made by the thousands of Caribbean children and their families who traveled to Britain between 1948 and 1971 as part of the Windrush generation)
Stéphane Anquetil, illus. Marie Capriata, Moriarty’s Trap, Sky Pony, Age 11-15 (an escape room adventure book based on one of the greatest detectives of all time—Sherlock Holmes!)
Rona Arato, illus. Isabel Muñoz, Nothing Could Stop Her, Kar-Ben, Age 8-12 (showcasing Jewish American Ruth Gruber whose career as a renowned journalist spanned seven decades, reporting on places like Nazi Germany)
Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein, illus. James E. Ransome, Northbound: A Train Ride Out of Segregation, Candlewick, Age 6-9 (offering both a hopeful tale of friendship and a window into a dark period of history that still resonates today)
David Bowles and Guadalupe García McCall, Secret of the Moon Conch, Bloomsbury, YA (connected by a magical conch, Sitlali and Calizto can communicate across centuries, between 1521 and present day Mexico)
Emma Carroll, Escape to the River Sea, Macmillan, Age 9-11 (inspired by Journey to the River Sea, new story tells of the next generation and the growing threats to the Amazon rainforest)
Mary Kay Carson, Escape From……….the 1916 Shark Attacks, little bee, Age 7-10 (during the summer of 1916, the “Jersey man-eater”-a great white shark-terrorized the coast of New Jersey)
Afua Cooper, My Name is Henry Bibb: A Story of Slavery and Freedom, Kids Can, Age 10-14 (based on historical facts and Bibb’s own writings, the story of a young slave’s perilous journey to freedom)
ALSO: My Name Is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom
Cathy Faulkner, Digging for Victory, Firefly Press, Age 8-12 (set in Devon in 1941; the story of twelve-year-old Bonnie Roberts who is desperate to play a valuable part in the war effort)
Joyce Efia Harmer, How Far We’ve Come, Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, YA (story of friendship and freedom that crosses continents and centuries, in a timeslip novel exploring the legacy of slavery)
Tom Holland, illus. Jason Cockcroft, The Wolf-Girl, The Greeks and The Gods, Walker Books, Age 9-12 (fictional retelling of the Persian Wars)
Julie Lee, In the Tunnel, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (a fourteen-year-old boy is sent to the front lines of the Korean War in this story of survival, loss, and hope)
Karen McCombie, illus. Anneli Bray, The Boy Who Stole the Pharaoh’s Lunch, Barrington Stoke, Age 7-11 (time-travel adventure in which a young prankster is whisked back to Ancient Egypt)
Jessica Outram, Bernice and the Georgian Bay Gold, Second Story, Age 9-14 (in 1914, Bernice finds a treasure map and sets out in a rowboat with the dream of changing her family’s fortunes forever)
Ruta Sepetys, I Must Betray You (c. 2022), Philomel, YA (historical thriller about communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. Cassie Anderson, I Survived the Great Chicago Fire, 1871, Scholastic Graphix, Age 8-12 (graphic format of 2015 novel)
Sheena Wilkinson, Hope Against Hope, Little Island Books, Age 10-14 (1921; when Polly’s brother returns from war and turns violent, Polly runs away to Helen’s Hope hostel in Belfast, where Catholic and Protestant girls live and work together)
June 2023
Michael January, The Boy King’s Tale As Told by Geoffrey Chaucer, Winged Lion, YA (untold adventure of the early days of England’s Edward III)
J. Anderson Coats, A Season Most Unfair, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (coming-of-age story set in medieval times follows a strong-minded girl determined to prove she’s just as good a candlemaker as any boy)
Phil Earle, Until the Road Ends, Andersen Press, Age 9-12 (a story of love and friendship in a time of war, based on true events)
Anita Heiss, illus. Samantha Campbell, Bidhi Galing, Simon & Schuster AU, Age 4-7 (the story of the Great Flood of Gundagai in 1852 and the Wiradyuri heroes, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who paddled bark canoes through raging floodwaters, risking their lives to save countless others)
Josh Lacey, illus. Garry Parsons, The Viking Attack: Time Travel Twins, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (young Tom is catapulted onto a Viking long ship and his twin sister Scarlett lands in a Saxon village)
Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illus. Oliver Averill, Luis de Torres Sails to Freedom, Kar-Ben, Age 5-10 (when Jews are forced from Spain in 1492, Luis de Torres sets sail for new lands with his faith, his wits, and a silver hamsa for protection)
Julie Mathison, The Starlet Letter, Starr Creek Press, YA (a tongue-in-cheek historical mystery series– when a washed-up Ziegfeld Follies star goes missing, can the Van der Beeck twins crack the case?)
E. L. Norry, Fablehouse, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 9-11 (Heather and friends must use the talents they’ve been given to save Fablehouse, and all the children who have found shelter there)
Eden Royce, Conjure Island, Walden Pond, Age 8-12 (novel returns to the folklore of Gullah-Geechee culture to weave a tale of magic, mystery, and belonging)
Manon Textoris, author & illustrator, The Good Girl, Europe Comics, YA (in mid-16th century France, at the royal court, the queen’s spies use their charms and talents to disarm her enemies and learn their secrets)
July 2023
Toni Buzzeo, Light Comes to Shadow Mountain, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (1937; Cora Mae Tipton is determined to light up her Appalachian community in this historical fiction novel)
Keely Hutton, Secret Soldiers, Square Fish, Age 8-12 (middle-grade historical adventure about a crew of young British soldiers on a deadly underground mission during World War I)
Hiba Noor Khan, Safiyyah’s War, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (WWII; when her father is arrested, can Safiyyah find the courage to enter the catacombs under Paris and lead the Jews to safety?)
Jamie Lilac, Bellegarde, HarperTeen, YA (historical rom-com with a modern twist)
Helen Peters, Friends and Traitors, Nosy Crow, Age 8-12 (middle-graders can step back in time with this World War II tale with soaring Spitfires and daring liars)
Elizabeth Van Steenwyk, illus. Michael G. Montgomery, First Dog Fala (c.2008), Peachtree, Age 4-8 (story of the Scottish terrier who won the hearts of a U.S. president and the American people. Picture book dog’s-eye view of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration)
August 2023
Autumn Allen, All You Have to Do, Kokila, YA (dual timeline novel set in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 and around the Million Man March in 1995)
Sasha Alsberg, Fracturing Fate, Inkyard Press, YA (final part of historical fantasy takes Klara back in time to 1560s Scotland, where she must navigate gods, humans, traitors)
Avi, The Secret Sisters, Clarion, Age 8-12 (a girl determined to define her own place graduates from a rural one-room schoolhouse to a small town’s bustling school. Sequel to The Secret School)
Jennifer Bohnhoff, The Worst Enemy, Kinkajou Press, Age 9-12 (adventure set during the Civil War)
J. G. Bryan, Ventura + Winnetka, Santa Monica, YA (stand-alone sequel that furthers the adventures of Douglas and his friends as they come of age in Southern California in the late 1970s)
Anitra Butler-Ngugi, illus. Wendy Tan Shiau Wei, Essie and the March on Selma, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (twelve-year-old Essie believes that Black people should be allowed to vote, and on Sunday, March 7, 1965, she joins the protesters)
Sophie Cleverly, A Case of High Stakes, HarperCollins Childrens Books, Age 9-12 (3rd in a Victorian mystery series)
Ailynn Collins, illus. Francesca Ficorilli, Ting and the Deadly Waters, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (after a summer of nine typhoons in 1931, the dams on the Yangtze River in China break and Ting wakes to a house full of water)
Benjamin Dickson, Rachael Smith, The Queen’s Favorite Witch: The Lost King, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (Daisy, now the court’s witch, is back for another fact-based adventure alongside Queen Elizabeth I)
Judith Eagle, The Stolen Songbird, Faber & Faber Children’s, Age 9-12 (1950s London and Caro Monday and her friends have become embroiled in a dangerous art heist)
Julie Gilbert, illus. Dan Freitas, Gemma and the Great Flu, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (with two brothers fighting in the Great War, the Dorgan family faces their own battle at home, when the Spanish Flu hits Philadelphia)
Janice N. Harrington, illus Theodore Taylor III, Rooting for Plants, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (fictional biography of Charles S. Parker, Black Botanist and Collector, in 1882)
Andrew Larsen, illus. Katty Maurey, The Man Who Loved Libraries, Owlkids, Age 4-8 (picture book biography of American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie)
Amanda West Lewis, Focus. Click. Wind., Groundwood, YA (Billie becomes involved in activism when her family moves from New York to Toronto and she discovers it is home to draft evaders and radicals against the Vietnam war)
Rachael Lippincott, Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh, S&S BfYR, YA (time-slip in which a girl from the present is transported back to 1812 to become a Regency romance heroine)
Barbara Perez Marquez, illus. Markia Jenai, Paulina and the Disaster at Pompeii, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (story about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius)
Amanda McCrina, I’ll Tell You No Lies, Farrar, Straus & Giroux BfYR, YA (novel of the Cold War era about a girl in post-World War II America who becomes entangled with an escaped Soviet pilot)
Gregory Mone, Sea of Gold, Abrams, Age 8-12 (an unlikely young pirate races a band of rogues to a hidden fortune)
Emily Bain Murphy, Splinters of Scarlet, Clarion, YA (historical fantasy set in nineteenth-century Denmark, where secrets can kill and magic is a deadly gift)
Claudia Oviedo, On the Home Front With Valentina: A Diary from 1940 to 1943, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (in diary format, the Nuestras Voces series profiles inspiring characters and honors the joys, challenges, and outcomes of Latino experiences)
Rosanne Parry, illus. Kirbi Fagan, A Horse Named Sky, Greenwillow, Age 8-12 (a young wild horse must find his way to rejoin his family after being captured for the Pony Express)
Jaguar Prince, Madagascar, Vol. 1, Black Sands Entertainment, YA (story of a young woman’s defiance, as well as her triumph in taking a nation into her own hands. Manga graphic)
William Ritter, The Dire King: A Jackaby Novel, Algonquin YR, YA (1890s — Jackaby, supernatural detective, and his indispensable assistant, Abigail Rook, are plunged into the heart of an apocalyptic war between magical worlds in the fourth book in series)
Adriana Erin Rivera, Paloma’s Song for Puerto Rico: A Diary from 1898, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (a story in diary format about twelve-year-old Paloma who lives in Puerto Rico in 1898)
Caleb Roehrig, Teach the Torches to Burn: A Romeo & Juliet Remix, Feiwel & Friends, YA (a teen boy discovers first love amid a bloody, centuries-old feud. LGBTQ+)
Amy Rubinate, illus. Alessia Trunfio, Kate and the City of Fire, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (in 1666, when Grandfather is forced to be part of a fire brigade, Kate is left alone to keep Lizzie and their horse and buggy safe as fire sweeps the city)
Johan Rundberg (trans. A. A. Prime), The Night Raven, Amazon Crossing Kids, Age 10-14 (1880, Stockholm; the notorious serial killer the Night Raven is finally off the streets…or is he?)
Ralph Shayne, illus. Tatiana Goldberg, Hour of Need: The Daring Escape of the Danish Jews during World War II, little bee, Age 8-12 (graphic novel telling the true story of the Nazi Resistance in Denmark during World War II and the heroes that saved the Danish Jews by helping them evacuate to Sweden)
Lucy Strange, illus. Pam Smy, The Storm and the Minotaur, Barrington Stoke, Age 9+ (story interweaves the Industrial Revolution with Greek mythology)
September 2023
Kate Albus, Nothing Else But Miracles, Margaret Ferguson, Age 9-12 (World War II story about three siblings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan)
David Bowles, illus. Amanda Mijangos, The Prince and the Coyote, Levine Querido, YA (1418 – pre-Columbian Mexico; story about crown prince Acolmiztli, renamed Nezahualcoyotl, or “fasting coyote”, one of the greatest minds of the Americas)
Stuart H. Brody, Humphrey and Me, Santa Monica Press, YA (portrays the often highly emotional journey that comes with embracing our heroes, while set against the backdrop of the tempestuous political eras of the 1960s and ’70s)
Emma Carroll, The Little Match Girl Strikes Back, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (illustrated feminist reworking of the classic tale set in Victorian London)
Alexandra Diaz, Farewell Cuba, Mi Isla, Paula Wiseman, Age 8-12 (it’s 1960 in Cuba, and as the political situation grows more dangerous, Victoria, her parents, and her two younger siblings are forced to seek refuge in America)
Cherie Dimaline, Into the Bright Open, Feiwel & Friends, YA (queer YA reimagining of The Secret Garden, in the Remixed Classics series)
Alda P. Dobbs, The Other Side of the River, Soucebooks YR, Age 8-12 (novel about a twelve-year-old girl who builds a new life in America after escaping the Mexican Revolution)
Alice Faye Duncan, illus. R. Gregory Christie, Coretta’s Journey, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (introduces readers to Coretta Scott Young, a girl full of spunk and pluck, bravery and grit)
Sachi Ediriweera, Enlightened, Atheneum BfYR, YA (graphic novel retelling of the life of Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism)
Caroline Fernandez, illus. Dharmali Patel, Asha and Baz Meet Elizebeth Friedman, Common Deer Press, Age 10+ (in another dive into the past―this time to learn about famous code breaker Elizebeth Friedman)
Margaret Peterson Haddix, The Ghostly Photos, Katherine Tegen, Age 8-12 (returns to the Mysteries of Trash and Treasure series as Colin and Nevaeh unravel a mystery from the 1930s)
Anna Rose Johnson, The Star That Always Stays, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (a bright and spirited Ojibwe girl moves from the country to the city in 1914)
Monica Kulling, illus. Melissa Castrillon, Mary Anning’s Curiosity, Groundwood, Age 9-12 (story of how the world’s greatest fossil hunter found her first huge find at the age of twelve)
Josh Lacey, illus. Garry Parsons, The Roman Invasion: Time Travel Twins, Andersen Press, Age 8-12 (Scarlett finds herself in a Roman camp and is chosen as a slave and Thomas joins a rabble of local kids whose leader is a small red-headed girl called Boudicca)
Julie Lawson, Out of the Dark, Nimbus, Age 9-12 (focusing on the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion and the onset of the Great Influenza Pandemic)
Bruce Lindsay, illus. Dan Burr, The Christmas List of Richard Lindsay, Shadow Mountain, Age 4-7 (picture book based on a true story of a boy who helps bring Christmas to his family despite the hard times of the early 1930s)
Erica Lyons, illus. Renia Metallinou, Zhen Yu and the Snake, Kar-Ben, Age 4-8 (re-telling of a Talmudic tale set in ancient China about a father, a daughter, and a warning from a fortune teller)
Trish MacEnulty, Cinnamon Girl, Livingston Press, YA (when her step-grandmother dies of cancer, 15-year-old Eli Burnes runs away with a draft-dodger, thinking she’s on the road to adventure and romance)
Andy Marino, Escape from Stalingrad, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (historical thriller about a city caught between an enemy army and their own brutal government)
Karen McCombie, illus. Anneli Bray, The Boy Who Stole the Pharaoh’s Lunch, Barrington Stoke, Age 7+ (Seth learns some important life lessons when he’s transported back to Ancient Egypt in this time-slip adventure)
Sally Nicholls, Yours from the Tower, Andersen Press, YA (about three best friends in late-Victorian London sharing their lives through a series of letters)
Marta Palazzesi (trans. Christopher Turner), Mist, Red Comet Press, Age 9-12 (story of a boy’s quest to give the gift of freedom to a caged wild animal in 1880)
Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning, Harper Teen, YA (Part historical fantasy, part rivals-to-lovers romance, part Gothic mystery—an indictment of institutions that sacrifice young girls on the altar of men’s “genius,”)
Lois Ruby, Gallows Hill, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (Salem, Massachusetts, 1692; to protect those they love two young people question their faith, their loyalties, and their places in Salem)
Amy Sparkes, illus. Katie Hickey, The Christmas Doll, Candlewick, Age 7-9 (a little girl in wartime England finds that a simple act of generosity and kindness changes her life forever)
Nancy Springer, Enola Holmes and the Mark of the Mongoose, Wednesday Books, YA (when Wolcott Balestier, the representative of an American book publisher, disappears on the streets of London, his great friend – Rudyard Kipling – bursts into Enola’s office looking for help in finding him)
Ali Standish, The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (poses the question, what if young Arthur Conan Doyle really went to a secret school for gifted children called Baskerville Hall?)
Lauren Tarshis, I Survived the Great Alaska Earthquake, 1964, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (the largest and most powerful recorded earthquake in US history)
Nikos Tsouknidas, Portraits, Europe Comics, YA (1838; goes beyond the origins of photography to explore the pain of migration and the attachment to one’s homeland)
Dana Vanderlugt, Enemies in the Orchard: A World War 2 Novel in Verse, Zonderkidz, Age 9+ (set against WWII, novel based on American history presents dual perspectives of Claire, a Midwestern girl and Karl, a German POW who works on Claire’s family farm)
Andrew Varga, The Celtic Deception, Imbrifex, YA (Dan and his time-jumping partner Sam have no choice but to jump back into history again, this time landing on the celtic island of Anglesey in 60 CE)
Carole Boston Weatherford, illus. Jeffery Boston Weatherford, Kin: Rooted in Hope, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in poems)
Nancy Werlin, Healer and Witch, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (medieval fantasy set in France)
Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Peachtree Teen, YA (set in London, 1883, novel features an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting)
Jane Yolen, John Patrick Pazdziora, illus. Lyndsay Roberts Rayne, Smout and the Lighthouse, Albert Whitman, Age 4-8 (picture book fictional biography of Robert Louis Stevenson as a child with dreams of becoming a writer)
October 2023
Kwame Alexander, illus. Dare Coulter, Unspoken, Andersen Press, Age 5-7 (picture book exploration of the story of slavery)
Elana K. Arnold, The Blood Years, Balzer + Bray, YA (story of a young woman’s coming-of-age during the Holocaust in Romania)
Kylie Lee Baker, The Scarlet Alchemist, Inkyard Press, YA (dark YA fantasy set in an alternate Tang Dynasty China, where alchemy has flourished, and a poor biracial girl gets caught up in the dangerous political games of the royal family)
Holly Black, Kaliis Smith, illus. Ebony Glenn, Sir Morien, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book retelling of a little-known figure of Arthurian Legend)
Janis Bridger, Lara Jean Okihiro, Obaasan’s Boots, Second Story Press, Age 9-12 (a grandmother shares her experience as a Japanese Canadian during WWII, revealing the painful story of Japanese internment)
Asha Ashanti Bromfield, Songs of Irie, Wednesday Books, YA (coming-of-age novel about a friendship struggling to survive amidst the Jamaican civil unrest of the 1970s)
Elizabeth C. Bunce, Myrtle, Means, and Opportunity, Algonquin YR, Age 10+ (Myrtle Hardcastle finds a haunted brooch, breaks an ancient curse, and catches a murderer)
Kate Chenli, A Bright Heart, Union Square Kids, YA (historical fantasy tale of vengeance, court intrigue, and romance, inspired by classic Chinese tropes)
Brandy Colbert, The Blackwoods, Balzer + Bray, YA (the story of a famous Black Hollywood family—an unforgettable tale of ambition, fame, struggle, loss, and love in America)
Erin Cotter, By Any Other Name, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (a down-on-his-luck actor and an English lord reluctantly team up to solve the murder of Christopher Marlowe in 1593)
Katie Cotton, The Secret of Splint Hall, Andersen Press, Age 9-11 (1945; two girls must unearth an ancient myth hidden deep beneath the mysterious Splint Hall)
Lindsay Eagar, The Patron Thief of Bread, Candlewick, Age 10-14 (a roving band of street urchins infiltrate an abandoned cathedral in the city of Odierne and decide to set down roots)
Judith Eagle, The Stolen Songbird, Faber & Faber Childrens, Age 8-12 (in 1950s London, Caro Monday and her friends become embroiled in a dangerous art heist!)
Deborah Hopkinson, The Plot to Kill a Queen, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (mystery about an intrepid young girl’s quest to foil a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I)
Sue Houser, Walter Steps Up to the Plate, Kinkajou Press, Age 9-12 (1927; a boy becomes errand boy for Al Capone, to help pay expenses for his mother’s illness)
Antony Barone Kolenc, Murder at Penwood Manor, Loyola Press, Age 10-13 (next installment in the Christian inspirational Harwood Mysteries children’s series)
Autumn Krause, Before the Devil Knows You’re Here, Peachtree Teen, Y&A (nineteenth century mixture of American tales and Faustian elements set in Wisconsin, 1836)
Catherine Little, illus. Sean Huang, Endgame: The Secret Force 136, Plumleaf press, Age 7-10 (as he plays Chinese chess with his great-grandfather, Tai Gong, Alex learns the important strategies that guided Tai Gong in an anti-Asian era in Canada, and learns about Force 136 and the sacrifices its members made to show their loyalty)
Radhika Natarajan, Chao Tayiana, illus. Alexander Mostov, Hear Our Voices, Wide-Eyed Editions, Age 8-12 (stories of resistance, community, struggle, hope and the impacts of colonialism)
Jordi Ortiz and Miguel Ángel Saura, illus. Miguel Ángel Saura, The Legions of Rome, Editorial el Pirata, Age 9-12 (first book in The Time Explorers collection which mixes comic book dialogues with a historical novel for children)
Also: The Expeditions of the Vikings
Tho Pham, Sandra McTavish, The Cricket War, Kids Can Press, Age 9-12 (story of a boy’s escape from Communist Vietnam by boat)
Aden Polydoros, Wrath Becomes Her, Inkyard Press, YA (Jewish historical horror novel about a fierce golem created to enact vengeance upon the Nazis)
Sara Raasch, Beth Revis, Night of the Witch, Sourcebooks Fire, YA (a witch hunter and a witch realize that they’re stronger as allies than as enemies in this YA fantasy set in medieval Germany)
Wilson Edward Reed, Junebug, Morgan James Kids, Age 10-12 (story of growing up Black in the South during the 1950’s and 60’s shows how to move beyond hardship, while living under Jim Crow)
Sonoko Sakai, illus. Keiko Brodeur, Mai and the Missing Melon, Bala Kids, Age 4-7 (picture book story takes young readers on a journey through rural 1960s Japan)
Eliot Schrefer, Charming Young Man, Katherine Tegen, YA (coming-of-age novel about a rising star French pianist, navigating his way into high society as he explores his sexuality)
Neal Shusterman, illus. Andrés Vera Martínez, Courage to Dream, Graphix, YA (presents a graphic novel exploring the Holocaust through surreal visions and a textured canvas of heroism and hope)
Ora Smith, The Peace of Pocahontas, Lighten Press, YA (book two in the Jamestown’s Boy Interpreter series)
Randi Sonenshine, illus. Gina Capaldi, The Inside Name, Apples & Honey, Age 6-9 (1500s; during the Portuguese Inquisition a boy and his family are forced to hide their Jewish identities until a secret message sets them on a course to freedom)
Tammar Stein, illus. Dodo Maeder, The Giant, the Slingshot, and the Future King, Apples & Honey, Age 6-8 (the early years of the biblical David; a tale of bravery and empathy)
Suzanne Supplee, Sweetness All Around, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (brings a small Tennessee town and its memorable residents to life. Set in 1974)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. Leo Trinidad, I Survived the American Revolution 1776, Graphix, Age 8-12 (graphic novel adaptation)
Sara Truuvert, illus. Michelle Theodore, Mira and Baku, Annick Press, Age 4-8 (with the help of a magical friend, a young girl searches for her missing father during Japanese internment in World War II)
Jasmine Walls, illus. Teo DuVall, Brooms, Levine Querido, YA (a magical tale set in 1930s Mississippi)
Cat Weldon, illus. Katie Kear, How to Be a Hero, Macmillan Children’s, Age 8-12 (first in a trilogy about how to be brave, what it means to be a hero and just how confusing the Norse Gods really are)
Laura E. Weymouth, The Voice Upstairs, Margaret K. McElderry, YA (in 1920s England, a working-class girl who can see spirits works with a lord’s son to solve mysterious deaths at the local manor home)
Frieda Wishinsky, illus. Ruth Ohi, We Belong Here, North Winds Press, Age 4-8 (a story of friendship between a Japanese boy and a Jewish girl in Canada soon after the end of World War II)
November 2023
Bret Baier, illus. Marvin Sianipar, Duel Across Time: The History Club, Aladdin, Age 8-12 (new time-bending graphic novel series about kids who use their love of history to thwart an evil time traveler’s scheme to change the past)
Sharon Cameron, Artifice, Scholastic Press, YA (a story of duplicity and resistance, betrayal and loyalty, set against the backdrop of World War II)
Michael J. Cooper, Wages of Empire, Koehler Books, YA (1914; follows 16-year-old Evan through the killing fields of the Western Front where he will help turn the tide of a war that is just beginning)
Lex Croucher, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love, Wednesday Books, YA (queer medieval rom com debut about love, friendship, and being brave enough to change the course of history)
Matthew Fox, The Sky Over Rebecca, Union Square Kids, Age 8-12 (two worlds collide when ten-year-old Kara discovers mysterious footprints in the snow that lead her to another place entirely)
Aya Ghanameh, These Olive Trees, Viking BfYR, Age 3-6 (story of a Palestinian family’s ties to the land in 1967, and how one young girl finds a way to care for her home, even as she says goodbye)
Isabel Ibañez, What the River Knows, Wednesday Books, YA (historical fantasy set in 19th-century Egypt filled with adventure and a rivals-to-lovers romance)
Linda Williams Jackson, The Lucky Ones, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (story set in the Mississippi Delta, 1967; an 11-year-old dreams of a real house, food enough for the whole family—and to be someone)
Jackie Johnson, Bladestay, CamCat Books, YA (when a violent, decades-long feud between two powerful men comes to a head in Bladestay, Colorado, Creed must use her wits to stay alive and save her town)
Ann Clare LeZotte, Sail Me Away Home, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (adventure filled with cunning characters, chance encounters, and new friendships will enrich children’s understanding of Deaf history and culture, and ability and disability)
Cédric Mayen & Jandro González, The Dyatlov Pass Mystery, Europe Comics, Age 15+ (an investigation of what really happened on the slopes of Dyatlov Pass on the night of February 1, 1959, that resulted in the deaths of nine experienced mountaineers)
Helen Moss, Balto and Togo: Hero Dogs of Alaska, Godwin Books, Age 8-12 (story set in winter of 1924 when a diptheria outbreak threatens the population of Nome, Alaska)
Anne Nesbet, V Is For Victorine, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (1915; a young heiress in hiding and her film star best friend go on a caper through early Hollywood)
Jacob Sager Weinstein, illus. Eliza Wheeler, What Rosa Brought, Katherine Tegen, Age 4-8 (a Jewish girl flees Nazi occupation with her family)
Robert Skead, The Batboy and the Unbreakable Record, Kinkajou Press, Age 9-12 (a young boy lands a dream job for the Cincinnati Reds where he becomes witness to a baseball record that is unbreakable)
Steve Watkins, Stolen By Night, Scholastic Press, YA (1940; as the Third Reich tightens its hold on France Nicolette is drawn into a growing resistance movement, determined to do her part to fight back)
December 2023
Anne Blanchard (trans. Rosie Eyre), Rosa Luxemburg: No to Borders, Triangle Square, YA (fictionalized biography of the great Polish-German revolutionary and anti-war activist. They Said No historical fiction series)
Barbara Krasner, Facing the Enemy, Calkins Creek, YA (novel-in-verse reveals the long history of American right-wing extremism, and its impact on the lives of two ordinary teens)
Mark Stay, The Holly King, Simon & Schuster UK, Age 8-12 (wartime fantasy adventure set in December, 1940)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press historical titles for books set in eras up to the mid 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, AUS) and are based on publisher descriptions.
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Merryn Allingham, The Secrets of Summerhayes, Bookouture (WWII family saga in Summerhayes House series)
Gina Apostol, La Tercera, Soho Press (pieces together a century and a half of Philippine history through the story of the Delgados of Leyte — a clan of “madmen and collaborators” loving and feuding through generations of colonization, war and catastrophe)
Rose Archer, The Timber Girls, Quercus (saga series set during the Second World War)
J. D. Arnold, Rawhide Jake: Westward Ho!, Five Star (the life and times of detective Jonas V. Brighton, book 3)
Amanda Barratt, Within These Walls of Sorrow, Kregel (a look at a little-known pharmacy in the midst of the Kraków Ghetto and the bravery of its employees who save the lives of the Jewish community)
Marie Benedict, The Mitford Affair, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel of history’s most notorious sisters, one of whom will have to choose either her country or her sisters)
Anya Bergman, The Witches of Vardø, Manilla Press (three women fight for survival in Norway, 1662)
Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard, Sisters of Castle Leod, Black Rose (story of two sisters torn apart by jealousy and superstition, and the impossible leap of faith that could finally bring them together)
Peter Blauner, Picture in the Sand, Minotaur (intergenerational saga told through a grandfather’s eyes, illuminating the story of his political rebellion in 1950s Egypt)
Rita Bradshaw, After the First Frost, Macmillan UK (20th-century romance)
Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Conquistadors’ Gold, Constable (humorous historical fiction mystery series)
Julie Brooks, The Keepsake, Headline (dual-time novel, with a complex woman at its heart, and a wealth of twists, turns and secrets)
Irene Bennett Brown, Somebody’s Business, Five Star (frontier novel set in early 20th-century Kansas, part of the Nickel Hill series focusing on a female rancher)
Elizabeth Camden, Hearts of Steel, Bethany House (romance in which a successful businesswoman offends a corrupt banker, and unwittingly sets off a series of calamities that threaten to destroy her life’s work)
Joy Castro, One Brilliant Flame, Lake Union (against the backdrop of the Great Fire of Key West and inspired by actual events–a 19th-century utopia becomes a powder keg of political intrigue and betrayal)
Caroline Cauchi, Mrs Van Gogh, One More Chapter (novel gives voice to Vincent’s sister-in-law and keeper of his immense collection of paintings, sketches and letters, who has, until now, been written out of history)
Tim Chant, The War for Tripoli, Sapere (nautical adventure set during the Italo-Turkish War. Marcus Baxter Naval Thrillers, book 3)
Lauren Chater, The Lace Weaver, Allison & Busby (1941, Estonia; facing the threat of invasion by Hitler’s encroaching Third Reich, Katarina, Lydia and two idealistic young soldiers, find themselves in a fight for life, liberty and love)
Renato Cisneros (trans. Fionn Petch), You Shall Leave Your Land, Charco Press (the story of the Catholic priest’s progeny unfolds alongside key moments in the development of the Republic of Peru)
Rory Clements, The English Führer, Zaffre (spy thriller set in autumn 1945)
Siân Collins, Tiding, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (novel about memory and the power of the imagination set in 1963)
Vivian Conroy, Last Seen in Santorini, One More Chapter (Miss Ashford investigates in 1930s era Greece)
Armando Lucas Correa, The Night Travelers, Atria (four generations of women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the Cuban Revolution and finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall)
Tad Crawford, On Wine-Dark Seas, Skyhorse (a continuation of the journey of Odysseus and his return home to his fatherless son Telemachus)
Tom Crewe, The New Life, Scribner (debut about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late 19th-century London)
John Cribb, The Rail Splitter, Republic (biographical fiction tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable journey from a log cabin to the threshold of the White House)
Orlando Davidson, Baseline Road, Artemesia (May 1970; murder mystery set n the turmoil following Nixon’s Cambodia invasion and the Kent State killings)
J. D. Davies, Sailor of Liberty, Canelo (1793 — Philippe Kermorvant, son of an English aristocrat and a French nobleman, arrives in Brittany, his father’s homeland, for the first time in his life. First in new navel adventure series)
Margaret DeRosia, Eight Strings, Simon & Schuster (coming-of-age debut novel about a young woman in late 19th-century Venice who becomes a man to join the male-dominated world of the theater as a puppeteer)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Independence, William Morrow (set during the partition of British India in 1947, novel brings to life the story of three sisters caught up in events beyond their control and their struggle against powerful odds)
Helena Dixon, Murder at the Charity Ball, Bookouture (Golden Age cosy murder mystery set in 1934)
Bella Ellis, A Gift of Poison, Hodder & Stoughton (fourth murder mystery with the Brontë sisters as amateur sleuths)
Elizabeth Everett, A Love by Design, Berkley (romance between a charming Earl and a woman who wants nothing to do with him since he broke her youthful heart)
Kimberly Olson Fakih, Little Miseries, Delphinium (biographical fiction set in Iowa and Minnesota in the 60s and 70s)
Jessica Fellowes, The Mitford Secret, Minotaur (book six of the Mitford Murder Mysteries set in 1941)
David Field, The Road to Runnymede, Sapere (sixth book in the Medieval Saga Series)
Katie Flynn, A Rose and a Promise, Century (WWII romantic saga)
Suzanne Fortin, The Dance Teacher of Paris, Embla (novel about the strength of the human spirit and the courage of ordinary people in the darkest days of war)
Laura Frantz, The Rose and the Thistle, Revell (amid the Jacobite uprising of 1715, an English heiress flees to the Scottish lowlands to stay with allies of her powerful family)
Craig Godfrey, The Vatican Ruby, Black Rose (mystery surrounding rare and valuable Vatican relics stolen in 1812)
Stephanie Graves, A Courage Undimmed, Kensington (British pigeoneer Olive Bright has hopes of becoming an agent herself one day …but first there is a baffling murder to solve)
Johana Gustawsson (trans. David Warriner), The Bleeding, Orenda (dark gothic thriller that swings from Belle Époque France to 21st-century Quebec)
Paul Harding, This Other Eden, W. W. Norton (novel inspired by the true story of the once racially integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine)
Anstey Harris, When I First Held You, Lake Union (novel set in 1960s Glasgow and present day)
Samantha Hastings, Secret of the Sonnets, Covenant (a debt-sunk lord and a history buff embark on the trail of a centuries-old mystery)
Sarah Hendess, Second Chances in Hollywood, Wild Rose (Hollywood, 1959; romance about two unlikely television co-stars whose relationship is threatened by a tabloid scandal)
Mimi Herman, The Kudzu Queen, Regal House (unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu in North Carolina, 1941)
Aleksandar Hernon, The World and All That It Holds, MCD/Macmillan (a story spanning decades in which two men escape the trenches in WWI, survive near-certain death, and tangle with spies and Bolsheviks)
Polly Heron, New Beginnings for the Surplus Girls, Corvus (1923- a woman must prove she can run a home for old soldiers as well as any man)
Donna Hill, I am Ayah ― The Way Home, Sideways Books (more than a century later, the descendant of the one Amistad escapee must return to the home she fled if she ever hopes to reconcile the events of the past)
Catherine Hokin, The Girl in the Photo, Bookouture (WWII novel about love and courage in the face of terrible odds)
Ben Kane, King, Orion (third instalment in the Lionheart series set in 1192)
Brian Kaufman, A Shadow Melody, Black Rose (historical speculative fiction set in early 1900s)
Jaan Kross (trans. Merike Lepasaar Beecher), A Book of Falsehoods, Quercus (third part in an historical trilogy set in 1578)
Lizzie Lane, New Neighbours for Coronation Lane, Boldwood (new series saga set in the interwar period)
Natasha Lester, The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, Forever (story of an orphan turned WWII spy turned fashion icon in Paris)
Paula Lichtarowicz, The Snow Hare, Little, Brown (a woman dreams of becoming a doctor until World War II gets in the way)
Victoria MacKenzie, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, Bloomsbury (two women who meet in Norwich, 1413 tell each other stories of girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief)
Carol MacLean, Elsie’s Wartime Wish, Hera Books (family saga set during WWII)
Dacia Maraini (trans. Jane Tylus), In Praise of Disobedience, Rutgers Univ. Press (part epistolary novel, part essay, part biography tells the life of Italian Saint Clare of Assisi)
Beezy Marsh, Queen of Thieves, William Morrow (1946 — historical adventure about a ring of resourceful women thieves in post-World War II London)
Alyssa Maxwell, A Fashionable Fatality, Kensington (a house party attended by fashion royalty becomes the backdrop for a murder that only Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid can untangle)
R. S. Maxwell, Through a Darkening Glass, Lake Union (World War II mystery about a Londoner who flees the city to write a novel and finds a truth stranger than fiction)
Frances McNamara, Molasses Murder in a Nutshell, Level Best (first in a series of fictional stories based on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, various miniature crime scenes which were and are used to train police detectives)
Ellie Midwood, The Undercover Secretary, Bookouture (tells the true WWII story of Dora Schaul, one of history’s most courageous women)
Jamila Minnicks, Moonrise Over New Jessup, Algonquin (debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the civil rights movement in Alabama)
Terri Nixon, The Secrets of Pencarrack Moor, Piatkus (spin-off from Fox Family saga, follows Bertie’s journey to become a pilot as she takes to the skies in Cornwall)
Joseph O’Connor, My Father’s House, Europa Editions (literary thriller based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who risked his life to smuggle thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy under the nose of his Nazi nemesis)
Véronique Olmi (trans. Alison Anderson), Daughters Beyond Command, Europa Editions (takes us from the May 1968 protests to the 1981 elections; a chronicle of an era, where consciousnesses are awakening to the upheaval of the world)
Amita Parikh, The Circus Train, Little, Brown/Sphere (a two-decade journey across Europe and a travelling circus where nothing is as it seems)
Tracey Rose Peyton, Night Wherever We Go, Ecco (debut novel about a group of enslaved women staging a covert rebellion against their owners)
Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time, Henry Holt (love story about a young reindeer herder and a minister’s daughter in the 19th century Arctic Circle)
C. S. Richardson, All the Colour in the World, Knopf Canada (story set against the sweep of the twentieth century—from Toronto in the ’20s and ’30s, through the killing fields of World War II, to 1960s Sicily)
Lalla Romano (trans. Brian Robert Moore), A Silence Shared, Pushkin (translated into English for the first time; a sharply modern novel of World War II)
Gordon L. Rottman, Hunters’ Island, Casemate (in WWII, two men will be caught on a rugged and brutal South Pacific island called Guadalcanal, known to both sides as Starvation Island)
Laura Joh Rowland, River of Fallen Angels, Crooked Lane (7th in Victorian mystery series in which Sarah Bain Barrett is pitted against a true-crime serial killer who may have ties to Jack the Ripper)
Gabriella Saab, Daughters of Victory, William Morrow (novel spanning from the Russian Revolution to the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union and following two women)
Michelle Salter, Death At Crookham Hall, Boldwood (beginning of a new 1920s cozy mystery series)
Preeta Samarasan, Tale of the Dreamer’s Son, World Editions (view of Malaysia’s history and an investigation of the psychology of cults set in the 1970s, early 1980s and the present day)
Helen Scarlett, The Lodger, Quercus (Gothic tale which takes readers back to the aftermath of the Great War)
Simon Scarrow & T. J. Andrews, Brothers of the Sword, Headline (fourth ebook novella telling the story of Caratacus – barbarian enemy of Rome)
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho, Liveright (reimagines the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late 19th and early 20th century)
Susan Holloway Scott, Martha, Kensington (novel about the life of Martha Dandridge Washington, who was a fierce and passionate beauty and an integral, intimate part of the founding of America)
Eleanor Shearer, River Sing Me Home, Berkley/Headline Review (redemptive story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery)
Laura Shepperson, Phaedra (US), Alcove Press (in this is the age of heroes and the age of monsters, there are two sides to every story. Retelling of the trial of Phaedra)
James D. Shipman, Before the Storm, Kensington (inspired by a real-life husband and wife Nazi-hunting team, novel follows the harrowing search for a fugitive Nazi scientist across post-war Europe)
Jane Smiley, A Dangerous Business, Abacus (murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls)
Simon Smith, A Man of Honour, Bonnier Echo (reimagining of the life of Henry James O’Farrell’s, before and after the would-be assassination of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, son of Queen Victoria, in 1868 Sydney)
Matthew Speiser, Sons of Liberty, Black Rose (tale of romance and betrayal, set in the shadows of America’s defining war)
Wendell Steavenson, Margot, W. W. Norton (a story of the sexual revolution and a fictional portrayal of the challenges women have faced in gaining power and respect in the scientific community)
Katie Stewart Stone, Scotland’s Melody, Covenant (Regency Romance between a Scottish lord and an heiress disowned by her family)
Alison Stuart, The Homecoming, HQ Fiction (historical romance with a murder mystery at its core, set in Maiden’s Creek, Australia, 1892)
Maggie Sullivan, The Schoolmistress, One More Chapter (saga in the Our Street at War series which takes an ordinary street during wartime and peeps inside at the life of the residents)
Kai Thomas, In the Upper Country, Viking/John Murray (debut set in the Black communities of Ontario that were the last stop on the Underground Railroad)
Liz Tolsma, What I Would Tell You, Barbour (dual timeline inspirational Christian fiction)
Ann M. Trader, If Ever in Love, Wild Rose (romance between a colonial Captain and a biracial woman, set in South Carolina 1783)
M. J. Trow, Breaking the Circle, Severn House (Dr Margaret Murray, accomplished archaeologist and occasional sleuth, calls upon her police connections to investigate who may want to see the Edwardian mediums of London dead)
Simon Turney, Bellatrix, Head of Zeus — an Aries b00k (warrior and combat medic, Titus Cervianus, must fight the armies of the fabled Warrior Queen in a new Roman adventure)
Phillipa Vincent-Connolly, The Ring of Fate, Sapere (in book two it seems Beth’s time-slipping has had a disastrous affect. Anne Boleyn has been wiped from history and it looks like Beth has taken her place)
Shirley Russak Wachtel, A Castle in Brooklyn, Little A (spanning decades, a novel about reckoning with the past, the true nature of friendship, and the dream of finding home)
Marlie Parker Wasserman, Path of Peril, Level Best (imagines what the newspapers feared to report and what historians never discovered about Roosevelt’s risky trip to Panama in 1906)
Jeri Westerson, Courting Dragons, Severn House (introducing Will Somers, the king’s jester but nobody’s fool in this first in a new series set in Tudor England)
Roseanna M. White, Yesterday’s Tides, Bethany House (romantic dual timeline novel set on Ocracoke Island in 1942 and 1914)
Doris Wilbur, Checkers on the Hill, Milford House (set in 1968; Samuel and Josie relocate to Washington, D.C., where they must learn to work with others who have outspoken beliefs, and how to adapt to survive)
De’Shawn Charles Winslow, Decent People, Bloomsbury (novel of a Black community reeling from a triple homicide, and the secrets the killings reveal
Kimberley Woodhouse, A Mark of Grace, Bethany House (inspirational novel about the strength and beauty of friendship, family, and love)
Sarit Yishai-Levi (trans. Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann), The Woman Beyond the Sea, Amazon Crossing (novel about three generations of women who have lost each other—and the quest to weave them back into a family)
February 2023
Shana Abe, An American Beauty, Kensington (story of Arabella Huntington, who defied both her origins and the constraints of the era to become the wealthiest woman in America. Set in Manhattan, 1870s-1900)
Ahmet Altan (trans. Brendan Freely), Dying is Easier Than Loving, Europa Editions (centers on the story of Nizam’s love affair with a Russian pianist, told against the backdrop of the Ottoman Empire’s tumultuous history in the years leading up to WWI. Vol 3)
Rosanna Amaka, Rose and the Burma Sky, Doubleday (historical novel of a Black soldier’s experience in the Second World War)
Lyn Andrews, Goodbye, Mersey View, Headline (saga evokes the ups and downs of life in the back streets of 1930s Liverpool)
John Manuel Arias, Where There Was Fire, Flatiron (a Costa Rican family wrestles with the aftermath of neocolonialism, a deadly secret, and an all-consuming fire. Set between 1968 and mid 1990s)
Lucy Ashe, Clara and Olivia (UK) / The Dance of the Dolls (US), Magpie/Union Square (Sadler’s Wells, 1933 – thriller in which identical twins compete for the lead in the ballet Coppélia)
Elizabeth Bailey, Just Deserts, Sapere (romance between two people with a shared love of horses, set in England, 1786)
Kate Baker, Maid of Steel, The Book Guild (1911; Emma’s arrival in Ireland leads her to discover family secrets, become involved in the Irish Women’s Suffrage and a forbidden love affair)
Paul Bannister, Plague and Rage, Lume Books (a novel of a young man in an age of hardship, disease and resentment who works to improve the lives of the peasant class)
Kerry Barrett, The Missing Wife, HQ Digital (dual timeline mystery set in 1933 and present day)
Pepper Basham, The Cairo Curse, Barbour (sequel to The Mistletoe Countess; romance set in Egypt)
Alissa Baxter, The Baronet’s Lady Biologist, Vinspire (romance with a lady biologist and an entomologist)
Celia Bell, The Disenchantment, Serpent’s Tail (two women in seventeenth-century Paris are drawn into the volatile and mysterious Affair of the Poisons, after a bid to keep their passionate romance a secret, results in deadly violence)
Charlotte Betts, The Lost Daughter of Venice, Piatkus (1919; when Phoebe returns to Venice to find her aunt dead and the grand palazzo now hers, she begins to question who she can really trust and whether her aunt’s death was truly an accident after all)
Stuart Blackburn, All the Way to the Sea, The Book Guild (a war-time romance, long-held secrets and a suspicious death disturb life in a quiet corner of rural America)
Rick Bleiweiss, Murder in Haxford, Blackstone (second Pignon Scorbion mystery set in England, 1910)
Franck Bouysse (trans. Chris Clarke), Wind Drinkers, Other Press (charts a family’s struggle for freedom and justice in a hostile mountain community)
Diane Marie Brown, Black Candle Women, Graydon House (family drama with a magical twist about four generations of Black women, a family curse, and one very complicated year of heartache, miscommunication, and learning to let go)
Doug Burgess, A Legacy of Bones, Sourcebooks Landmark (a story of sacrifice, an abandoned temple, and a family torn apart by a legacy of shame that won’t stay buried)
Jessie Burton, Medusa, Bloomsbury (retelling of the Greek myth, illuminating the woman behind the legend)
Mary Calvi, If a Poem Could Live and Breathe, SMP (fact-based romantic speculative novel about Teddy Roosevelt’s first love)
Francesca Capaldi, A New Start at the Beach Hotel, Hera Books (WWII romantic saga)
Crystal Caudill, Counterfeit Hope, Kregel (second book in the Hidden Hearts of the Gilded Age series. Inspirational)
Megan Chance, A Dangerous Education, Lake Union (novel about secrets and redemption set in the shadows of McCarthy-era America)
Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon, William Morrow (novel set in WWI France about two young women—one Chinese, one French—whose lives intersect with unexpected, potentially dangerous consequences)
Adrienne Chinn, The Paris Sister, One More Chapter (forever changed by their experiences during the Great War the Fry sisters come to realise that the most important bond is that of family)
Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl, Sourcebooks Landmark (set against the backdrop of 1935 North Carolina where a eugenics board was mandating forced sterilizations, novel sheds light on one young woman’s fight to control her future)
Rosie Clarke, Life and Love at Mulberry Lane, Boldwood (continuation of WWII saga as Mulberry Lane’s favourite pub undergoes renovation)
Elena Collins, The Lady of the Loch, Boldwood (romance set in dual time period, Scotland 1307 and present day)
Mary Connealy, Forged in Love, Bethany House (1870; after being left for dead and with no memory, a woman attempts to rebuild her life as she takes over her father’s blacksmith business)
James D. Crownover, Me An’ Gus, Five Star (coming-of-age adventure Western saga)
Dilly Court, Dolly’s Dream, HarperCollins (sixth and final book in The Rockwood Chronicles)
Lynn Cullen, The Woman with the Cure, Berkley (novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped the polio pandemic)
Sara Dahmen, Outcast 1883, Promontory Press (takes place in the Dakota town of Flats Junction, where a woman of mixed race owns the only general store)
Janet Dailey, A Calder at Heart, Kensington (1919 — with the Great War over and the country on the brink of Prohibition, the small town of Blue Moon, Montana, is about to undergo another seismic shift)
N. R. Daws, A Perfect Time to Murder, Thomas & Mercer (WW2 is raging in the skies over England. But for Kember and Hayes there is murder underground)
Patrick Dearen, Grizzly Moon, Five Star (Wash Baker has been haunted by the memory of a cattle drive, a grizzly bear and accidentally killing his young son – and now he has a chance at redemption)
Jennifer Deibel, The Maid of Ballymacool, Revell (a Cinderella story, complete with a mystery, a romance, and a chance at redemption, set in 1930s Ireland)
Neil Denby, Legionary, Sapere (first book in the Quintus Roman Thrillers series set in Ancient Rome)
Kimberly Duffy, The Weight of Air, Bethany House (the lives of three circus performers become entangled beneath the glittering lights and flying trapeze of Madison Square Garden)
Kate Eastham, The Last Letter from Paris, Bookouture (story takes place in Nazi-occupied Paris as one woman searches for the truth about her birth mother)
Sarah M. Eden, Wyoming Wild, Shadow Mountain (Wyoming Territory, 1876 — hearts collide when a sheriff’s daughter asks a hardened US Marshal to join her fight for justice and rid a small town of her corrupt father)
Sharon Emmerichs, Shield Maiden, Head of Zeus (refocusing the narrative on a fierce young woman reclaiming her power, this novel will upend everything you think you know about Beowulf)
Elaine Everest, The Woolworths Girl’s Promise, Macmillan UK (eighth in series follows the turbulent life of a much-loved Woolworth girl)
Yuri Felsen (trans. Bryan Karentnyk), Deceit, Astra House (novel in the form of a diary tells of an obsessive love affair set in interwar Paris)
Heinz Insu Fenkl, Skull Water, Spiegel & Grau (set in South Korea in the 1950s and 1970s, a haunting inter-generational coming-of-age novel about identity and displacement)
Charles Fergus, Lay This Body Down, Arcade Crimewise (Gideon Stoltz #3 takes place in 1837 in pre-Civil War America, when both northern and southern states grew rich from slave labor)
Danny Gardner, A Negro and An Ofay, Bronzeville Books (1952, a disgraced Chicago Police Officer accepts a straight job as a process server and crosses paths with a powerful family from Chicago’s North Shore)
Jonathan Garfinkel, In a Land Without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark, House of Anansi (Cold War revenge story unfolding over three decades)
Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, The Promise of a Normal Life, Arcade (a journey of a quiet young woman finding her way in the changing landscape of the 1960s)
Elizabeth Gill, An Orphan’s Wish, Quercus (a story of familial strength and survival in the face of great loss)
Rosie Goodwin, A Lesson Learned, Zaffre (Nuneaton, 1850; Saffie is forced to place her dreams on hold as she steps up to look after her family)
Molly Greeley, Marvelous, William Morrow (novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de’ Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend)
Ella Gyland, The Day the Germans Came, One More Chapter (Inspired by the true story of how the people of Denmark saved their Jewish neighbors during WWII)
Tessa Harris, The Paris Notebook, HQ Digital (the Nazi party will stop at nothing to destroy a notebook, highly damaging to Hitler, and silence those who know of the secret hidden inside)
Emilia Hart, Weyward, The Borough Press (weaving together the stories of three women across five centuries, this is a novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world)
Anastasia Hastings, Of Manners and Murder, Minotaur (marauding husbands and murder are par for the course for the best-loved Agony Aunt in Britain)
Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind, Harper (based on the myth of Medusa and how she was never a monster at all)
Cheryl A. Head, Time’s Undoing, Dutton (a young contemporary Black journalist searches for answers to the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, 1929)
Jody Hedlund, The Last Chance Cowboy, Bethany House (romantic Western adventure set in Colorado)
Claire Heywood, The Shadow of Perseus, Dutton (reinterpretation of the myth of the great hero Perseus, told through the voices of three women)
Joanna Higgins, In the Fall They Leave, Regal House (a WWI story of moral courage, resilience, and endurance)
Tom Hindle, The Murder Game, Century (locked-room mystery set around a murder mystery party in a crumbling country house)
K. S. Hollenbeck, The Odyssey of Effie Frost, Five Star (stranded in San Francisco, a half-built city of almost all men, Effie devises a plan to find gold)
Kevin Jared Hosein, Hungry Ghosts, Ecco (story of two families colliding in 1940s Trinidad—and a chilling mystery that shows how interconnected their lives truly are)
B. M. Howard, Blood & Fireflies, Canelo (debut historical mystery set around Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquests)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Ragged Orphan, Boldwood (an Oliver-twist-type story with a 12-year-old boy who does what he has to to avoid the workhouse)
Alex Hyde, Violets, Granta (a story of women’s courage suffused with power, lyricism and beauty set in the closing days of the war)
Jac Jemc, Empty Theatre, MCD/Macmillan (social satire reimagining the mad misadventures of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi)
Pam Jenoff, Code Name Sapphire, Park Row (a woman must rescue her cousin’s family from a train bound for Auschwitz)
Paulette Kennedy, The Witch of Tin Mountain, Lake Union (in Depression-era Arkansas, something wicked has come to a haunted mountain town in a novel of uncanny suspense)
Christina Koning, Murder in Dublin, Allison & Busby (Ireland, 1939; blind war veteran, Frederick Rowlands, seeks refuge in the neutral grounds of Ireland where his friend is accused of murder)
Richard Kurti, Omens of Death, Sapere (first book in the Basilica Diaries Medieval Mysteries series: historical thrillers set in fifteenth-century Rome and featuring a brother and sister investigative duo)
Brianna Labuskes, The Librarian of Burned Books, William Morrow (WWII-era novel about the intertwined fates of three women who believe in the power of books to triumph over the very darkest moments of war)
Lillie Lainoff, One For All, Titan Books (adventure in which Tania attends L’Académie des Mariées, a secret training ground for Musketeers: women who strap daggers under their skirts and protect France from downfall)
Caroline Lea, Prize Women, Harper Perennial (reimagines the story of one of the most controversial contests in history, the Great Stork Derby, in which a wealthy millionaire’s death spawns a furious competition for his inheritance)
Judy LeBlanc, The Broken Heart of Winter, Caitlin Press (debut in which three generations of Acadian women grapple with the impacts of dislocation, exile, and violence)
Pierre Lemaitre (trans. Frank Wynne), Mirror of Our Sorrows, MacLehose (final novel in the Paris between-the-wars trilogy chronicles the greatness and decline of a people crushed by circumstance)
Chris Lloyd, Paris Requiem, Orion/Pegasus (World War II murder mystery & portrait of Paris under occupation)
Katie Lumsden, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall, Dutton (1852 a young widow takes a position as governess to an only child, at an isolated country house & is soon embroiled in the house’s secrets)
Maja Lunde (trans. Diane Oatley), The Last Wild Horses, HarperVia (historical science fiction in which three families in three centuries discover the indestructible bonds that unite us all – set in 1881, 1992 and 2064)
J. C. Maetis, The Vienna Writers Circle, Mira (suspenseful tale of love, survival and redemption set against the backdrop of 1938 Vienna, as the newly arrived SS hunt down two writers from among Freud’s close circle of friends)
Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane, Atria (multi-period novel about three women whose lives are bound together by a long-lost letter, a mother’s love, and a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose)
Francesca May, Wild and Wicked Things, Orbit (in the aftermath of the First World War, a young woman gets swept into a glittering world filled with illicit magic, romance, blood debts and murder)
Rachel Scott McDaniel, In Spotlight and Shadow, Barbour (11th in series — dual-time romantic suspense set in Pittsburgh’s famous theater)
Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down, FSG / Sceptre (a child goes missing during a dust storm in Colonial Australia of 1883)
C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny, Harper/Doubleday (revisits of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein that unfolds with a fresh, provocative, queer twist)
Sherif Meleka, (trans. Raymond Stock), Suleiman’s Ring, Hoopoe (an enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player)
Toni Mount, The Colour of Bone, MadeGlobal (May 1480 in the City of London; book 11 in the Sebastian Foxley Medieval Murder Mystery series)
Melinda Moustakis, Homestead, Flatiron (debut novel set in 1950s Alaska in the years leading up to statehood, about the turbulent marriage of two unlikely homesteaders)
Niklas Natt och Dag (trans. Ebba Segerberg), 1794: The City Between the Bridges, Atria (1794; second installment of historical noir trilogy featuring Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman)
Blaise Ndala (trans. Amy B Reid), In the Belly of the Congo, Other Press (multigenerational novel that explores the history and human cost of colonialism in the Congo)
Gosia Nealon, The Polish Girl, Bookouture (a woman in the Polish resistance risks her life transporting ammunition for the underground network’s uprising against the Nazis)
Mary-Anne O’Connor, Never to Surrender, HQ Fiction (a young German-Australian soldier meets a passionate Cretan girl and together they are caught up in guerrilla warfare during the brutal Nazi invasion of Crete)
H. G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter, Redhook/Orbit (a young woman raised on an isolated island by a magician discovers things aren’t as they seem and must venture into early 1900s England to return magic to the world)
William Seto Ping, Hollow Bamboo, HarperCollins (recounts with humour and sympathy the often-brutal struggles, and occasional successes, faced by some of the first Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland)
Bridget Pitt, Eye Brother Horn, Catalyst Press (tale of identity, kinship, and atonement, set in 1870s South Africa, a decade of ruthless colonial aggression against the nation’s indigenous people)
MJ Porter, King of Kings, Boldwood (in a story of kings and vassals, powerful men who wish to rule and not be ruled, plot their revenge against the upstart English king, Athelstan)
Richard Gid Powers, Secret Agent Gals, Livingston Press, Univ. West Alabama (humorous satire about a group of FBI gals who might have thwarted J. Edgar Hoover, Hitler, and Stalin and won WW II)
Laura Purcell, The Whispering Muse, Raven (gothic romance set at the Mercury Theatre in London’s West End)
Weina Dai Randel, Night Angels, Lake Union (novel about a diplomatic couple who risked their lives to help Viennese Jews escape the Nazis, based on the true story of Dr. Ho Fengshan)
Patricia Raybon, Double the Lies, Tyndale (amateur detective Annalee Spain races the clock to solve the murder of a young pilot before she is framed for the crime)
Sarah Rayne, Chalice of Darkness, Severn House (London, 1908; the Fitzglens are proud of their reputation as one of London’s leading theatre families and equally proud of their other profession — they are thieves!)
Shelley Read, Go As A River, Spiegel & Grau (set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, a coming-of-age story of a young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. Inspired by true events in the 1960s)
Brigitte Reimann (trans. Lucy Jones), Siblings, Penguin Classics (novel battles with the clash of idealism and suppression, familial loyalty, and desire in a story of three siblings, set in 1960s Germany)
Mandy Robotham, The War Pianist, Avon UK (1940 —bound together by the invisible wires of their radios, two women lead parallel lives in their home cities, as both are betrayed by those they trust the most)
M. J. Rose, The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams, Blue Box (a tale of two passionate women separated by decades but united by a shared vision)
Matt Ruff, The Destroyer of Worlds, Harper (historical fantasy set in summer, 1957, explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty)
Salman Rushdie, Victory City, Jonathan Cape (in 14th-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history)
Shari J. Ryan, We Only Had Each Other, Bookouture (tells the story of identical twin sisters in Auschwitz)
Jill Santopolo, Stars in an Italian Sky, Putnam (story of two star-crossed lovers in post-World War II Italy, and a blossoming relationship generations later)
John Sayles, Jamie MacGillivray, Melville House (spanning 13 years, two continents, several wars, and many smoke-filled and bloody battlefields, novel begins in 1746 at the Battle of Culloden)
Morgan Shamy, The Dollmaker, Camcat (1920s; a serial killer targets beautiful women, creating “art” from the bodies he leaves behind, and it’s up to Dawn and her medical knowledge to find the murderer)
Laura Shepperson, The Heroines (UK), Sphere (in Athens, crowds flock to witness a trial. Phaedra, young bride of King Theseus, has accused her stepson, Hippolytus, of rape)
Kim Sherwood, A Wild & True Relation, Virago (set in 18th-century, novel challenges women’s writing and women’s roles throughout history)
Jill Eileen Smith, Daughter of Eden, Revell (imagines the life of the first woman to ever live, unspooling a story of love, loss, and the promise of redemption)
Sarah Sundin, The Sound of Light, Revell (WWII, Denmark; a story of ordinary people responding to extraordinary circumstances with faith, fortitude, and hope for a brighter future)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Persian Slipper, Sapere (Sherlock Holmes must pry the secrets from a dead man in London, 1877)
Herbert E. Stover, By Night the Strangers, Catamount Press (story of Luke Hanley who unwittingly finds himself on the station of the Underground Railroad and joins the valiant group of “Right People” in the lumber country of Pennsylvania)
Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix), The Fawn, MacLehose (set against newly communist 1950s Hungary, novel embraces the lies and falsehoods people were obliged to live with)
Johhny Teague, The Lost Diary of George Washington, Addison & Highsmith (biographical fiction in which Washington describes the Revolutionary War Years with his own words and feelings)
Kate Thompson, The Little Wartime Library, Forever (novel based on the true story of a librarian who created an underground shelter during World War II)
Charles Todd, The Cliff’s Edge, William Morrow (in the aftermath of World War I, nurse Bess Crawford is caught in a deadly feud between two families)
June Trop, The Deadliest Deceptions, Level Best (first-century CE Roman Alexandria; narrates the perilous adventures of Miriam bat Isaac, budding alchemist and sleuth extraordinaire)
Jen Turano, A Match in the Making, Bethany House (tasked with finding the season’s most eligible bachelor a wife, a paid matchmaker’s assignment becomes increasingly difficult when she realizes his perfect match might be her)
Daniel H. Turtel, The Family Morfawitz, Blackstone (a retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Greco-Roman myth as a multigenerational Jewish family saga)
Margaret Verble, Stealing, Mariner (novel about a Cherokee child removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s)
Betty Walker, A Mother’s Hope for the Cornish Girls, Avon UK (fourth installment of family saga, set in St. Ives, Cornwall, 1943)
Megan Walker, Miss Newbury’s List, Shadow Mountain (Regency romance set in England, 1820)
Olivia Wearne, The Woman Who Knew Too Little, HQ Fiction (novel about one of Australia’s great mysteries, and the life choices available to mid-century women)
Sheila Williams, Things Past Telling, Amistad (novel that charts a midwife’s journey across an ocean of years, surviving capture, enslavement, and a brief stint as a pirate’s ward where she is both a spy and a translator)
Jonathan Wilson, The Red Balcony, Schocken (based on actual events, a novel of sex, love, and justice in the tinderbox of British Mandatory Palestine, 1933)
Daisy Wood, The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris, Avon (dual timeline WWII tale of love and a betrayal that echoes through generations)
March 2023
Leila Aboulela, River Spirit, Grove Press (novel about an embattled young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War, in 19th century Sudan)
Cheryl Adnams, We’ll Meet Again, Mira (story of love, loss, ambition and family set in Australia and Hawaii in 1941)
César Aira (trans. Chris Andrews), Fulgentius, New Directions (holds a fun-house mirror up to the genre of historical fiction in this novel about an aging Roman general on what may be his last campaign into the provinces)
Larry Alexander, 76 Hours, Blackstone (a novel of the US Marines taking of the Pacific sland of Tarawa)
Ron Base, Prudence Emery, Scandal at the Savoy, Douglas & McIntyre (as the rich and famous converge on the Savoy Hotel in swinging ’60s London, a dark deed threatens to ruin the fun)
Vicki Beeby, Hopeful Hearts for the Wrens, Canelo (third in Wren saga about Sally, Iris and Mary at Scapa Flow, Orkney)
Kate Belli, Deception by Gaslight, Crooked Lane (mystery set in Gilded Age New York)
Joe Benevento, His Perfect Wife, Her Perfect Son, Addison & Highsmith (reimagines the Holy Family’s story through the very human voice of Joseph)
James R. Benn, The Refusal Camp, Soho (an eclectic mix of new and previously published mystery stories of wartime)
Patricia Bernstein, A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower, History Through Fiction (based on a true story of one woman’s courage and wit in trying to rescue her husband from the Tower of London the night before he is to be executed)
Diana Biller, Hotel of Secrets, St Martin’s Griffin (historical romance set against the backdrop of Vienna’s ball season as a hotel manager tries to save her hotel with the help of a secret service agent)
Cara Black, Night Flight to Paris, Soho Crime (follow-up to Three Hours in Paris, it is up to American markswoman Kate Rees to take the shot that just might win—or lose—WW II)
Gary Born, The File, Addison & Highsmith (a graduate student stumbles upon a cache of WWII Nazi files in the wreck of a German bomber hidden in the jungle in Africa)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, All That is Hidden, Minotaur (New York, Autumn, 1907: former private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan tangles with Tammany Hall in second historical mystery series, after Wild Irish Rose)
Linda Broday, Winning Maura’s Heart, Severn House (romance between an outcast daughter of a hangman and one of twin brothers who are both shot and come under her care at a nearby mission)
Frances Brody, A Mansion for Murder, Crooked Lane (old bones speak from the grave as a curse descends on Saltaire in thirteenth Kate Shackleton mystery)
Diane Marie Brown, Black Candle Women, Graydon House (three women are set on a collision course dating back to a voodoo shop in 1950s New Orleans’s French Quarter)
Emily Brugman, The Islands, Allen & Unwin (in the mid-1950s, a small group of Finnish migrants set up camp on Little Rat, a tiny island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia)
Rachel Burton, The Last Party at Silverton Hall, Aria (dual timeline tale of family, duty and the secrets we keep from those we love most. Set in 1952 and 2019)
Amanda Cabot, After the Shadows, Revell (in 1880s Texas a young widow returns to her hometown never dreaming that the new schoolteacher holds the key both to the mystery surrounding her father’s death–and to her heart)
Christi Caldwell, The Heiress at Sea, Montlake (romance in which a seafaring journey is the second chance for a lady and the last chance for a marquess)
Jay Carmichael, Marlo, Scribe US (in the 1950s in conservative Australia, and Christopher, a young gay man, moves to “the City” to escape the repressive atmosphere of his tiny hometown)
Kerry Chaput, Daughter of the Shadows, Black Rose (follow up to Daughter of the King, a historical adventure where fierce, cunning women fight for freedom. 1667, Quebec and France)
KJ Charles, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, Sourcebooks Casablanca (Regency romance of smugglers, adventure, mystery, and life-changing love)
Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl, Sourcebooks Landmark (set in 1935 North Carolina, novel sheds light on a horrific era of injustice and one young woman’s fight to control her future)
Oliver Clements, All the Queen’s Spies, Atria/Leopoldo & Co. (thriller about Queen Elizabeth I’s advisor John Dee in a race to save the Empire)
Stephanie Clifford, The Farewell Tour, Harper (tells the story of one woman’s rise in country and western music, crisscrossing between the Depression, the Second World War, and the rise of Nashville)
Meg Clothier, The Book of Eve, Headline Wildfire (historical feminist tale – inspired by the undeciphered Voynich manuscript)
Sally Colin-James, One Illumined Thread, 4th Estate AU (historical novel spanning two thousand years, celebrates the power and creative spirit of the female heart, as each woman finds freedom)
Manda Collins, A Spinster’s Guide to Danger and Dukes, Forever (Victorian historical rom-com series)
Lorna Cook, The Hidden Letters, Avon UK (on the eve of a world war, a forbidden love will blossom in the garden of a stately home and one young woman will make a choice that will change her life forever)
Paul Cornell, illus. Valeria Burzo, The Witches of World War II, TKO studios (inspired by a true story, follows a coven of witches as they embark on a mission to help capture Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, Rudolf Hess)
Constance Cosati, Clytemnestra, Sourcebooks Landmark (follows Clytemnestra, the most notorious heroine of the ancient world and the events that forged her into the legendary queen)
Mia Couto (trans. David Brookshaw), The Drinker of Horizons, FSG (conclusion of the historical saga: the Sands of the Emperor Trilogy)
Josephine Cox, The Letter, HarperCollins (family drama romance saga in which things take a troubling turn after an act of kindness by two sisters comes back to haunt them)
Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books, Lake Union (novel about the magical lure of books and summoning the courage to rewrite our stories)
Eugene J. DiCesaris, Clayton Sharp: Life or Death, Five Star (autumn 1867. In book two of the Clayton Sharp series, Clay, Annie, and Ward are bound for Utah)
Paul Doherty, Dark Queen Wary, Severn House (with an imposter prince claiming he is Henry Tudor, Margaret Beaufort must play the game of kings very carefully in this medieval mystery)
Hannah Dolby, No Life for a Lady, Aria (historical romcom set in 1896)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Aldwych Station, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in 1940)
Sarah Ferguson, A Most Intriguing Lady, Avon Books (saga about a Duke’s daughter who secretly moonlights as an amateur sleuth)
David Field, The Conscience of a King, Sapere (seventh book in the Medieval Saga series set in England, 1229)
Emily France, Daughter Dalloway, Blackstone (retelling of Virginia Woolf’s classic, following two rebellious young women through interwar London, whose paths are inextricably entwined as they search for the truth about the people they love)
Jackie French, Becoming Mrs Mulberry, HQ AU (a very wealthy woman is drawn to a mysterious child who cannot speak, and she and her shell-shocked husband work to untangle the mystery of the child’s origins)
Julie Gerstenblatt, Daughters of Nantucket, Mira (saga of the days leading up to Nantucket’s historic fire of 1846 and its dramatic aftermath)
Peter Gibbons, Storm of War, Boldwood (continues the Viking historical fiction saga series which began with Warrior & Protector)
Clair Gilbert, I, Julian, Hodder & Stoughton (fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich, set in the 14th-century)
Chris Glatte, The Scars of Battle, Severn River (WWII historical fiction that brings the Pacific Theatre to life with authentic detail to tell a powerful tale of courage, hope, and survival)
Tamara Goranson, The Oath of Bjorn, One More Chapter (Bjorn must risk everything to save the woman he loves before she steps into the darkness and sets their world ablaze. Vinland Viking Saga, book 2)
Jocelyn Green, The Metropolitan Affair, Bethany House (1920s tale featuring one of New York City’s most esteemed museums, where a young woman discovers secrets, betrayal, and romance)
Barbara Hambly, One Extra Corpse, Severn House (enter the roaring twenties in this Silver Screen historical mystery)
Sarah Hardy, The Walled Garden, Manilla Press (debut novel about love, the trauma of war and the miracle of human resilience)
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree, HarperVia (Strasbourg, 1518 — story of lust, family secrets and women under the eye of the Church)
Carmel Harrington, The Girl from Donegal, HarperCollins (two women must each make a choice between their past and their present in this love story spanning two continents and three generations)
Liz Harris, Simla Mist, Heywood Press (tale of love and revenge set in Simla, the summer capital of the British Raj)
Cora Harrison, The Deadly Weed, Severn House (Reverend Mother’s investigative skills are called into action when a local tobacco factory burns down and fingers are pointed at one of her ex pupils)
Emilia Hart, Weyward, SMP (debut that explores witchcraft and female intuitive powers, told over five centuries through three connected women)
Alis Hawkins, A Bitter Remedy, Canelo (first installment of The Oxford Mysteries series set in 1881)
Sophie Haydock, The Flames, The Overlook Press (set in the Bohemian art world of early 20th century Vienna, the untold story of the four women who posed for and inspired the erotic art of controversial painter Egon Schiele)
Jane Healey, Goodnight from Paris, Lake Union (in Nazi-occupied France, an American film star takes on the most dangerous role of her life)
Rachel Heng, The Great Reclamation, Riverhead/Tinder Press (a love story and coming-of-age set in Singapore, that reckons with the legacy of British colonialism, the World War II Japanese occupation, and the pursuit of modernity)
Kate Hewitt, An Island Far From Home, Bookouture (fifth novel in the Amherst Island series, set during the Second World War in Canada and England)
Erik T. Hirschmann, Voyage of the Eclipse, Epicenter Press (naval adventure set in southeast Alaska in 1802)
Alan Hlad, The Book Spy, John Scognamiglio (inspired by true stories of the heroic librarian spies of WWII)
Elisabeth Hobbes, Daughters of Paris, One More Chapter (WWII novel about female friendships)
James T. Hogg, Assault, All Night Books (Girl With a Knife, Book One — a story of witchcraft and devil worship in Massachusetts Bay Colony in the late 1600s)
Emma Hornby, An Orphan’s Choice, Bantam (Victorian saga about an orphaned brother and sister)
Marjorie Hudson, Indigo Field, Regal House (multigenerational drama set in the deep South)
Sabrina Jeffries, What Happens in the Ballroom, Headline Eternal (book two of the Designing Debutantes, witty Regency romance series)
Sadeqa Johnson, The House of Eve, S&S (novel set in the 1950s about two Black women working to overcome the stumbling blocks that threaten to upend everything they worked so hard for)
Adele Jordan, The Lost Highlander, Sapere (book four of the Kit Scarlett Mystery series)
Sophie Jordan, The Scandalous Ladies of London, Avon (new series chronicles the lives of a group of affluent ladies reigning over Regency-era London, vying for position in the hierarchy of the ton)
Alka Joshi, The Perfumist of Paris, Mira (final chapter in Jaipur trilogy takes readers to 1970s Paris where Radha’s budding career as a perfumer must compete with the demands of her family and the secrets of her past)
Irena Karafilly, Arrested Song, Legend Press (historic look at Greek island life, spanning three decades & chronicling the story of one woman’s lifelong struggle against social and political tyranny)
David Keenan, Monument Maker, Europa Editions (novel ranges from the siege of Khartoum and the conquest of Africa in the 19th century through the Second World War and up to the present day)
Julia Kelly, The Lost English Girl, Gallery (saga of love, motherhood, and betrayal set against World War II)
John Keyse-Walker, Bert and Mamie Take a Cruise, Severn House (new historical mystery series, set in the months before the outbreak of the Second World War)
Owen King, The Curator, Scribner (Dickensian fantasy of illusion and charm where cats are revered as religious figures, thieves are noble, scholars are revolutionaries, and conjurers are the most wonderful criminals)
Lana Kortchik, The Countess of the Revolution, HQ Digital (novel of love, loss and sacrifice set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution)
Ann Hanigan Kotz, The Journey of Karoline Olsen, BookPress (1905: tale of a woman and a wife building the American Dream out of nothing but the dirt on which she stands)
Erik Kriek, The Exile, Diamond Books (a decades-spanning epic, equal parts action “Western” and family drama. Graphic novel format)
Caroline Lamond, Well Behaved Women, One More Chapter (story inspired by the real life of silent movie icon, Alla Nazimova)
Stephanie Landsem, Code Name Edelweiss, Tyndale (based on the true story of how a lone Jewish lawyer and a handful of amateur spies discovered and foiled Adolf Hitler’s plan to take over Hollywood)
Lizzie Lane, Her Father’s Daughter, Boldwood (a young girl’s tragic loss will shape her dreams and her future…1930 – Douro Valley, Portugal)
Also: Women in War (India, 1939; historical saga about a woman’s determination to beat the odds)
Soraya Lane, The Cuban Daughter, Bookouture (dual timeline novel about family secrets, lost loves and new beginnings, set in Havana 1950 and present-day London)
Patrick Larsimont, The Raiders and the Cross, Sapere (WWII adventure across the war-torn skies of Britain, France and Malta)
Victor Lavalle, Lone Women, One World (a cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America)
Kristen Loesch, The Last Russian Doll, Berkley (a haunting novel about betrayal, revenge, and redemption that follows three generations of Russian women, from the 1917 revolution to the last days of the Soviet Union)
Jonathan Lunn, The Flames of Heresy, Canelo (new instalment of the 100 Years War series which features medieval archer Martin Kemp)
Amulya Malladi, A Death in Denmark, William Morrow (new series detective Gabriel Præst, an ex-Copenhagen cop and relentless pursuer of truth, explores Denmark’s Nazi-collaborator past and anti-Muslim present)
Owen Matthews, White Fox, Doubleday/Bantam (thriller about two competing KGB operatives on a race against time to uncover the truth behind the assassination of JFK)
Fenella J. Miller, A Wartime Reunion at Goodwill House, Boldwood (next installment of the Goodwill House series set in 1940)
Liz Milliron, The Truth We Hide, Level Best/Historia (1940s; fourth book in the Homefront Murder Mystery series)
Sarah Mitchell, Letters to a Stranger, Bookouture (WWII story of wartime love and heartbreak)
Mary Monroe, Love, Honor, Betray, Dafina (Depression-era saga of a church-going lady and her upstanding husband racing to cover up their many sins)
Terry Mort, Convoy to Morocco, McBooks (a WWII military action naval thriller)
Benjamin Myers, Cuddy, Bloomsbury (story of love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a space both hilarious and terrifying―unfolding over centuries and deploying a panoply of voices)
Harini Nagendra, Murder Under a Red Moon, Pegasus (amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy uncovers a new murder during the blood moon eclipse)
Tobie Nathan (trans. Joyce Zonana), A Land Like You, Seagull Books (Cairo, 1925; tale of Egypt caught between tradition and modernity, oppression and freedom)
James Naughtie, The Spy Across the Water, Head of Zeus –an Aries book (third instalment in spy series, about three brothers whose lives are entwined with the intelligence service)
Gosia Nealon, The Polish Wife, Bookouture (fleeing her fanatical Nazi husband, Anna agrees to manage a network of spies behind the façade of a café for enemy soldiers, to aid the Polish resistance)
Alexander Nemerov, The Forest, Princeton Univ. Press (historical imagining of life in the early United States)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Intrigue in Istanbul, Kensington (when Jane Wunderly arrives in 1920s Turkey in search of her father, she finds a country redefining itself after the fall of the Ottoman Empire)
Alison Mills Newman, Francisco, New Directions (literary evolution of a young Black woman in California and her intense relationship with an indie filmmaker)
Chris Nickson, The Dead Will Rise, Severn House (historical mystery set in Leeds in the early 19th century, where thief-taker Simon Westow is used to finding stolen goods …. not stolen bodies)
Billy O’Callaghan, The Paper Man, Jonathan Cape/Godine (story of twentieth-century Europe, the Holocaust, the cost of fame, and love against the odds)
Sharon Dodua Otoo (trans. Jon Cho-Polizzi), Ada’s Room, Riverhead (novel spanning generations and continents, that reveals the connections between four women in their struggle for survival)
Lizzie Page, The Children Left Behind, Bookouture (1951; novel set in an orphanage in the aftermath of WWII. Shilling Grange Children’s Home, book four)
Tracie Peterson, Remember Me, Bethany House (when she’s reunited with her lost love, a woman must decide to run or to face her wounds in order to embrace her life, her future, and her hope in God)
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child, Algonquin (an American GI, two Vietnamese bargirls, and an Amerasian man are forced to make decisions during and after the Việt Nam War that will reverberate throughout each other’s lives)
Cecile Pin, Wandering Souls, Henry Holt/Fourth Estate (debut novel about three Vietnamese siblings who seek refuge in the UK at the end of the war)
Michael Raleigh, Poe Street, Level Best/Historia (1946; Ray Foley, just back from serving in WWII finds himself involved in a series of related killings)
Deanna Raybourn, A Sinister Revenge, Berkley (Veronica Speedwell must find and stop a devious killer when a group of old friends is targeted for death. Victorian murder mystery)
Jennifer Rosner, Once We Were Home, Flatiron (novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II)
Ian Ross, Battle Song, Hodder & Stoughton (1264; storm clouds are gathering as Simon de Montfort and the barons of the realm challenge the power of Henry III)
Maryanne Ross, Wylder Opal, The Wild Rose Press (Western romance between a gunslinger turned playwright and a prospector)
Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan, The Castle Keepers, Harper Muse (a collection of stories that examines questions of healing and love against the backdrop of an historical castle and its adjoining poison garden)
Cathleen Schine, Künstlers in Paradise, Henry Holt (set between 1930s and 2020, weaves together the story of a family of Jewish émigrés just after they fled from Vienna to LA in the 1930s and life in the 2020 pandemic)
Isabelle Schuler, Lady MacBethad (UK) / Queen Hereafter (US), Raven (reimagines the life of Gruoch – the real-life Scottish Queen who inspired one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters)
Sophfronia Scott, Wild, Beautiful, and Free, Lake Union (story of one young woman’s bold journey to reclaim her birthright and carve out her own place in a world)
Lisa Scottoline, Loyalty, Putnam (novel set during the rise of the Mafia in Sicily)
Natasha Siegel, Solomon’s Crown, Dell (12th-century Europe; two destined rivals fall in love—but the fate of medieval Europe hangs in the balance)
Lauraine Snelling, Fields of Bounty, Bethany House (inspirational fiction in which a woman must learn to balance her new courtship with a young Reverend with her pursuit of another dream–the publication of her artwork)
A.L. Sowards, A Waltz with Traitors, Covenant (inspirational romance set in 1918)
Laura Spence-Ash, Beyond That, the Sea, Celadon (tells the story of two families living through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean)
John Spurling, Arcadian Days, Pegasus (five tales centre on male-female pairs – Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and the sorceress Medea, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, Achilles and his mother Thetis, Odysseus and Penelope)
Sarah Steele, The Lost Song of Paris, Mobius (dual timeline story of courage and a love that will defy even the darkest days of World War Two)
David Stokes, King Alfred’s Daughter, The Book Guild (based on contemporary sources and archaeological evidence, a story rich in family conflict and historical achievement)
Susan Stokes-Chapman, Pandora, Harper Perennial (novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance)
Anna Stuart, Code Name Elodie, Bookouture (inspired by the brave women of Bletchley Park, a World War Two novel of friendship, heartbreak and hope)
Sherry Thomas, A Tempest at Sea, Berkley (Charlotte Holmes investigates crimes in Victorian-era London)
Trisha R. Thomas, One True Wish, Lake Union (novel offers a glimpse into Diahann Carroll’s journey navigating the unpredictable terrain of love, fame, scandal, and family)
Stephanie Marie Thornton, Her Lost Words, Berkley (novel about feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and her visionary daughter, Mary Shelley, and the many ways their words transformed our world)
Teresa Trent, If I Had a Hammer, Level Best/Historia (1963; s swinging sixties mystery)
Marilyn Turk, The Escape Game, Barbour (series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII)
L.C. Tyler, Fire, Felony & Mayhem/Constable (4th John Grey historical mystery as he’s ordered by Lord Arlington to find a scapegoat for the 1666 fire of London)
Gabriel Valjan, Liar’s Dice, Level Best (thriller set in Boston with a former cop whose past in Vietnam comes to haunt him when the corpse of a veteran is found on Boston Common)
Fred Van Lente, Never Sleep, Blackstone (Pinkerton detective Kate Warn is enlisted with several other spy agents to infiltrate the groups heading up the assassination plot to kill president Lincoln)
J.M. Varese, The Company, Baskerville (set against the backdrop of the real-life arsenic wallpaper controversy of the late 19th century)
Andrew Varga, The Last Saxon King, Imbrifex Books (a time jumper, descended from a long line of secret heroes, protects the present by traveling to the past to fix breaks and glitches in the time stream)
Steven Veerapen, Of Judgement Fallen, Polygon (an Anthony Blank Tudor mystery set in the court of Henry VIII, 1523)
Jeanette Walls, Hang the Moon, Scribner (novel about an indomitable young woman in Virginia during Prohibition)
Mark Warren, A Last Serenade for Billy Bonney, Five Star (William H. Bonney became one of the best-known historical characters of our Western mythology. We know him as “Billy the Kid.”)
Heather Webb, Strangers in the Night, William Morrow (in the golden age of Hollywood, two of the brightest stars, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, define an era)
Josh Weiss, Sunset Empire, Grand Central (a Morris Baker adventure of deceit, intrigue, murder, and conspiracy where the safety of the entire world may hang in the balance. Set in 1959)
Sheena Wilkinson, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, HarperCollinsIreland (witty romantic comedy about friendship, loneliness, and the unexpected places where we find fulfilment, set in the tumult of 1930s Britain)
Pip Williams, The Bookbinder (US) / The Bookbinder of Jericho (UK), Ballantine (a story about knowledge – who gets to make it, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld. Set in 1914)
Lauren Willig, Two Wars and a Wedding, William Morrow (coming-of-age story with a dual timeline featuring a bold and adventurous young woman who finds herself caught up in two very different wars on both sides of the Atlantic)
Alice Winn, In Memoriam, Knopf/Viking (debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war)
Jacqueline Winspear, The White Lady, Harper/Allison & Busby (adventure follows the coming of age and maturity of former wartime operative Elinor White, where she is drawn back into a world of violence she is desperate to leave behind)
Mary Winters, Murder in Postscript, Berkley (London 1861 — when one of her readers asks for advice following a suspected murder, Victorian countess and agony aunt Amelia has no choice but to investigate. First in new series)
John Winton, Polaris, Sapere (cold war naval thriller based on historical events)
James Wolf, No Good Day to Die, Riverfeet Press (saga of early America follows a cast of historical and fictional characters revealing human perseverance and the injustice humans will commit to fight for their way of life)
Anne Youngson, A Complicated Matter, Doubleday UK (a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and a meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world. Set in 1939)
April 2023
Meryl Ain, Shadows We Carry, SparkPress (sequel to The Takeaway Men, following Bronka and JoJo Lubinski as they find themselves on the cusp of momentous change for women in the late 1960s)
Libby Ashworth, The Runaway Daughter, Canelo (19th-centry northern family saga)
Jo Baker, The Midnight News, Phoenix (story of friendship, love and war, set in 1940)
Rachel Beanland, The House is on Fire, S&S (reimagining of the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811, told from the perspectives of four characters whose lives are irrevocably altered in the aftermath of the inferno)
Seamus Beirne, Kings Mountain, Fireship Press (in 1775, friends Michael Redferne and Isaac Malot break out of a penal colony in Barbados, go their separate ways, and later find themselves on opposite sides of a war)
Johanna Bell, The Blitz Girls, Hodder & Stoughton (three girls thrown together into an unlikely friendship, do their bit to protect their country its the darkest hour)
Christophe Bernard (trans. Lazer Lederhendler), The Hollow Beast, Biblioasis (slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge, beginning in 1911, in a hockey game in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula)
Sian Ann Bessey, The Unassuming Curator, Covenant (romance between a bookworm and a colour-blind curator of natural history)
James D. Brewer, Blood on the Crossties, TouchPoint (railroad detective Choctaw Parker works to solve all manner of murder-most-foul in Florida during the Gilded Age)
Verity Bright, Death on Deck, Bookouture (even on her first luxury cruise Lady Swift can’t seem to escape from murder)
Thomas Brussig (trans. Jonathan Franzen, Jenny Watson), The Short End of the Sonnenallee, Picador (first time in English, a moving and comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the wall)
Paul Bryers, The Vatican Candidate, McBooks (an ex-Royal Marine follows a trail from the hidden bunkers of Berlin to the mountains of Italy to solve how a present-day murder and a plot to kill the Pope are connected)
Colleen Cambridge, Mastering the Art of French Murder, Kensington (new historical mystery series combines a fresh perspective on a fictional Julia Child’s years in post-WWII Paris with a mystery and a culinary twist)
Christian Cameron, The Treason of Sparta, Orion (Sparta 478 BCE; new book in the Long War series, set on the bloody battlefields of Ancient Greece)
Ella Carey, The Paris Maid, Bookouture (Louise, a housemaid at The Ritz in Paris, 1944, reports what she sees and hears to the Resistance)
Jill Caugherty, The View from Half Dome, Black Rose (1934; coming of age story about hope, forgiveness, nature’s healing power, and the courage to overcome societal boundaries)
Elizabeth Chadwick, The King’s Jewel, Mobius/Sphere (Wales, 1093 – story of Nesta, daughter of Prince Rhys of Deheubarth)
Yao-Chang Chen (trans. Pao-fang Hsu, Ian Maxwell, and Tung-jung Chen), Puppet Flower, Columbia Univ. Press (revisionist narrative of 1867 Formosa)
Alix Christie, The Shining Mountains, High Road Books (family saga set in 1838 reveals blended cultures seeking allies, trading furs for guns and steel, and a way of life in collision with westward colonial expansion)
Rosie Clarke, Changing Times at Harpers, Boldwood (new instalment in the Harpers Emporium series, set in London, Spring 1920)
Chanel Cleeton, The Cuban Heiress, Berkley (inspired by the true story of the tragedy of the SS Morro Castle — two women on board the luxury liner find their fates inextricably intertwined)
Rebecca Connolly, Under the Cover of Mercy, Shadow Mountain (account of one woman who defied an entire nation in order to heal those who needed her help the most – based on a true story)
Donovan Cook, Odin’s Betrayal, Boldwood (Francia AD853; two kingdoms are destined for war, and one boy is caught in the eye of the storm)
Vivian Conroy, A Fatal Encounter in Tuscany, One More Chapter (cosy crime series that captures the glamour of the 1930s. Miss Ashford Investigates, Book 3)
Angela K. Couch, Kelly J. Goshorn, Carolyn Miller, Cara Putman, Across the Shores, Barbour (an anthology of four romances set in New South Wales 1951, Baltimore 1877, Canada 1905 and Outer Banks, NC 1942)
Ben Creed, Man of Bones, Welbeck (political thriller set in Leningrad, winter of 1953. A Revol Rossel murder mystery)
Kjell Ola Dahl (trans. Don Bartlett), The Lazarus Solution, Orenda Books (summer, 1943. When a courier for Sweden’s Press & Military Office is killed on his final mission, the Norwegian government-in-exile appoints a writer to find missing documents)
Sandra Dallas, Where Coyotes Howl, SMP (romantic ode to the early 20th century American West)
Siddhartha Deb, The LightAt the End of the World, Soho Press (connecting India’s tumultuous 19th and 20th centuries to its potentially apocalyptic future, this tale of rebellion, courage, and brutality reinvents historical fiction for our time)
Liana de la Rosa, Ana Maria and the Fox, Berkley (a forbidden love between a Mexican heiress and a shrewd British politician in the Victorian era)
Jude Deveraux, My Heart Will Find You, Mira (dual timeline narrative where a young woman shelters at a home in the early days of the pandemic and finds a portal to the 1870s where she discovers her true love)
Danielle Devlin, Burnt Offerings, Polygon (1593; based on historical records, a retelling of the North Berwick Witch Trials)
Margaret Dickinson, The Poacher’s Daughter, Macmillan UK (romantic saga set in the Lincolnshire Wolds, beginning in 1910)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Down Street Station, Allison & Busby (series explores crimes in derelict London Underground stations in World War Two)
A. J. Elwood, The Other Lives of Miss Emily White, Titan Books (a tale of young girls’ obsession and what happens when it grows out of hand. Set in 1894)
Mario Escobar, The Swiss Nurse, Harper Muse (true story of a brave woman who saved hundreds of mothers and their children during the Spanish Civil War and WWII)
Pamela Binnings Ewen, Émilienne, Blackstone ( novel of Belle Epoque Paris and the once most beautiful and sought-after woman and star of the Folies Bergère)
P. W. Finch, Usurper, Canelo (1066; coming-of-age adventure set in early medieval England)
Aoife Fitzpatrick, The Red Bird Sings, Virago (based on a real trial and novel delivers a feminist history whilst playing with the tropes of the Southern Gothic)
Kevin Flynn, Rock Creek, Bronzeville Books (combination of murder mystery and political thriller set in Washington, D.C., 1952)
Kate Foster, The Maiden, Mantle (Edinburgh, 1679; story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history)
Hester Fox, The Last Heir to Blackwood Library, Graydon House (novel in which a young woman inherits an old library on a remote estate, where not only have all the previous librarians have met untimely ends, but there may be something sinister about the library itself)
Anita Frank, After the War, HQ (1945 – as events of the past return to haunt them, Jack and Gwen find themselves facing their greatest battle yet)
Emily Franklin, The Lioness of Boston, David R. Godine (novel of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a visionary who created a legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself)
Charles Frazier, The Trackers, Ecco (novel paints a vivid portrait of life in the Great Depression)
Bruce Geddes, Chasing the Black Eagle, Dundurn (Against a backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, a young man tails a man who is a possible threat to America)
Eva Glyn, The Collaborator’s Daughter, One More Chapter (in 1944 in war-torn Dubrobvnik, the arrival of the partisans brings new dangers for Branko, his wife Dragica and their new baby)
Elizabeth Graver, Kantika, Metropolitan Books (portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, which follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul)
Anissa Gray, Life and Other Love Songs, Berkley (a father’s sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the 20th century)
Michelle Griep, The Bow Street Runners Trilogy, Barbour (mystery, intrigue, and high adventure from a fledgling police force in the 1800s known as the Bow Street Runners)
Dianne Haley, A Light to Guide Us Home, Bookouture (1943: resistance fighter Valérie is asked to find an orphan who has part of a top-secret Nazi document that could change history)
Amy Harmon, A Girl Called Samson, Lake Union (saga of a young woman who dares to chart her own destiny in life and love during the American Revolutionary War. Set in 1760)
C. S. Harris, Who Cries for the Lost, Berkley (historical mystery featuring Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin set in 1814, London, England. Book 18 in series)
Monika Helfer (trans. Gillian Davidson), Last House Before the Mountain, Bloomsbury (multigenerational family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria)
Maria Hesselager (trans. Martin Aitken), First Comes Summer, Riverhead (set in a remote Viking settlement, story of a young woman’s dangerous passion as it plays out over the course of an eerie summer)
Caitlin Hicks, Kennedy Girl, Sunbury Press (coming-of-age adventure about love and justice in 1968)
Roccie Hill, The Blood of My Mother, Bloodhound Books (a woman fights for her life as a refugee, slave, mother, and farmer in a multi-layered saga)
Jenny Holmes, The Ballroom Girls, Penguin (new WWII saga series about the ballroom dancing scene in wartime Blackpool)
Emily Hourican, Mummy Darlings, Grand Central (set in early 1930s, novel follows the three enigmatic Guinness sisters as they take on married life and motherhood)
Charlie N. Holmberg, Heir of Uncertain Magic, 47North (one man is on a journey to unravel his magical lineage in the next novel of the Whimbrel House series. Historical fantasy)
Anna Lee Huber, A Fatal Illusion, Berkley (artistic sleuth Lady Kiera Darby uses her talent for the macabre to bring murderers to justice in nineteenth-century Scotland. Book 11 in series)
Damion Hunter, Empire’s Edge, Canelo (tale of love, family and warfare in the age of Rome. Borderlands, book 2)
Liz Hyder, The Gifts, Sourcebooks Landmark (set against the backdrop of 19th century London, novel explores science, nature and enlightenment, the role of women in society and the dark danger of ambition)
Brenda Janowitz, The Audrey Hepburn Estate, Graydon House (with the estate set to be demolished, Emma, who grew up there, finds herself caught between two worlds and two loves and a shattering secret)
Paterson Joseph, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, Henry Holt (tale of adventure, artistry, romance, and freedom set in eighteenth-century London and inspired by a true story)
Ellen Keith, The Dutch Orphan, Park Row (novel set during World War II about a woman who offers shelter to a Jewish baby, and her sister, who must choose between family loyalty and her own safety)
Martha Hall Kelly, The Golden Doves, Ballantine (two former female spies, bound together by their past, risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II)
Aline Kiner (trans. Susan Emanuel), The Mirror of Simple Souls, Pushkin Press (story of love, jealousy and faith, set amid a community of independent women in medieval Paris)
Gregory Koop, The Donkey Cutter, Guernica Editions (Canadian Prairies, 1910; with the looming arrival of Halley’s Comet, the local Bishop becomes obsessed with an adolescent girl, planning to save her from a charismatic Doomsday preacher & her atheist father)
Richard Kurti, Palette of Blood, Sapere (1503; second book in the Basilica Diaries Medieval Mysteries series: historical thrillers set in fifteenth-century Rome and featuring a brother and sister investigative duo)
Jake Lamar, Viper’s Dream, No Exit (hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961)
Catherine Law, The Officer’s Wife, Boldwood (WWII; Nathan returns from the war carrying a secret which his wife suspects is linked to the mysterious evacuee at the secluded house in the woods on his Kent estate)
Denis Lehane, Small Mercies, Abacus (thriller set against the tumultuous months in 1974, Boston, when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence)
Hannah Linder, When Tomorrow Came, Barbour (the life siblings Nan and Heath have managed to eke out for themselves since their father abandoned them when they were young, is upended when he suddenly returns)
Elvira Lindo (trans. Adrian Nathan West), Open Heart, Other Press (a tribute to the generation that struggled to survive in Spain after the Civil War, beginning in 1939)
Erin Litteken, The Lost Daughters of Ukraine, Boldwood (four daughters of Ukraine will face devastation and loss as they fight to survive and protect the ones they love in WWII)
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, The American Wife, Bookouture (a story about finding love, resilience and friendship in the midst of the darkness of World War 2)
Dominic Luke, Reminders of Home, Joffe Books (1916; one family’s struggle to remain united in the face of loss and heartbreak)
Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread, Doubleday (novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village)
Robert Macomber, Full Naval Honors, Naval Institute Press (final volume finds the admiral dealing with European and Japanese spies and assassins in the Pacific while on a “diplomatic” recon mission ahead of the Great White Fleet’s epic 1907-09 voyage around the world)
K. J. Maitland, Rivers of Treason, Headline Review (1607; from the stark Yorkshire landscape to the underbelly of Jacobean London, Daniel Pursglove’s new mission sees him fall prey to a ruthless copycat killer in book three in series)
Andreï Makine (trans. Geoffrey Strachan), My Armenian Friend, Arcade (an indelible portrait of friendship, a coming-of-age tale, and a dive into the memory of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire)
Marco Malvaldi (trans. Howard Curtis), Foul Deeds & Fine Dying, MacLehose (a locked room mystery set in 1900)
Amy Maroney, The Queen’s Scribe, Artelan Press (1458, Cyprus; a story of courage, loyalty, and the sustaining power of love, brings a forgotten world to vivid life)
Laura Martin, Death of a Lady, Sapere (Regency murder mystery featuring Jane Austen as an amateur detective. Jane Austen Investigations, book 1))
Edward Marston, Death at the Terminus, Allison & Busby (Railway Detective Series, book #21, set in York 1865)
Maggie Mason, The Fortune Tellers, Sphere (new family wartime saga series set in Blackpool, 1918)
Anna Mazzola, The House of Whispers, Orion (Rome, 1938; outside the forces of Fascism are rising but in her new home, Eva fears that something else is at work, whispering in the walls)
C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny, Doubleday (revisits of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein that unfolds with a fresh, provocative, queer twist)
Claire McGlasson, The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, Faber and Faber (Blackpool, 1938; Margaret Finch has just begun work in a position that relies on her discretion and powers of observation, when she crosses paths with the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey, the subject of a national scandal)
Juliet E. McKenna, The Cleaving, Angry Robot (an Arthurian retelling that follows the tangled stories of four women: Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana, and Guinevere, as they fight to control their own destinies)
Susan Meissner, Only the Beautiful, Berkley (story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter. Set in California 1938 and Austria 1947)
Carolyn Miller, Dawn’s Untrodden Green, Kregel (an accident and a scandal lead Theo and Daniel to discover that their best-laid plans may not have been what God designed for them after all)
Akira Mizubayashi (trans. Alison Anderson), Fractured Soul, HarperVia (1938 — story of compassion that reminds us of the power of art and love to combat nationalistic fury, redress the loss of human dignity, and heal deep psychic wounds)
Susanna Moore, The Lost Wife, Knopf (novel set in the mid 1800s about a devastating Native American revolt, and a woman caught in the middle of the conflict)
Cindy Morgan, The Year of Jubilee, Tyndale (coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the turbulent South in the early 1960s)
Robbie Morrison, Cast a Cold Eye, Macmillan (dark historical crime novel set in Glasgow, 1933)
Kate Morton, Homecoming, Mariner/Mantle (saga with a mystery at its heart tracing a shocking crime whose effects echo across continents and generation)
Donald S. Murray, The Call of the Cormorant, Saraband (an outlandish tale of island claustrophobia, of those who leave and those who stay behind, and the many dangers of delusions, deceit, and false identities)
Gosia Nealon, The Polish Daughter, Bookouture (WWII – a girl searches for her father by joining the resistance, but when she’s trapped in the ghetto, her childhood sweetheart saves her life)
David O’Donnell, The Berlin Gambit, Polygon (Police Chief Investigator Rolf Schneider exposes a web of corruption and secrecy involving the highest-ranking figures in the Reich)
Emma Orchard, The Second Lady Silverwood, Allison & Busby (a Regency Romance set in 1814)
Henry Oster and Dexter Ford, The Stable Boy of Auschwitz, Grand Central (in the darkest moment of history, one child found the courage and strength to survive the unimaginable. This is Henry’s true story)
Sharon Dodua Otoo, Ada’s Realm, MacLehose (debut novel paints a picture of femininity, resilience and struggle)
Catherine Palmer, The Bachelor’s Bargain, Tyndale (an amusing Regency marriage of convenience story)
Philip Paris, The Last Witch of Scotland, Black & White (1727; a story of love, loyalty and sacrifice, inspired by the true story of the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Britain)
Phillip Parotti, Through Bitter Seas, Casemate (World War II naval action adventure in the Mediterranean Sea)
Sarah Penner, The London Séance Society, Legend/Park Row (gothic whodunit set in Victorian London, where a female medium and her understudy join forces with a league of male spiritualists to solve a high-profile murder)
Stef Penney, The Beasts of Paris, Pegasus/Quercus (novel of love and survival set during the Siege of Paris in 1870)
Anne Perry, The Fourth Enemy, Ballantine (Daniel Pitt is under pressure to prosecute a beloved philanthropist whose good deeds may hide dark and dangerous secrets)
Angela Petch, The Girl Who Escaped, Bookouture (WWII story of a family who escape from an internment camp helped by a friend who may not be who he seems)
Victoria Purman, A Woman’s Work, HQ Fiction (the lucrative prize of the 1956 Australian Women’s Weekly cookery competition offers two women the possibility of a new kind of future)
Roberta Rich, The Jazz Club Spy, Gallery (follows a Jewish woman attempting to bring justice to her family on the eve of World War II)
Jennifer Robson, Coronation Year, William Morrow (the lives of three very different residents of London’s historic Blue Lion hotel converge in a potentially explosive climax on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation)
Renée Rosen, Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl, Berkley (a novel beginning in 1938, about Estée Lauder, as she’s about to take the world by storm)
Rebecca Rosenberg, Madam Pommery, Lion Heart (Champagne, France, 1860. Madame Pommery, an etiquette teacher and orphanage founder, loses her husband and is forced to support her family by making champagne)
Phoebe Rowe, Swan Light, Lake Union (weaves together the stories of two people separated by a century but connected by family, purpose, and one extraordinary lighthouse. Dual timeline set in 1913 & 2014)
Rosemary Rowe, The Rewards of Treachery, Severn House (a stolen valuable is the beginning of a trail of strange events Junio has to uncover in this mystery set in 2nd century Britain)
Laura Rupper, The Sergeant and the Girl Next Door, Covenant (post WWII inspirational romance)
Sheldon Russell, Listen, Cynren Press (educated Liam takes a low-paying job with the Federal Writers’ Project, assigned to collect stories of rural life, then he meets a woman who upends all his carefully laid plans)
Kim Vogel Sawyer, The Tapestry of Grace, Waterbrook (romance in which a group of Kansas women start a benevolent society devoted to aiding widows and orphans)
Bryan Thomas Schmidt (edit.) Henry Herz (edit.), The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie, Blackstone (anthology of fictional short stories that imagine dark events in the life of Marie Curie as a teenager)
Katherine A. Sherbrooke, The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly, Pegasus (a runway model in 1940s Hollywood makes a split-second decision and triggers a cascade of secrets that threaten to upend her daughter’s life decades later)
Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets, Anchor (dual timeline novel about a professor who uncovers a secret about a famous American composer—that his music was stolen from a young Black composer in 1920s Manhattan)
Katy Simpson Smith, The Weeds, FSG (two women, connected across time, edge toward transgression in pursuit of their desires. Present day and 1855)
Angie Spoto, The Grief Nurse, Sandstone (novel of a grief nurse, kept by the wealthy Aster family to ensure they’re never troubled by negative emotions)
Sally Tarpey, The Country Girl, Joffe Books (First World War story of hardship and hope, beginning in 1912)
Craig Thomas, Winter Hawk, Canelo (thriller set against a background of Cold War tension and nuclear threat)
Will Thomas, Heart of the Nile, Minotaur (London, 1893 – private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn have to unravel a mystery involving a mummy, a giant ruby and a murder)
Victoria Thompson, Murder on Bedford Street, Berkley (book 26 in the Gaslight Mystery series set in Victorian era New York)
Annabelle Thorpe, The Enemy of Love, Aria (WWII drama set in Mussolini’s Italy in 1943)
Mark W. Tiedemann, Granger’s Crossing, Blank Slate (after the Battle of St. Louis in 1780, Ulysses Granger tracks his missing friend to a homestead where a mystery unfolds surrounding the Spaniard who owns the property)
Liz Trenow, The Secret Sister, Bookouture (story of a sister’s sacrifice which shines a light on the forgotten heroes of World War Two)
Éric Vuillard (trans. Mark Polizzotti), An Honourable Exit, Picador/Other Press (an account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism; set in 1950)
Alexandra Walsh, The Forgotten Palace, Boldwood (three women divided by time but connected by the long-hidden secrets of the past. Dual timeline novel set in London, 1900 and present day)
Alan Warner, Nothing Left to Fear from Hell, Polygon (novel set in the aftermath of Culloden with the escape of Charles Edward Stuart)
Sharon Sochil Washington, The Blue is Where God Lives, The Overlook Press (dual timeline work of Afro-magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty & witnesses the beauty and power in survival)
Martha Waters, To Swoon and to Spar, Atria (story about a viscount and his irascible new wife who hopes to chase her husband from their shared home so that she can finally get some peace and quiet)
Daisy Waugh, Old School Ties, Piatkus (next in the Tode Hall series: a witty tale of toffs and terror)
Betty Webb, Lost in Paris, Poisoned Pen Press (explores a young woman’s journey to redeem herself from the heartaches of her past)
Marian O’Shea Wernicke, Out of Ireland, She Writes (coming-of-age story of a brother and sister in an Ireland still under the harsh rule of the British)
Wiz Wharton, Ghost Girl, Banana, HarperVia (between 1966 and 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother’s homeland)
Jen Wheeler, The Light on Farallon Island, Lake Union (tale about the dangers a nineteenth-century woman encounters as she flees a tragic past to the menacing Farallon Islands)
Iona Whishaw, To Track a Traitor, Touchwood (with events spanning both world wars, the tenth in series is a transatlantic tale of sibling rivalry, infidelity, and espionage)
Patricia Wilson, An Island Promise, Zaffre (WWII dual timeline novel set during the Nazi occupation of Athens and in Liverpool 2023)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Vanishing at Castle Moreau, Bethany House (in 1865, orphaned Daisy Francois takes a housemaid position and finds that the eccentric Gothic authoress inside hides more than the harrowing tales in her novels)
Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet, Amazon Crossing (a daughter discovers the dramatic history that shaped her mother’s secret life)
Larry Zuckerman, Lonely Are the Brave, Cynren Press (in 1919, a war hero upends his small town by turning at-home father and trading wartime secrets with the wife of his former lieutenant)
May 2023
Mesu Andrews, In Feast or Famine, Waterbrook (inspirational novel in which the daughter of ancient Egypt’s high priest plays a pivotal role in Joseph’s biblical narrative)
Viola Ardone (trans. Clarissa Botsford), The Unbreakable Heart of Olivia Denaro, HarperVia (set in 1960s Sicily and based on a true story, of how a young Sicilian girl defied centuries old tradition to win the right to control her own life)
Kelley Armstrong, The Poisoner’s Ring, Minotaur (time slip novel in which a modern-day homicide detective is working as an undertaker’s assistant in Victorian Scotland. Second in Rip Through Time series)
Steve Arnick, You Shall See the Beautiful Things, Acre Books (literary novel about 3 men in a fishing village in 1889, who secretly launch an unorthodox fishing vessel, departing from a long tradition of massive boats and large crews)
Jenny Ashcroft, The Officer and the Spy, HQ Fiction (WWII tale of secrets, love, loyalty, family and a love letter to Crete)
Lucy Atkins, Windmill Hill, Quercus (witty novel set in the 1970s, in a Sussex windmill)
D. R. Bailey, Dawn of Hope, Sapere (a war in the skies adventure set in England, 1940)
Jo Baker, The Midnight News, Knopf (novel of one young woman’s unraveling during the Blitz—a story of World War II intrigue, love, and danger)
John Banville, The Lock-Up, Hanover Square (crime novel set in 1950s Dublin brings two detectives together to solve a globe-spanning mystery)
Joanna Barker, A Heart Worth Stealing, Shadow Mountain (Regency Romance set in Sowerby, England, 1802, between a magistrate’s daughter and a former Bow Street officer)
Amy Barry, Marrying off Morgan Mcbride, Berkley (humorous historical romance)
Celia Bell, The Disenchantment, Pantheon (17th-century Paris — follows a love affair between two noblewomen who wish to free themselves from their repressive society)
Ann Bennett, The Forgotten Children, Bookouture (dual timeline story of courage, hope and secrets, set in 1939 and 1990)
Anne Berest (trans. Tina Kover), The Postcard, Europa Editions (a woman embarks on a journey to uncover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath)
H. W. “Buzz” Bernard, Down a Dark Road, Severn River (fourth book in the When Heroes Flew series)
Moniquill Blackgoose, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Random House (historical fantasy set in an alternate 1840s New England where a young Indigenous woman enters a colonizer-run dragon academy–and finds herself at odds with the “approved” way of doing things)
Samara Breger, A Long Time Dead, Bywater Books (1830 — Victorian romance, drenched in blood and drama, about the lengths two women will go to secure a love that cannot die)
Marcus Brotherton, Tosca Lee, The Long March Home, Revell (set in WWII, story follows three friends from Mobile, Alabama, as they struggle to survive the Bataan Death March)
Donnaldson Brown, Because I Loved You, She Writes (dual timeline family story of love and secrets, set in 1972 and 1986)
Fiona Buckley, The Net of Steel, Severn House (April, 1590; series featuring Ursula Stannard, the queen’s half-sister and occasional secret agent)
Robyn Cadwallader, The Fire and the Rose, HarperCollins AU (novel about how language, words and books have the power to change and shape lives; set in 13th-century England)
Tara Calaby, House of Longing, Text (LGBTQ romance set in an unforgiving Melbourne of the 1890s)
Joy Callaway, All the Pretty Places, Harper Muse (examines the life-changing effects of the beauty of nature and how that splendor is restricted to the rich and privileged in the Gilded Age)
Melodie Campbell, The Merry Widow Murders, Cormorant (it’s the latter half of the Roaring Twenties and Lady Lucy Revelstoke finds a dead body in her stateroom aboard an ocean liner in 1928)
Jan Casey, The Letter Reader, Aria (in 1967 a woman posted, by the WRNS as a letter censor during the war is plagued by memories of what she read and sets out to track down the authors)
Crystal Caudill, Counterfeit Faith, Kregel (inspirational romance between a woman who’s lost her faith in mankind and a man who’s lost his faith in God)
Brinda Charry, The East Indian, Scribner (debut novel about the first native of the Indian subcontinent to arrive in Colonial America)
Alys Clare, The Cargo from Neira, Severn House (physician-sleuth Dr Gabriel Taverner has to connect the dots before time runs out in mystery set in 1605)
Georgina Clarke, The Dazzle of the Light, Verve Books (novel set in the 1920s, inspired by the notorious all-female crime syndicate who operated out of the slums of south London)
Genevieve Cogman, Scarlet, Tor / Ace (reinvention of the tale of The Scarlet Pimpernel with the addition of magic and mayhem)
Vivian Conroy, Mystery in Tuscany, One More Chapter (a chance meeting on the Orient Express with Italian heiress Catharina Lanetti leads to a party invitation for Atalanta Ashford. Book five in series)
Emily Critchley, One Puzzling Afternoon, Sourcebooks/Zaffre (dual timeline mystery set in 1941 and 2018 England)
Polly Crosby, Vita and the Birds, HQ (dual timeline mystery set in 1938 and 1997)
Edward Cuddy, 1777, The Year of Destiny, Fireship (a novel of those who participated in the victories of the continental army and patriot militia in Saratoga, New York, September and October 1777)
Katie Daysh, Leeward, Canelo (tale of naval warfare, political intrigue and a love between two men set in 1798)
Helena Dixon, Murder at the Beauty Pageant, Bookouture (A Miss Underhay Mystery book 12, set in the 1930s))
Hannah Dolby, No Life for a Lady, Head of Zeus (in 1896, Violet does not want to marry. She wants to make her own way in the world and find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier)
Anton Du Beke, The Ballroom Blitz, Orion (Buckingham mystery series set in 1930s London at a glamorous Mayfair hotel)
Lesley Eames, Land Girls at the Wartime Bookshop, Bantam (story of three unlikely friends finding solace in books during the turbulence of WWII. Book two)
Debra Magpie Earling, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, Milkweed Editions (biographical fiction recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history)
Emily J. Edwards, Viviana Valentine Goes Up the River, Crooked Lane (murder mystery set in the gritty, noir world of 1950s New York City)
Martin Edwards, Sepulchre Street, Head of Zeus — an Aries book (Rachel Savernake faces her most puzzling murder yet in this gothic mystery set in 1930s London)
Jessica Ellicott, Murder on the Home Front, Severn House (series featuring WPC Billie Harkness, a pioneering female police officer in WWII Britain)
Liz Fenwick, The Secret Shore, HQ (WWII story tale of intrigue and romance, set in Cornwall)
Fiona Ford, Hope for the Good Time Girls, Embla Books (wartime saga about the power of love and friendship)
Mario Fortunato (trans. Julia Macgibbon), South, Other Press (through the loves and losses of a middle-class family from Calabria, saga retraces the history of twentieth-century Italy)
Jean Fullerton, A Stepney Girl’s Secret, Atlantic Books (saga fiction charting the loves, hopes and heartaches of three women who move into a rectory in Stepney, East London during WW2)
Ann H. Gabhart, In the Shadow of the River, Revell (in 1881, Jacci Reed is an actress aboard the Kingston Floating Palace when someone tries to kill her)
Bruce Geddes, Chasing the Black Eagle, Dundurn (spy thriller set against a backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia)
Matthew Gibson, Mr Stoker and the Vampires of the Lyceum, The Book Guild (mystery thriller set in Victorian London)
C. P. Giuliani, Death in Rheims, Sapere (espionage thriller set in France, 1585, with Tom Walsingham, cousin to Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis. Book 3)
Chris Glatte, The Scars of Battle, Severn River (the third book in A Time to Serve series is WWII historical fiction that brings the Pacific Theatre to life)
Tim Glister, A Game of Deceit, Oneworld (a Richard Knox Cold War spy thriller)
Alison Goodman, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, Berkley (a high society amateur detective at the heart of Regency London uses her wits and invisibility as an ‘old maid’ to protect other women)
J. Lawrence Graham, Charlotte’s War, Greenleaf (follows one American woman as she grieves and triumphs through the realities of three wars that threaten the men she loves)
Claudia Gray, The Late Mrs. Willoughby, Vintage (sequel to The Murder of Mr. Wickham sees Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney reunited with another mystery to solve)
Stephen Greco, Such Good Friends, John Scognamiglio (recreation of the tumultuous friendship between Truman Capote and his most elegant yet unconventional swan: Her Serene Royal Highness Lee Radziwell)
Kate Griffin, Fyneshade, Viper (historical gothic novel in house full of secrets where the young governess finds herself drawn to the son and heir, despite the warnings of the housekeeper that he is a danger to everyone)
M. B. Guel, They Ain’t Proper, Bella Books (adventure romance set in 1880s Wild West)
Cole Haddon, Psalms for the End of the World, Headline (1962 –finding herself on the run across America’s Southwest, the discoveries awaiting physics student, Gracie, will undermine everything she knows about the universe)
Jasmin Iolani Hakes, Hula, HarperVia (told in part by the tribal We, narrative connects Hawaii’s tortured history to its fractured present through the story of the Naupaka family)
Aaron Hamburger, Hotel Cuba, Harper Perennial (novel about two sheltered Russian Jewish sisters, desperate to get to America to make a new life, who find themselves trapped in the sultry, hedonistic world of 1920s Havana)
Tom Hanks, illus. R. Sikoryak, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, Knopf (dual timeline graphic novel set in 1947 and 1970, capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II)
JB Harris, The Immigrant’s Wife, Milford House (a story of love and perseverance set when consumption ravaged America)
Sammy Harkham, Blood of the Virgin, Pantheon Graphic (conjures up the grindhouse movie-making scene in 1970s Los Angeles and tracks a young man’s flailing attempts to build a family and a career)
J. C. Harvey, The Dead Men, Allen & Unwin (sequel to The Silver Wolf – picks up Jack Fiskardo’s story as he returns to Germany in 1630 with the invading Swedish army)
JJA Harwood, The Thorns Remain, Magpie (historical fantasy set in 1919 that fuses fairy tale bargains, Highland charm and dark romance)
Sarah Hawkswood, Too Good to Hang, Allison & Busby (Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll murder mystery in 12th-century Worcester)
Amy Hill Hearth, Silent Came the Monster, Blackstone (the story of the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks)
Patti Callahan Henry, The Secret Book of Flora Lea, Atria (when a woman stumbles across a mysterious children’s book, long-held secrets about her missing sister and World War II are revealed)
Adriana Herrera, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal, Canary Street (Victorian romance series takes us to Paris…and into a love affair between a visiting artist and an older, pleasure-seeking duchess)
James T. Hogg, Defense, All Night Books (Girl With a Knife, Book Two — accused by the townspeople of witchcraft and incestual rape, a father is caught up in a trial reminiscent of the Salem Witch Trials)
Catherine Hokin, Her Last Promise, Bookouture (a WWII novel of redemption and the endurance of the human spirit)
Mike Hollow, The Campden Murder, Allison & Busby (DI John Jago sets off on a murky trail of deceit, corruption and murder in 1940)
M.J. Hollows, The German Messenger, HQ Digital (WWII historical novel about an English woman who is forced to spy for the Nazis after her son is kidnapped)
James Hynes, Sparrow, HarperCollins (recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity)
Buzzy Jackson, The Girl with the Red Hair (UK) / To Die Beautiful (US), Michael Joseph / Dutton (based on the unsung true story of Hannie Schaft, a young-woman-turned-Dutch-Resistance-fighter in Nazi-occupied Netherlands)
Eloisa James, Not That Duke, Avon (new enemies-to-lovers Regency romance)
Nicole Jarvis, A Portrait In Shadow, Titan Books (a novel of art and magic in 17th-century Florence as Artemisia Gentileschi fights to make her mark as a painter)
Rebecca F. John, Vulcana, Honno Welsh Women’s Press (1892, Kate Williams leaves Wales for London, where strong man William reinvents Kate as ‘Vulcana – Most Beautiful Woman on Earth’, and himself as ‘Atlas’)
Neil Jordan, The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small, Pegasus/Apollo (reimagining of an extraordinary friendship spanning the revolutionary tumult of the eighteenth century)
Barbara Josselsohn, Secrets of the Italian Island, Bookouture (Italy, 1943; a castle once full of love and laughter is left in ruins by the Nazis, as three sisters are torn apart by one terrible mistake)
Ben Kane, Napoleon’s Spy, Orion (Matthew enlists in Napoleon’s army, is coerced into turning spy for the British Government and witnesses the ultimate destruction of Napoleon’s army in the harsh Russian winter)
Abraham Kawa, The Red Death, Sapere (2nd in the DI Chris Bates and Helen Briant murder mysteries set in Rome, 1970)
Bruce Kemp, Ladies of the Press, Tidewater Press (Mel McLeod is an aspiring journalist determined to make it to the front during the Great War, despite the odds of acceptance as a woman)
Natalie Kleinman, The Wishing Well, Sapere (a historical romantic tale set in Regency England, with a spirited and courageous heroine at its heart)
Matthew Kneale, The Cameraman, Atlantic Fiction (road trip through a rapidly changing Europe in the 1930s)
Andrew Krivak, Like the Appearance of Horses, Bellevue Literary Press (last in Dardan Trilogy, after The Sojourn and The Signal Flame – story about borders drawn within families and around nations, and redrawn by ethnicity, prejudice, and war)
Samantha Larsen, A Novel Disguise, Crooked Lane (1784– when Miss Tiffany Woodall assumes the identity of her half-brother after his death, she realizes she isn’t the only one with a secret to hide)
Edward J. Leahy, Enemies of All, Black Rose (a thriller about the investigation of a series of anti-Semitic assaults in the early 1940s)
Judy LeBlanc, The Broken Heart of Winter, Caitlin Press (three generations of Acadian women grapple with the impacts of dislocation, exile, and violence)
Dana LeCheminant, What Dreams May Come, Covenant (a romance forms between a woman and her supposedly betrothed’s older brother)
Lee Geum-yi (trans. An Seonjae), Can’t I Go Instead, Forge (follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century)
Amanda Lees, The Midwife’s Child, Bookouture (Auschwitz, January 1945: after a death march from the concentration camp, Maggie learns Dr Mengele has escaped – and she may be the only person strong enough to track him down)
Robin Lloyd, Hidden Cargo, Lyons Press (five months after the end of the Civil War, Acting Navy Lieutenant Everett Townsend finds himself facing a mystery that takes him from the backwaters of Florida to the interior of Cuba)
Mary Logue, The Big Sugar, Univ. of Minnesota Press (a grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881)
Elizabeth Loudon, A Stranger in Baghdad, Hoopoe (intergenerational drama set against a background of political tension and intrigue)
Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, M.J. Rose, The Friday Night Club, Berkley (novel of artist Hilma af Klint and her creative circle; dual timeline narrative set in early 1900s and present day)
Susie Luo, Paper Names, Hanover Square (story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effect of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference)
Sally Magnusson, Music in the Dark, John Murray (novel looks at love at an older age – its cost and its beauties – whilst shedding light on female resistance during the Highland Clearances)
Kirsty Manning, The Paris Mystery, Vintage (reporter Charlotte “Charlie” James arrives in Paris in 1938 eager to make a fresh start, little knowing the trouble that awaits her)
Tim Mason, The Nightingale Affair, Algonquin (Inspector Charles Field hunts a serial killer targeting Florence Nightingale’s nurses in Crimea)
Sujata Massey, The Mistress of Bhatia House, Soho Crime (Bombay’s only female solicitor, Perveen Mistry, grapples with class divisions, sexism, and complex family dynamics as she seeks justice for a mistreated young woman)
Constance Hays Matsumoto & Kent Matsumoto, Of White Ashes, Loyola College/Apprentice House (the bombing of Pearl Harbor propels America into WWII and two Japanese Americans into chaos)
Beryl Matthews, An Onerous Duty, Allison & Busby (1802; romance in which Harry uncovers a web of treachery in which it seems that someone is supplying secrets to Napoleon, and that his brother’s death was no accident)
Catherine McCullagh, Resistance and Revenge, Big Sky Publishing (the story of a village in the grip of occupation and of those who have the courage to fight back)
Stephenia H. McGee, The Swindler’s Daughter, Revell (when Lillian tries to take possession of her inheritance, she finds the dilapidated structure already occupied by another woman who claims it was promised to her son)
Carol McGrath, The Stolen Crown, Headline Accent (when Henry I dies, Princess Matilda, de facto heir to the throne, must race across England, evading capture until she can demand the crown)
Gabrielle Meyer, In This Moment, Bethany House (the daughter of an influential senator at the outbreak of the Civil War inherits a gift that allows her to live three separate lives in 1861, 1941, and 2001)
Michael Moorcock, The Whispering Swarm, Tor (in post-war London young writer Moorcock’s chance encounter with a monk leads to a secret hidden world inhabited by great heroes of both history and fiction)
Rachael Moorthy, River Meets the Sea, House of Anansi Press (traces the dual timelines of a white-passing Indigenous foster child in 1940s Vancouver and a teenage immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo in the 1970s)
Eliza Morton, The Orphans from Liverpool Lane, Macmillan (saga set in Liverpool in the 1940s)
Ginny Kubitz Moyer, The Seeing Garden, She Writes (1910; explores what it takes for a woman to discern her most authentic life)
Nathan Munday, Whaling, Seren (in 1790 Wales, as two cultures rub against each other, and distrust grows driven by the local preacher, this story explores the boundary between faith and superstition)
Amita Murray, Unladylike Lessons in Love, Avon (a journey from the pleasure gardens of society to the dangerous streets of 19th century London)
Cynthia G. Neale, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, Bedazzled Ink (a fact-based story which spans two wars and makes visible some unwritten truths of early American history)
Kent Michael Nerburn, Lone Dog Road, Polished Stone (tale of compassion and redemption played out against the haunting backdrop of the American high plains during the drought-stricken summer of 1950)
Sheila Newberry, The Nursemaid’s Journey, Zaffre (1906; Molly Sparkes is leaving her convent school to accompany Mrs. Alexa Nagel on a tour of Australia)
Shelley Noble, The Tiffany Girls, Wm. Morrow (novel about the real-life “Tiffany Girls,” a largely unknown group of women artists behind Tiffany’s most legendary glassworks)
Billy O’Callaghan, The Paper Man, David R. Godine (interwar romance set between 1930s Austria and 1980s Ireland, based on a real-life unsolved mystery)
Jacqueline O’Mahony, Sing, Wild Bird, Sing, Lake Union (a courageous woman journeys from nineteenth-century Ireland to the American West))
Janika Oza, A History of Burning, McClelland & Stewart/Grand Central/Chatto & Windus (novel spanning India, Uganda, England, and Canada, about how one act of survival reverberates across four generations of a family and their search for a place of their own)
Sigrún Pálsdóttir (trans. Lytton Smith), Embroidery, Open Letter (tragicomic tale about the preservation of cultural treasure set at the turn of the twentieth century)
Helen Parusel, A Mother’s War, Boldwood (1940s Norway; when Laila finds out she is pregnant, she turns to a home for women which promises to care for her, but finds herself caught in a system of evil beyond anything she thought possible)
Susan Paterson, Where Light Meets Water, S&S AU (novel of love and art, and one man’s journey to find his place in the world, traversing 19th-century London, Melbourne and New Zealand’s rugged South Island)
Candice Sue Patterson, The Keys to Gramercy Park, Barbour (a new series of historical stories of romance and adventure)
Crystal Smith Paul, Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?, Henry Holt (multigenerational saga that traverses the Jim Crow South, the glamour of old Hollywood, and the seductive draw of present-day showbiz)
Jonathan Payne, Citizen Orlov, CamCat (an unassuming fishmonger and upstanding citizen is catapulted into a web of espionage and political maneuvering at the end of the Great War)
AJ Pearce, Mrs Porter Calling, Picador/Scribner (Emmy Lake is the agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine, relied upon by readers across the country as they face the challenges of life on the Home Front during WWII)
Tom Piazza, The Auburn Conference, Univ. of Iowa Press (in 1883, an idealist professor convinces Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and others to participate in a public discussion about the future of the nation)
Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, The Heart’s Choice, Bethany House (romantic adventure between a female court reporter in Montana and a librarian)
MJ Porter, Eagle of Mercia, Boldwood (Tamworth AD 831; a mission in the heart of Wessex is beset with danger)
Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls, Mariner (indigenous novel spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day)
Amanda Quick, The Bride Wore White, Piatkus/Berkley (returns to the 1930’s glamour of Burning Cove, California, where everyone has a secret they would kill to hide)
Julia Quinn, Shonda Rhimes, Queen Charlotte, Avon (1761; romance novel about the love affair between German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the young George III)
Matthew Richardson, The Scarlet Papers, Michael Joseph (multi timeline novel set in Vienna, 1946; in Moscow, 1964 and in Riga in 1992)
Anthony Riches, Storm of War: Empire XIII, Hodder & Stoughton (with the emperor Pertinax’s murder, Marcus and his protector Scaurus have escaped Rome, seeking sanctuary for their familia in the East)
David L. Robbins, The Shortest Road, Wicked Son (novel of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, depicting with human scope and historical scale the struggle for Israel’s existence. The Promised wars, book two)
Toby Roberts, The Beast in the Labyrinth, The Book Guild (historical thriller set during the time of Hannibal’s war with Rome, following the life of Dion of Syracuse)
Terence Robertson, Full Speed to Heaven, Sapere (naval thriller set in WWII, inspired by true events)
Mandy Robotham, The War Pianist, Avon (set between London in the midst of the Blitz and a war-torn Amsterdam, novel shines a light on the darkest corners of WWII)
Linda Rosen, The Emerald Necklace, Black Rose (a novel about friendship and trust set in the late 1960s)
Jane Loeb Rubin, In the Hands of Women, Level Best (centered on the life of Hannah Isaacson, an obstetrician in training who was determined to improve medical safety for women in a time when women had few choices)
L. V. Russell, The Quiet Stillness of Empty Houses, Quill and Crow (Theodora takes the job as governess to young Ottoline Thorne, and travels far north to Broken Oak Manor, where she finds a house filled with secrets)
Jennifer Saint, Atalanta, Flatiron (a reimagining of the myth of Atalanta, a fierce huntress raised by bears and the only woman in the world’s most famous band of heroes, the Argonauts)
Carly Schabowski, The Airman’s Girl, Bookouture (WWII romance wherein a German pilot crash-lands his plane, claiming to be trying to defect from the Nazis)
Siôn Scott-Wilson, What We Leave Behind, Deixis Press (tale of redemption and the power of love set against the backdrop of an 18th-century crime-ridden London)
Rani Selvarajah, Savage Beasts, One More Chapter (retelling of the Greek myth of Medea)
Jeff Shaara, The Old Lion, St. Martin’s (novel tracing the life of one of the consequential presidents, Theodore Roosevelt)
A. J. Sidransky, Incident at San Miguel, Black Opal Books (Havana, Cuba. December 1958. Two brothers find themselves on opposite sides of Castro’s revolution)
J. David Simons, An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful, Saraband (in the 1950s, a British writer pens a novel questioning the ethics of the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
Douglas Skelton, A Thief’s Justice, Canelo (crime thriller set in London, 1716)
Alexander McCall Smith, The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even, Pantheon (short story collection: — spy stories and tales of revenge, highlight the gentler side of espionage and retribution)
Minerva Spencer, The Dueling Duchess, Kensington (Regency era romance – Wicked Women of Whitechapel series, book #2)
Domenico Starnone (trans. Oonagh Stransky), The House on Via Gemito, Europa Editions (told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that becomes a vivid character in a novel steeped in Neapolitan lore)
Logan Steiner, After Anne, William Morrow (an unexpected portrait of Lucy Maud Montgomery, creator of one of literature’s most prized heroines, whose personal demons were at odds with her most enduring legacy)
Harper St. George, The Duchess Takes a Husband, Berkley (a scandalous arrangement between a London rogue and an American duchess leads to lavish stakes)
Karen Swan, The Stolen Hours, Pan Macmillan (an engaged woman falls in love with another man. Romance set on St. Kilda, 1929)
Deborah Swift, The Silk Code, HQ Digital (based on the true story of ‘Englandspiel’, one woman must race against the clock to uncover a traitor)
Lydia Travers, Murder in the Scottish Hills, Bookouture (historical whodunnit set in Edinburgh, 1911)
Bryn Turnbull, The Paris Deception, Mira/Headline Review (novel about two brave women who risk their lives rescuing looted masterpieces of modern art from the Nazis and replacing them with forgeries)
Kerri Turner, The Magpie’s Sister, Bonnier Echo (Sydney, Australia, 1911; novel about a traveling circus full of secrets and lies)
Luis Alberto Urrea, Good Night, Irene, Little, Brown (novel delivers an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II)
Juan Gabriel Vasquez (trans. Anne McLean), Retrospective, Riverhead (family saga stretching from the Spanish Civil War to exile to Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Colombia)
Ana Veciana-Suarez, Dulcinea, Blackstone (the mistress, muse, and lifelong love of Miguel de Cervantes de Cortinas, paints her story against the rich backdrop of Spain)
Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water, Grove (spanning 1900 to 1977, novel set in India follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning)
Bridget Walsh, The Tumbling Girl, Gallic (1876, Victorian London. Murder mystery in which a friend of Minnie Ward, the feisty scriptwriter for the Variety Palace Music Hall, is found murdered)
Chrissie Walsh, Hard Times on Weaver Street, Boldwood (saga about a close-knit community in Liverpool during the Great Depression)
Susan Wands, Magician and Fool, SparkPress (a magical adventure in Victorian London in which two actors of the Lyceum are used as muses to create a powerful new tarot deck with living incarnations of magician and fool)
Ashley Weaver, Playing it Safe, Minotaur (third in the Electra McDonnell series—World War II mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and wit)
Alison Weir, Henry VIII: The Heart & the Crown (UK) / The King’s Pleasure (US), Headline Review/Ballantine (reveals the story of a man who was by turns brilliant, romantic, and ruthless: the king who changed England forever)
Mathew West, The Water Child, HarperCollins (supernatural novel set in Portugal, 1754)
Karen Witemeyer, Fairest of Heart, Bethany House (a romantic Western take on the classic Snow White fairy tale)
Olga Wojtas, Miss Blain’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters, Felony & Mayhem/Saraband (2022) (a time-travelling librarian heads to 11th-century Scotland to cozy up to Macbeth and Lady M & prevent them from murdering Duncan)
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Glassworks, Bloomsbury (generational saga about the Novaks, a family connected across time by their work in glass and by a single fragile crystalline bee)
Marion Womack, On the Nature of Magic, Titan Books (spanning London’s occult seances to the Parisian catacombs, a Gothic supernatural mystery set in 1902)
Mary Wood, The Orphanage Girls Come Home, Pan (inspirational tales set in London, 1910 and Canada 1919)
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, JAJ, Douglas & McIntyre (visually brings to life the history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples & the early colonization by the Europeans of the northern West Coast)
June 2023
Anna Abney, The Messenger of Measham Hall, Duckworth (tale of espionage and intrigue in the years leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688)
Isabel Allende (trans. Frances Riddle), The Wind Knows My Name, Bloomsbury/Ballantine (intertwining past and present, novel tells the tale of two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home)
Aharon Appelfeld, Poland, A Green Land, Schocken (a Tel Aviv shopkeeper visits his parents’ Polish birthplace in an attempt to come to terms with their complex legacy)
Lucy Helen Barker, The Other Side of Mrs. Wood, Harper/Fourth Estate (witty historical debut about the fiery rivalry between two female mediums at the height of Victorian London’s obsession with Spiritualism)
Phil Batman, Our Ethel, The Book Guild (set in 1950s York, novel follows a young woman who is accused of the murder of her newborn baby, following his birth out of wedlock)
Misty M. Beller, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, Bethany House (combination of adventure, inspiring faith, and sweet romance set in 1837)
Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, The First Ladies, Berkley (about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune)
Freya Berry, The Birdcage Library, Headline Review (story of long-buried secrets and dark obsession)
Katharine Beutner, Killingly, Soho Crime (based on the unsolved real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in 1897)
Neil Blackmore, Radical Love, Hutchinson Heinemann (London, 1809; a queer love story about how desire can take us to the edge of madness and beyond)
Kelly Bowen, The Garden of Lost Secrets, Forever (two sisters discover the fairy tales written by their great-grandmother during WWII)
AnneMarie Brear, The Waterfront Lass, Boldwood (family saga set in Wakefield 1870 follows a working-class family and a man tired of the greed of his wealthy family)
Verity Bright, Murder in Manhattan, Bookouture (twisty Golden Age cozy mystery set in New York, with Lady Eleanor Swift)
Tracey D. Buchanan, Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace, History Through Fiction (1952, western Kentucky; with the help of the living and the dead, a woman discovers the power of forgiveness)
Jeremy P. Bushnell, Relentless, Melville House (supernatural detective thriller that introduces Artie Quick, a sales assistant at Filene’s in Boston, who moonlights as an amateur detective)
Susanna Calkins, Death Among the Ruins, Severn House (printer’s apprentice Lucy Campion investigates a puzzling death)
Rita Chang-Eppig, Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, Bloomsbury (adventure novel about a legendary Chinese pirate queen, her fight to save her fleet, and the dangerous price of power)
A.Y. Chao, Shanghai Immortal, Hodder & Stoughton (fantasy debut teeming with Chinese deities and demons cavorting in jazz age Shanghai)
Kerry Chaput, Chasing Eleanor, Black Rose Writing (a story of loss and survival set in America’s Great Depression, paying tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt)
Monica Chenault-Kilgore, Long Gone, Come Home, Graydon House (debut set in small-town Kentucky in the 1930s featuring a young Black woman working through love and loss while discovering the jazz scene in Cincinnati and Chicago)
Christos Chomenidis (trans. Patricia Felisa Barbeito), Niki, Other Press (a resilient Greek woman recounts her family’s story at the end of her life, marked by the great historical events of the twentieth century)
Joanne Clague, The Watchman’s Widow, Canelo (Victorian saga about a factory worker struggling to make ends meet and a middle-class newspaperman’s wife who devotes her time to lobbying for better working conditions)
Alan Robert Clark, The Redemption of Isobell Farrar, Fairlight Books (England, 1926; literary novel of a mother and son who are finally reunited, after the son was given up for adoption as a child)
Cassandra Clark, The Night of the Wolf, Severn House (the ruthless reign of Henry IV and the clerical tyranny of Archbishop Arundel keep Brother Chandler and his friends under constant threat)
Rosie Clarke, A Sister’s Destiny, Boldwood (standalone saga set during World War One)
Fliss Chester, Death in the Highlands, Bookouture (Scotland, 1926; there’s a dangerous killer lurking by the loch… and only Cressida Fawcett can track them down in book 3)
Rachel Cochran, The Gulf, Harper (literary thriller, set in the 1970s at the height of the women’s liberation movement, a closeted young woman attempts to solve her surrogate mother’s murder in a tight-knit, religious small town)
Daniel Colter, Brotherhood of Wolves, Sapere (a Templar thriller set in Jerusalem, 1177)
Mary Connealy, The Laws of Attraction, Bethany House (19th-century Wyoming Western adventure with a romance, witty banter, and a mystery)
Roma Cordon, Bewitching a Highlander, CamCat (a healer with witchery in her blood and a future Highlander clan chief risk everything for family and a forbidden romance)
Stephanie Cowell, The Boy in the Rain, Regal House (LGBTQ romance, set in England, 1903, between an art student and a young man running from a failed marriage)
Claudia Cravens, Lucky Red, The Dial Press (debut set in the American West about a scrappy orphan who finds friendship, romance, and her true calling as a revenge-seeking gunslinger)
Kathryn Crawley, Walking on Fire, She Writes (a romance involving choices between politics and love set in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1974)
Andrew Crumey, Beethoven’s Assassins, Dedalus (a meditation on art and science, and a primer on Beethoven’s life and work, novel weaves history, music, erudition and humour in an historical mystery)
Siobhan Daiko, The Girl From Venice, Boldwood (dual timeline novel of love, betrayal, and finding where you truly belong)
Fiona Davis, The Spectacular, Dutton (1950s Manhattan and Radio City Music Hall feature in this novel about a talented young Rockette and a mysterious bomber terrorizing New York City)
J. R. Dawson, The First Bright Thing, Tor (with the scars of WWI in the past, Rin and the Fantasticals enchant a Big Top packed full with audiences who need to see the impossible. LGBTQIA fantasy)
Emma Deards, Wild With All Regrets, She Writes (LGBTQ romance in which a man grieves over the loss of his lover in WWI and sees and hears his ghost)
Debra Magpie Earling, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, Milkweed Editions (novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea recentering her as the arbiter of her own history)
Sarah M. Eden, Fleur de Lis, Covenant (inspirational Regency romance)
Mary Anna Evans, The Traitor Beside Her, Poisoned Pen (story of a young woman who spends every day locked in a room of people working on the most sensitive secrets of WWII)
David Field, Pirates and Patriots, Sapere (first Tudor novel in The New World Nautical Saga Series – historical adventure featuring a young Francis Drake in 1554)
Julia Fine, Maddalena and the Dark, Flatiron (novel set in 18th-century Venice at a prestigious music school, about two girls drawn together by a dangerous wager)
Russell Franklin, The Broken Places, Phoenix (debut dual timeline novel inspired by the life of Hemingway’s favourite child)
Dianne Freeman, A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder, Kensington (Countess of Harleigh series)
Elizabeth Fremantle, Disobedient, Pegasus (based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi—the greatest female painter of the Renaissance—as she forges her own destiny in a world dominated by the will of men)
Lynne Francis, The Smuggler’s Secret, Piatkus (saga of love and betrayal with a time slip narrative between 1813 and 1913)
Anita Frank, The Good Liars, HQ (story of crime, deceit, and murder, set in the early 1920s)
V. V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night, Viking (exploration of a family fractured by civil war)
Hazel Gaynor, The Last Lifeboat, Berkley (inspired by a true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters)
Amanda Geard, The Moon Gate, Headline Review (story of love, war, and a mystery that ensnares three generations, sweeping the reader from London to Tasmania and to Ireland)
Craig Godfrey, Cap’n Jonathon Bourke, Black Rose Writing (adventure thriller on the high seas)
Paul Goldberg, The Dissident, FSG (Cold War mystery about a ragtag group of Jewish refuseniks in Moscow)
Nathan Go, Forgiving Imelda Marcos, FSG (a novel of alternative history that explores power and powerlessness, the nature of guilt, and what we owe to those we love)
Alex Gough, Caesar’s Soldier, Canelo (first of a new four book series brings to life the world of one of history’s greatest warriors)
Michelle Griep, Man of Shadow and Mist, Barbour (England, 1890; when Rosa sets out to prove the dark local gossip about a cursed resident is wrong, she discovers more questions than answers)
Kathleen Grissom, Crow Mary, Atria (saga inspired by the true story of Crow Mary—an indigenous woman torn between two worlds in 19th-century North America)
Alexis Hall, Mortal Follies, Orion/Gollancz (1814; a Regency queer romance)
Jeffrey Hantover, The Forenoon Bride, Severn House (novel set in Elizabethan England and the Ottoman Empire of the late 16th century)
Louise Hare, Harlem After Midnight, Berkley/HQ (1936 – leaving memories of murder and mayhem behind her, Lena Aldridge sets out to discover her father’s hidden past by exploring Harlem’s music scene)
Kristin Harmel, The Paris Daughter, Gallery/Welbeck (novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation)
Nicola Harrison, Hotel Laguna, St. Martin’s/History Through Fiction (post-war novel of love and hidden secrets on sun-kissed Laguna Beach)
Arlem Hawks, Along a Breton Shore, Shadow Mountain (a soldier must choose between his heart’s desire or his duty to country in a novel of friendship and survival. French Revolution era romance)
Kate Hewitt, The Last Orphan, Bookouture (sixth novel in the Amherst Island series, set after the Second World War in England)
Tim Hodkinson, Blood Eagle, Head of Zeus — an Aries book (Einar and the Wolf Coats undertake a dangerous mission to war-torn Northern France)
Nancy Horan, The House of Lincoln, Sourcebooks Landmark (in the Lincoln home Ana finds employment as household help, and a front-row seat to societal changes that will reshape an entire country)
Sue Hubbard, Flatlands, Pushkin Press ONE (tale of unlikely friendship and the beauty of nature, set in the wild wetland landscape of the English Fens during World War II)
Liz Hyder, The Illusions, Manilla Press (Bristol, 1896 — at a time of extraordinary change, two women must harness their talents to take control of their own destiny)
Conn Iggulden, Empire, Pegasus (a Golden Age novel of Pericles, the lion of Athens, on his journey to secure the fate of the Athenian empire)
Douglas Jackson, The Barbarian, Bantam (AD406; a story of treacheries, betrayals and bloody confrontations during the twilight years of Rome’s once all-powerful empire)
Tania James, Loot, Knopf (18th-century; a hero’s quest, a love story, a young artist coming of age, and an exuberant heist adventure that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years)
Luisa A. Jones, The Gilded Cage, Storm Publishing (romance in which Rosamund finds herself caught in a dangerous web of secrets and lies after her marriage to a cruel man in 1897)
Adele Jordan, The Traitor Queen, Sapere (fifth book in the Kit Scarlett Tudor Mysteries Series; a historical espionage adventure set in Elizabethan London)
Dietrich Kalteis, The Get, ECW Press (mid-’60s, Toronto; Lenny’s days are spent with his partner, Gabe, terrorizing the locals into paying protection on their shops and their lives)
M.R.C. Kasasian, The Horror of Haglin House, Canelo (new Victorian crime series featuring jilted thriller writer Lady Violet Thorn)
Sophie Keetch, Morgan is My Name, Magpie/Random House Canada (feminist retelling of the early life of Morgan le Fay, set against the chivalric backdrop of Arthurian legend)
Lee Kelly, Jennifer Thorne, The Antiquity Affair, Harper Muse (1907 — two estranged sisters must band together to solve a puzzle three millennia in the making)
Naomi Kelsey, The Burnings, HarperNorth (true story set in 16th-century Scotland and Denmark)
Christopher Kerr, Fission, The Book Guild (story of the dangerous race to obtain the ultimate deterrent, with hidden roots in Nazi Germany. Based on real events)
Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Flowers and Fatality, Crooked Lane (second mystery featuring botanist Saffron Everleigh)
Victoria Kielland (trans. Damion Searls), My Men, Astra House (based on the true story of Norwegian maid Belle Gunness, 19th-century America’s most notorious serial killer)
Stephen P. Kiernan, The Glass Château, William Morrow (a novel of hope, healing, and the redemptive power of art, set against the turmoil of post-World War II France and inspired by the life of Marc Chagall)
Eliza Knight, Starring Adele Astaire, William Morrow (the life of Adele Astaire, a spirited and talented woman who served up smiles and love both on and off the stage—with and without her famous brother Fred Astaire)
Lizzie Lane, Trouble for the Boat Girl, Boldwood (story of two girls, from opposite backgrounds and their search for freedom and happiness. Set in 1925 – The Midland Canals)
Antoine Laurain (trans. Louise Rogers Lalaurie, Megan Jones), An Astronomer in Love, Gallic Books (a story of two men, 250 years apart, who find themselves on separate quests to see the transit of Venus across the Sun. Set in 1760 & 2012)
Sue Lawrence, The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange, Contraband (based on the 18th-century story of a Scottish noblewoman whose own husband faked her death and exiled her to a remote island)
Debby Lee, Beneath a Peaceful Moon, Barbour (inspirational romance between two people damaged by war)
Venetia Hobson Lewis, Changing Woman, Univ. of Nebraska Press Bison Books (abducted amid the massacre of 150 Apache women, a young woman grieves for her lost heritage)
Liz Locke, Follow the Sun, Random House Canada (paints a portrait of the 1960s International Jet Set Era through the eyes of an aspiring singer-songwriter)
Harriet Alida Lye, Let It Destroy You, McClelland & Stewart (inspired by the true story of a dangerous atomic weapon and the man who designed it)
H.B. Lyle, Spy Hunter, Mobius/Hodder & Stoughton (Secret Service Agent Wiggins returns for a new adventure – and meets with his old mentor, Sherlock Holmes in a story of intrigue, danger and violence)
Christina Lynch, Sally Brady’s Italian Adventure, St. Martin’s (with war engulfing Europe, an effervescent young American party girl leaves behind her glamorous life in Rome and uses her wiles and humor to save her imperiled friends)
Sharon Maas, The Children of Berlin, Bookouture (Berlin 1933; WWII story in which two avowed best friends part ways as one joins the Hitler Youth and the other is from a Jewish family whose home is raided by the Nazis)
Siobhan MacGowan, The Graces, Welbeck Fiction (science and faith collide against tumultuous 20th-century Ireland)
A. J. MacKenzie, By Treason We Perish, Canelo (one lone detective faces down a twisted medieval web of spies and intrigue; England, October, 1338)
Shirley Mann, Bridget’s War, Zaffre (inspirational saga of a female police office during World War II)
Luna McNamara, Psyche and Eros, William Morrow (retelling of Greek mythology in which the god of desire is cursed to fall for a spirited young mortal woman. Historical fantasy)
Rachael Mead, The Art of Breaking Ice, Affirm Press (1960; reimagining of the life of Nel Law, the wife of expedition leader Phillip Law, of the icebreaker Magga Dan, reveals a ground-breaking artist searching for freedom in a man’s world)
Elizabeth Millane, Sixty Blades of Grass, Bloodhound Books (the bond between a Dutch teenager and her father is tested as the Resistance wages its secret war against the Nazis)
Fenella J. Miller, Wedding Bells at Goodwill House, Boldwood (at a time when the war is getting ever closer, love and happiness should be grabbed with both hands)
Miranda Miller, Angelica, Paintress of Minds, Barbican (biographical fiction of a woman who battled misogyny to become one of the greatest artists of the 18th-c Enlightenment Period)
Peta Miller, The Ship’s Midwife, HQ Fiction AU (a story of survival and love, inspired by true events. Set in 1850)
Simon Mockler, The Dark That Doesn’t Sleep, Pegasus (winter, 1967; a psychiatrist is tasked with unraveling a mystery at a top-secret military base)
Laura Morelli, The Last Masterpiece, William Morrow (in a race across Nazi-occupied Italy a German photographer and an American stenographer hunt for priceless masterpieces looted from the Florentine art collections)
Michael Moorcock, The Woods of Arcady, Tor (writer of genre fiction, Moorcock, find himself drinking with heroes of history & next day awakens aboard a sailing ship, kidnapped into another reality by a French highwayman and the four Musketeers)
Marty Neumeier, Octavo, Story Plant (historical mystery, a modern thriller, and a strong evocation of Leonardo’s times)
Terri Nixon, The Secrets of Pencarrack Moor, Piatkus (saga set against the dramatic Cornish coastline)
Anne O’Brien, A Marriage of Fortune, Orion (England, 1469; in the midst of civil war, three women must decide between love and duty)
Sheila O’Flanagan, The Woman on the Bridge, Headline (story of a young woman caught up in the drama of Ireland’s fight for freedom)
B.K. Oldre, Caravans in the Dark, She Writes (coming-of-age story set in WWII as Jana and her friends strive to find love in the world—even as they fight the Nazi occupation of their country)
Mat Osman, The Ghost Theatre, The Overlook Press/Bloomsbury (1601 — set amid Elizabethan London’s fabled underground children’s theatre scene, novel follows an androgynous, bird-worshipping fortune teller & the troupe’s enigmatic leader)
Ambrose Parry, Voices of the Dead, Canongate (Edinburgh, 1853; in a city still haunted by the crimes of Burke and Hare, Dr. Will Raven is tasked with heading off a scandal)
Anna Pitoniak, Our American Friend, No Exit (Cold War-era spy thriller crossed with a fictional biography of a First Lady)
Christine Purkis, Betrayal, Y Lolfa (novel based around a headstrong working-class girl in late 18th-century Wales)
Katherine Quarmby, The Low Road, Unbound (tale of two women, destitute, and in love in 19th century London)
Nilima Rao, A Disappearance in Fiji, Soho Crime (debut mystery featuring a young Indian police sergeant investigating a missing persons case in colonial Fiji)
Katherine Reay, A Shadow in Moscow, Harper Muse (two courageous female spies, one with MI6 and the other with CIA during the Cold War in Moscow, must work together before the KGB closes in and destroys them both)
Willa Reece, Wildwood Magic, Redhook (novel of magic and self-discovery when a woman escapes her abusive husband and finds shelter in a magical orchard. Set in Virginia, 1969)
Craig Russell, The Devil’s Playground, Constable/Doubleday (a dark thriller set in 1920s Hollywood about “the greatest horror movie ever made”, the curse, and the search for the single copy rumoured still to exist. Dual timeline)
Daniela Sacerdoti, The Bookseller’s Daughter, Bookouture (Francesca and Thiago uncover the secrets of the story of Helèna, a young girl who lived on Santa Caterina, and who risked everything to protect the island from the Nazi invasion)
Susan E. Sage, Dancing in the Ring, Black Rose Writing (follows two law school students for whom dancing is a passion which leads to courtship and marriage which is irrevocably changed by the Great Depression)
Riley Sager, The Only One Left, Dutton (dual timeline gothic thriller about a massacre in late 1920s and the home health aide assigned in 1983, help with end life care to the accused)
Brandon Sanderson, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Tor (fantasy in which an amnesiac wizard’s only hope of survival in medieval England lies in recovering his missing memories)
Katharine Schellman, The Last Drop of Hemlock, Minotaur (second in the Nightingale series invites readers to join protagonist Vivian Kelly in a nighttime world where anything goes, and any drink could be your last)
Julia Seales, A Most Agreeable Murder, Random House (when a wealthy bachelor drops dead at a ball, a young lady takes on the decidedly improper role of detective)
Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good, Avon (1950s romance about the son of a New York City newspaper mogul who falls for the local reporter who keeps saving his neck)
Lisa See, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, Scribner (inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China)
Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Square of Sevens, Mantle/Atria (the daughter of a Cornish fortune-teller travels with her father making a living predicting fortunes, but when he dies, her quest is to discover her past who her father’s enemies were)
Leïla Slimani (trans. Sam Taylor), Watch Us Dance, Faber & Faber (Morocco, 1968; a family deals with a new chapter of Moroccan history and learns how life can take wild and unexpected turns)
Dominic Smith, Return to Valetto, FSG (a journey into one family’s dark history, and an excavation of the ruins of history and our commitment to justice in a fragile world)
Cindy K. Sproles, This Is Where It Ends, Revell (now 94, Minerva is nearing the end of a lonely life, keeping a secret of hidden gold owned by her husband, but now a reporter has come calling)
Hwang Sok-yong (trans. Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae), Mater 2-10, Scribe UK (multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history)
Wilbur Smith, Nemesis, Zaffre (three strands of the Courtney family converge in a bloodthirsty bid for revenge. Story set in Paris, 1794 & Cape Town, 1806)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Legend of the Great Auk, Sapere (fifth Victorian crime thriller in the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series)
Laraine Stephens, A Deadly Game, Level Best (mystery which infiltrates the illegal gambling dens and social clubs of 1920s Melbourne)
Qin Sun Stubis, Once Our Lives, Guernica World Editions (four generations of Chinese women & how their lives were threatened by powerful and cruel ancient traditions and historic upheavals)
Amanda Taylor, An Uncharted Devotion, Covenant (romance in which a man, returning from war a very different man, and tortured by an unresolved past, must decide whether to save his friend or reclaim his lost love for his wife)
Thao Thai, Banyan Moon, Mariner (from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, novel tells a story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance)
Julia Bryan Thomas, The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club, Sourcebooks Landmark (Boston, 1954. Alice Campbell transforms a derelict building into a bookshop, on a mission to help other women reconsider their traditional roles)
Gail Tsukiyama, The Brightest Star, HarperVia (based on the life of the actress Anna May Wong—the first and only Asian American woman to gain movie stardom in the early days of Hollywood)
Lisa Tuttle, The Missing Mummies, Jo Fletcher (Jesperson and Lane murder mystery set in 1890 Victorian London)
Linda Ulleseit, The River Remembers, She Writes (1835; three women from different cultural backgrounds must find a way to direct their own future and leave a legacy for their children)
Itamar Vieira Júnior, (trans. Johnny Lorenz), Crooked Plow, Verso Books (deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife and, mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal)
Pim Wangtechawat, The Moon Represents My Heart, Magpie (weaving through decades and across continents, a novel about one family, the gift that threatens to tear them apart and the love that binds them together)
Ruth P. Watson, A Right Worthy Woman, Atria (story of Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a formerly enslaved woman who became the first Black woman to establish and preside over a bank in the United States)
Jeri Westerson, The Isolated Séance, Severn House (Sherlock Holmes’s protégés Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson are catapulted into a tricky first case when a man is murdered during a séance)
Merial Wiles, Where Ivy Dares to Grow, Kensington (timeslip gothic novel where a crumbling cliffside house brings Saoirse from her own time to the past and into a romance with the house’s 19th-century owner)
T. A. Willberg, Marion Lane and the Raven’s Revenge, Park Row (third and final book in the Marion Lane mystery series)
Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly, William Morrow (takes readers back to a mid-century New England rich with secrets and Cold War intrigue)
Ovidia Yu, The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery, Constable (next in the Chen Su Lin series set in 1930s Singapore)
Mary Kay Zuravleff, American Ending, Blair (a woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life)
July 2023
Anita Abriel, The Life She Wanted, Lake Union (New York in the 1920s—a time when fortunes are made and a woman’s dreams are challenged)
Jane A. Adams, The Room with Eight Windows, Severn House (1930; Henry Johnstone has retired from the police, but when he suddenly disappears his old colleague and friend, Inspector Mickey Hitchens, investigates)
Jamila Ahmed, Every Rising Sun, Henry Holt/John Murray (Shaherazade must entertain her dangerous new husband, the Malik, and navigate court intrigue as her homeland teeters on brink of destruction in this new take on the classic)
Rebecca Alexander, Coming Home to the Cottage by the Sea, Bookouture (family drama in which a house renovation uncovers a story dating back to WWII)
Diane Allen, The Yorkshire Farm Girl, Macmillan (novel of a family dreaming of a better life when war looms on the horizon)
Ann Aptaker, A Crime of Secrets, Bywater Books (NYC, 1899 — introducing readers to the crime-fighting duo of Fin Donner and Devorah Longstreet – lovers, investigators, women ahead of their time. LGBTQ+)
Jasmin Attia, The Oud Player of Cairo, Schaffner Press (tells the story of a young Egyptian woman who breaks from the traditional mores of her time to follow her true, independent and creative spirit. Set mid-20th century, Egypt)
Ola Awonubi, A Nurse’s Tale, One More Chapter (born Nigerian royalty, Princess Adenrele Ademola trained as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital in London and stepped up to serve the people of Britain when war broke out)
Ethan Bale, The Lost Prince, Canelo (Nov 1485; Hawker and his men are charged with rescuing a prisoner, who was supposed to have died in 1476, from a remote Wallachian mountain fortress)
Stela Brinzeanu, Set in Stone, Legend Press US (in medieval Moldova, two women from opposing backgrounds fall in love)
Karen Brooks, The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson, HQ (recreation of the optimistic but politically treacherous world of London’s Restoration theatre. Set in 1679)
Louella Bryant, Sheltering Angel, Black Rose Writing (follows the true story of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912)
James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou, Atlantic Monthly (Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and enslaved & free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate & Union soldiers are caught in the maelstrom)
Rachel Cantor, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, Soho Press (reimagines the lives of the Brontë siblings from precocious childhood, through the writings of their great novels, to their early deaths)
Francesca Capaldi, All Change at the Beach Hotel, Hera Books (employed at the Beach Hotel in Sussex during WWI, Lili is forced to return to family in Wales and must decide whether to follow her dreams to make her own life)
C. J. Carey, Queen Wallis, Sourcebooks Landmark (alternative history sequel to Widowland, set in June 1955)
Mary Chamberlain, The Lie, Magpie (dangerous secrets entwine the lives of two sisters)
Jennifer Chiaverini, Canary Girls, William Morrow (novel about the “munitionettes” who built bombs in Britain’s arsenals during World War I)
Wendy Chin-Tanner, King of the Armadillos, Flatiron (debut novel about family, love, and belonging, set against the backdrops of New York City and a historical leprosarium in 1950s Louisiana)
James Clarke, Sanderson’s Isle, Serpent’s Tail (1960s-set noir in which a man infiltrates a hippie cult in search of a missing child)
Alyssa Cole, An Unconditional Freedom, Kensington (a man ravaged by the horrors of slavery works with a Cuban woman to aid the Union cause – 3rd in series exploring the untold role of people of color in the fight to end slavery)
Deryn Collier, A Real Somebody, Lake Union (Montreal, 1947; postwar historical novel based on the true story of an aspiring writer who dares to dream big)
Kate Collins, A Good House for Children, Mariner (feminist gothic tale combines a mystery with themes of motherhood, madness, and the value of a woman’s work)
Joanna Courtney, Cleopatra & Julius, Piatkus (novel about the legendary Cleopatra and her lover where, in a choice between love and duty, only one can win)
Siobhan Curham, The Storyteller of Auschwitz, Bookouture (a WWII novel about finding something to live for when all seems lost)
Ellie Curzon, The Ration Book Baby, Bookouture (WWII novel of a nurse who finds a newborn on her doorstep along with the mother’s ration book)
Siobhan Daiko, The Girl from Portofino, Boldwood (a story of loss, courage, and secrets untold, set on the Italian Riviera)
Lindsey Davis, Fatal Legacy, Minotaur (in first century Rome, Flavia Albia takes on an easy case that soon proves to be anything but)
Tetyana Denford, The Soldier’s Child, Bookouture (based on true events of the author’s family, novel is a story of family, struggle, and the strength of hope, set in Ukraine 1941 and present)
Kat Devereaux, Escape to Florence (US) / Escape to Tuscany (UK), Harper/Aria (debut novel about two women, decades apart, whose fates converge in Florence, Italy)
Matthew Di Paoli, Holliday, Milford House (follows the infamous 1880s gambler, dentist, and gunslinger, Doc Holliday)
D. L. Douglas, Dr. Spilsbury and the Camden Town Killer, Orion (new historical mystery series, featuring forensic pathologist Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury)
Louise Douglas, The Secret of Villa Alba, Boldwood (dual timeline tale of betrayal, love, jealousy set in 1968 and present-day Sicily)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Tower of London, Allison & Busby (London, 1899. Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton, the museum detectives, are called upon to investigate a bizarre murder at the White Tower)
Jessica Ellicott, Murder at a London Finishing School, Kensington (Beryl and Edwina team up as enquiry agents to solve a mystery at their alma mater in this English village mystery set just after World War I –book 7)
Jennifer Cody Epstein, The Madwomen of Paris, Ballantine (in the 19th-century two women fall under the influence of a powerful doctor in Paris’s notorious women’s asylum)
Kathleen Ernst, The Solace of Stars, Level Best (Hanneke Bauer investigates the death of a friend’s husband, revealing cultural rifts and family secrets)
Jess Everlee, A Rulebook for Restless Rogues, Carina Adores (London, 1885 — two lifelong best friends find romance as they join forces to save an illegal gay club and the one place where they can truly be themselves)
David Field, Beyond the Setting Sun, Sapere (second book in the New World Nautical saga series)
Susie Finkbeiner, The All-American, Revell (in this 1950s coming-of-age story, two sisters are left reeling when their father is accused of being a member of the Communist party)
Suzanne Fortin, The Lost Dressmaker of Paris, Embla Books (wartime story of the bravery of ordinary women and the enduring power of love)
Felicity George, A Courtesan’s Worth, Orion Dash (Kitty, the most sought-after courtesan in London, falls in love with her long time and loyal friend, Reverend Sidney Wakefield)
Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers, Ballantine (set in 1960s south of France, a young woman with the power to bring soulmates together searches for her own true love)
Amiee Gibbs, The Carnivale of Curiosities, Grand Central (a gothic tale of Faustian bargains, jealousy, and murder set in a circus, where star-crossed lovers’ destinies are forged at an unexpected price)
Cathy Gohlke, Ladies of the Lake, Tyndale (novel about the wonder and complexities of friendship, love, and belonging beginning before WWI)
Leonard Goldberg, The Wayward Prince, Minotaur (the fate of Prince Harry and the British throne lies in the hands of Joanna and the Watsons)
Genevieve Gornichec, The Weaver and the Witch Queen, Ace/Titan (the lives of two women—one desperate only to save her missing sister, the other a witch destined to become queen of Norway—intertwine in a story of Viking history and myth)
Eliza Graham, The Girl in Lifeboat Six, Storm Publishing (1914; in a world at war, a young woman must face her darkest fears)
Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Promise, Random House/John Murray (two Black sisters growing up in small-town New England fight to protect their home, their bodies, and their dreams as the civil rights movement sweeps the nation)
Alex Hay, The Housekeepers, Graydon House/Headline Review (novel about a housekeeper at a stately home who recruits an eclectic group of women from the fringes of society to launch an audacious revenge heist)
A. W. Hammond, The Berlin Traitor, Bonnier Echo (post WWII thriller, where Auguste Duchene finds himself involved in a race against the Soviet military – among them his estranged wife – to retrieve a set of nuclear plans)
Kate Heartfield, The Chatelaine, HarperVoyager (1328 and Hell has overrun Bruges. Demons stalk the streets and revenants swarm the walls. The city’s men have fallen and only widows remain)
James T. Hogg, Devastation, All Night Books (Girl With a Knife, Book Three –the trial from book two commences but yields no justice as the accused is driven into action leading to chaos and violence)
Verity M. Holloway, The Others of Edenwell, Titan Books (gothic tale of a demon stalking the grounds of the Edenwell Hydropathic wellness retreat in Norfolk, 1917)
Emma Hornby, An Orphan’s Choice, Bantam (romantic saga of family, friendship and love)
Angela Hunt, The Woman From Lydia, Bethany House (novel dives into the perilous days of the early church as Christians struggle to remain true to their faith amid the highest of risks in a hostile pagan culture)
Nick Hunt, Red Smoking Mirror, Swift Press (reimagining of an alternate history set 1521 in the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan)
Graham Hurley, The Blood of Others, Head of Zeus – an Aries book (thriller shows the horrors of World War Two in Northern France)
Kevin Ikenberry, The Crossing, Baen (a squad of ROTC cadets training at Fort Dix, in November 2008 find themselves transported to December 1776 in the days before the Battle of Trenton)
Sophie Irwin, A Lady’s Guide to Scandal, Penguin (escapist historical romance, led by an audacious heroine who has suddenly inherited a fortune)
Kelsey James, The Woman in the Castello, John Scognamaglio (blend of modern gothic and historical fiction, set against the backdrop of a movie set in 1960s Rome)
Michel Jean (trans. Susan Ouriou), Kukum, Arachnide Editions (unfolding over a century, novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu, the loss of their land and confinement to reserves, and the enduring violence of residential schools)
Annette Kane, Dolly Butler’s Eight Day Week, The Book Guild (June 1908; cross-dressing Dolly Butler is starting a new career as a detective with her very own Soho agency)
Ariel Kaplan, The Pomegranate Gate, Erewhon/Rebellion (first in a Jewish fantasy trilogy set in a mythical 15th century Spain)
Christine Gallagher Kearney, What We Leave Behind, She Writes (1947; one woman learns to survive and to reconcile her dream of motherhood with an America that is very different from what she imagined)
Richard T. Kelly, The Black Eden, Faber and Faber (1956, Scottish Highlands; for five boys the discovery of oil under the North Sea can make their dreams come true, but it can also overthrow relationships and turn friends into foes)
Karen Kirsten, Irena’s Gift, Mardle Books (weaves together a mystery, history and memoir to tell the story of a family torn apart by war)
Natalie Kleinman, Some Day My Prince Will Come, Sapere (romantic tale set in Regency England, with a spirited female lead and a mystery at its heart)
Khaled Khalifa (trans. Leri Price), No One Prayed Over Their Graves, FSG (the story of two friends whose lives are altered by a 1907 flood that devastates their Syrian village)
Sarah E. Ladd, In the Shelter of Hollythorne House, Thomas Nelson (a young widow flees the estate of her loveless marriage and reunites with the man who once broke her heart)
Callie Langridge, A Time to Change, Storm Publishing (a gothic timeslip novel set in present day and one hundred years in the past)
Elizabeth Langston, The Measure of Silence, Lake Union (dual timeline 1963 & 1993; two sisters fulfilling their grandfather’s dying wish uncover decades of secrets in a novel about family, truth, and forgiveness)
Mirinae Lee, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster, Harper/Virago (genre-bending debut of love and survival, set in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea)
Pierre Lemaitre, The Great World, Little, Brown (saga of one prominent French family against the backdrop of post-war Paris, Beirut, and Saigon)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the English House Party Murder, Kensington (drastic circumstances compel Lady Caroline Morton to make an upstairs downstairs switch to become a lady’s companion, whose duties will soon entail solving a murder)
Norman Lock, The Ice Harp, Bellevue Literary Press (Ralph Waldo Emerson battles dementia while debating whether to intercede in a Black soldier’s unjust arrest)
Zelda Lockhart, Trinity, Amistad (explores three generations of a family trying to overcome trials and trauma and free themselves from the darkness of the past)
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, An American Wife in Paris, Bookouture (Kitty will stop at nothing to play her part in bringing the war to a close, until her undercover Nazi husband goes missing)
Lindsay Lynch, Do Tell, Doubleday (maps the intricate networks of power that manufacture the magic of the movies in the golden age of Hollywood, and interrogates who actually gets to tell women’s stories)
Annie Lyons, The Air Raid Book Club, William Morrow/Headline Review (story of making connections through books set against the bombing of London during WWII)
Sarah Maine, The Forgotten Shore, Hodder & Stoughton (story of family secrets, love and redemption set in 1940, 1965 and 1980)
Edward Marston, Murder at the Arizona Biltmore, Allison & Busby (Merlin Richards sets off from the Welsh valleys to the Arizona desert to launch his architectural career, but finds himself prime suspect in a murder)
Laura Martin, Last Impressions, Sapere (second book in the Jane Austen Investigation series ― Regency-era murder mysteries with a literary heroine working as a female sleuth)
Michael McGarrity, The Long Ago, W. W. Norton (in the early 1960s, Ray Lansdale returns from Vietnam to his Montana home to search for his missing sister)
Claire McMillan, Alchemy of a Blackbird, Atria (a mystical novel based on the true story of the 20th-century painters and occultists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington)
Shannon McNear, Rebecca, Barbour (novel about the “what if” questions relating to the Lost Colony of Roanoke, when a native princess meets an English widower)
Tom Mead, The Murder Wheel, Mysterious Press/Head of Zeus — an Aries Book (follow-up to Death and the Conjuror, in which former stage magician Joseph Spector is back to help Scotland Yard with yet another baffling case)
Rosie Meddon, A Wartime Welcome, Canelo (war time saga about a volunteer who sets up one of the British Welcome Clubs aimed at easing American troops’ integration into English life)
Margaret Meyer, The Witching Tide, Orion Phoenix (East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a mute midwife, healer and servant, becomes a silent witness to a witch hunt)
Maddison Michaels, The Heiress Swap, Entangled: Amara (not every American heiress wants to be a dollar princess, nor does every duke wish to marry one. Victorian romance)
Stacy Lynn Miller, Devil’s Slide, Bella Books (two high school friends meet again after nine years and try to find a way to be together in 1930s California. LGBTQ romance)
Denise Mina, Three Fires, Pegasus (re-imagines the “Bonfire of the Vanities,” a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century—inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola)
Allison Montclair, The Lady from Burma, Minotaur (murder once again stalks Sparks and Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau in the surprisingly dangerous landscape of post-WWII London)
Santa Montefiore, Wait for Me, S&S UK (novel of enduring love and devastating secrets, sweeping across England during WWII to Australia five decades later, based on a true story)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Silver Nitrate, Del Rey (a meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film—and awakens one woman’s hidden powers)
Kate Mosse, The Ghost Ship, Minotaur/Mantle (third in The Burning Chambers series—continues the story of the Joubert family and their descendants in an adventure story of piracy and revenge, lost treasure and family secrets)
Gretta Mulrooney, Death at Larch Bridge, Joffe Books (historical mystery whodunnit set in Oxfordshire, 1946)
Linda Joy Myers, The Forger of Marseille, She Writes (1939; as a Jew or anti-fascist, the only way to avoid being imprisoned or murdered is to assume a new identity. For that, people need papers. And for that, the underground needs forgers)
Ben Okri, TheLast Gift of the Master Artists, Head of Zeus — an Apollo book (a magical look at Africa before the arrival of the Atlantic slave ships)
S. J. Parris, Alchemy, HarperCollins UK (historical thriller set in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Prague 1588)
S. W. Perry, The Sinner’s Mark, Corvus (1600; with a dying queen on the throne, England is on the brink of chaos and in London’s dark alleyways, a conspiracy is brewing)
Tracie Peterson, Finding Us, Bethany House (a journey of faith, trust, and hope wrapped up in a historical romance)
MJ Porter, Kings of War, Boldwood (a story of kingship that will result in the pivotal, bloody Battle of Brunanburh in 937 AD)
Nicola Pryce, The Cornish Rebel, Corvus (Aunt Harriet’s school for young women is facing imminent closure after a series of sinister events but Pandora and her Aunt Harriet must do everything in their power to save the school)
A. D. Rhine, Horses of Fire, Dutton (epic in which Troy’s strong, yet misunderstood women take center stage in the most famous war in history)
Vanessa Riley, Queen of Exiles, William Morrow (novel based on the life of Haiti’s Queen Marie-Louise Coidavid, who escaped a coup in Haiti to set up her own royal court in Italy during the Regency era)
Kelly Rimmer, The Paris Agent, Graydon House/Piatkus (follows three female SOE operatives as their lives intersect in occupied France, and the double agent who controls their fate)
Debbie Rix, The German Mother, Bookouture (novel about mothers fighting for the survival of their children in the depths of World War Two
Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch, Knopf (mid-1970s tale of a cursed mythical creature and the lonely fisherman who falls in love with her)
Delphine Ross, The Poetics of Passion, Muse Publications (in 1870 London, a love poetess and a children’s book illustrator are set at odds)
Josh Rountree, The Legend of Charlie Fish, Tachyon (debut is the juxtaposition of a strange found-family, a fish man yearning to return to his home, and the legendary Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900)
Joshunda Sanders, Women of the Post, Park Row (novel gives voice to the pioneering Black women of the Six Triple Eight Battalion who made history by sorting over one million pieces of mail overseas for the US Army)
E. Saxey, Unquiet, Titan Books (London, 1893; a woman searches for clues to the drowning death of her brother-in-law)
Amanda Schiavo, In Her Own Right, Black Rose Writing (a novel of Lady Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII)
Anika Scott, Sinners of Starlight City, William Morrow/Duckworth (historical drama about a woman determined to avenge the crimes against her family, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair)
Elizabeth L. Silver, The Majority, Riverhead (a novel of love and friendship, motherhood and ambition, and one woman’s fight to be a Supreme Court justice)
Mona Simpson, Commitment, Corsair UK (novel about a single mother’s collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s)
Rachel Kelley Stones, Love Unseen, Covenant (despite their rocky introduction, an almost-spinster and a man with a social black mark against him, find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another)
Karin Tanabe, The Sunset Crowd, St. Martin’s (an enigmatic young woman meets a group of glamorous friends in Los Angeles and upends their lives as she chases the blinding lights of fame)
Andrew Taylor, The Shadows of London, HarperCollins (when a man’s brutally disfigured body is discovered in the ruins of an ancient almshouse, architect Cat Hakesby and Whitehall secretary James Marwood are ordered to investigate)
Stacey Thomas, The Revels, HQ (England, 1645; in a country torn apart by civil war, & rumours of witchcraft, Nicholas hides a secret, but will he find the courage to speak up to save innocent lives)
Linda Travers, Mystery in the Highlands, Bookouture (when members of a choir start dropping dead in the Highlands, Maud McIntyre and her lady’s maid Daisy go undercover)
Simon Turney, Para Bellum, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (novel set in the fourth-century Roman Empire)
Fiona Valpy, The Cypress Maze, Lake Union (dual timeline story of a secret kept to protect the innocent, set in Tuscany, 1943 and 2015)
Kim van Alkemade, Counting Lost Stars, William Morrow (saga in which an unmarried college student who’s given up her baby for adoption helps a Dutch Holocaust survivor search for his lost mother)
Anneka R. Walker, An Unwitting Alliance, Covenant (Regency Romance about debutantes and arranged marriages)
Sasha Wasley, Snapshots from Home, Pantera (1917, Australia; a teacher at Miss Raison’s School for Girls agrees to take part in a comfort scheme sending photos of home to the troops)
Pam Weaver, The Lost Orphan, Avon (saga of the bond between three sisters in the darkest days of WWII)
Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto, Doubleday (continues the Harlem saga with novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory)
Pamela R. Winnick, The Spymaster’s Mistress, She Writes (at the height of the American Revolution, 17-year-old Rachel flees her home in NYC, to Philadelphia, where she is recruited as an American Spy)
Dias Novita Wuri, Birth Canal, Scribe UK (novella that explores what it means to be a woman — whoever you are, wherever you are, and whenever it is in history and time)
Megan Wykes, Back to the Garden, At Bay Press (Toronto, summer 1971; novel tells of four strangers who take a chance on a new psychological treatment: group therapy)
August 2023
Nigar Alam, Under the Tamarind Tree, Putnam/Bedford Square (debut novel about the echoes of Partition and four friends whose dark secrets lead to a life-changing night that comes back to haunt them decades later)
Rochelle Alers, Take the Long Way Home, Kensington (chronicles one woman’s journey through some of history’s most turbulent eras—and the four men who challenge her along the way)
Rose Alexander, The Lost Diary, Bookouture (dual timeline tale about bravery in the face of terror and how a woman pushed to the brink is forced to make a terrible choice)
Amanda Allen, Death Comes to Santa Fe, Severn House (amateur sleuth Madeline Vaughn-Alwin is thrown into a deadly web of secrets and lies)
Rebecca Anderson, The Art of Love and Lies, Shadow Mountain (a free-spirited artist teams up with a no-nonsense detective to capture a thief who has stolen a priceless Michelangelo painting – set in Manchester, England, 1857)
Rosie Archer, Dream a Little Dream, Quercus (continuing the saga of The Timber Girls)
Anne Armistead, A Tryst in Paris, Soul Mate (first in The Carousel Time Traveler series, set in 1900s Paris)
D. R. Bailey, A Fool’s Errand, Sapere (aviation adventure set during WWII and featuring a team of vigilante pilots. Book 2 in series)
Megan Barnard, Jezebel, Penguin (a reimagining of the story of a fierce princess from Tyre and her infamous legacy)
Jan Baynham, The Secret Sister, Joffe Books (family saga set in WW II Wales and 1960s Sicily)
Lauren J. A. Bear, Medusa’s Sisters, Ace/Titan (Stheno and Euryale step into the light to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other. Historical fantasy)
Melanie Benjamin, California Golden, Ballantine (two sisters navigate the early days of California surf culture in a saga of ambition, sacrifice, and the tangled ties)
Nancy Bilyeau, The Orchid Hour, Lume Books (novel about one woman caught up in a secret nightclub that one can only be reached through a certain florist on a cobblestone street)
D. V. Bishop, Ritual of Fire, Macmillan (historical crime novel set in 1530s Renaissance Florence)
Johnny D. Boggs, Longhorns East, Kensington (story of the biggest, longest, wildest cattle drive in America’s history)
Rhys Bowen, The Paris Assignment, Lake Union (a courageous wife, mother, and resister confronts the devastation of World War II)
William Boyd, The Romantic, Knopf/Penguin (a novel about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman)
Graham Brack, Murder in Maastricht, Sapere (book 7 in the Master Mercurius series set in the Netherlands, 1686)
Emily Brightwell, Mrs. Jeffries Aims to Win, Berkley /Penguin (Mrs. Jeffries must help Inspector Witherspoon crack a new case and catch a killer in this Victorian Mystery series)
Fiona Britton, Violet Kelly and the Jade Owl, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, 1930; Phryne Fisher is determined to find out the truth about a centuries-old curse and a house full of secrets)
David Buzan, In the Lair of Legends, Black Rose (a highly decorated Native American Civil War veteran embarks on a wagon trip across miles of dangerous wilderness)
Diane Byington, Louise and Vincent, Red Adept (a love story and a chronicle of a woman’s awakening, which portrays the last months of one of the most iconic artists in history)
Jane Cable, The Lost Heir, Sapere (a time-shift romance set in Cornwall between Regency era, 1810 and modern day, 2020)
Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte, Berkley (vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this historical fantasy set in the 1840s)
Jerome Charyn, Ravage & Son, Bellevue Literary Press (a novel of crime, corruption, and antisemitism in early 20th-century Manhattan)
J’nell Ciesielski, To Free the Stars, Thomas Nelson(historical adventure novel set during the roaring ’20s – second book in the Jack and Ivy duology)
Sara Goodman Confino, Don’t Forget to Write, Lake Union (in 1960, a young woman discovers a freedom she never knew existed)
Connilyn Cossette, Voice of the Ancient, Bethany House (brings to life the first years of King Saul’s reign)
Lesley Crewe, Recipe for a Good Life, Vagrant Press (novel follows a mystery author with writer’s block from 1950s Montreal to rural Cape Breton, in search of much more than her next big story)
Siobhan Daiko, The Girl from Bologna, Boldwood (dual timeline WWII story set in 1944 and 1981 Bologna, Italy)
Vanessa de Haan, A Time to Live, HarperCollins UK (moving from the battlefields of France to Devon, from Suffragettes to political extremists; a story of legacy and the price of family)
Sara DiVello, Broadway Butterfly, Thomas & Mercer (1923– true-crime novel, based on one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the era, where power, politics, and secrets conspire to bury the truth)
Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart, Little, Brown/Picador (based on the true story of two girls who fall secretly, deeply, and dangerously in love at boarding school in 19th century York)
Martin Edwards, The Puzzle of Blackstone Lodge (US) / Blackstone Fell (UK) (c2022), Poisoned Pen Press / Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (a locked gatehouse, potential corruption at a sanatorium, and a fraudulent medium. Story set in 1606 and 1930)
Charles Finch, The Hidden City, Minotaur (aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox makes a triumphant return to London to unlock a mystery hidden in the architecture of the city itself)
Jacqueline Friedland, The Stockwell Letters, SparkPress (novel based on the true story of female abolitionist Ann Phillips and her connection to Anthony Burns, a young man who briefly escaped American slavery)
J. H. Gelernter, The Montevideo Brief, W. W. Norton (1804; a secret treaty will determine whether England can survive against Napoleon, as Captain Grey races across the Atlantic to intercept a treasure fleet)
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (trans. Janet Hong), The Naked Tree, Drawn and Quarterly (Korea, 1951; paints a stark portrait of a single nation’s fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval and armed conflict)
Peter Gibbons, Brothers of the Sword, Boldwood (991 AD; a battle where heroes fight and die to protect a Kingdom from Viking invasion)
Claire Gilbert, I, Julian, Hodder Faith (account of a medieval woman who dares to tell her own story, battling grief, plague, the church and societal expectations to do so)
Robert Goddard, The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction, Bantam (second installment featuring private investigator Umiko Wada in a novel spanning seventy years of twist and counter-twist)
Suzanne Goldring, The Girl Who Never Came Back, Bookouture (WWII novel set in Paris 1945 which explores the bravery of women in war)
Hilary Green, Operation Fortitude, Joffe Books (WW II mystery featuring a plot to murder the King of England)
Nicola Griffith, Menewood, FSG (sequel to Hild transports readers to seventh-century Britain, a land full of rival kings and rival religions)
Lauren Grodstein, We Must Not Think of Ourselves, Algonquin (novel of love and Jewish defiance set inside the Warsaw Ghetto)
Jimin Han, The Apology, Little, Brown (tale of sisterhood and diaspora, reaching back to the days of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War)
Nino Haratischvili (trans. Ruth Martin), Juja, Scribe (multi-period debut novel published for the first time in English, set in bohemian Paris beginning in 1953)
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Mistress of Ashmore Castle, Sphere (third novel in the Ashmore Castle historical family drama series, filled with heartbreak, romance and intriguing secrets)
Gracie Hart, The Baker’s Sister, S&S UK (third in series historical saga set in 20th-century)
Liz Harvey, Becoming Liz Taylor, Allen & Unwin (set in the present and the 1970s, a story of love, loss and bereavement)
Stefan Hertmans (trans. David McKay), The Ascent, Pantheon (reimagining of a family in a historical moment of great upheaval)
Naomi Hirahara, Evergreen, Soho Crime (follow-up to Clark and Division set in Los Angeles in 1946)
Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour, Atria / Scribner UK (novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery and the enduring magic of books)
Sophia Holloway, The Chaperone, Allison & Busby (a young woman oversees the debut of her younger sister and their wild cousin)
B. M. Howard, Blood on the Tiber, Canelo (a Magistrate Gracchus & Lieutenant Vanderville historical mystery set in Rome 1797)
Lorena Hughes, The Queen of the Valley, Kensington (amid the devastation of the 1925 Cali earthquake, the owner of a legendary hacienda vanishes plunging three strangers into the dangerous secrets he left behind)
Jane Hulse, Prisoner of Wallabout Bay, Fireship (a young newspaper apprentice fights to expose rampant cruelty and wretched conditions aboard a prison ship)
C. C. Humphreys, Someday I’ll Find You, Doubleday Canada (novel about a pilot and a spy who fall in love during WWII)
James Hynes, Sparrow, The Overlook Press (recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity)
Jane Johnson, The Black Crescent, Apollo (story of murder, magic and divided loyalties set in 1950s Morocco)
Lynn Johnson, A New Day at Paradise Pottery, Hera Books (a woman shadowed by an abusive father starts work at a local pottery in WWI and finds her artistic flair might take her up the ranks)
Anita Gail Jones, The Peach Seed, Henry Holt (multigenerational novel that explores the origins of a south Georgia family’s tradition, the struggle with the legacies of America’s Civil Rights Movement and the impacts of the 1800s slave trade)
Mary Karras, One Night Beneath the Lemon Trees, John Murray/Two Roads (dual timeline novel set in Cyprus 1954 and London, 1988)
Brian Kaufman, A Persistent Echo, Black Rose (1897; hundreds of UFO sightings have been reported, seven years before the Wright brother’s initial flight, and August Simms, explorer, soldier and world traveler, intends to solve the mystery)
Katrina Kendrick, A Bride by Morning, Aria (Regency romance between a spy and the lady who finds herself embr4oiled in his game of espionage)
Vaseem Khan, Death of a Lesser God, Hodder & Stoughton (in the fourth thriller in the Malabar House series, Persis and Archie travel to the old colonial capital of Calcutta)
Lana Kortchik, Sisters of the Sky, HQ Digital (tired of being left behind in the war two friends decide to volunteer for the first female-only aviation regiment, led by the legendary pilot Marina Raskova)
Marion Kummerow, The Berlin Wife’s Choice, Bookouture (story of the lengths we go to for love; set in Berlin during WWII)
Soraya M. Lane, The Secret Midwife, Lake Union (inspired by real-life accounts of the Polish resistance, the doctors, nurses and midwives imprisoned in the camps and those who fought to save lives in Poland during World War II)
Tim Leach, The Hollow Throne, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (conclusion to historical adventure series set in the Roman Empire in 180 AD)
Edan Lepucki, Time’s Mouth, Counterpoint (saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the landscape of California)
Chalon Linton, Chiara’s Choice, Covenant (inspirational romance between the daughter of an Italian baron and an aristocratic son who can’t decide on an occupation)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld, Kensington (set against the backdrop of 1830s high-society London, mystery series features Miss Caroline Morton, now gainfully employed as a lady’s companion)
Valerie Fraser Luesse, Letters From My Sister, Revell (a complex and suspenseful tale full of intrigue, romance, and Southern charm)
Sarah MacLean, Knockout, Avon/Piatkus (the next Hell’s Belles novel about a chaotic bluestocking and the buttoned-up detective enlisted to keep her out of trouble)
Christine Mangan, The Continental Affair, Flatiron (a train ride through Europe in the early 1960s—with stolen money, secret lives, and damaged pasts)
Kirsty Manning, The Paris Mystery, Vintage (reporter Charlotte “Charlie” James arrives in Paris in 1938 eager to make a fresh start)
Alyssa Martin, My Duty to You, Kingsley (an Austen generation romance novel)
Madeline Martin, The Keeper of Hidden Books, Hanover Square (story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw)
Maggie Mason, The Fortune Tellers, Sphere (family saga about overcoming hardship, and the value of friendship set post-WWI)
Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at the Elms, Kensington (an Emma and Derrick mystery in Gilded Newport Series)
James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Riverhead/W&N (1972, Pottstown, Pennsylvania; a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them)
Rachel Scott McDaniel, The Starlet Spy, Barbour (intrigue and romance in Sweden, 1943)
Ellie Midwood, The Child Who Lived, Bookouture (inspired by true events, World War Two novel tells a tale of two ordinary people who risk everything to achieve the impossible)
Kate Mildenhall, The Hummingbird Effect, Scribner AU (story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread and their determination to shape their own stories)
Denise Mina, The Second Murderer, Mulholland Books (recreation of Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe, in a mystery that finds Marlowe on the hunt for a missing heiress—and up against a rival PI)
Yu Miri (trans. Morgan Giles), The End of August, Riverhead (multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation)
Syd Moore, Witch Hunt, Avon (ghost story that delves into the dark past of the 16th century Essex witch trials)
Donna Morrissey, Rage the Night, Viking (the intimate tale of one man’s quest to discover the truth of his birth and a account of a real-life Newfoundland tragedy from 1914)
Claire North, House of Odysseus, Redhook (follow up to Ithaca, a reimagining that breathes life into an ancient myth; a feminist tale of the women who stand defiant in a world ruled by men)
Kevin O’Brien, The Enemy at Home, Kensington (as WWII rages overseas, a serial killer preys on women working in Seattle’s factories)
Alli Parker, At the Foot of the Cherry Tree, HarperCollins AU (story of love and hope, based on the true story of Australia’s first Japanese war bride)
Shelley Parker-Chan, He Who Drowned the World, Tor / Mantle (sequel and series conclusion to She Who Became the Sun, sweeping across an alternate 1300s China)
Emma Pass, The Girl from Norway, Aria (a romance set in World War II)
Mark Pryor, The Dark Edge of Night, Minotaur (Paris’s police detective, Henri Lefort, thwarts the Gestapo in new WWII mystery series)
Kate Quinn, A Day of Fire, Harper 360/William Morrow (follows the lives of those in ancient Pompeii on the fateful day Mount Vesuvius erupts)
Michelle Rawlins, Steel Girls at War, HQ (second book in the WWII romance saga series, set in 1940)
Emma Royal, The Palace Girls, Century (post-war saga set in Buckingham Palace, 1951)
Aimie K. Runyan, A Bakery in Paris, William Morrow (novel set in 19th-century and post–World War II Paris follows two women of the same family who find their futures lie in the four walls of a bakery in Montmartre)
Michael Russell, The City of God, Constable (WWII thriller begins in Rome, 1943, with the barbaric murder of a young Irish priest)
Kate Ryder, Echoes on a Cornish River, Embla Books (romantic timeslip novel)
Carly Schabowski, The Postcard, Bookouture (based on a true story, wartime novel follows one woman’s brave decision to save the man she loves from the Nazis)
Elle Seymour, The Royal Station Master’s Daughters at War, Zaffre (WWI saga series, inspired by the Saward family, who ran the station at Wolferton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries)
Craig Shreve, The African Samurai, S&S (novel based on the true story of Yasuke, the only samurai of African descent. Set in late 16th-century Africa, India, Portugal, and Japan)
Fiona Veitch Smith, The Picture House Murders, Embla Books (first in a new, Golden Age cozy mystery series, set in 1929, with an amateur sleuth with a penchant for science)
Natasha Solomons, Fair Rosaline, Manilla Press (a subversive, powerful untelling of Shakespeare’s best known tale)
Sarah Steele, The Traitor’s Wife, Headline (inspired by true stories of the heroines of the Italian Resistance; a story set between the glamorous Golden Age of Hollywood and World War II Naples)
Lee Swanson, Her Dangerous Journey Home, Merchant’s Largesse Books (in 1310, Christina, posing as her dead brother, sails to the Baltic waters of her birthplace to exact revenge on the pirates who killed her father and brother)
Allie Therin, Once a Rogue, Harlequin Carina (two gay reformed scoundrels have renounced the battlefields and scandals for one another, but their troubled pasts could destroy everything they hold dear)
Julia Park Tracey, The Bereaved, Sybilline Press (1859; work of historical fiction based on author’s research of her grandfather, illuminating the darkest side of the Orphan Train)
Nina Wachsman, The Courtesan’s Secret, Level Best (when an envoy from the New World comes to Venice, courtesan Belladonna must abandon her luxurious palazzo, and take refuge in the Ghetto with her friend)
Betty Walker, A Wedding for the Cornish Girls, Avon (fifth installment of the romantic saga of Alice, Penny and Evelyn in WWII)
Mollie Walton, A Daughter’s Gift, Welbeck (when Raven Hall, North Yorkshire, is requisitioned by the army in 1940, Rosina must protect her family home from the rowdy troops)
Pam Weaver, The Runaway Orphans, Avon UK (tale of the bond between sisters and the courage of women in wartime)
Roseanna M. White, A Beautiful Disguise, Bethany House (left with an estate on the brink of bankruptcy after their father’s death, a brother & sister decide to open a private investigation firm marketed to the elite)
Pip Williams, The Bookbinder of Jericho (UK) / The Bookbinder (US), Chatto & Windus (a story about knowledge – who gets to make it, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld. Set in 1914)
Emily H. Wilson, Inanna, Titan Books (first novel in the Sumerians Trilogy, a retelling of one of the oldest surviving works of literature)
Tracey Enerson Wood, The President’s Wife, Sourcebooks Landmark (unwilling to let the presidency fail, Edith Wilson steps in, supporting Woodrow while concealing his true condition to all but his most trusted advisors)
Jennifer L. Wright, The Girl from the Papers, Tyndale (inspired by Bonnie and Clyde; a tale set during the public enemy era of the Great Depression)
Glenda Young, The Sixpenny Orphan, Headline (saga of orphan sisters Poppy and Rose who are separated by a chance of fate and the toss of a coin)
Irina Zhorov, Lost Believers, Scribner (inspired by true events, about a meeting between two women in 1970s Soviet Russia that irrevocably changes the course of both of their lives)
September 2023
Skye Alexander, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, Level Best (jazz singer Lizzie Crane mystery book 3 set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1925)
V. S. Alexander, The Novelist from Berlin, Kensington (based on true story of a mysterious German writer, novel spans from the Nazis’ ascent to power to the building of the Berlin Wall)
Tina Andrews, Queen Charlotte Sophia, Jacaranda Books (newly crowned King George III can’t wed the Catholic Lady Sarah Lennox, so a search begins for a German Protestant royal)
Lucy Ashe, The Dance of the Dolls US / Clara & Olivia UK, Union Square (novel about obsessive love featuring two ballet dancers—identical twin sisters Olivia and Clara Marionetta—set in pre-war London)
Jina Bacarr, Sisters at War, Boldwood (after a Nazi attack in Paris, two sisters find themselves on opposite sides of the war)
Julie Bates, Rise to Rebellion, Level Best (a mystery set in the early days of the American Revolution)
James R. Benn, Proud Sorrows, Soho Crime (US Army Captain Billy Boyle investigates a murder in a charming English village, where personal vendettas tangle with wartime espionage)
David Bergen, Away From the Dead, Goose Lane (novel set in early 20th-century Ukraine during the tumult of the Russian Revolution)
Baron Birtcher, Reckoning, Open Road Media (Ty Dawson is a small-town sheriff with big-city problems, in this crime thriller set in 1970s US)
Richard Blaine, The Tainted Jade, Level Best (1948; L.A. private detective Michael Garrett is hired to represent a client at an auction involving a jade statuette said to come with an Aztec curse four centuries old)
A. K. Blakemore, The Glutton, Granta / Scribner (a novel of desire and destruction in Revolutionary France, based on a true story)
Emily Bleeker, When We Were Enemies, Lake Union (two women, generations apart and both in the spotlight, feature in a novel about family secrets, devastating choices, and hope for the future)
J. C. Briggs, The Waxwork Man, Sapere (Dickens and Superintendent Sam Jones investigate a death witnessed only by waxwork women in London, 1851)
Verity Bright, Murder By Invitation, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery, book 15)
Millie Bobby Brown, Nineteen Steps, William Morrow/HQ (a story of love against the odds, set during WWII)
Peter Burke, The Silk Merchant’s Son, Fremantle Press (novel that examines the impact colonisers have on the original inhabitants, no matter how good they believe their intentions to be)
Corin Burnside, Her Forgotten Promise, HQ Digital (a dual timeline novel featuring a wartime secret and a journey to uncover the truth)
Colleen Cambridge, Murder by Invitation Only, Kensington (when a murder-themed game goes awry, can Agatha Christie’s ever-capable housekeeper, Phyllida Bright, outfox the guilty party?)
Christian Cameron, Treason of Sparta, Orion (book 7 of The Long War series set in spring of 478BCE)
Michelle Cameron, Babylon, Wicked Son (586 BCE; saga of an exiled Judean family, set against the deadly ambition of Nebuchadnezzar’s royal court and the struggle of Biblical prophets and scribes to keep the Hebrew faith alive)
Ella Carey, An Italian Secret, Bookouture (dual timeline story set in Tuscany, featuring a family secret from World War Two)
Brian Carso, Gideon’s Revolution, Three Hills (set in 1780, just days after Benedict Arnold’s treasonous plot to surrender the American fort at West Point is discovered)
Cedric the Entertainer, Flipping Boxcars, Amistad (entertaining crime caper featuring close-knit black families and tightly woven communities struggling to get by during the Depression and World War II)
K. J. Charles, A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, Sourcebooks Casablanca (LGBTQIA+ historical Regency romance set in Kent, England)
Carolyn Charron, Hunting a Sea-Glass Heart, Renaissance Press (the death of Anne Bonny’s father and the subsequent theft of her sea-glass heart, a memento from Mary Reed, frees Anne to return to her piratical ways in 1741)
Amy Chua, The Golden Gate, Minotaur (historical thriller that paints a vibrant portrait of a California buffeted by the turbulent crosswinds of a world at war and a society about to undergo massive change)
Carmela Circelli, Love and Rain, Guernica Editions (moving from Rome to Montreal in the 1960s and 70s, novel traces the individual rebellion and social revolution that marked the FLQ movement in Quebec and the Red Brigades in Italy)
Raneé S. Clark, A Lady’s Promise, Covenant (inspirational novel set in New York, 1895)
Meg Clothier, The Book of Eve, Wildfire (discovering a book of dark and ancient power, a convent librarian must defend it with her life)
Daniel Colter, Fortress of Crows, Sapere (thriller set during the Crusades. Knights Templar series book 2)
Donovan Cook, Loki’s Deceit, Boldwood (historical adventure series; The Charlemagne Series Book 2)
Ellie Curzon, The Spitfire Girl, Bookouture (in England, 1941, Sally is chosen to run test flights on the Spitfire and get it battle ready)
Abigail Cutter, The Last of What I Am, Union Square (novel about a Confederate soldier whose own personal war follows him into the afterlife)
Jeanne M. Dams, Music and Murder, Severn House (female sleuth Elizabeth Fairchild is drawn into Chicago’s growing jazz scene in this 1920s murder mystery)
Neil Denby, Decanus, Sapere (Julius Quintus Quirinius and his cohort have been sent on a mission to scout out Britannia, and battle the local tribesman to pave the way for their emperor. Book two of Quintus Roman Thrillers)
Rebecca D’Harlingue, The Map Colorist, She Writes (in 1660 Amsterdam, Anneke longs to make maps in a world that is the domain of men)
Robert Dinsdale, Once a Monster, Macmillan UK (retelling of the legend of the Minotaur, steeped in the grime of Victorian London)
David Diop (trans. Sam Taylor), Beyond the Door of No Return, FS&G (1806: a love story drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal’s oral traditions)
Victor Dixen (trans. Françoise Bui), The Court of Shadows, Amazon Crossing (a fiery heroine seeks vengeance against a royal court of deadly vampires in this alternate history fantasy set in Versailles at the time of Louis XIV)
Melanie Dobson, The Wings of Poppy Pendleton, Tyndale (time-slip mystery, in which a little girl goes missing from her family’s castle in the Thousand Islands & eighty-five years later, a journalist teams up with a woman to find out what happened)
David Donachie, Droits of the Crown, McBooks Press (a John Pearce naval adventure)
Angus Donald, King of the North, Canelo (spring AD777; a clash of crowns pits brother against sister in a battle for power))
Anton Du Beke, The Royal Show, Orion (can a troupe of old-time crooners, dancing girls and magicians compete with the 1960’s rebellious new bands and revolutionary music at the Royal Variety Performance for the Queen)
María Dueñas (trans. Simon Bruni), Sira, Amazon Crossing (sequel to The Time In Between is a novel of love and intrigue set against the tumultuous aftermath of World War II)
Anne Echols, A Tale of Two Maidens, She Writes (story of an ordinary medieval girl on an extraordinary adventure—one that will require her to dig within herself to claim her own true, independent, and heroic destiny)
Sarah M. Eden, The Queen and the Knave, Shadow Mountain (mystery romance set in London, 1866)
James Ellroy, The Enchanters, Knopf /Hutchinson Heinemann (reimagines Hollywood’s reaction to Marilyn Monroe’s death)
Martha Engber, The Falcon, the Wolf and the Hummingbird, Addison & Highsmith/Histria (a young Native American woman fights fierce invaders to save her tribe — and spirit — from annihilation in precolonial southern New England)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Locket, Bookouture (World War Two story about how the tragic consequences of war can echo through generations)
F. L. Everett, Murder in the Blitz, Bookouture (England, 1940; newspaper secretary Edie York stumbles upon the death of a Home Guard soldier and turns her investigative skills to sleuthing)
David Field, Westward to Freedom, Sapere (the New World Nautical Saga, book 3)
Ken Follett, The Armour of Light, Macmillan/Viking (1792; fifth novel in series returns to Kingsbridge with a tale of revolution)
Ari Folman, illus. Lena Guberman, Where Is Anne Frank, Pantheon Graphics (brings to life Kitty, Anne Frank’s imaginary friend to whom she addressed her diary)
Kim Coleman Foote, Coleman Hill, SJP Lit (story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration)
Elizabeth Fremantle, Firebrand, S&S (shows the darker side to the marriages of Henry VIII, and the wife who survived)
Trip Galey, A Market of Dreams and Destiny, Titan Books (a high-stakes magical adventure across a 17th-century fantasy London not quite like our own)
Kelly Stone Gamble, Ragtown, Red Adept (story set in the Nevada desert during the Great Depression)
Ned Ghosh, The Two-Tailed Snake, Fairlight Books (India, 1945; when her father disappears without a trace, 14-year-old Joya is forced to drop out of school and support her mother by working in a garment factory)
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Wall, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (set against the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, final book in the City of Victory trilogy, after The Fort and The City)
Alex Grecian, Red Rabbit, Tor Nightfire (historical fantasy with an alternate Western setting)
Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds, Riverhead/Hutchinson Heinemann (through a servant girl who escapes from a U.S. colonial settlement in the wilderness, novel is about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism)
Lori Hahnel, Flicker, Univ. of Calgary Press (novel about time travel, scientific discovery, and the power of love)
Lisa Hall, The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black, Canelo (time-slip murder mystery set in the Golden Age of Hollywood)
Adrianne Harun, On the Way to the End of the World, Acre Books (in 1963, an eclectic group of characters embark on President Kennedy’s ambitious walking challenge)
Kate Heartfield, The Valkyrie, HarperVoyager (a retelling of one of Norse mythology’s greatest epics)
Victor Heringer (trans. James Young), The Love of Singular Men, New Directions (queer coming-of-age story as well as an exploration of Brazilian society and politics, set in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s)
Christine Higdon, Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue, ECW/a misfit book (a novel immersed in the complex political and social realities of the 1920s: love, sex, desire, police corruption, abortion, addiction, and women wanting more)
Victoria Hislop, The Figurine, Headline Review/Hachette (shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people – and countries – will pay to cling on to them)
N. L. Holmes, The Moon That Fell From Heaven, Red Adept (Ehli-nikkalu, eldest daughter of the Hittite emperor, sets out to save the kingdom and prove herself to her father)
Rachel Hore, The Hidden Years, S&S UK (novel of secrets, loss and betrayal – set on the Cornish coast during WWII and the 1960s)
Pam Howes, A Child for Sale, Bookouture (novel about how far a mother will go to find her child)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Bad Penny, Boldwood (saga set in Victorian-era Birmingham)
Anna Jacobs, Golden Dreams, Hodder & Stoughton (second book in the Jubilee Lake series set in Lancashire, 1895)
Paulette Jiles, Chennville, William Morrow (a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption)
Elaine Johns, Please Come Home, Bookouture (Cornwall, England, 1940; novel of romance between a pilot and a young woman who joins the Women’s Air Force, determined to do her duty)
Kathleen B. Jones, Cities of Women, Keylight Books (dual timeline novel evokes the joys and pitfalls facing medieval women artists, and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books)
Ismail Kadare (trans. John Hodgson), A Dictator Calls, Counterpoint (novel reflects on three particular minutes in a long moment of time when the dark shadow of Joseph Stalin passed over the world)
Pauline Kaldas, The Measure of Distance, Univ. of Arkansas Press (family saga begins when Salim, the eldest of three brothers, moves to Cairo in early 20th century, kicking off a series of migrations that shape the lives of his family)
Irena Karafilly, Arrested Song, Legend Press (spanning three decades, novel chronicles the story of a woman’s lifelong struggle against social and political tyranny, beginning in Greece, 1941)
Linda Kass, Bessie, She Writes (story of a bold young woman living at a precarious moment in our cultural history as she searches for love and acceptance. Based on the post war story of Bess Myerson)
Bruce Kemp, Ladies of the Press, Tidewater Press (an aspiring female journalist is determined to make it to the front during the Great War)
M.A. Kuzniar, Upon a Frosted Star, HQ (a literary fairy-tale about an abandoned manor house silent with secrets and a cursed woman who is desperate to be free)
Callie Langridge, The Mandeville Secret, Storm (a romantic tale of one woman’s destiny within a house full of secrets set in 1924)
Shauna Lawless, The Words of Kings and Prophets, Head of Zeus – an AdAstra book (sequel to The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, a new historical fantasy novel set in Ireland in 1000 AD)
Natasha Lester, The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard, Sphere (dual timeline novel set in the world of luxury fashion)
Amy Licence, False Mistress, Sapere (book three in the Marwood Family Tudor saga)
Gail Lukasik, The Darkness Surrounds Us, CamCat (fleeing Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish flu, Nellie takes a nursing job at a decrepit mansion on a Michigan island, convinced the island holds the secret to her mother’s past)
Hannah Lynn, Athena’s Child, Sourcebooks Landmark (story of Medusa, history’s most infamous monster—and the men who made her into one)
Julianne MacLean, A Storm of Infinite Beauty, Lake Union (tale of how one woman’s search for the truth uncovers long-hidden secrets and rocks the very foundation of her world)
S. G. MacLean, The Winter List, Quercus (returns to the world of Damian Seeker, but Cromwell is dead and Charles Stuart restored to the throne)
Kerri Maher, All You Have to Do is Call, Berkley (Chicago 1970s; based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the women who fought for our right to choose)
Stephens Gerard Malone, Jumbo, Vagrant Press (fiction following the prized African elephant who stole the show of the Barnum & Bailey Circus)
Jodi Ellen Malpas, A Gentleman Never Tells, Orion (second book in the Belmore Square Regency series)
Molly Guptill Manning, The War of Words, Blackstone (story of how American troops in World War II wielded pens to tell their own stories)
Nev March, The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret, Minotaur (explores the vivid nineteenth-century world of the transatlantic voyage, one passenger’s secret at a time)
Edward Marston, Homicide in Chicago, Allison & Busby (for young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on a sixteen-room mansion is an answer to his prayer, until a body is found hanging from a rafter)
Imogen Martin, Under a Gilded Sky, Storm (1874; love story set in the wilds of Missouri and in high society Boston at the dawn of the Gilded Age)
Daniel Mason, North Woods, Random House/John Murray (novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries)
Beryl Matthews, Beautiful Innocence, Allison & Busby (London, 1900; the story of one woman’s fight after a grave miscarriage of justice)
Maria McDonald, Tangled Webs, Bloodhound (two women take drastic action to protect the life they’ve built, in a novel set in early twentieth-century Belfast)
Mary Miley, Murder off Stage, Severn House (in New York, 1926, a former theatre starlet turned amateur sleuth gets mixed up in murder)
Denene Millner, One Blood, The Borough Press / Forge (set in the American South during the Great Migration, New York during the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment)
Boyd & Beth Morrison, The Last True Templar, Head of Zeus – an Aries book (Italy 1351; Fox and Willa find themselves on a dangerous quest for the treasure of the Templar Knights. Second in series)
Heather B. Moore, Under the Java Moon, Shadow Mountain (WWII novel captures the resilience, hope, and courage of a Dutch family who is separated during the war when the Japanese occupy the Dutch East Indies)
Jennifer Moore, Educating Elizabeth, Covenant (to keep her struggling girl’s school afloat, Elizabeth Miller turns to carefree flirt Lord Charles Chatsworth, who agrees to financial funding for a price)
Danial Neil, The Sum of One Man’s Pleasure, NeWest Press (a searching literary novel questions the stories we tell of our own lives. Set in Canada late 1950s to early 1960s)
Chris Nickson, Rusted Souls, Severn House (Leeds, 1920; can Chief Constable Tom Harper stop a spiralling crime spree involving love letters, robbery and murder before he retires?)
Karen E. Osborne, True Grace, Black Rose (set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties, novel chronicles the journey of an immigrant, mixed-raced woman fighting for her family’s survival)
Lizzie Page, An Orphan’s Wish, Bookouture (England, 1953; story about children tragically orphaned by the war, and the woman who is determined to save them)
Gill Paul, A Beautiful Rival, William Morrow (reveals the unknown history of cosmetic titans Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein and their infamous rivalry that spanned decades, broke marriages, and caused personal tragedies)
Andrea Penrose, Murder at the Merton Library, Kensington (a murder in a renowned library at Oxford University and a suspicious fire in the London research laboratory put Wrexford and Charlotte in harm’s way)
Anne Perry, The Traitor Among Us, Ballantine/Headline (Elena Standish investigates the murder of a fellow MI6 agent near the country estate of one of England’s most influential families)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch, Knopf (story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War)
Carol Pouliot, RSVP to Murder, Level Best (time-travel mystery in which Depression-era cop Steven Blackwell and his 21st-century partner-in-crime Olivia Watson travel to the Adirondack Mountains for a Christmas party)
MJ Porter, Protector of Mercia, Boldwood (Dark Ages historical adventure set in Tamworth AD833)
Karen Powell, Fifteen Wild Decembers, Europa Editions (re-imagining of the short life of Emily Brontë, one of England’s greatest writers)
Keenan Powell, The Sorrowful Girl, Three Hooligans (Liam Barrett is a policeman striving for justice in Gilded Age Massachusetts)
Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls, Mariner (novel spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day)
Kate Quinn, Janie Chang, The Phoenix Crown, William Morrow (narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the palace of Versailles)
Oriana Ramunno, Ashes in the Snow, HarperVia (murder mystery set in Auschwitz at Christmas, 1943)
Ron Rash, The Caretaker, Doubleday/Canongate (told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle)
Marcia Rendon, Sinister Graves, Soho Crime (1970s Minnesota–White Earth Reservation–new mystery follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, as she attempts to discover the truth about the disappearances of Native girls and their newborns)
Mike Ripley, Mr Campion’s Memory, Severn House (in 1972, Albert Campion must dig deep into his memory to solve this latest mystery involving a construction magnate)
Kathleen Rooney, From Dust to Stardust, Lake Union (a novel about Hollywood, the cost of stardom, and selfless second acts, inspired by a true story)
Shari J. Ryan, The Glovemaker’s Daughter, Bookouture (WWII novel about sacrifice, the powerful and unbreakable love of a mother, and a glimmer of hope amongst the never-ending darkness of war)
Simon Scarrow, Warrior, Headline (the epic story of Caratacus, warrior Briton and enemy of the Roman Empire)
Bianca M. Schwarz, The Spy’s Daughter, Central Avenue (fourth and final book in the darkly romantic Gentleman Spy Mysteries series which mix mystery with happily ever after romances)
Nikola Scott, The Life I Stole, Headline (May 1953. Princess Elizabeth is about to be crowned, and 22-year-old Isobel McIntyre is a young doctor-in-training at a London university)
Katharine Schellman, Murder at Midnight, Crooked Lane (Lily Adler Regency mystery)
Jacqueline Seewald, Heart of Wisdom, Level Best (an historical family saga featuring an immigrant family during the years 1920 through 1946 as they face the challenges of surviving life, love and loss)
Zadie Smith, The Fraud, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin (fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who deserves to tell their story—and who deserves to be believed)
Burt Solomon, The Murder of Andrew Johnson, Forge (historical thriller focused on one of America’s most controversial presidents)
Matthew Speiser, To the Manor Born, Black Rose (an alternate history in which the Civil War never ended)
Lyn Squire, Immortalised to Death, Level Best (embeds an ingenious solution to Charles Dickens’s unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood within the evolving and tragic consequences of a broader mystery surrounding the author himself)
Shilpi Suneja, House of Caravans, Milkweed Editions (moving back and forth from years surrounding Partition to present, novel portrays a family and nations divided by the living legacy of colonialism)
Mark Stay, The Holly King, S&S UK (fourth novel in a fantasy adventure series of war and mystery)
Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Berlin, Bookouture (story of one woman’s determination to reunite her family in the aftermath of surviving Auschwitz)
Lesley Thomson, The Mystery of Yew Tree House, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (dual timeline novel about a house of revenge, desperation and wartime tragedy – set in 1941 and 2023)
Annabelle Thorpe, The Enemy of Love, Head of Zeus (novel set in wartime Italy and following the fortunes of an Italian family under Mussolini’s rule)
Carrie Turansky, The Legacy of Longdale Manor, Bethany House (two women a century apart are taken on a journey to healing, faith, and forgiveness. Set in 2012 and 1912)
S. J. A. Turney, Caracalla, Canelo (book four and conclusion of The Damned Emperors series)
Jon Volkmer, Brave in Season, Milford House (set in 1950 in the rural Midwest, and inspired by real events, novel explores what happens when an African American railroad repair crew is dropped into a tiny farm community)
Marlie Parker Wasserman, Inferno on Fifth, Level Best (novel based on the Saint Patrick’s Day, New York City, Windsor Hotel fire in 1899)
Christine Wells, The Royal Windsor Secret, William Morrow (a young woman seeks to discover the truth about her mysterious past)
Rachel Wesson, When’s Mummy Coming?, Storm (novel inspired by the real-life stories of the Kindertransport children)
Steve Wiegenstein, Land of Joys, Blank Slate Press ( a brutal murder turns the excitement of the 1904 World’ s Fair into a nightmare)
Gabriela Wiener (trans. Julia Sanches), Undiscovered, HarperVia/Pushkin Press (literary novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman’s family)
C. J. Williams, The Conjuror’s Apprentice, Legend Press (Doctor John Dee and his secret apprentice, Margaretta, embark on a journey to solve a brutal murder in 16th-century England. First in Tudor Rose Murders series)
Kimberley Woodhouse, The Secrets Beneath, Bethany House (inspirational romantic fiction set in the era known as The Bone Wars)
Cindy Woodsmall and Erin Woodsmall, Until Then, Tyndale (time-slip novel in which an Amish man in 1985 finds he has traveled to 1822 Ohio)
Guzel Yakhina (trans. Polly Gannon), A Volga Tale, Europa Editions (set in the dying years of the 19th century through mid-twentieth century, an epic of personal tragedy and resilience, telling a family story of a people, a republic, and a nation)
Barbara Youree, Reaching for Independence, Addison & Highsmith (set in the nineteenth century during Greece’s War for Independence from the Ottoman Turks)
October 2023
Tasha Alexander, A Cold Highland Wind, Minotaur (a Lady Emily mystery set in the wild Scottish Highlands, tells an ancient story of witchcraft which may hold the key to solving a murder centuries later)
Isa Arsén, Shoot the Moon, Putnam (novel about one brilliant but lonely NASA secretary’s relentless drive to live a big life in a world that would keep her small)
Melissa Ashley, The Naturalist of Amsterdam, Affirm Press (gives voice to the long-ignored women who shaped our understanding of the natural world)
D. R. Bailey, The Fleeting Target, Sapere (WWII story, 3rd in the Spitfire Mavericks Thriller series)
Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Final Mystery, Soho Crime (between novels, Jane Austen, Regency England’s most beloved author, doubles as a sleuth in often idyllic locales. Last in series)
Kate Belli, Opulence and Ashes, Crooked Lane (next installment in Gilded Gotham Mystery series set in New York City in the 1890s)
Michelle Bennington, Widow’s Blush, Level Best (mystery in which two people uncover an international plot to destroy England)
Lucy Black, The Brickworks, Now or Never Publishing (a young man searches for redemption for his father after the Tay Bridge collapses in 1879 killing everyone on the train which his father was driving)
K. T. Blakemore, The Good Time Girls Get Famous, Sycamore Creek Press (second adventure with Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn, two accidental outlaws now on the run for too many crimes to count)
Amy Boyes, Yes, Miss Thompson, Now or Never Publishing (beginning in 1904, author brings her great-grandmother’s past alive in this tale of immigration, struggle, and the long reach of history)
Karma Brown, What Wild Women Do, Viking/Dutton (a 1970s feminist strives to create a better future for women, and a contemporary screenwriter makes a shocking discovery that causes her to rewrite her own story)
Theodore Brun, A Savage Moon, Corvus (set in Byzantium, 718AD; a Viking fantasy of blood and battle. The Wanderer Chronicles, book 4)
Denny S. Bryce, The Other Princess, William Morrow (portrait of an African princess raised in Queen Victoria’s court and adapting to life in Victorian England—based on the real-life story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta)
Grant Buday, In the Belly of the Sphinx, Brindle & Glass (coming-of-age story that captures the late-Victorian fascination with ancient Egypt, auras, and the afterlife)
Nathan Burrage, The Hidden Keystone, IFWG Publishing International (dual timeline novel set in 1099 and 1307)
Amanda Cabot, Against the Wind, Revell (an enforced stay in Sweetwater Crossing for doctor in training Louisa Vaughan and injured Josh Porter sparks a romance which neither may want to fulfill)
Edward Carey, Edith Holler, Riverhead (story of a young woman trapped in a ramshackle English playhouse—and the mysterious figure who threatens the theater’s very survival)
Ye Chun, Straw Dogs of the Universe, Catapult (follows a Chinese railroad worker and his young daughter–sold into servitude–in 19th century California as they search for family, fulfillment, and belonging in a violent new land)
Chanel Cleeton, A Night at the Tropicana, Amazon Original (Cuba in the 1930s is the backdrop for a short story about the rhythms of the heart and twists of fate)
Jonathan Coe, Bournville, Europa Editions (a state-of-the-nation story from the Queen’s coronation to the death of Lady Diana told through four generations of one family)
C. J. Cooke, A Haunting in the Arctic, HarperCollins (a haunting dual timeline mystery set aboard a whaling ship in 1901 and 1973)
Celeste Connally, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord, Minotaur (new Regency-era cozy series with a feminist spin)
Mary Connealy, Marshaling Her Heart, Bethany House (conclusion to the Wyoming Sunrise series is a blend of humor, romance, and adventure)
Vivian Conroy, Last Dance in Salzburg, One More Chapter (Miss Ashford cosy mystery series book four)
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Command, Harper (returns to the early years of the 19th century, capturing the bravery, battles, and bloodshed of Britain’s peninsular wars)
Christine Coulson, One Woman Show, Avid Reader Press (set over the course of the 20th-century, a woman transforms herself from a precious object into an unforgettable protagonist)
Dilly Court, A Thimble for Christmas, HarperCollins (a romantic historical Christmas saga)
Michelle Cox, A Haunting at Linley, She Writes (a Henrietta and Inspector Howard novel set in 1930s Chicago)
Amy Crider, Kells, Univ. of New Orleans (8th-century — an early medieval odyssey ripe with purpose and rife with danger—whether from marauding Vikings, treacherous fellow wayfarers, or one’s own innermost doubts)
Siobhan Curham, The Secret Photograph, Bookouture (WWII story set around true historical events in Paris, 1942)
Joie Davidow, Anything But Yes, Monkfish (inspired by the diary of an 18th-century Roman Jewish girl who was imprisoned in a convent cell by the Catholic Church in an attempt to forcibly convert her)
J. D. Davies, Tyranny’s Blood Standard, Canelo (naval adventure of the Age of Sail told from the French perspective. The Philippe Kermorvant Thrillers)
Anna Di Lellio, Dardan Luta, The Long Winter of 1945: Tivari, Univ. of Toronto Press (graphic novel rescues the memory of the victims and survivors of the massacre at Tivari from political exploitation)
Rebecca Dimyan, Waiting for Beirut, Running Wild Press (a novel that explores identity and love in 1950’s Connecticut and Lebanon)
David Diop (trans. Sam Taylor), Beyond the Door of No Return, FS&G/Pushkin Press (adventure story set in eighteenth-century Senegal)
Ariel Djanikian, The Prospectors, William Morrow (rags-to-riches story of survival, greed, and injustice across American history following a family transformed by the Klondike Gold Rush)
Anton Du Beke, The Paris Affair, Orion (as dark secrets rise to the surface, the very heart of the Buckingham Hotel is under threat)
Tananarive Due, The Reformatory, Gallery/Saga Press (Florida 1950; novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows a boy who is sent to a segregated reform school where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living and the dead)
JC Duncan, Warrior Prince, Boldwood (first instalment in a story of an exiled boy’s journey to become Harald Hardrada)
Lesley Eames, Christmas at the Wartime Bookshop, Bantam (book 3 in the WWII saga)
Sarah M. Eden, Sally Britton, Ashtyn Newbold, Karen Thornell, Christmas Forevermore, Covenant (a collection of novellas from meddling matchmakers to fortuitous fiascos, set during the Christmas season)
Morag Edwards, The Jacobite’s Wife, Bloodhound (based on the true story of Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale, and set in the early eighteenth century)
Anne Eekhout (trans. Laura Watkinson, Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein (US) / Mary: or The Birth of Frankenstein (UK), HarperVia/Pushkin Press (brings to life a defining moment in Mary Shelley’s youth)
Sharon Emmerichs, Shield Maiden, Redhook (refocusing the narrative on a fierce young woman reclaiming her power, this novel will upend everything you think you know about Beowulf)
Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, Bloomsbury (novel recounting W. Somerset Maugham’s trip to Malaya after World War I and the secretive couple with whom he grows entangled)
Stephen G. Eoannou, Yesteryear, Santa Fe Writer’s Project (based on the life-story of Fran Striker who created The Lone Ranger, a show that provided hope to Americans during the country’s darkest days)
Allison Epstein, Let the Dead Bury the Dead, Doubleday (alternate history set in imperial Russia, following a cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon’s failed invasion)
Pamela Binnings Ewen, The Moon in the Mango Tree, Blackstone (based on a true story, one young woman travels from Roaring Twenties Philadelphia to the jungles of the Orient, to pre-war Paris and Rome in her struggle to find her place)
Catherine Fearns, All the Parts of the Soul, Quill and Crow (a reclusive magistrate is sent to investigate rumours of witchcraft in a small village, and falls for the beautiful healer who lives there)
Betty Firth, War Comes to the Dales, Hera Books (WWII saga series set in the Yorkshire Dales in 1941)
Rachel Fordham, The Letter Tree, Thomas Nelson (1920s New York when hidden letters change everything for two lost souls and the community around them)
Sam Foster, American Pied Piper, Girl Friday/Agave (final chapter in a trilogy tracing the rise and fall of the American Midwest)
Kate Furnivall, Child of the Ruins, Hodder & Stoughton (1948; in a post-war city where the line between right and wrong has become blurred, two women search for a lost child)
Tong Ge, The House Filler, Ronsdale Press (portrayal of one family’s struggle to survive in the face of an historical upheaval and political oppression)
Jenny Glanfield, The Hotel Quadriga, Sapere (first book in a historical family saga set in Berlin in the 1920s)
Chris Glatte, The Last Test of Courage, Severn River (A Time to Serve, book 4, WWII novel)
S. K. Golden, The Socialite’s Guide to Death & Dating, Crooked Lane (1958; the second Pinnacle Hotel mystery finds another murder that strikes too close to home)
Martin Goodman, The Cellist of Dachau, Barbican Press (a novel of the Holocaust set in 1938 and 1990s)
Ann Granger, The Old Rogue of Limehouse, Headline (ninth Victorian murder mystery with Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie)
Juliet Greenwood, The Last Train From Paris, Storm (novel about the terrible choices ordinary people were forced to make during WWII)
David Greig, Columba’s Bones, Polygon (recasts ninth-century Scotland as the setting for a Scandi noir-style thriller, playing with the familiar tropes of the ‘heist gone wrong’, and a faithful follower turning against his brutal mob boss)
Nicola Griffith, Menewood, FS&G (in 7th-century Britain, novel picks up where the heroine Hild’s journey left off. Sequel to Hild)
Elly Griffiths, The Great Deceiver, Quercus (seventh Brighton-based crime novel set in 1966)
Chris Hadfield, The Defector, Mulholland Books/Quercus (Cold War thriller; a high-stakes game of spies, lies, and a possible high-level defection that plays out across three continents)
Sophie Hannah, Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night, William Morrow (the world’s greatest detective puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery)
Rebecca Hardy, The Merchant’s Daughter, Headline Accent (in 1815, widowed Jenny must discover the hidden forces at play before she agrees to a marriage to the enigmatic Erasmus)
Matthew Harffy, A Day of Reckoning, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (in third historical adventure in the A Time for Swords series, Hunlaf battles peril and intrigue on a dangerous voyage to Muslim Spain in AD 796)
Penny Haw, The Woman at the Wheel, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel examines the life of Bertha Benz, who refused to let men hinder her belief in her revolutionary machine)
Olivia Hawker, October in the Earth, Lake Union (in Depression-era Kentucky, a defiant wife embarks on a liberating journey)
Richard Helms, Vicar Brekonridge, Level Best Historia (a race to find the motive to the shooting of a man the killer thought was the Prime Minister; set in Victorian England)
Austin Hernon, The Lionheart’s Bride, Sapere (first in the Berengaria of Navarre medieval trilogy)
Elisabeth J. Hobbes, The Promise Tree, One More Chapter (historical fantasy set as the Great War is looming)
Kate Hodges, The Wayward Sisters, Hodder & Stoughton (Macbeth’s three witches resurface in 1780s Scotland in this novel of obsession, magic and betrayal)
Mike Hollow, The Covent Garden Murder, Allison & Busby (December 1940, Detective Inspector John Jago investigates)
Jon Howe, Shanghaied, Koehler Books (in the fall of 1810, Eamon McGrath is stolen from his New England life and family, and shanghaied to work aboard a British Navy merchant vessel)
Pam Howes, The Girls of Mersey Square, Bookouture (novel about young women facing dark times together with friendship and courage; set in Stockport, 1959)
Also: The Mothers of Mersey Square
Chelsea Iverson, The Witches at the End of the World, Sourcebooks Landmark (a Norwegian witch’s rage manifests in a curse in this novel set in the late 1600s)
David Jacinto, Out of the Darkness, Forefront Books (biographical fiction inspired by the true story of a 19th-century child coal miner who rose out of the ashes of poverty to reach for his dreams)
Angela Jackson-Brown, Homeward, Harper Muse (Georgia 1965; follows a woman’s path toward self-discovery and growth as she becomes involved in the Civil Rights Movement)
Michael Jecks, Murdering the Messenger, Severn House (March 1557; Jack Blackjack is back in London but is pretty soon being accused of a crime for which he might hang)
Dan Jones, Wolves of Winter, Head of Zeus – an Aries Book (second book following Essex Dogs, set during the siege of Calais in 1300s mediaeval France)
Chris Keefer, Tragedy’s Twin, Level Best (death at the poorhouse is unremarkable in 1900; but what if the corpse presents as a drowning victim and there is no water on the property? Second in the Carrie Lisbon undertaker series)
Julia Kelly, A Traitor in Whitehall, Minotaur (the first novel in the Parisian Orphan series — can Evelyne find out who’s been selling England’s secrets and catch a killer?)
Heidi Kimball, A Not-So Distant Love, Covenant (Lady Charlotte Darrington crosses the Atlantic to Pittsburgh for a bit of freedom before inevitable marriage, and falls in love with an American sceptical of the British peerage system)
Deborah L. King, Mary Not Broken, Red Adept (1930s Mississippi; a young woman flees to Chicago with her musician boyfriend to escape a forced marriage, but returns when multiple tragedies strike)
Christian Klaver, Sherlock Holmes and Mr Hyde, Titan Books (Dr Jekyll claims to Sherlock that his friend has been wrongfully accused of hideous crimes)
Karen Lynne Klink, At What Cost, Silence?, She Writes (novel presents two contrasting plantation families in a society where strict rules of belief and behavior are clear, and public opinion can shape an entire life)
Sophia Kouidou-Giles, An Unexpected Ally, She Writes (a newly woven set of tales that brings to life ancient Greek myths)
Lesley Krueger, Far Creek Road, ECW (1961; after their sacrifices made during the war, many in Grouse Valley believe they’ve earned security and prosperity, but conflicts and secrets seethe beneath the surface)
William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember, Atria (In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen)
Richard Kurti, Demon of Truth, Sapere (1504, Rome; third in series in which construction of the new Basilica reveals St Peter’s tomb contains only animal bones)
Chiara Lagani (adapt.), (trans. Ann Goldstein), illus. Elena Ferrante Mara Cerri, My Brilliant Friend, Europa Editions (graphic novel adaptation tells the story of the complex friendship between Lila and Lenù in post-war Naples)
Soraya Lane, The Royal Daughter, Bookouture (a dual timeline novel of love and sacrifice)
Shauna Lawless, Words of Kings and Prophets, Head of Zeus — an AdAstra Book (sequel to The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, historical fantasy novel set in Ireland, 1000AD)
Pam Lecky, The Last Letter from London, Avon (1944; as WWII rages on, newly promoted MI5 agent Sarah Gillespie is thrown into the dangerous world of espionage when she is tasked with handling Adeline Vernier – a mysterious double agent from Paris)
Jonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime Novel, Ecco (story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing over fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood)
Hannah Linder, Garden of the Midnights, Barbour (Gothic style Regency romance)
James Lovegrove, Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors, Titan Books (1929; an ageing Dr John Watson finally sits down to write a fresh chronicle disclosing the true events behind his accounts of Holmes’s exploits)
Posy Lovell, The Sewing Factory Girls, Orion (novel inspired by the brave, hardworking women who fought to improve working conditions at the Singer Factory in Clydebank, Scotland)
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, The American Wife’s Secret, Bookouture (The Diplomat’s Wife series, book 3)
Tim Major, Sherlock Holmes and the Twelve Thefts of Christmas, Titan Books (Sherlock’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler)
Nikki Marmery, Lilith, Legend Press (a feminist retelling of the first woman who is banished from Paradise when she refuses to bow to Adam’s will)
Edward Marston, Danger of Defeat, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set in 1918)
Laura Martin, A Poisoned Fortune, Sapere (Regency murder mystery set in Bath, England. Third in the Jane Austen Investigates books)
Annabelle Marx, The Herbalist’s Secret, Storm (a mystery story set in Scotland, 1889)
Maggie Mason, The Fortune Tellers’ Secret, Sphere (family saga about overcoming hardship and the value of friendship set in Blackpool, 1922. Book 2 in series)
Imogen Matthews, The Girl From the Resistance, Bookouture (series based on true stories of the heroic women of the Dutch resistance)
Robert Matzen, Season of the Gods, GoodKnight Books (set against the backdrop of Pearl harbor and World War II, tells the unlikely story of Hollywood’s greatest masterpiece through the eyes of all who made it happen)
Steven Mayfield, The Penny Mansions, Regal House (amidst the threat of the Spanish flu pandemic, the disappearance of a real estate developer brings an investigator to a small mountain town)
Steven A. McKay, The Heathen Horde, Canelo (historical adventure following the life of one of Britain’s most important kings, Alfred the Great)
Clara McKenna, Murder on Mistletoe Lane, Kensington (Stella and Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst celebrate their first Christmas together as Morrington Hall comes alive with caroling. . .. and a murder)
Jason Monaghan, Blackshirt Conspiracy, Level Best (1936; novel in which the Agents of Room Z race to unravel competing conspiracies that entangle the government, the church, and the king)
Ada Moncrieff, Murder at Maybridge Castle, Harvill Secker (1936; an innocent game of murder-in-the-dark turns into a real game of life and death)
Will Montgomery, The Last Hour, Bloodhound (a Royal Navy commander is tasked with stopping a German convoy in WWII)
Heather Morris, Sisters Under the Rising Sun, SMP/Echo (story of how the second world war was fought and won by women the world over, in different ways, as much as it was by men)
Robbie Morrison, Edge of the Grave, Bantam/Macmillan (c.2021) (historical noir in which two detectives hunt a killer amidst the lawless streets of 1932 Glasgow)
Trudy J. Morgan-Cole, A Company of Rogues, Breakwater (conclusion to a trilogy brings to the fore the experiences of women settlers in North America as they grapple with notions of homeland, colonization, and sense of belonging)
Ritu Mukerji, Murder by Degrees, Simon & Schuster (mystery set in 19th century Philadelphia, following a pioneering woman doctor as she investigates the disappearance of a young patient who is presumed dead)
Colin Mustful, Reclaiming Mni Sota, History Through Fiction (an alternate history of the U.S. Dakota War of 1862)
Leonora Nattrass, Scarlet Town, Viper (reluctant eighteenth-century sleuth Laurence Jago becomes enmeshed in a deadly election in his native Cornwall)
A.D. Nauman, Down the Steep, Regal House (a coming-of-age novel set in 1963 small-town Virginia)
Emma Orchard, The Runaway Heiress, Allison & Busby (1815; under duress to marry a repellent friend of her uncle, Cassandra makes her escape only to find she is now penniless and very much alone)
Eliot Pattison, Freedom’s Ghost, Counterpoint (part of the Bone Rattler series offering historical adventures embedded in the clashes and intrigue of the American Revolution)
Tracie Peterson, Knowing You, Bethany House (romance set during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition)
Tim Powers, My Brother’s Keeper, Head of Zeus – an AdAstra Book/Baen (1846 – gothic novel introduces an ancient secret haunting the Yorkshire moors, a dark inheritance and something terrible buried in the church)
Ben G. Price, Ogden: A Tale for the End of Time, Addison & Highsmith/Histria (set in 18th-century, tells a tale about how an emissary from the Spirit of Nature arrives in the early days of industrialization, to judge humanity’s fitness for survival)
Virginia Pye, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, Regal House (story of a successful female author of romance and adventure novels who becomes a champion of women’s rights as she takes on the literary establishment in Gilded Age Boston)
Lina Rather, A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, Tordotcom (historical fantasy of midwifery, monstrosity, and the rending of the world, set in 17th-century London)
Petra Rautiainen (trans. David Hackston), Land of Snow and Ashes, Pushkin Press (story of Lapland’s buried history of Nazi crimes during World War II)
Heather Redmond, Death and the Sisters, Kensington (a young Mary Shelley, her stepsister Jane “Claire” Clairmont, and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley are drawn into a murder investigation)
Tracy Rees, The Elopement, Macmillan UK (a scandalous romance set in Victorian England, 1897)
Patricia Reis, Unsettled, Sybilline Press (a repressed woman begins an ancestral quest through the prairies of Iowa, awakening family secrets, while in the late 1800s, a repressed ancestor, Tante Kate, creates those secrets)
Vanessa Riley, Murder in Drury Lane, Kensington (Lady Worthing Mystery #2 –mystery series features an engaging heroine with an independent streak, a notorious past, and a decided talent for sleuthing)
Jennifer Sherman Roberts, The Village Healer’s Book of Cures, Lake Union (in 17th-century England, a female healer enflames the fury of a witchfinder in a novel about murder, revenge, and the dangerous power of knowledge)
Lev AC Rosen, The Bell in the Fog, Forge/Tor (San Francisco, 1952; historical mystery asks—once you have finally found a family, how far would you go to prove yourself to them?)
Anbara Salam, Hazardous Spirits, Tin House (captures a world unsettled by mediums and spirits, revealing the devastating secrets that ghosts from the past can tell, when given the voice to do so)
Noelle Salazar, The Roaring Days of Zora Lily, Mira (a museum curator finds a hidden label on a famous gown, unearthing the story of a young seamstress and her journey from the speakeasies of Jazz Age Seattle to the costume houses of Hollywood)
Shannon Sanders, Company, Graywolf (moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960’s to the 2000’s, literary novel tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga)
Isabelle Schuler, Queen Hereafter (US) / Lady MacBethad (UK), Harper Perennial (reimagines the life of Gruoch – the real-life Scottish Queen who inspired one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters)
Michelle Shocklee, Appalachian Song, Tyndale (story of love and sacrifice set in the heart of Appalachia, 1943)
Sarah Sigal, The Socialite Spy, Lume Books (London, 1936; a historical spy novel about socialites, spies and the king of England)
Luanne G. Smith, The Witch’s Lens, 47North (during World War I there are evils both living and dead which only a witch can see)
John Smolens, A Cold, Hard Prayer, Michigan Univ. State Press (a morality tale in which a sense of fairness, decency, and tolerance are in conflict with bigotry, fanaticism, and hate, told through a story of two orphans on the run in 1924)
A. L. Sowards, Codes of Courage, Covenant (romance in the midst of war where three lives are woven together in love, joy, sacrifice and courage)
Minerva Spencer, The Cutthroat Countess, Kensington (England may be a man’s world, but behind the scenes of an all-female circus, women wield the power in the most unexpected ways)
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz, Faber & Faber/Scribner (tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently)
Mike Stark, The Derelict Light, Bison Books (explores a Pacific Northwest town in the grips of catastrophe, caught in a bitter struggle between progress, greed, and human frailty)
Mel Starr, A Polluted Font, Lion Fiction (medieval crime mystery in The Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton series)
Julian Stockwin, Sea of Treason, Hodder & Stoughton/Mobius (following his recovery after a savage wounding in America, Kydd returns to England to re-assume command of Thunderer, which is sent to the remote station of Bermuda)
Zoë Strachan, Catch the Moments as They Fly By, Blackwater Press (portrait of class, love, and womanhood in mid-twentieth century Scotland)
Sara Swann, The Secret Room, Vinspire (WWII – as word of the deadly program against the Jews of Europe spreads, an Amish farmer finds himself asking God to show him how he can help them)
Melina Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, Grand Central (a witchy reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the troublesome and much-maligned youngest Bennet sister)
Robert Tecklenburg, The Lady in the Castle, Addison & Highsmith (historical drama of a young Austrian aristocrat’s struggle against tyranny, war, and social upheaval in 1945)
Adam Thirlwell, The Future Future, FS&G (set in 1775 and in the present moment, novel follows one woman on a contemporary quest to clear her name and change the world)
Gill Thompson, The Orphans on the Train, Headline Review (two orphaned girls are separated in this story of loss, friendship and the need to belong)
Sidney Thompson, The Forsaken and the Dead, Univ. of Nebraska Bison Books (in the third book in the Bass Reeves trilogy, we meet the Marshal again in the 1890s)
Pauls Toutonghi, The Refugee Ocean, S&S (two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked, over time and distance, by the perils of history)
Marcelino Truong (trans. David Homel), 40 Men and 12 Rifles, Arsenal Pulp Press (graphic novel about love, beauty, and war in 1950s Indochina)
Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally), Olav Audunssøn IV: Winter, Univ. of Minnesota Press (fourth and final volume in the epic of one man’s fateful life in medieval Norway)
Erica Vetsch, Children of the Shadows, Kregel (Detective Daniel Swann and debutante Juliette Thorndike team up to solve a dangerous mystery, while trying to keep their growing romance secret)
Sharon Virts, Veil of Doubt, Girl Friday Books (when a mother is charged with murder, can defense attorney Powell Harrison find truth and justice in a legal system where innocence is not presumed?)
Caroline Vu, Catinat Boulevard, Guernica Editions (beginning in Saigon during the Vietnam War, tells the story of Mai who flirts with American GIs in rowdy bars, and Mai Ly who joins the communist resistance in the jungle)
Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend, Scribner/Bloomsbury UK + ANZ (a reimagining of American slavery through the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War)
Amanda Weinberg, The Italian Bookshop Among the Vines, Embla (inspired by true life events during WWII)
Rachel Wesson, A Mother’s Promise, Storm (WWII story of the power of a mother’s love and the will to survive)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Lost Boys of Barlowe Theater, Bethany House (1915; when Greta’s younger brother disappears, Greta engages a local police officer to help her uncover the ghostly secrets of the theater where he went missing)
Julie Wright, Windsong Manor, Shadow Mountain (romance set in the London countryside in 1820)
Jin Yong (trans. Gigi Chang), A Past Unearthed, MacLehose (historical fantasy set in China, 1237 AD after the death of Genghis Khan when the Mongolians turn their armies on their ally, the Great Song Empire)
Felicity York, The Runaway Bride, HarperNorth (inspired by the true story of Lyme Park’s most scandalous love affair. Set in 1827)
Also: The Secret Sister (Book 2 in the Stately Scandals series)
November 2023
Tessa Afshar, The Peasant King, Tyndale (When her mother, the Persian king’s famous senior scribe, is kidnapped, Jemmah and her sister must sneak undetected into enemy territory to rescue her. Biblical fiction)
Mitch Albom, The Little Liar, Harper (Albom’s first novel set during the Holocaust is a moving parable that explores honesty, survival, revenge and devotion)
Robert Archambeau, Alice B. Toklas is Missing, Regal House (brings Paris in the 1920s to life, deflating myths of established male geniuses and showing the interactions between different schools of art and literature)
Jess Armstrong, The Curse of Penryth Hall, Minotaur (gothic murder mystery set after the Great War in which Sir Edward Chenowyth’s death brings whispers of a returned curse that may soon claim its next victim)
K. M. Ashman, The Fate of a King, Canelo (1066 dawns on an unsettled England, where the death of Edward the Confessor has set in motion a chain of events that can no longer be stopped)
Paul Auster, Baumgartner, Grove Press (a 1970s era novel of love, memory, and grief asks why we remember certain moments, and forget others)
Elizabeth Bailey, The Hanging Cheat, Sapere (tenth book in the Lady Fan Mystery series; 18th-century romance murder mysteries with a courageous woman sleuth)
Tracy Baines, Trouble at Fisher’s Wharf, Boldwood (romantic WWII saga)
Amanda Barratt, The Warsaw Sisters, Revell (story of the oft-forgotten history of Poland during WWII, inspired by true stories of ordinary individuals who fought to preserve freedom and humanity)
Vicki Beeby, The Girls of Bomber Command, Canelo (WWII saga about members of the WAAF)
Misty M. Beller, Rocky Mountain Promise, Bethany House (romance and adventure set in the Rocky Mountain wilderness)
Tania Blanchard, A Woman of Courage, HarperCollins AU (set in 1890 Northern England, novel illuminates the strength and struggles of women at time of momentous change)
Shelley Blanton-Stroud, Poster Girl, She Writes (young gossip columnist Jane Benjamin joins FDR’s Office of War Information to find a poster girl to entice more women into the shipyard work so essential in WW II)
Rhys Bowen, The Proof of the Pudding, Berkley (Lady Georgiana Rannoch is looking forward to her first ever turn as hostess for her very own house party when the festivities lead to murder)
Karen K. Brees, Headwind, Black Rose (historical adventure novel amidst spies and murder, set against Churchill’s last hope to mine the coast of Norway against Hitler’s invasion)
Linda Broday, Courting Miss Emma, Severn House (Western romance set in Texas 1868)
Alida Bremer (trans. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp), Split, Amazon Crossing (Nazis, spies, romance, and murder collide in prewar eastern Europe)
Jennifer Burke, Sub Rosa, Level Best (a Valerius mystery set in Rome, 58AD)
Fliss Chester, Death on the Scotland Express, Bookouture (Golden Age cosy mystery with Cressida Fawcett and Detective Andrews; book 4 in the series)
Alison Clare, Midnight at Maidenstone Hall, Level Best (gothic novel of suspense, set in spring 1919)
John Clinch, The General and Julia, Atria (Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president)
Tea Cooper, The Talented Mrs Greenaway, HQ AU (novel brings to life the story of the wife to feted colonial architect Francis Greenway)
Tea Cooper, The Butterfly Collector, Harper Muse (dual time line mystery fifty years in the making, set5 in 1868 and 1922 Australia)
Bernard Cornwell with Suzanne Pollak, Uhtred’s Feast, Harper (additional Uhtred stories, showing us the man behind the shield – as a young boy, as Alfred’s advisor, and as prince)
Angela K. Couch, Capturing Hope, Barbour (new series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII)
Elizabeth Crook, The Madstone, Little, Brown (story of a pregnant young mother, her child, and the frontier carpenter who helps them flee across Texas from outlaws bent on revenge)
JP Cross, Operation Tipping Point, Monsoon Books (eighth in a series of books involving Gurkha military units; set in Malaya, 1951)
Judith Cutler, The Dead Hand, Severn House (while hosting a group of academics at Thorncroft House, Harriet and Matthew Rowsley find themselves confronted with bigger issues than unruly guests)
Siobhan Daiko, The Tuscan Orphan, Boldwood (two people vow to find the parents of a Jewish orphan girl amidst the shadow of WWII)
P. T. Deutermann, Iwo, 26 Charlie, SMP (next in series – a story of sacrifice and courage at Iwo Jima)
Sean Dietrich, Kinfolk, Harper Muse (when a mysterious teenager shows up in Nub’s life in rural Alabama, he learns that family, forgiveness, and kindness can be found in the most unlikely of places)
Helena Dixon, Murder at the Highland Castle, Bookouture (1935; book 14 in the Miss Underhay Mystery series)
Paul Doherty, Murder Most Treasonable, Severn House (1382; friar-sleuth Brother Athelstan races against time to solve impossible crimes and uncover a traitor)
Emily J. Edwards, Viviana Valentine and the Ticking Clock, Crooked Lane (NYC, 1950s; when Viviana Valentine and Tommy Fortuna head to Times Square for New Year’s Eve, they don’t expect to catch a killer)
Loren D. Estleman, Vamp, Forge (Valentino embarks on a treacherous path to save not only an extinct drive-in movie theater, but the last remaining print of the 1917 film Cleopatra, which has been lost for over a century)
Nicole Evelina, Catherine’s Mercy, Chalice Press (brings to life Irish reformer and Sisters of Mercy founder Catherine McAuley. Set in Dublin, Ireland 1820s)
F. L. Everett, Murder in a Country Village, Bookouture (England, 1941; during WWII rookie reporter Edie York wants to write the front-page news, but finds herself in the headlines when she stumbles over a body on the moors)
Jonathan Evison, Again and Again, Dutton (story of a lonely old man clinging to his delusions, or a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago)
Robert Fabbri, Alexander’s Legacy: Forging Kingdoms, Corvus (Alexander’s sudden death has left the empire in chaos – and the dead king’s generals each plot against each other for power)
Amanda Flower, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, Berkley (when a literary icon stays with the Dickinson family, Emily and her housemaid Willa find themselves embroiled in a murder)
Essie Fox, The Fascination, Orenda Books (gothic novel that brings alive Victorian London and the darkness and deception that lies beneath)
Frank Francis, Deliver Us From Evil, Bloodhound Books (a woman searches for the truth about the JFK assassination and her father’s possible role in it)
Joel Francis, Zebedee’s Calling, Kharis Publishing (brings 11th Century England to life, with key battles and royal successions, as well as the efforts among a group of zealous Christians to have access to Scripture written in English)
Darry Fraser, The Milliner of Bendigo, HQ Fiction (a twisty historical mystery and adventure set in 1898, Bendigo, Victoria)
Sarah Freethy, The Porcelain Maker, SMP/Simon & Schuster UK (dual timeline story of love, betrayal and art that opens in Weimar Germany through the horrors of World War II to 1990s)
Laura Anne Gilman, Uncanny Vows, Gallery / Saga Press (historical fantasy sequel to Uncanny Times, in which Rosemary and Aaron Harker, along with their supernatural hound Botherton, have been given a new assignment to investigate)
Lee Goldberg, Calico, Severn House (parallel present day investigative thriller with an 1880s historical mystery)
Rosie Goodwin, The Lost Girl, Zaffre (saga set in Nottingham, 1875, about a girl who can see the spirits of those who have passed)
Leslie Gould, This Passing Hour, Bethany House (dual-time tale set during World War II and present-day Lancaster County)
Molly Green, Wartime Wishes at Bletchley Park, Avon (third novel in the Bletchley Park Girls series, set in 1939)
Kerry Greenwood, Murder in Williamstown, Poisoned Pen (In addition to Miss Phryne Fisher, this mystery features Phryne’s three wards with their own mysteries to solve)
Kate Grenville, Restless Dolly Maunder, Canongate (tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles in the 19th-century)
Michelle Griep, The Bow Street Runners Trilogy, Barbour (three 19th century novels — Brentwood’s Ward, The Innkeeper’s Daughter and The Noble Guardian)
Lauren Grodstein, We Must Not Think of Ourselves, Algonquin (1940; story of love and defiance set in the Warsaw Ghetto, based on archives kept by those determined to have their stories survive World War II)
Emily Gunnis, The Girls Left Behind, Headline Review (story of a girl disappeared, a terrible wrong and powerful people with something to hide)
Diane Hanks, The Woman With a Purple Heart, Sourcebooks Landmark (based on the life of Lieutenant Annie Fox; a WWII novel of leadership, courage, and friendship that exposes a shameful side of history)
Elodie Harper, The Temple of Fortuna, Union Square (final installment in the Wolf Den Trilogy)
Cora Harrison, Murder in the Mist, Severn House (Charles Dickens extends the hand of friendship to a stranded stranger and his nephews for Christmas, with deadly consequences)
Victoria Hawthorne, The Darkest Night, Quercus (haunting story of family secrets – and the lengths some will go to protect them)
Leigh Heasley, The Once and Future Fling, W by Wattpad Books (romance in which a time-traveling woman finds love in Regency England and in 1920s New York)
Virginia Heath, Never Wager With a Wallflower, St. Martin’s Griffin (third installment in the Merriwell Sister’s Regency rom-com series)
Cecelia Holland, The Kings in Winter, Open Road Media (set in Ireland in eleventh century; follows the life of a clan chief torn between opposing factions in his own land while war with the Danes looms on the horizon)
Katherine Howe, A True Account, Henry Holt/Magpie (dual timeline story of two women in different worlds, both shattering the rules of their own society and daring to risk everything to go out on their own account – set at end of Golden Age of Piracy and in 1930)
Therese Howes, The Secrets We Keep, HQ Digital (WWII romance– recruited by British Intelligence Marguerite must obtain documents that will condemn German officers, and do it in a world where she also carries a secret)
Sonallah Ibrahim (trans. Eleanor Ellis), 1970: The Last Days, Seagull Books (a memoir of Nasser’s final months in the voice of his former prisoner who kept diaries that he smuggled out of prison on cigarette papers)
Sarah James, Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen, Sourcebooks Landmark (mystery set in wartime Hollywood)
Teresa H. Janssen, The Ways of Water, She Writes (a tale of loss, hope, and forgiveness set in the rugged beauty of the turn-of-the-century Southwest)
Dinah Jefferies, Night Train to Marrakech, HarperCollins (third in the Daughters of War trilogy; novel brings the color, atmosphere and sun-baked walls of 1960s Marrakech to life)
Jane Jesmond, A Quiet Contagion, Verve Books (a mystery inspired by the 1957 Coventry polio epidemic. Dual timeline story set in 1957 and 2017)
William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone, The Frontier Overland Company, Kensington (story of a legendary stagecoach line—and the brave men who built it and risked their lives to keep it running)
Rosemary Jones, The Bootlegger’s Dance, Aconyte Books (Golden-age fantasy adventure of secret whispers, haunted streets, and a lost actor falling through time)
Karen Kingsbury, Just Once, Atria (World War II love story about a young woman torn between two brothers)
E. J. Koh, The Liberators, Tin House (from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators, novel spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions)
Ann Hanigan Kotz, Sons & Daughters, Bookpress (saga of a widowed woman fighting to preserve a legacy, carve her own path in the midst of tragedy, and guide six first-generation American children to discover their own identities)
Florence Reiss Kraut, Street Corner Dreams, She Writes (a family saga, a love story, a gangster tale, and a suspense story, set during Prohibition, the Spanish Flu epidemic, and the Depression)
Eleni Kyriacou, The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou, Head of Zeus — an Aries Book (historical crime novel set in the Greek diaspora of 1950s London, inspired by a true story)
Callie Langridge, The Mandeville Shadow, Storm (third book in series sees Kate offered a housemaid’s position on the staff of the ornate halls of Mandeville House)
Mariely Lares, Sun of Blood and Ruin, Harper Voyager (16th-century New Spain — reimagining of Zorro weaves Mesoamerican mythology and Mexican history into a historical fantasy with magic, intrigue, treachery, and romance)
Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River, Doubleday (historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who investigates a shocking murder)
Lee Geum-yi (trans. An Seonjae), Can’t I Go Instead, Scribe UK (follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century)
Jonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime Novel, Ecco / Atlantic (a story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing over fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood; set in the streets of 1970s Brooklyn)
Hannah Levene, Greasepaint, Nightboat Books (set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, novel follows an ensemble cast of all-singing, all-dancing butch dykes and Yiddish anarchists through eternal Friday nights at the bar)
JL Lycette, The Committee Will Kill You Now, Black Rose (based on the rationing of kidney dialysis in 1960s America)
H. B. Lyle, Spy Hunter, Mobius (Secret Service Agent Wiggins returns for a new adventure – and meets with his old mentor, Sherlock Holmes in a story of escalating intrigue, danger and violence)
Freya Marske, A Power Unbound, Tordotcom (the final entry in the Last Binding trilogy; the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light)
Alice McDermott, Absolution, FS&G (account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War)
Rachel McMillan, Operation Scarlet, Thomas Nelson (set during WWII; a story with fresh wit, romance, and the spirit of swashbuckling heroism that transcends wars and centuries)
Anne Michaels, Held, Bloomsbury UK & ANZ/Knopf (a novel that spans four generations set on a battlefield in 1917 and in 1920 North Yorkshire)
Louisa Morgan, The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird, Redhook (a story of obsession, redemption, and the magic of unexpected friendship)
Emily Bain Murphy, Enchanted Hill, Union Square (historical mystery where two people with a dark, shared past collide while working undercover at a mansion on the California coast)
M. Lee Musgrave, The Beautiful One, Black Rose (against a 1912 backdrop, photographer Asim and translator Chione navigate Berlin’s society while pursuing their desires, dreams, and the enduring quest for truth)
Nola Nash, Watcher, Black Rose (historical fantasy set around the battle for Athens in 404 BC)
Randy O’Brien, The Farm, Addison & Highsmith (study of Southern America following World War II)
Tim Pears, Run to the Western Shore, Swift Press (a novel about destiny, home and surviving in a world in flux, set in Britain in AD 72)
Anne Perry, A Christmas Vanishing, Ballantine (Charlotte Pitt’s clever grandmother investigates the sudden disappearance of her dear friend)
Glynis Peters, The Orphan’s Homecoming, One More Chapter (the Red Cross Orphans series, book 3 set during WWII)
Tracie Peterson, Kingdom of Love, Barbour (three medieval romances)
Michelle Porter, A Grandmother Begins the Story, Algonquin (story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them)
Mary Jo Putney, Silver Lady, Kensington (first in a historical romance series set on the rugged Cornish coast, filled with adventure, real-life history, intrigue and love)
Angela Ranson, Shades of Death, Sapere (book one of the Catrin Tudor Mysteries set in the court of Elizabeth I)
Kathleen Williams Renk, The Rossetti Diaries, Bedazzled Ink (wrapped in a modern-day mystery, novel is a re-imagining that explores the aspirations and achievements of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal)
David Rotenberg, City Rising, At Bay Press (the story of two destitute Baghdadi boys who become opium lords, and the battles against the powerful British Opium companies. First book in the Shanghai Tetralogy)
William Ryan, The Constant Soldier, Arcade (historical thriller taking place at the end of World War II)
Constance Sayers, The Star and the Strange Moon, Redhook (dual timeline tale of ambition, obsession, and the eternal mystery and magic of film, set in 1968 and 2015)
Simon Scarrow, Rebellion, Headline (AD 60. Britannia is in turmoil & the rebel leader Boudica has tasted victory against a force of tough veterans in Camulodunum. Book 22 in Eagles of the Empire series)
Caroline Scott, Good Taste, William Morrow (1932; a heroine ahead of her time and an adventure across the English countryside in search of great food)
Mattia Signori, Peace on the Western Front, Manilla Press (based on a true story)
Alice Simpson, The Winthrop Agreement, Harper (novel set in Gilded Age New York City, about an ambitious young immigrant woman and her rise from the floor of a sweatshop to the heights of haute couture)
Rosemary Simpson, Murder Wears a Hidden Face, Kensington (a diplomat’s murder draws heiress-turned-sleuth Prudence MacKenzie and former Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter away from New York’s high society and into the dark heart of Chinatown)
Jane Smiley, A Dangerous Business, Knopf (murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls)
Olivia Spooner, The Girl from London, Moa Press (a young schoolteacher volunteers as an escort helping to evacuate children from war-torn England to Australia and New Zealand)
Danielle Steel, The Ball at Versailles, Delacorte (four American debutantes attend a renowned Paris cotillion at the Palace of Versailles in 1959)
Embassie Susberry, Code Name Butterfly, Avon (WWII-era novel inspired by the true story of Josephine Baker in the French Resistance)
Sally Tarpey, The Country Sisters, Joffe Books (story of hardship and hope in the aftermath of World War I)
Stephen Taylor, The Lost Gospels, Sapere (historical conspiracy adventure novel that moves from the streets of Georgian London and Venice to the deserts and monasteries of Egypt)
Gill Thompson, The Orphans on the Train, Headline Review (two orphaned girls are separated in this story of loss, friendship and the need to belong; set in 1939 and 1943)
Julia Todd, The Gilded Sutra, She Writes (1880 New England, India, and Nepal; the lives of two people are transformed by their secret romance and a perilous quest to save an ancient, gilded Buddhist manuscript)
S. J. A. Turney, Wolves Around the Throne, Canelo (in AD 1044, the wolves of Odin escort a Norman noblewoman to her wedding in France, but there are plenty who oppose the match)
Jen Turano, To Spark a Match, Bethany House (when Adelaide Duveen inadvertently stumbles upon Mr. Gideon Abbott engaged in a clandestine activity during a dinner party, she finds herself thrust into a world of intrigue that resembles the plots in spy novels)
Harry Turtledove, Wages of Sin, CAEZIK SF & Fantasy (a patriarchal 19th-century society reacts to a devastating HIV disease in the only way it knows how: it sequesters women, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples)
Nicola Upson, Shot With Crimson, Crooked Lane (in 1930s Britain, Josephine Tey struggles with wartime changes while sleuthing crimes in her small Suffolk village. 11th book in series)
Sarah Vaughn, Ruined, First Second (Regency romance where duty and passion collide in a slow-burn tale of intertwined fates)
Katherine Vaz, Above the Salt, Flatiron (love story that follows two Portuguese refugees who flee religious violence and reignite their romance in Civil-War America)
Jill E. Warner, Of Jasmine and Roses, Covenant (an inspirational romance that shows the heart doesn’t play by Society’s rules)
Theodore Wheeler, The War Begins in Paris, Little, Brown (literary noir about two female war correspondents whose fates intertwine in Europe)
Yulia Yakovleva (trans. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp), Death of the Red Rider, Pushkin Press (dark detective series set in 1930s Stalinist Russia)
Robert Young, Murder in a Minor Key, At Bay Press (murder mystery with blind Detective Inspector, Sidney Baxter, and his ever-faithful assistant Maxine Godbout, set in Winnipeg, 1935)
December 2023
Dominic Adler, Red Labyrinth, Lume Books (alternative historical thriller set in October 1957)
Pepper Basham, The Juliet Code, Barbour (newlyweds Lord and Lady Astley reach their honeymoon destination only to encounter a new mystery in need of solving)
Anna Bliss, Bonfire Night, John Scognamiglio (1936 England; a Fleet Street photographer meets a Jewish med student at an anti-fascism protest in this love story about art, obsession, and family)
Barbara Taylor Bradford, The Wonder of It All, SMP (concludes House of Falconer trilogy that has followed the story of the family from Victorian times to the 20th-century)
Verity Bright, Murder on the Cornish Cliffs, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery Book 16)
Mollie Cox Bryan, The Lace Widow, Crooked Lane (novel surmises whether Alexander Hamilton could be at the center of a vast murder plot engulfing Old New York in 1804)
Jeanne Charters, Silk Stocking, Open Road Media (three generations of Irish American women seek better lives in Boston)
Sebastien de Castell, Crucible of Chaos, Jo Fletcher (a mortally wounded magistrate faces his deadliest trial inside an ancient abbey where the monks are going mad in this historical fantasy)
Julien Delmaire, Teresa Lavender Fagan, Blues in the Blood, Seagull Books (ode to the spring of 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, when stifling heat crushed the countryside & threatened the harvest, and riders of the Ku Klux Klan spread terror)
Evie Dunmore, The Gentleman’s Gambit, Berkley (forced into close proximity in Oxford’s hallowed halls, two very different people have to face the fact that they might just be a perfect match)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Louvre, Allison & Busby (Paris 1899; Abigail Wilson is invited to an archaeological dig by Professor Flamand, but when he turns up dead, she’s arrested for his murder)
Sharon Lynn Fisher, Salt & Broom, 47North (a gifted healer unravels the mysteries of a cursed estate in a witchy in a retelling of Jane Eyre)
Arno Geiger, Hinterland, Picador (1944; story depicting the quiet heroism of ordinary people in the face of suffering)
Eliza Graham, The Midwife’s Promise, Storm (dual timeline story of love, sacrifice, and the unyielding bonds of motherhood)
Jody Hedlund, Calling on the Matchmaker, Bethany House (a romantic adventure set in St. Louis, 1849)
Lee Jackson, Driving the Tide, Severn River (sixth installment in the After Dunkirk family saga, bringing to life the darkest pages of World War II)
Barbara Josselsohn, The Lost Gift to the Italian island, Bookouture (novel about desperate decisions in the dark days of war and the power of true love)
Julie Klassen, A Winter By the Sea, Bethany House (when the Duke and Duchess of Kent rent neighboring Woolbrook Cottage for the winter, the Summers sisters realize they’ve invited the possibility of romance into their home)
Patrick Larsimont, The Maple and the Blue, Sapere (third of the Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers, set in spring 1942)
Pierre Lemaitre, The Wide World, Little, Brown/Tinder Press (saga of one prominent French family against the backdrop of post-war Paris, Beirut, and Saigon)
Asha Lemmie, The Wildest Sun, Dutton (novel follows a young woman escaping her past in postwar Paris as she searches for the man she believes to be her father)
Graham Ley, Lady at the Lodge, Sapere (historical saga set against the backdrop of the French Revolution)
Sean Lusk, The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley, Union Square/Doubleday (c.2022) (novel of wild mechanical automata, love in a variety of forms, and themes of identity, with a diverse cast of characters)
Anne Madden, The Wilderness Way, One More Chapter (story set against the wild landscapes of Donegal, Ireland in 1861 and the turbulent times of the American Civil War)
Laura Martin, The Body on the Beach, Sapere (book four of Jane Austen Investigations series)
Penny Mickelbury, Two Wings to Hide My Face, Bywater Books (novel returns to pre-Civil War Philadelphia to continue the saga of Genie Oliver and Abigail Read)
K. L. Murphy, Her Sister’s Death, CamCat (dual-Timeline Mystery in which a mysterious death in the present is connected to a young woman’s story in 1921)
Annie Murray, The Bells of Bournville Green, Pan (continues the saga set in 1960s Birmingham; a story of families whose lives are entwined, and a young woman’s search for transforming love)
Scott Oden, The Doom of Odin, SMP (as the Black Death rampages across Europe, two creatures of the Elder World clash over the rotting corpse of Christendom)
Alex Quaid, The Semi-Detached Women, Bloodhound (a pregnant young single woman in the 1960s is hounded by a social worker to give up her child for adoption)
Renee Ryan, The Paris Housekeeper, Love Inspired (World War II novel of the heroism of a young Paris housekeeper who makes a bargain to save the Jews hiding in her Nazi employer’s basement)
Simon Scarrow, Dead of Night, Kensington (World War II thriller murder mystery set in Berlin 1941)
W. A. Schwartz, The Weight of Water, Black Rose (a story of two sisters born into brutal, rural poverty of southeastern Louisiana in the 1960s)
Leslie K. Simmons, Red Clay Running Waters, Koehler Books (portrait of the Antebellum Era and the fate of Native Americans)
Stephen Spotswood, Murder Crossed Her Mind, Doubleday/Headline (latest installment in the Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much)
Peter Steiner, The New Detective, Severn House (Willi Geismeier thought he’d faced the worst of humanity in WW 1, but when he returns to Munich, he is drawn into an investigation that proves to be just as chilling. 3rd in series)
Hope C. Tarr, Irish Eyes, Lume Books (historical romance of love and second chances set in early 20th-century)
Victoria Thompson, City of Betrayal, Berkley (A Counterfeit Lady novel, book 7 where Elizabeth Bates’s latest con just might change the course of history)
Misty Urban, Viscount Overboard, Oliver Heber (when the war-scarred Viscount Penrydd washes up in 1799 Newport, Gwenllian ap Ewyas decides not to tell him about his property that she’s turned into a refuge)
Darcie Wilde, The Secret of the Lady’s Maid, Kensington (mystery series set in Regency London featuring Rosalind Thorne who has a talent for helping ladies of the ton with their most pressing and delicate problems)
Futaro Yamada (trans. Bryan Karetnyk), The Meiji Guillotine Murders, Pushkin Vertigo (a pair of sleuths investigate a series of murders in 19th-century Tokyo)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press historical titles for books set in eras up to the early 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, AUS) and are based on publisher descriptions.
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Isabel Allende (trans. Frances Riddle), Violeta, Ballantine (story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century)
Lena Andersson (trans. Sarah Death), Son of Svea, Other Press (comedy of the progress and ruin of the industrial welfare state, told through the story of a single family)
Leah Angstman, Out Front the Following Sea, Regal House (at the onset of King William’s War between French and English settlers in 1689 New England, Ruth Miner is accused of witchcraft for the murder of her parents and must flee the brutality of her town)
Libby Ashworth, The Convict’s Wife, Canelo (based on real events, a Lancashire saga of one woman’s journey of love, family and survival)
Jabari Asim, Yonder, Simon & Schuster (novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century)
Marie Benedict, Her Hidden Genius, Sourcebooks Landmark (fictionalised story of Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) who unlocked the secrets of DNA only to die in anonymity)
Ann Bennett, The Child Without a Home, Bookouture (dual time-line novel Inspired by the lives of the forgotten orphans of World War Two)
Charlotte Betts, Letting in the Light, Piatkus (next installment of the Spindrift Trilogy, set in 1914, Cornwall)
Johnny D. Boggs, The Cobbler of Spanish Fort and Other Frontier Stories, Five Star (an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the real cobbler of Spanish Fort)
Matthew Booth, A Talent for Murder, Level Best (a locked door murder mystery featuring retired judge Everett Carr in mid-1930s rural England)
Annemarie Brear, The Orphan in the Peacock Shawl, Boldwood Books (Yorkshire Dales, 1850 – family saga)
Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Suspicious Guests, Constable (book eleven in series)
Drew Bridges, A New Haunt for Mr. Bierce, BQB (novel follows the ghost of Ambrose Bierce, American writer and civil war Union soldier, who has been displaced from the home he had been haunting)
Karen Brooks, The Good Wife of Bath, Wm Morrow (medieval novel starring Chaucer’s bold and libidinous Wife of Bath)
Eric Brown, Murder Most Vile, Severn House (London 1957; the search for a missing artist draws Donald Langham and Ralph Ryland into London’s criminal underworld, with deadly consequences)
Teri M. Brown, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, Atmosphere Press (a Ukrainian rebel. Three generations of women bearing the consequences. A journey that changes everything)
Tony Bryan, Baltimore, Book 3, Vanguard (continuing the saga of Irish adventurer, Daemon Quirk)
Louella Bryant, Beside the Long River, Black Rose (based on historical people and events, including the brutal and bloody Pequot War of 1636)
Robert Olen Butler, Late City, No Exit (novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham covers much of the early 20th century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God)
Jillian Cantor, Beautiful Little Fools, Harper Perennial (revisits the glittering Jazz Age world of The Great Gatsby, retelling this American classic from the women’s perspective)
Francesca Capaldi, Hope in the Valleys, Hera Books (a WW1 saga, set in a mining town in Wales)
Ella Carey, The Girl from Paris, Bookouture (novel about the terrible choices people made during humanity’s darkest days. Daughters of New York series #3)
Elizabeth Chadwick, A Marriage of Lions, Little, Brown (England, 1238. Raised at the court of King Henry III as a chamber lady to the queen, young Joanna of Swanscombe’s life changes forever when she comes into an inheritance far above all expectations)
Diane Chamberlain, The Last House on the Street, SMP (a community’s past sins rise to the surface when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved mystery. Set in 1965 and 2010)
Tim Chant, Mutiny on the Potemkin, Sapere (naval adventure story set around WWI)
Rory Clements, The Man in the Bunker, Zaffre (a Cambridge spy must find the truth behind Hitler’s death. But exactly who is the man in the bunker and what if Hitler had survived?)
Lorna Cook, The Dressmaker’s Secret, AvonUK (Paris, 1941: As well as Coco Chanel’s assistant, Adèle is working for the resistance, right under the Germans’ noses)
David Stuart Davies, Revenge from the Grave, Titan (Sherlock Holmes mystery featuring the return of the sinister Moriarty gang)
Lora Davies, The Widow’s Last Secret, Bookouture (England, 1846: Bella Farrow is a beautiful young widow, making a good living on her own land, but not even her husband knew she was a fugitive from the law)
Ed Davis, The Last Professional, Artemesia (returning to the rails fifteen years after the childhood trauma that haunts him, young Lynden Hoover gets help from an old hobo who calls America’s landscape his home)
Fiona Davis, The Magnolia Palace, Dutton (novel about the secrets, betrayal, and murder within one of New York City’s most impressive Gilded Age mansions)
Maurizio de Giovanni (trans. Antony Shugaar), Winter Swallows, World Noir (tenth Commissario Ricciardi mystery set in 1930s Naples)
Nina de Gramont, The Christie Affair, Mantle (reimagines the unexplained 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie that captivated the world)
Melanie Dobson, The Winter Rose, Tyndale (dual narrative novel in which an American Quaker woman works tirelessly in Vichy France to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis)
Angus Donald, The Saxon Wolf, Canelo Adventure (a Viking epic of berserkers and battle)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the National Gallery, Allison & Busby (detectives are contacted at the request of the artist, Walter Sickert, famously suspected of being Jack the Ripper)
Carolyn Elizabeth, The Raven and the Banshee, Bella Books (18th-c tale of vengeance, forgiveness, second chance love and redemption in an adventure on the high seas. LGBTQ+)
Genevieve Essig, A Deception Most Deadly, Bookouture (cozy mystery set on the island city of Fernandina, 1883)
Donna Everhart, The Saints of Swallow Hill, Kensington (1932 Georgia & N. Carolina – a story of courage, survival and friendships)
Jonathan Evison, Small World, Dutton (story set in multiple time periods, in which the characters interconnect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways)
Robert Fabbri, An Empty Throne, Corvus (Alexander’s Legacy, book 3)
Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth, Pegasus (1910, Edinburgh. The devil’s daughter has been sent by her father to bear a child for a wealthy couple, but, when things go wrong, she curses the building and all who live there)
Kerry Dean Feldman, Alice’s Trading Post, Five Star (story of an untameable woman with a wry wit who lives 103 adventurous years)
Jessica Fellowes, The Mitford Vanishing, Minotaur (fifth installment in the Mitford Murders series, inspired by a real-life murder in a story full of intrigue)
Jennie Felton, The Smuggler’s Girl, Headline (a saga of shipwrecks, secrets, love and loss)
June Felton, The Dignity of Silence, The Book Guild (1942 and early 60s – novel explores devastation and redemption in the keeping of family secrets)
Keith Finney, A Deadly Mistake, Lume Books (third and final book in the Lipton St Faith Mysteries)
Lynne Francis, The Lost Sister, Piatkus (Kent 1816 — when the secret Molly has kept for over twenty-five years is revealed in front of her whole family, Molly’s relationship with her son and her husband crumbles)
Laura Frantz, A Heart Adrift, Revell (1755; a colonial lady and a privateering sea captain collide once more after a failed love affair a decade before)
Patricia Friedrich, The Art of Always, The Wild Rose Press (dual timeline story of a Modernist painter who, on the verge of stardom in the 1920s, mysteriously vanished from public view)
Marcial Gala (trans. Anna Kushner), Call Me Cassandra, FSG (magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology)
Sulari Gentill, Where There’s a Will, PPP (a Rowland Sinclair WWII mystery)
Diana Giovinazzo, Antoinette’s Sister, Grand Central (brings to life one of history’s most formidable European monarchs: a woman who upended societal conventions for the betterment of her people as Queen of Naples)
Stephanie Graves, A Valiant Deceit, Kensington (young pigeoneer Olive Bright has been conscripted, with her racing birds, to aid the fight against the Nazis)
Melody Groves, Lady of the Law, Five Star (a novel featuring Sheriff Maud Overstreet, an unusual lady sheriff in 1870s California)
Ella Gyland, The Helsingør Sewing Club, One More Chapter (inspired by the true story of how the people of Denmark saved their Jewish neighbours during WW2)
Stephen Harrigan, The Leopard is Loose, Knopf (the fragile 1952 postwar tranquility of a 5-yr-old boy’s world explodes when a leopard escapes from the zoo, and he has to confront his deepest fears)
Jody Hedlund, Never Leave Me, Revell (after the disappearance of her father and sister, Ellen Creighton wants nothing to do with the holy water they were seeking, even if it would cure her deadly genetic disease)
Max Hennessy, Sunset at Sheba, Canelo Action (military thriller set in South Africa, 1914)
Ray Herbeck, Jr., Changing Flags, Five Star (true story of John Riley, a cocky Irish professional soldier who deserts the U.S. Army to fight for Mexico at first for money, then for something loftier)
Arlene Heyman, Artifact, Bloomsbury (novel of female drive and desire, reaching from mid-century to the Reagan era)
Joanna Hickson, The Queen’s Lady, HarperCollins (a novel of Joan Guildford, lady-in-waiting and confidante to Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII)
Tom Hindle, A Fatal Crossing, Century (murder mystery aboard The Endeavour, November 1924)
Grace Hitchcock, Her Darling Mr. Day, Bethany House (jilted in front of all New York, Theodore Day decides to lose himself in his family’s luxury riverboat business in New Orleans)
Beatrice Hitchman, All of You Every Single One, The Overlook Press (a literary lesbian novel set in a bohemian enclave of Vienna, about love, freedom, and what constitutes a family. LGBTQ)
Catherine Hokin, The Commandant’s Daughter, Bookouture (novel about the courage of ordinary people during the Second World War)
Pam Howes, The Daughters of Victory Street, Bookouture (fourth book in the Bryant Sisters series set post-WWII)
Melanie Hudson, The Night Train to Berlin, One More Chapter (dual narrative love story set in 1944 and present day)
Tammye Huf, A More Perfect Union, Forever (story of love and courage, desperation and determination, and three people whose lives are inescapably entwined)
Callie Hutton, The Mystery of Albert E. Finch, Crooked Lane (third Victorian Book Club mystery, set in Bath, 1892)
Don Jacobson, The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion, Meryton Press (the Bennet Wardrobe book 7 in which young Mrs. Wickham learns that honor and bravery grow from the contents of the heart)
Dinah Jefferies, The Tuscan Contessa, Penguin UK (two women find themselves entangled in a dangerous game with the Nazis in WWII Tuscany)
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Fourth Estate (chronicles the journey of generations of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade to our own tumultuous era)
Nick Jones, The Observer Effect, Blackstone (Joe heads back to 1873 on his most dangerous mission yet, one that will take him deep inside a burning opera house. Joseph Bridgeman book 3)
Meredith Kazer, Ring Road, Soul Mate (an 18th-century farmhouse holds over two hundred years of Ring Family history, including clues to the missing Ring ruby pendant)
Snorri Kristjansson, Council, Quercus (second in the Helga Finnsdottir Mysteries, set in Viking-age Uppsala)
M. A. Kuzniar, Midnight in Everwood, HQ (a historical retelling of The Nutcracker, set in 1906)
Mercedes Lackey, The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley, Titan (magical alternate history series continues the reimagined adventures of Sherlock Holmes in an alternate 20th-century England)
Soraya M. Lane, Under a Sky of Memories, Lake Union (Sicily, 1943 — story of three brave women who go to war—and end up fighting for their lives)
Pam Lecky, Her Secret War, Avon (explores a deadly tangle of love and espionage in war-torn Britain)
Gemma Liviero, Half in Shadow, Lake Union (novel about courage, love, and consequences at the dawn of World War I in German occupied Belgium)
Joanna Lowell, The Runaway Duchess, Berkley (a runaway bride dumps a duke and rewrites her own love story. Victorian romance)
Robert MacKenzie, Dave Walker, illus. Justin Greenwood, Compass, Image Comics (setting out from Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, Shahi’s quest brings her to 13th-century Britain)
John Maddux, Little Eagle, Bitingduck Press (novel about one man’s journey to find himself as he travels with the famous Canadian-Ojibwe artist, Norval Morrisseau)
Kerri Maher, The Paris Bookseller, Headline Review/Berkley (story of a young woman who fought incredible odds to bring one of the most important books of the twentieth century to the world)
Sarah Maine, The Awakenings, Hodder & Stoughton (1890 – a woman experiences strange dreams that take her into the life of Ælfwyn, a woman from the past whose fate is overshadowed by menace)
Peter Mann, The Torqued Man, Harper (set in wartime Berlin and propelled by two voices: a German spy handler and his Irish secret agent, neither of whom are quite what they seem)
Peter Manseau, The Maiden of All Our Desires, Arcade (explores the territory between faith and freedom, and how the horrific events of history shape individual lives, set in 14th-c)
David Mark, Anatomy of a Heretic, Aries (1628 – two assassins go head-to-head on the open seas)
Imogen Matthews, The Hidden Village, Bookouture (tale based on the true story of an entire town who put themselves in incredible danger to keep strangers safe in Nazi-occupied Holland in World War Two)
Mimi Matthews, The Siren of Sussex, Berkley (new Victorian romance series – Belles of London Book 1)
BJ Mayo, The Sparrows of Montenegro, Skyhorse (western set in Texas, 1870)
Anna Mazzola, The Clockwork Girl, Orion (in the midst of the freezing winter of 1750, a new maid arrives at the home of a clockmaker, whose uncanny mechanical creations seem to imitate life itself. Dark historical mystery)
Gavin McCrea, The Sisters Mao, Scribe US (against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and Europe’s sexual revolution, the fates of two families in London and Beijing become unexpectedly intertwined)
Catherine McCullagh, Love and Retribution, Big Sky (in 1943 Emmy, after finding two men washed up on a Cornwall beach, is drawn further into a deadly cycle of post-war retribution from which only one man can save her)
Kathleen McGurl, The Girl from Bletchley Park, HQ Digital (dual timeline WWII novel set in 1942 and present day)
Vonda N. McIntyre, The King’s Daughter, Jo Fletcher (alternate history set in the court of Louis XIV)
Eduardo Mendoza (trans. Nick Caistor), City of Wonders, MacLehose (novel about the birth of Barcelona as a world city, embodied in the rise of the ambitious and unscrupulous Onofre Bouvila)
Claire Messud, A Dream Life, Tablo Tales (novel explores lies and self deception as a family moves from New York to Australia in the early 1970s)
Simon Michael, The Final Shot, Sapere (a 1960s London gangland thriller)
Elizabeth D. Michaels, The Captain of her Heart, Sweetwater (romance set in 1777 colonial America)
Also: Captive Hearts (April 2022); The Captain’s Angel (July 2022); Hearts Crossed (September 2022)
Derek B. Miller, How to Find Your Way in the Dark, Doubleday (coming-of-age story set during the rising tide of World War II)
Kelly Miller, Captive Hearts, Meryton Press (a Regency variation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion)
Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, John Murray (1916― a testament to the strength of human bonds, reminding us that we are never beyond the reach of love)
Timothy Miller, The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, Seventh Street (detective murder mystery featuring Sherlock Homes in Paris 1890)
Robbie Morrison, Edge of the Grave, Macmillan (a dark historical crime novel set in Glasgow, 1932)
Niklas Natt och Dag (trans. Ebba Segerberg), 1794: The City Between the Bridges, Baskerville/John Murray (1794; second installment of historical noir trilogy featuring Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman)
Heather Newton, McMullen Circle, Regal House (twelve linked stories explore the intertwined lives of faculty families at the McMullen Boarding School in Tonola Falls, Georgia, in 1969–70)
Freya North, Little Wing, Welbeck (novel about resilience, forgiveness and the true meaning of family, taking place over three generations beginning in the 1960s)
J. P. O’Connell, Hotel Portofino, Blackstone/S&S (historical drama about a British family who opens an upper-class hotel on the magical Italian Riviera during the Roaring Twenties)
Kelly Oliver, Villainy in Vienna, Historia (Fiona Figg mystery set in Viena 1917)
T. Jefferson Parker, A Thousand Steps, Forge (coming-of-age thriller set in California in 1968)
Lesley Pearse, Never Look Back, Agora (romance amidst the craze of the gold rush and the approaching Civil War)
Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, Ever Constant, Bethany House (romance set in Nome, Alaska)
Sergio Pitol (trans. George Henson), The Love Parade, Deep Vellum (following the discovery of certain documents, a historian sets out to unravel the mystery of a murder committed in Mexico City in the autumn of 1942)
Petra Rautiainen (trans. David Hackston), Land of Snow and Ashes, Pushkin Press (debut novel about Lapland’s buried history of Nazi crimes against the Sámi people)
Sarah Rayne, The Murder Dance, Severn House (researching the history of a dilapidated Elizabeth manor house, Phineas Fox uncovers the shocking truth behind a mysterious – and deadly – dance)
Debbie Rix, The German Wife, Bookouture (dual-timeline tale of ordinary people fighting for survival in the darkest of times)
Rena Rossner, The Light of the Midnight Stars, Orbit (historical fantasy about Jewish resistance in the face of oppression)
Ralf Rothmann, The God of that Summer, Picador (novel of the final months of World War II, a war that forever darkened the souls of the civilians who lived through it)
Laura Joh Rowland, Garden of Sins, Crooked Lane (Victorian Mystery series in which crime scene photographer, Sarah Barrett must search for the killer of a woman she found murdered on a train)
W. C. Ryan, The Winter Guest, Zaffre (1921 -mystery set against the raw Irish landscape in a country divided)
Daniela Sacerdoti, The Italian Island, Bookouture (novel about how the catastrophic consequences of war can echo through generations)
Daniel Schenker, Confessions of a Marrano Rocketeer, Black Rose (a young man growing up in early twentieth-century Germany becomes a key figure in the successful development of the V2 rocket)
Anna Schmidt, High-Wire Heartbreak, Barbour (1936 – a party at the Ringling mansion, Ca d’Zan in Sarasota, Florida, leads to a robbery – and possibly death)
James D. Shipman, Beyond the Wire, Kensington (blends fact and fiction in a novel based on the real story behind the prisoner uprising at Auschwitz during WWII)
Dana Stabenow, Disappearance of a Scribe, Aries (Pharaoh Cleopatra’s plans for Alexandria are run awry when a body is found floating in the sea)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Explorers’ Club, Sapere (Holmes is faced with an unidentified body, a coded message, and multiple murders in London, 1876)
Julian Stockwin, Thunderer, Mobius (Britain’s ambitions turn to the Spice Islands, where Admiral Pellew has been sent to confront the enemy’s vastly rich holdings)
Susan Stokes-Chapman, Pandora, Harvill Secker (novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance)
Linda Stratmann, Sherlock Holmes and the Explorers’ Club, Sapere (second Victorian crime thriller in the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series)
Wilfred Summers, Our Em, Volume IV: My Em, Vanguard (last volume in family saga worked within the framework of some of the most significant historical events of the early nineteen-fifties)
M. K. Tod, The Admiral’s Wife, Heath Street (the lives of two women living in Hong Kong more than a century apart are inextricably linked by forbidden love and financial scandal)
Teresa Trent, The Twist and Shout Murder, Historia (a Swinging Sixties Mystery)
Jen Turano, To Disguise the Truth, Bethany House (when Arthur Livingston seeks out the Bleeker Street Enquiry Agency to find a missing heiress, Eunice Holbrooke realizes her past has finally caught up with her)
Beth Underdown, The Key in the Lock, Viking (dual timeline story of burning secrets and buried shame)
Gabriel Valjan, Hush Hush, Historia (A Shane Cleary Mystery)
Sandro Veronesi (trans. Elena Pala), The Hummingbird, HarperVia (saga of a Florentine family from the 1960s to the present introduces a portrait of human existence, the vicissitudes and vagaries that propel and ultimately define us)
Carol Wallace, Our Kind of People, Putnam (set in 1880s – among New York City’s Gilded Age elite, one family will defy convention)
Rachel Wesson, Stolen From Her Mother, Bookouture (WWII story of an Irish girl banished to a Magdalen Laundry in 1944)
Roseanna M. White, To Treasure an Heiress, Bethany House (Beth Tremayne stumbles across an old map, but her only way to piece together the clues is through Lord Sheridan–a man she insists stole a prized possession)
Ally Wilkes, All the White Spaces, Titan Books (ghost story exploring identity, gender and selfhood, set against the backdrop of the golden age of polar exploration)
Abigail Wilson, Twilight at Moorington Cross, Thomas Nelson (in the Regency era, a woman only has to marry one of two men. But what if her heart belongs to a third?)
John Wingate, William the Conqueror, Sapere (novel exploring the life of William I, from his early childhood in Normandy to his turbulent reign as the first Norman king of England)
Kimberley Woodhouse, Kathleen Y’Barbo, Daughters of the Mayflower: Pioneers, Barbour (three adventurous romances in the expanding West)
Samantha Greene Woodruff, The Lobotomist’s Wife, Lake Union (novel of a woman fighting against the most grievous odds, of ego, and of the best intentions gone horribly awry)
James C. Work, The Mystery of the Missing Bierstadt, Five Star (Ranger McIntyre investigate the case of a painting missing from a home in the Rocky Mountain National Park)
Joe Browning Wroe, A Terrible Kindness, Faber & Faber (October 1966; novel exploring the landslide at the coal mine in Aberfan, Wales, which buried a school, and one man who determines to help)
Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise, Picador/Doubleday (novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia)
Helen Yendall, A Wartime Secret, HQ Digital (When Maggie’s new job takes her from London to Snowden Hall in the Cotswolds, she is involved in a secret project which threatens to expose her German ancestry)
Derek Yetman, The Yankee Privateer, Breakwater (story of adventure, betrayal, and resilience in Newfoundland set against the backdrop of the American War of Independence)
Glenda Young, The Miner’s Lass, Headline (family saga and romance)
February 2022
Anita Abriel, The Italian Girl, S&S AU (a fearless young Italian woman risks everything to save precious artworks from the Nazis)
Cheryl Adnams, The Bushranger’s Wife, Mira (tale about following your heart and finding home in unexpected places, set in 1861)
Joel Agee, The Stone World, Melville House (an American boy’s childhood in Mexico, ensconced in a world of communist European exiles, union activists, street children, and avant-garde artists like Frida Kahlo)
Kianna Alexander, Carolina Built, Gallery (novel based on the incredible life of real estate magnate Josephine N. Leary)
Rosie Andrews, The Leviathan, Raven Books (set in England during a time of political and religious turbulence – a tale of family and loyalty, superstition and sacrifice)
Hannah Lillith Assadi, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, Riverhead (story of secrets, loss, and the betrayals of memory: a lyrical novel of an aging woman confronting her romantic past under the mysterious skies of her island home)
Tilly Bagshawe, The Secrets of Sainte Madeleine, HarperCollins (tale spanning generations & sweeping from Burgundy to Greece and beyond)
Dane Bahr, The Houseboat, Counterpoint (noir set in small town Iowa in the 1960s)
Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir (trans. Philip Roughton), Karitas Untitled, Amazon Crossing (portrait of an artist trapped by convention and expectations but longing for the chaos that can set her free)
Alan Bardos, Enemies and Allies, Sharpe Books (Johnny Swift, a reckless former diplomat turned soldier, works for Naval Intelligence in WWI)
Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Year Without a Summer, Soho Crime (a portrait of Austen’s life—with a dash of fictional murder)
Freya Berry, The Dictator’s Wife, Headline Review (wife of a feared dictator stands trial for her late husband’s crimes against the people)
Daniel Black, Don’t Cry for Me, Hanover Square (a black father makes amends with his gay son through letters written on his deathbed)
Robin Blake, Hungry Death, Severn House (1747; when a blackened body is discovered buried beneath a hot-house, Coroner Titus Cragg uncovers a tale of scandalous secrets stretching back decades)
Rick Bleiweiss, Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives, Blackstone (new detective and ensemble cast of characters – story set against the backdrop of small-town England in the 1910s)
Kay Brellend, The Workhouse Sisters, Piatkus (WWI family saga)
Verity Bright, A Royal Murder, Bookouture (witty 1920s cosy mystery set in 1923)
Rachel Brimble, A Very Modern Marriage, Aria (third instalment of Victorian saga series)
Barbara M. Britton, Defending David, Pelican Book Group (newly orphaned Rimona and Ittai the Gittite seek refuge in Jerusalem on the eve of a rebellion)
Joanne Burn, The Hemlock Cure, Sphere/Pegasus (based on the real history of an English village during the Great Plague)
Richard D. Camp, Echo Among Warriors, Casemate (fictional account of gut-level combat as seen through the eyes of American and North Vietnamese participants)
Jan Casey, The Woman with the Map, Aria (dual timeline novel about keeping hope alive through the worst of times. Set in 1941 and 1974)
Barbara Chase-Riboud, The Great Mrs. Elias, Amistad (brings to life Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the early 1900s)
Adrienne Chinn, Love in a Time of War, One More Chapter (three sisters come of age in London, 1913)
Ashley Clark, Where the Last Rose Blooms, Bethany House (more than a century apart, two women search for the lost)
Rosie Clarke, A New Dawn Over Mulberry Lane, Boldwood (new entry in Mulberry Lane series set in London, 1958)
Brett Cogburn, Too Proud to Run, Five Star (U.S. Deputy Marshal Morgan Clyde has worn a tin star long enough to leave a mark on the Indian Territory, but his allies are wearing thin)
Catherine Coulter, The Grayson Sherbrooke Novella Collection, Blackstone (set in the mid-19th century, join Sherbrooke and his rag-tag team of investigators to solve bizarre, out-of-this-world cases)
Dilly Court, Runaway Widow, HarperCollins (book three in Victorian romance saga)
Tricia Cresswell, The Midwife, Mantle (a haunting Victorian tale of dark secrets and tragedy)
Curtis Crockett, Leaving Gettysburg, Casemate (the Confederate army is defeated and must retreat to the Potomac with thousands of wagons full of wounded soldiers, provisions and thousands of animals)
Siobhan Curham, The Paris Network, Bookouture (WWII story inspired by true events, about one woman’s strength to survive in the most difficult circumstances)
Norma Curtis, The Captain’s Wife, Bookouture (dual time-line story about lost love, forgiveness and family secrets)
Janet Dailey, Calder Grit, Kensington (novel returns to 1909 Montana, as tensions mount between immigrant homesteaders and cattlemen determined to keep the range free)
Mary Davis, Mrs. Witherspoon Goes to War, Barbour (new series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII)
Nina de Gramont, The Christie Affair, SMP (reimagines the unexplained 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie that captivated the world)
Jennifer Deibel, The Lady of Galway Manor, Revell (in 1920 Galway, amid the Irish War of Independence, the daughter of a British landlord becomes an apprentice jeweler to the descendent of the creator of the famed Claddagh ring)
Marco De Sio, The Third Secret, Covenant (in late 2000s, a reporter is lured into a search for the still-hidden mystery – The Third Secret of Fatima, given by the Madonna to a nun in 1917)
Dee DeTarsio, Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl, Addison & Highsmith (historical fan fiction celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the 1972 hit song — Crum, England, mid-1800s, barmaid Brandy seizes on a plan to become a good wife and escape her life of drudgery)
Anni Domingo, Breaking the Maafa Chain, Pegasus (story of two sisters’ struggle for freedom in the mid-19th century as their paths diverge—one to the court of Queen Victoria, the other to an American plantation)
Helena Dizon, Murder in First Class, Bookouture (Golden Age historical cozy mystery)
Jessica Ellicott, Death in a Blackout, Severn House (new WWII mystery series introduces WPC Billie Harkness – a female police officer who risks her life to protect the home front in the British coastal city of Hull)
Elizabeth Everett, A Perfect Equation, Berkley (the Secret Scientists of London series, book two)
Victoria Eyre, Prince, Slave, Soldier, King: Tom Peters, A Life That Matters, Unicorn (a fictional retelling of the life of Black Loyalist revolutionary Thomas Peters)
David Wright Falade, Black Cloud Rising, Grove Press (takes readers to the moment when enslaved men and women were embracing freedom)
Kim Fay, Love & Saffron, Putnam (follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really does connect us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine)
David Field, Conquest, Sapere (first book in new series set during the Norman Conquest)
Heather Fisher, Fates of Battle for Love and War, Sweetwater (Ebony series, book 2)
Hester Fox, A Lullaby for Witches, Graydon House (a young museum worker stumbles across a mysterious woman who begins to call to her across the centuries)
Caroline Frost, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, Wm Morrow (set in Texas in the 1970s and 90s — literary debut about a fierce woman and the partner-in-crime she can’t escape)
Marius Gabriel, Goodnight, Vienna, AmazonUK (WWII story set at the time of the annexation of Austria and the Nazi rise to power)
S. T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood, Orbit (a dark retelling of Dracula)
Chris Glatte, Tark’s Ticks War Point, Severn River (historical thriller set in the Pacific theater during WWII)
Tim Glister, A Loyal Traitor, Point Blank (second book in the Richard Knox Spy Thriller series, set in 1966 London)
Suzanne Goldring, The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon, Bookouture (WWII story of a beautiful city, a violent war and the bravery of a daring young woman)
Elena Gorokhova, A Train to Moscow, Lake Union (in post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future)
Jennie Goutet, A Daring Proposal, Sweetwater (Memorable Proposals series, book 2. Romance)
Also: A Fall from Grace
Libbie Grant, The Prophet’s Wife, Wm Morrow (story of the early days of the Mormon church through the eyes of the woman who saw it all—Emma, the first wife of the prophet Joseph Smith)
Jocelyn Green, Drawn by the Current, Bethany House (a birthday excursion turns deadly when the SS Eastland capsizes with insurance agent Olive Pierce and her best friend on board)
Tessa Hadley, Free Love, Harper/Random House Canada (novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London)
Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire, Tordotcom (at turn of 20th-c two gifted performers journey to Chicago to search for a place where they can be who they want to be – historical fantasy)
Dennis Hamley, The Second Person from Porlock, Fairlight (literary historical novel based around the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, set in London, 1824)
Emma Harding, Friedrichstrasse 19, John Murray (highlights Berlin from the underground cabaret culture, to rise of the Nazis, the radical left wing, to the falling of the Wall, and its re-emergence as a city of artists)
Suzette D. Harrison, The Dust Bowl Orphans, Bookouture (story of family torn apart and fighting to be reunited. Dual narrative Oklahoma 1935 and present-day California)
J. C. Harvey, The Silver Wolf, Allen & Unwin (tale of an orphaned boy’s quest for truth and then for vengeance as war rages across 17th-century Europe. Fiskardo’s War, book 1)
Arlem Hawks, Beyond the Lavender Fields, Shadow Mountain (romance between a factory owner’s daughter and a revolutionary, set in 1792 France)
Kate Heartfield, The Embroidered Book, HarperVoyager (1768. Charlotte, daughter of the Habsburg Empress, arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Her sister Antoine is sent to France, and in Versailles they rename her Marie Antoinette)
Rick Held, Night Lessons in Little Jerusalem, Hachette AU (a novel of family and love set in WWII)
Edvard Hoem (trans. Tara Chace), Haymaker in Heaven, Milkweed Editions (a transatlantic novel of dreams, sacrifice, and transformation set at the turn of the twentieth century)
Jane Holland, The Manor House, Orion Dash (dual timeline novel of romance and dark secrets, set in Cornwall 1963 and present)
Colin Holmes, Thunder Road, CamCat Books (when an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his top-secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him. Noir thriller)
Emma Hornby, A Mother’s Betrayal, Penguin (family saga set in Manchester, 1867)
Laura Hunter, Summer of No Rain, Bluewater Publications (a timid biracial girl grows up in Sweetwater, Alabama during the 1960s)
Stephen Hunter, Basil’s War, Aries (a daredevil British agent goes behind enemy lines to search for a religious text that might hold the key to ending the Second World War)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Runaway Children, Boldwood Books (saga about surviving against the odds and finding a family)
Alex Hyde, Violets, Granta Books (debut novel of motherhood and loss in the dying days of the Second World War)
Liz Hyder, The Gifts, Manilla Press (set against the backdrop of 19th century London, novel explores science, nature and enlightenment, the role of women in society and the dark danger of ambition)
Don Jacobson, The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy, Meryton Press (book 8 of The Bennet Wardrobe)
John James, The Bridge of Sand, Sapere (80AD — poet and regimental commander, Juvenal, is ordered to conquer the island of Britain)
Rebecca F. John, Fannie, Honno (a feminist reimagining of the story of Fantine, from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables)
K. S. Jones, Change of Fortune, Five Star (novel of a woman of independence set in California 1849)
Alan Judd, A Fine Madness, Pegasus (espionage novel that explores the life of theatrical genius—and spy—Christopher Marlowe)
Joseph Kanon, The Berlin Exchange, Scribner (an espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is swapped by the British and returns to East Berlin)
Scott Kauffman, Saving Thomas, Wild Rose (a hermit refuses a recent knighthood for services rendered in WWII and a reporter in 1970s Portland set out to discover why)
Jessie Keane, Diamond, Hodder & Stoughton (in the early years of the last century, a desperate young girl changes her name and flees the confines of her domineering gangland family in London)
Hannah Kent, Devotion, Picador (1836 Prussia — story of girlhood and friendship, faith and suspicion, and the impossible lengths we go to for the ones we love)
Juhea Kim, Beasts of a Little Land, Oneworld (novel spanning the turbulent decades of Korea’s fight for independence)
Dana LeCheminant, The Thief and the Noble, Covenant (a Robin Hood Regency romance)
Jennifer Lamont Leo, Naomi Musch, Candice Sue Patterson, Pegg Thomas, Lumberjacks and Ladies, Barbour (struggling to remain independent in the 1800s, four women reluctantly open up to help – and love – from lumberjacks)
Mark Levenson, The Hidden Saint, Level Best/Historia (conjures up a human origin story for one of the greatest superheroes of Jewish folklore: Rabbi Adam, famous for battling wizards, witches, and demons)
Helen Lewis, Malory’s Quest, Austin MacCauley (March 1471, Rogue Malory is dead and his friends set out to fulfil their promise to deliver the finished manuscript of Le Morte D’Arthur to the friars of Winchester)
Frances Liardet, Think of Me, Putnam (novel about one couple’s journey through war, love, and loss, and how the people we love never really leave us)
Kristen Loesch, The Porcelain Doll, Allison & Busby (an Oxford student returns to her homeland and uncovers a devastating family history which spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin’s purges and beyond)
Maja Lunde (trans. Diane Oatley), The Last Wild Horses, HarperVia (spanning continents and centuries, this is a powerful tale of survival and connection—of humans, animals, and the indestructible bonds that unite us all)
Jonathan Lunn, Warriors in the Snow, Canelo Adventure (1356. King Edward III invades Scotland in the dead of winter to punish the Scots for their recent attack on Berwick)
Marina McCarron, The Time Between Us, Aria (dual timeline novel set in Normandy, 1937 and Boston 2009)
Timothy David Mack, The Orchid and the Emerald, Blackstone (William Gunn seeks a cure for his sick daughter and goes in search of the black orchid; a plant only found in the forbidding Amazon rainforest)
Sharlene MacLaren, Her Guarded Heart, Whitaker House (Western romance)
Elizabeth Macneal, Circus of Wonders, Atria (a novel with a vivid cast of characters and the Victorian obsession with spectacle)
Miranda Malins, The Rebel Daughter, Orion (as the turmoil of Civil War reaches her family home in Ely, 19-year-old Bridget Cromwell finds herself at the heart of the conflict)
Violet March, Velocity of a Secret, Montlake (an intrepid heroine confronts the dark underworld of espionage and war in a romance set in 1919)
Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane, Hodder Studio/S&S (story of three women whose lives are bound together by a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose)
Sam Martin, One Day in June, Roundfire Books (based on a true story and series of historical events, novel is one man’s journey of self discovery)
Elizabeth Massie, The Great Chicago Fire, Crossroad Press (historical romance set in 1870s)
June Hall McCash, The Truth Keepers, Mercer Univ. Press (set primarily on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in the nineteenth-century, novel tells the tale of a torn family and the struggles of a young nation)
Rosie Meddon, Ties That Bind, Canelo (when Esme’s past as a secret operative comes calling, she must choose – her husband or her job?)
Elaine Meyers, Iron Pants, Vanguard (story of four sisters, separated after the death of their mother, and reunited at an orphanage where they encounter teachers who understand the importance of an education)
Simon Michael, The Final Shot, Sapere (seventh crime novel set in 1960s London. Charles Holborne series)
Ellie Midwood, The White Rose Network, Bookouture (true story of Sophie Scholl––one of history’s bravest women, who risked everything to lead a revolution against darkness)
Mikaël, Harlem, Europe Comics (to bootlegger Dutch Schultz, Harlem is ripe for the picking, especially with the police and politicians for sale to the highest bidder)
Rod Miller, All My Sins Remembered, Five Star (a mounted mail carrier suspects that there is more going on at a lonely roadhouse, the only source for water for miles)
Liz Milliron, The Lessons We Learn, Level Best/ Historia (in March 1943, Betty Ahern sets out to prove her friend Lee is not guilty of his father’s murder, even though he will not cooperate with the police)
T. L. Mogford, The Plant Hunter, Welbeck (seizing his chance for fame and fortune, Harry sets out to make his mark in pursuit of the plant that could change his future)
Anne Montgomery, Wolf Catcher, Touchpoint (a reporter seeks information on an eleventh-century magician and discovers that black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder)
Coirle Mooney, The Lady’s Keeper, Sapere (1168 France is a mediaeval world of intrigue, danger and adventure)
Louisa Morgan, The Great Witch of Brittany, Redhook/Orbit (tale of Ursule Orchiere and her discovery of magical abilities that will not only change the course of her life but every generation that comes after her)
Terry Mort, A Spy in Casablanca, Mcbooks (Riley Fitzhugh is recruited by the OSS for temporary duty as a naval spy in Morocco)
Pamela Nowak, Necessary Deceptions, Five Star (tells of Wyatt Earps two women married to him the longest – Mattie Blaylock and Josephine Marcus)
Mary-Anne O’Connor, Dressed by Iris, HQ Fiction AU (romantic story of Sydney in the 1930s Depression – and one young woman’s dream of designing her way from rags to riches)
Patrick O’Leary, 51, Tachyon (novel that upends one of the best-kept secrets in American history: the strange events at Area 51 – alternative fantasy)
Heather O’Neill, When We Lost Our Heads, Riverhead (takes readers into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of 19th-century Montreal’s wealthy)
Lizzie Page, A Place to Call Home, Bookouture (historical novel set after the devastation of World War Two)
Ann Parker, The Secret in the Wall, PPP (book 8 of the Silver Rush Mysteries set in Colorado and San Francisco in late 1800s)
Allison Pataki, The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, Ballantine (reimagining of the life of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the American heiress and trailblazing leader of the twentieth century)
Renee Patrick, Idle Gossip, Severn House (sleuthing duo Lillian Frost and Edith Head investigate in Los Angeles, 1940)
Anna Pitoniak, Our American Friend, Simon & Schuster (from 1970s to present day, from Moscow and Paris to Washington and New York, novel is about power and complicity and how sometimes, the fate of the world is in the hands of the people you’d never expect)
M. J. Porter, Son of Mercia, Boldwood (new series set in Tamworth, Mercia AD825)
Alex Preston, Winchelsea, Canongate (story of adventure, vengeance, transformation, and smuggling)
Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms, Bloomsbury (historical adventure that takes us from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish lighthouse and back through time itself)
Karolina Ramqvist (trans. Saskia Vogel), The Bear Woman, Coach House (a journey of feminism and literary detective work spanning centuries and continents)
Petra Rautiainen (trans. David Hackston), Land of Snow & Ashes, Pushkin (novel about Lapland’s buried history of Nazi crimes against the Sámi people)
Deanna Raybourn, An Impossible Impostor, Berkley (London 1889; while investigating a man claiming to be the long-lost heir to a noble family, Veronica Speedwell gets the surprise of her life)
Ros Rendle, The Divided Heart, Sapere (dual timeline saga, spanning World War II and the Cold War)
Anne Rice, Christopher Rice, Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, Anchor (gilded adventures of Ramses the Damned continue in a tale of a titanic supernatural power unleashed on the eve of a world war)
Francine Rivers, The Lady’s Mine, Tyndale (romantic tale of a displaced New England suffragette, a former Union soldier disinherited by his Southern family, and the town they join forces to save)
Alex Rutherford, Fortune’s Heir, Canelo Adventure (sequel to Fortune’s Soldier, India 1770s)
Toni Shiloh, In Search of a Prince, Bethany House (Brielle is a princess in the kingdom of Oloro Ilé, Africa, and she must immediately assume her royal position, since the health of her grandfather, the king, is failing)
Jill Eileen Smith, The Prince and the Prodigal, Revell (after a stunning betrayal, Judah struggles to forget what he’s done while Joseph attempts to move on from what’s been done to him)
Luanne G. Smith, The Raven Spell, 47North (in Victorian England a witch and a detective join forces to hunt for a serial killer)
Sarah Smith, Hear No Evil, Two Roads (in the industrial city of Glasgow in 1817 Jean Campbell – a young, Deaf woman – is witnessed throwing a child into the River Clyde)
Susan Spann, Fires of Edo, Seventh Street (Edo, February 1566: a Hiro Hattori, Shinobi mystery, book 8)
Eva Stachniak, The School of Mirrors, Wm Morrow/Doubleday Canada (novel about a mother and a daughter in 18th-century France, beginning with decadence and palace intrigue at Versailles and ending in revolution)
Harper St. George, The Lady Tempts an Heir, Berkley (a fake engagement brings together a lady with bold and daring dreams, and the heir whose heart she captured)
Herbert J. Stern, Alan A. Winter, Sins of the Fathers, Skyhorse (tells the true story of the foolish prime minister who undermined the coup to topple the regime, saved the Führer’s life, and paved the road to World War II)
Alfred Stifsim, Wild Salvation, TwoDot (a western novel that explores diverse perspectives on race and the role of women in the Old West)
Keith Stuart, The Frequency of Us, Sphere (dual narrative novel about an impossible mystery and a true love that refuses to die, set during WWII and present)
Sarah Sundin, Until Leaves Fall in Paris, Revell (when the Nazis march into Paris, an American woman uses her bookstore to aid the resistance, while a businessman chooses to sell his products to Germany–and send vital information home to the US)
Gill Thompson, The Lighthouse Sisters, Headline Review (story of love, courage and sacrifice, inspired by real events, of two sisters in occupied Jersey during World War Two)
Kate Thompson, The Little Wartime Library, Hodder & Stoughton (while the world outside remains at war, Clara has created the country’s only underground library in the disused Bethnal Green tube station)
Charles Todd, A Game of Fear, Wm Morrow (Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge is faced with a murder with no body, and a killer who can only be a ghost. Set in 1921)
Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Jennifer Croft), The Books of Jacob, Text AU/Riverhead (follows the comet-like rise and fall of a messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across 18th-century Europe)
Bryn Turnbull, The Last Grand Duchess, Mira (takes readers behind palace walls to see the end of Imperial Russia through the eyes of Olga Romanov, the first daughter of the last Tsar)
S.J.A. Turney, The Bear of Byzantium, Canelo Adventure (second instalment in Wolves of Odin series; story of power in Constantinople and the machinations of the Byzantine emperors)
Paul Vidich, The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin, Pegasus/No Exit (an American woman targeted by the Stasi must confront the truth behind her German husband’s mysterious disappearance)
Hans von Trotha (trans. Elisabeth Lauffer), Pollak’s Arm, New Vessel Press (account of a little-known figure responsible for a major archaeological discovery of the long-missing piece of an ancient sculpture in the Vatican Museums)
Heather Webb, The Next Ship Home, Sourcebooks Landmark (inspired by true events, novel probes America’s history of prejudice and exclusion—when entry at Ellis Island promised a better life but often delivered something drastically different)
Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake, Ballantine/Michael Joseph (a voice recording at a funeral narrates a tumultuous story about a headstrong young woman who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder)
T. A. Willberg, Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose, Park Row/Orion (lady detective-in-training Marion Lane returns to solve a new case when a serial killer with an unusual calling card is on the loose in London)
J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Love at Deep Dusk, Sunbury Press (romance novel of betrayal and forgiveness)
Reavis Z. Wortham, The Texas Job, PPP (Texas Ranger Tom Bell is simply tracking a fugitive killer in 1931 when he rides into Kilgore, where the roughnecks are not inclined to assist in his search for the wanted man)
Sandra L. Young, Divine Vintage, The Wild Rose Press (murder mystery romance set in 1913)
Tom Young, Red Burning Sky, Kensington (saga based on the true story of Operation Halyard, WWII’s most daring and successful rescue mission)
March 2022
Patricia Adrian, The Bletchley Women, One More Chapter (as they work at Bletchley Park, decoding intercepted Luftwaffe messages, two women realise they don’t have to settle for the life once laid out before them)
Nicole Alexander, The Last Station, Bantam AU (story of heritage, heartbreak and hope, set during the dying days of the riverboat trade along the Darling River)
Reine Andrieu, The Girl With no Name, Hodder (WWII novel set in 1940 and 1946)
Annabel Abbs, The Language of Food (UK), S&S UK (England, 1835 – explores the enduring struggle for female freedom, the power of female friendship, the quiet joy of cooking and the poetry of food. US title: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen)
Anita Abriel, A Girl During the War, Atria (story of love and purpose in WWII Italy)
Diana Abu-Jaber, Fencing with the King, W. W. Norton (draws on King Lear and Arthurian fable to explore the power of inheritance, the trauma of displacement, and whether we can release the past to build a future)
W. M. Akers, Westside Lights, HarperVoyager (third book in Jazz Age fantasy series set in the dangerous Westside of New York City, and following private detective Gilda Carr’s hunt for the truth)
Ellen Alpsten, The Tsarina’s Daughter, SMG (brings to life the story of Elizabeth, daughter of Catherine I and Peter the Great)
Marty Ambrose, Forever Past, Severn House (last in a historical trilogy based on the ‘summer of 1816’ Byron/Shelley group)
J. D. Arnold, Rawhide Jake: Learning the Ropes, Five Star (first book in a trilogy on the life and times of Detective Jonas V. Brighton)
Jenny Ashcroft, Under the Golden Sun, SMP (World War II love story set against the raw beauty of Australia)
Dane Bahr, The Houseboat, Counterpoint (murder mystery noir set in small-town Iowa in the 1960s)
Jane Bailey, Sorry Isn’t Good Enough, Orion (coming of age mystery with a dark core, set in 1966 and 1997)
David Baldacci, Wish You Well, Pan (a tale of family, faith, humanity and prejudice)
Tom Beckerlegge, The Carnival of Ash, Solaris (historical fantasy about a city of poets and librarians)
Vicky Beeby, A New Start for the Wrens, Canelo Saga (saga about protection of the British coastline during WWII)
Julie Bennet, The Understudy, S&S AU (novel immersed in the underbelly of the theatre world in the gritty streets of Sydney in 1973)
Lisa Berne, The Redemption of Philip Thane, Pan (regency romantic comedy)
Maryka Biaggio, The Model Spy, Milford House Press (based on the true story of Toto Koopman, who spied for the Allies and Italian Resistance during World War II)
Tony Birch, The White Girl, HarperVia (debut set in the 1960s, that explores the lengths we’ll go to save the people we love)
D. V. Bishop, The Darkest Sin, MacmillanUK (historical thriller set in Renaissance Florence and sequel to City of Vengeance)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, Wild Irish Rose, Minotaur (1907― back in New York, where her and her now husband’s story began, Molly decides to accompany some friends to Ellis Island to help distribute clothing to those in need)
Robert Burden, Song of the Land, Matador (follows a man as he digs deeply into his family’s past, the English and the Armenian, and comes to a better understanding of himself)
Annabelle Bryant, The Lady Loves Danger, Kensington (Regency romance)
Amanda Cabot, The Spark of Love, Revell (tale of treachery, love and trust, set in 1850s Texas)
Lucy Caldwell, These Days, Faber & Faber UK (follows the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing known as the Belfast Blitz)
Deborah Carr, An Island at War, One More Chapter/Harper 360 (novel about the German occupation of the Channel Islands)
Valentine Carter, These Great Athenians, Imprint Twenty Seven (gives voice to the mostly forgotten and maligned female characters of Homer’s epic The Odyssey)
Maud Casey, City of Incurable Women, Bellevue Literary Press (exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria―and the hysterical response commonly exhibited by medical men)
Deborah Challinor, The Leonard Girls, HarperCollins AU (three people grapple with love, loss and the stresses of war at the height of the Vietnam War, 1969)
Lauren Chater, The Winter Dress, S&S AU (two women are separated by centuries but connected by one beautiful silk dress in this novel based on a real-life shipwreck discovered off Texel Island)
Timothy Christian, Hemingway’s Widow, Pegasus (portrait of the complicated woman who becomes Ernest Hemingway’s fourth wife)
Andrea Yaryura Clark, On a Night of a Thousand Stars, Grand Central (in this narrative of love and resilience, a young couple confronts the start of Argentina’s Dirty War in the 1970s)
Catherine Coles, Poison at the Village Show, Boldwood (post-WWII mystery set in England, 1947)
Mary Connealy, The Element of Love, Bethany House (after learning their stepfather plans to marry them off, Laura Stiles and her sisters escape to find better matches and claim their father’s lumber dynasty)
Martha Conway, The Physician’s Daughter, Zaffre (historical fiction set against the back drop of the American civil war)
Liliana Corobca (trans. Monica Cure), The Censor’s Notebook, Seven Stories (a window into the intimate workings of censorship under communism, confirming the power of literature to capture personal and political truths)
Thomas E. Crocker, Captain Hale’s Covenant, Mcbooks (family saga an American Revolutionary War blockade runner, who, with his sons, builds a fortune in trade with France, England, and Jamaica)
Jeanne M. Dams, Murder in the Park, Severn House (introducing female sleuth Elizabeth Fairchild in the first of the Oak Park village mystery series, set in 1920s Illinois)
Danielle Daniel, Daughters of the Deer, Random House Canada (novel imagines the lives of women in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s)
Jibanananda Das (trans. Rebecca Whittington), Malloban, Penguin Random House India (novel set in North Calcutta in the winter of 1929 and unfolds through a series of everyday scenes of dysfunction and discontent)
Marion Deeds, Comeuppance Served Cold, Tordotcom (in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Seattle’s powerful Commission of Magi is moving against the city’s most vulnerable magic users under the guise of protecting law-abiding citizens)
Vicki Delany, Deadly Director’s Cut, Berkley (1950s film set cozy mystery)
Camille Di Maio, Until We Meet, Forever (WWII romance)
Patricia Dixon, Birthright, Bloodhound (a woman’s quest to save her family’s chateau in France brings danger, rivalry, and romance—and reveals a secret buried since World War II)
Paul Doherty, The Hanging Tree, Severn House (London, 1382; Brother Athelstan must solve a theft from the royal treasure chamber and the murders of six executioners)
David Donachie, Every Second Counts, Mcbooks (WWII thriller)
Anna Enquist (trans. Eileen J. Stevens), The Homecoming, Amazon Crossing (fictional biography examining the life of Elizabeth Cook, wife of explorer James Cook)
Leylâ Erbil (trans. Nermin Menemencioglu & Amy Marie Spangler), A Strange Woman (c.1971), Deep Vellum Publishing (narrates the past and present of a complicated Turkish family through the eyes of each of its members)
Elaine Everest, The Woolworths Saturday Girls, Pan (seventh entry in series set post-war Britain)
Mirza Farhatullah Baig (trans. Parvati Sharma & Sulaiman Ahmad), The Last Light in Delhi, Penguin Random House India (portrait of the life and living styles of the upper classes of Delhi in the decade before the fateful year of 1857)
W. Michael Farmer, A Song of Blood and Fire, Five Star (an Iliad-type narrative of the last ten years of Geronimo’s wars beginning in 1877)
Juni Fisher, Indelible Link, Bedazzled Ink (novel harks back to the time when a traveling circus arrived to promise a magical adventure under the big top)
Anthony Flacco, The Last Nightingale, Severn River (story of a bloodthirsty serial killer and the family he destroyed, set in San Francisco during the Great Earthquake)
Katie Flynn, The Rose Queen, Penguin (romantic saga set in 1938)
Karen Joy Fowler, Booth, Serpent’s Tail/Putnam (the story of the ill-fated Booth family. Junius, a Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, and his children who grew up on a farmstead in 1820s rural Baltimore)
Whit Fraser, The Cold Edge of Heaven, Boulder Publications (fictional adventure set in the Canadian High Arctic in the 1920’s and based on Canada’s determination to assert sovereignty over the vast area)
Helen Fripp, The Painter’s Girl, Bookouture (a bereft mother, forced to relinquish her daughter, poses for artist Edouard Manet in 1860s Paris)
Melissa Fu, Peach Blossom Spring, Little, Brown/Wildfire (follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home)
Patrick Gale, Mother’s Boy, Tinder Press (story of a man who is among, yet apart from his fellows, in thrall to, yet at a distance from his own mother; a man being shaped for a long and remarkable life spent hiding in plain sight)
Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry, Doubleday (debut set in 1960s California features a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show)
Barry Gifford, The Boy Who Ran Away to Sea, Seven Stories (a childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s among grifters, show girls, and mob enforcers made him who he is. Short stories)
Jen Gilroy, The Sweetheart Locket, Orion Dash (dual timeline novel about love, loss and buried secrets, set in England 1939 and San Francisco 2019)
Rose Goodwin, A Simple Wish, Zaffre (1885; a young girl is led into a life of crime for which she must atone)
Dolores Gordon-Smith, The Chapel in the Woods, Severn House (Jack and Betty Haldean’s weekend in the country is disrupted by sudden, violent death in this 1920s mystery)
Reyna Grande, A Ballad of Love and Glory, Atria (a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier must fight for survival and love amidst the atrocity of the Mexican-American War)
John MacLachlan Gray, Vile Spirits, Douglas & McIntyre (thriller set in 1920s Vancouver post prohibition, when liquor was the fuel driving big business, big government—and major crime)
Philip Gray, Two Storm Wood, W. W. Norton (thriller set on the battlefields of the Somme after the end of World War I, as a woman investigates the disappearance of her fiancé)
V. B. Grey, Sisterhood, Quercus (identical twin sisters take very different paths, leading to long-buried family secrets that reverberate through the generations)
Joumana Haddad, The Book of Queens, Interlink (a book of history, heritage, loyalty, religion, feminism, families, and the Armenian genocide)
Araminta Hall, Hidden Depths, Orion (mystery set aboard Titanic, inspired by author’s family story)
Barbara Hambly, Death and Hard Cider, Severn House (1840; musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January gets mixed in politics, with murderous results)
Matthew Harffy, A Night of Flames, Aries (Northumbria, AD 794―A Time for Swords, book 2)
Liz Harris, Hanoi Spring, Heywood Press (novel set during the time of French Colonial rule of Vietnam)
Cora Harrison, Spring of Hope, Severn House (when an exhibition featuring London’s top engineers results in sudden, violent death, Victorian writer-sleuths Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens investigate)
Pamela Hart, The Charleston Scandal, Hachette AU (story of a young Australian actress caught up in the excesses, royal intrigues and class divide of Jazz Age London)
Kristy Woodson Harvey, The Wedding Veil, Gallery (following four women across generations, bound by a beautiful wedding veil and a connection to the famous Vanderbilt family)
Sophie Haydock, The Flames, Doubleday (every painting tells a story, but what if the women on the canvas could talk)
Richard Helms, A Kind and Savage Place, Level Best/Historia (spans 1942 to 1989 and examines the racial and societal turmoil of that period through the lens of a North Carolina agricultural community)
Rosie Hendry, The Mother’s Day Victory, Sphere (2nd in WWII series Women on The Home Front, set in Norfolk, 1940)
Alan Hlad, A Light Beyond the Trenches, John Scognamiglio (WWI — a German Red Cross nurse joins the world’s first guide dog training school for the blind)
India Holton, The League of Gentlewomen Witches, Berkley (a Victorian adventure romance)
Elise Hooper, Angels of the Pacific, Wm Morrow (story of the Angels of Bataan, nurses kept as prisoners during the occupation of the Philippines)
Kristi Ann Hunter, Enchanting the Heiress, Bethany House (Harriet Hancock likes to make the lives of those around her better whether they like it or not. So, she is surprised when her friend has ideas on how to make Harriet happier)
Alex Hyde, Violets, Granta (a post WWII novel of women’s courage as two young women’s lives intertwine)
Eloisa James, How to be a Wallflower, Avon (first novel in a new series featuring a romance between a British heiress and an American businessman vying for the same costume emporium)
Natalie Jenner, Bloomsbury Girls, SMP (story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world)
Kathleen Marple Kalb, A Fatal Overture, Kensington (Ella Shane Mystery #3, set in New York City in 1900)
Rebecca Kauffman, Chorus, Counterpoint (told in turn over time, from the early 20th-c through the 1950s, seven siblings relay their own version of memories that surround their mother’s death & one sibling’s teenage pregnancy)
William Keeling, Belle Nash and the Bath Soufflé, EnvelopeBooks (when a soufflé fails to rise, friends try to find out why and uncover a web of corruption that spreads throughout Bath’s legal system. Set in the early 1830s)
Averil Kenny, The Girls of Lake Evelyn, Bonnier Echo (a runaway bride escapes to tropical North Queensland, where she finds a mysterious lake with secrets of its own)
Josi S. Kilpack, The Valet’s Secret, Shadow Mountain (a kiss from a handsome valet becomes a Regency Cinderella story when he is revealed to be an earl)
Lee Kravetz, The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., Harper (told through three narratives, debut novel reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar)
Marion Kummerow, The Girl in the Shadows, Bookouture (third novel in Margarete’s Journey series set in Germany, 1943)
Sarah E. Ladd, The Letter from Briarton Park, Thomas Nelson (Regency romance centers around a young woman intent on uncovering her past and a man determined to leave his behind)
Caroline Lea, Prized Women, Michael Joseph (based on one of history’s untold stories when, in 1926, women were asked to bear children to earn a fortune)
Mark Lamprell, The Secret Wife, Text (story of female friendship and liberation in the turbulent 1960s)
Lizzie Lane, Heaven & Hell for the Tobacco Girls, Boldwood (WWII family saga)
Sue Lawrence, The Green Lady, Saraband (1567, when Mary, Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; a tale of intrigue, secrets, treachery and murder, based on true events)
Kim Leine (trans. Martin Aiken), The Colony of Good Hope, Picador (novel about the first encounters between Danish colonists and Greenlanders in early 18th century, of brutal clashes between priests and pagans, and the forces that drive each individual towards darkness or light)
Amy Licence, The York King, Lume Books (set in 1464, during the Wars of the Roses, this is the second volume in the York trilogy)
K. J. Maitland, Traitor in the Ice, Headline Review (Daniel Pursglove murder mystery)
Clare Marchant, The Queen’s Spy, Avon (dual timeline mystery set in 1584 Tudor court and present day)
Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane, Simon & Schuster (novel about three women whose lives are bound together by a long-lost letter, a mother’s love, and a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose)
Francesca May, Wild and Wicked Things, Redhook/Orbit (debut set In aftermath of WWI in which a young woman gets swept into a world filled with illicit magic, romance, blood debts, and murder)
Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope, Sandstone Press (May 1907; a depiction of young Stalin’s time in London and the beginnings of his power-base building in the Russian Communist Party)
Anna Mazzola, The Clockwork Girl, Orion (story of obsession, illusion and the price of freedom set in Paris 1750)
Carol MacLean, Jeannie’s War, Hera Books (romantic family saga set in WW2 Scotland)
Debra May Macleod, Empire of Iron, Blackstone (conclusion to the Vesta Shadows trilogy)
Madeline Martin, The Highlander’s Stolen Bride, Harlequin (an enemies-to-lovers romance
Rachel McMillan, The Mozart Code, Thomas Nelson (post WWII spy novel)
Kelly O’Connor McNees, The Myth of Surrender, Pegasus (follows two girls whose paths intersect at a maternity home in the “Baby Scoop Era.”)
Elena Medel, The Wonders, Pushkin Press (through a series of vignettes, novel weaves together a broken family’s story, stretching from the last years of Franco’s dictatorship to the 2018 Spanish Women’s Strike)
Teresa Messineo, What We May Become, Severn House (in 1945 secrets hidden at an Italian estate could prove just as vital to humanity’s fate as the war efforts on the frontlines)
T. L. Mogford, The Plant Hunter, Welbeck (1867. When plant hunter Harry Compton receives a rare specimen and a map, he sets out to find fame and fortune)
Mary Monroe, Empty Vows, Dafina (a proper church-going woman determined to snare Alabama’s most-sought after widower finds his secret desires and righteous lies come as a package deal)
Jess Montgomery, The Echoes, Minotaur (fourth in the Kinship series)
Louise Morrish, Operation Moonlight, Century (novel set in France during WWII)
Katie Munnick, The Aerialists, The Borough Press (based on the true story of Louisa Maud Evans, a fourteen-year-old girl who died during the Great Exhibition in Cardiff, 1896, and whose demise captured the imagination of the city)
Adele Myers, The Tobacco Wives, Wm Morrow (debut set in 1947 North Carolina following a young female seamstress who uncovers dangerous truths about the Big Tobacco empire ruling the American South)
Lars Mytting (trans. Deborah Dawkin), The Reindeer Hunters, MacLehose (novel set in 1903 is about love and bitter rivalries, sorrow and courage, about history and myth, and a country as it enters a new era. Second in trilogy after The Bell in the Lake)
Kitty Neale, A Family Secret, Orion (WWII family saga)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Danger on the Atlantic, Kensington (Jane Wunderly Mystery #3)
Chris Nickson, The Blood Covenant, Severn House (the brutal deaths of two young boys and a young man connected to a mill in Leeds propel thief-taker Simon Westow into a disturbing mystery)
Amita Parikh, The Circus Train, HarperCollins (a two-decade journey across Europe and a travelling circus where nothing is as it seems)
Emma Pass, Before the Dawn, Aria (a wartime romance about the power of love in the face of adversity)
Angela Petch, The Postcard from Italy, Bookouture (a dual-timeline story of lost memories, betrayal and impossible choices)
Tracie Peterson, Along the Rio Grande, Bethany House (when bankruptcy forces widow Susanna Jenkins to follow her family to New Mexico, what they see as a failure she sees as a fresh start)
Lizzie Pook, Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, Mantle (in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice and blackmail, Eliza soon learns that the truth can cost more than pearls, and she must decide just how much she is willing to pay)
Victoria Purman, The Nurses’ War, HQ Fiction AU (story of grit, love and loss, based on the true history and real experiences of Australian nurses in World War 1)
Diana Quincy, The Marquess Makes His Move, Avon (romance about a half-Arab marquess seeking revenge on—and falling for—London’s most famous mapmaker)
Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye, Wm Morrow (World War II tale of a quiet librarian who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story)
Virginia Rafferty, The House on Peace Street, Milford House (WWI — saga that follows a family’s trajectory as they struggle to find inner strength in a rapidly changing world)
Harmony Reed, Confidence John, Sterling & Stone (a family mystery and revenge story set in early 1800s Florida)
Vanessa Riley, A Duke, the Spy, an Artist, and a Lie, Zebra (an English spy must follow his neglected wife through the streets of London as she investigates her sister’s death with the aid of the Widow’s Grace)
Lilly Robbins, The Stockport Girls, Orion (Second World War saga)
Erika Robuck, Sisters of Night and Fog, Berkley (based on the true stories of an American socialite and a British secret agent whose acts of courage collide during World War II)
Kelsey Ronan, Chevy in the Hole, Henry Holt and Co (debut novel follows multiple generations of two families in Flint, Michigan, through the city’s notorious growth and decline)
James Runcie, The Great Passion, Bloomsbury (a meditation on grief and music, told through the story of Bach’s writing of the St. Matthew Passion)
Aimie K. Runyan, The School for German Brides, Wm Morrow (a young woman who is sent to a horrific “bride school” to be molded into the perfect Nazi wife finds her life forever intertwined with a young Jewish woman about to give birth)
Erin Kate Ryan, Quantum Girl Theory, Random House (suspenseful mystery story which asks again and again whose disappearances matter — and explores the ways we may be haunted by the lives we did not lead. Set in 1940s and 60s US and NYC)
Jennifer Ryan, The Kitchen Front, Pan (story inspired by the true events of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition)
Simon Scarrow, Blackout, Kensington (crime thriller set in Berlin, December 1939)
Simon Scarrow, The Honour of Rome, Headline (new installment featuring Macro and Cato in Britannia, AD 58)
Carly Schabowski, The Note, Bookouture (WWII tale about lost loves and long-buried secrets––and the consequences that cannot be escaped)
V. E. Schwab, Gallant, Greenwillow (a dark and original tale about the place where the world meets its shadow, and the young woman beckoned by both sides)
Alex Segura, Secret Identity, Flatiron (literary mystery set in the world of comic books)
Michelle Shocklee, Count the Nights By Stars, Tyndale (dual-timeline novel set in 1961 and 1867)
Irene Solà (trans. Mara Faye Lethem), When I Sing, Mountains Dance, Granta/Graywolf (when their father dies, young Mia and Hilari are left to grow up wild among the Pyrenees mountains and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war, but then Hilari dies …)
Zoë Somerville, The Marsh House, Apollo (two women, separated by decades, are drawn together by one, mysterious house in this haunting 20th-c historical thriller set on the North Norfolk coast)
A. Sowards, Before the Fortress Falls, Covenant (a young woman decides to stay and face the oncoming war in Vienna, rather than escape the conflict when her family evacuates the city)
Lisa Russ Spaar, Paradise Close, Persea (the paths of an orphaned girl in 1971 and a sixty-something recluse in 2016 entwine in this dual narrative)
Joyce St. Anthony, Front Page Murder, Crooked Lane (World War II-era historical mystery series featuring a small-town editor who has a nose for news and an eye for clues)
Sarah Steele, The School Teacher of Saint-Michel, Headline Review (dual timeline story of friendship, courage and hope set in France 1942 and present day)
Tara M Stringfellow, Memphis, John Murray (provides a literary portrait of three generations of a Southern black family, as well as an ode to the city they call home)
A.M. Stuart, Evil in Emerald, Berkley (when a cast member from a musical theatre company is brutally killed, Inspector Curran turns once again to Harriet for help)
Michael John Sullivan, The Shattered Cross, Permuted Press (inspirational Christian historical fiction imagines what the world would look like if Christ had never been crucified)
Tim Swink, Madd Inlet, Touchpoint (1969 – draft-dodger Jack Tagger seeks refuge on a desolate island where, while avoiding one war, he finds himself unwittingly caught in the middle of another, waged between two very powerful men)
Marta Anne Tice, Allegiance to Alsace, BQB (coming of age of a daughter of a German winemaker and a Parisian aristocrat, who journeys to the simplicity of the winery and brewery lifestyle of Alsace-Lorraine in 1804)
Sarah Tolmie, All the Horses of Iceland, Tordotcom (a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland’s unusual horses – historical fantasy)
Joanna Toye, Wedding Bells for the Victory Girls, HarperCollins (WWII family saga series)
Anne Tyler, French Braid, Chatto & Windus/Knopf (begins in 1959, with a family holiday, the effects of which will ripple through the generations. Literary)
L. C. Tyler, The Plague Road, Felony & Mayhem (1665 — John Grey, the government’s favorite fixer, gets the delightful task of pawing through corpses, in search of the one that doesn’t belong)
Jennifer Uhlarik, Love’s Fortress, Barbour (Dani Sango inherits her art forger father’s estate including a series of Native American drawings and paintings, which lead her to research St. Augustine of 1875)
Stephanie Vanderslice, The Lost Son, Regal House (WWII novel about a mother whose baby is kidnapped by his father and nurse and taken back to Germany)
Anneka R. Walker, Bargaining for the Barrister, Covenant (a barrister with a fear of being touched falls prey to a group of matchmaking mothers in this Victorian romance)
John Ware, A Green Bough, Page D’Or (the exploits of the Royal Munster Fusiliers (‘The Dirty Shirts’) in WWI)
Charlotte Whitney, The Unveiling of Polly Forrest, Lake William Press (during the Great Depression, newly widowed Polly is set to pursue her dream of opening a hat-making business, but instead becomes a suspect in her husband’s murder)
Daniel Wiles, Mercia’s Take, Swift Press (depicts an England in the heat of the industrial revolution, and the lives it took to make it)
Ally Wilkes, All the White Spaces, Atria/Emily Bestler (ghost story exploring identity, gender and selfhood, set against the backdrop of the golden age of polar exploration in the wake of WWI)
Sheila Williams, Things Past Telling, Amistad (from the mid-18th-century to the end of America’s Civil War – a story of a past that lives on in all of us, and a life that encompasses the best—and worst—of our humanity)
Sue Williams, Elizabeth & Elizabeth, Allen & Unwin (evokes a short time in Australia’s European history when two women wielded extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony)
Christopher Wilson, Hurdy Gurdy, Faber Fiction (a funny historical novel, following Brother Diggory on an eerily prescient journey through fourteenth-century England)
Jacqueline Winspear, A Sunlit Weapon, Harper/Allison & Busby (a series of possible attacks on British pilots lead Maisie Dobbs into a mystery involving First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt)
Paul Aziz Zarou, Arab Boy Delivered, Cune Press (the teenage son of Palestinian immigrants comes of age during the tumultuous sixties in his family’s neighborhood grocery store in New York City)
Michael Zimmer, The Devil by his Horns, Five Star (a tale of reckoning in an untamed land, and of a family standing up against the inequality of circumstance and a tyrant’s greed)
April 2022
Mai Al-Nakib, An Unlasting Home, Mariner (ranging from 1920s to the near present, novel traces Kuwait’s rise from a pearl-diving backwater to its reign as a thriving cosmopolitan city to the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion)
Kevin J. Anderson, Neil Peart, Clockwork Destiny, ECW Press (final book in trilogy set in a world of airships and alchemy, fantastic carnivals and lost cities. Steampunk fantasy)
Michael Arditti, The Young Pretender, Arcadia (after being courted by royalty and lusted after by patrons of both sexes, story takes place during child-actor William Henry West Betty’s attempted comeback at the age of twenty-one)
Elizabeth Bailey, The Unwanted Corpse, Sapere (Lady Ottilia Fanshawe is juggling motherhood with murder in 1794 England)
David Baldacci, Dream Town, Macmillan UK/Grand Central (Aloysius Archer returns to solve a new case in Hollywood, 1952)
Nanni Balestrini, We Want Everything, Verso (1969, and temperatures were rising across the factories of the north as workers demanded better pay and conditions. Soon, discontent would erupt in what became known as Italy’s “Hot Autumn”)
Rachel Barenbaum, Atomic Anna, Grand Central (three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past)
Luke Francis Beirne, Foxhunt, Baraka Books (exploration of passivity, loyalty, and literature in times of political upheaval as the Cold War closes in)
DeMisty D. Bellinger, New to Liberty, The Unnamed Press (showcases the strength and resolve of three unforgettable women growing up in a society, in mid-century America, that refuses to evolve)
Pam Binder, The Immortal, Wild Rose (time-slip historical fantasy romance in 16th-c England)
Carol Birch, Shadow Girls, Apollo (Manchester, 1960s―combines psychological suspense with elements of the ghost story, in a literary exploration of girlhood)
Sarah Bird, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, SMP (a story that is still deeply resonant today of America as it learns that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together)
Caroline Bishop, The Lost Chapter, S&S UK (1957, France: Florence and Lilli forge a firm friendship that promises to last a lifetime. But a terrible betrayal prematurely tears them apart)
Juliet Blackwell, The Paris Showroom, Berkley (in Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented designer must fight for her life by creating art for her enemies)
Jacquie Bloese, The French House, Hodder & Stoughton (story of courage and long-lost love set on WWII-occupied Guernsey)
Michael Blouin, I Am Billy the Kid, Anvil Press (revisionist history seen through the lens of a 21st century sensibility features the picaresque hero we thought we knew and the unexpected one that we don’t)
Jerry Borrowman, Dark Seas, Covenant (WWII naval thriller)
Kimberly Brock, The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, Harper Muse (alternating between the story of war widow Alice in the 1940s and excerpts from Eleanor Dare’s Commonplace Book – novel explores the meaning of female history)
Taylor Brown, Wing-Walkers, SMP (a former WWI ace pilot and his wing-walker wife barnstorm across Depression-era America, performing acts of aerial daring)
Lisa Hall Brownell, Gallows Road, Elm Grove Press (in 1750, a beautiful young servant is condemned to death for a crime that she swears she did not commit)
Denny S. Bryce, In the Face of the Sun, Kensington (a young, pregnant Black woman and her brash, profane aunt embark upon an audacious 1960s road trip across a country convulsed by the Civil Rights Movement)
Grace Burrowes, Never a Duke, Piatkus (a proper lady must choose between society or the untitled gentleman who has stolen her heart)
John Cameron, The Roads of War, TouchPoint (novel set during the Civil War exposes the authenticity of battle—the hardships, the struggle, and the yearning for tranquility)
Kenneth Cameron, The Past Master, Felony & Mayhem (a writer living in London has cause to help Henry James with a mystery)
Mark Carlson, Out of the Darkness: Vengeance of the Last Roman Legion, Milford House (AD 9 and 2021 – in a long-forgotten crypt in rural France, an ancient and deadly nightmare has awakened, which will not be denied its revenge)
Crystal Caudill, Counterfeit Love, Kregel (combines history, danger, suspense, and romance in a mystery series featuring a partnership with Secret Service operative Broderick Cosgrove & his former fiancé and love, Theresa Plane)
Derek Catron, Avenging Angel, Five Star (a wild frontier story of love and vengeance featuring Union sharp-shooter Josey Angel)
Christopher M. Cevasco, Beheld: Godiva’s Story, Lethe Press (a darkly twisted psychological thriller exploring the legend of Lady Godiva’s naked ride)
Robert Charles, Nothing to Lose, Sapere (S.O.E trained espionage expert, Simon Larren, features in new spy thriller set in 1960)
Rebecca Connolly, A Brilliant Night of Stars and Ice, Shadow Mountain (based on the true story of the Carpathia—the only ship and her legendary captain who answered the distress call of the sinking Titanic)
Angela K. Couch, A Rose for the Resistance, Barbour (book 5 in the Heroines of WWII series)
Paul Cox, Guadalupe Canyon, Five Star (Monte Segundo is hired as a tracker to find an aristocrat who has disappeared in Guadalupe Canyon)
Ben Creed, A Traitor’s Heart, Welbeck UK (post WWII thriller)
John Crowley, Flint and Mirror, Tor (a historical novel shot through with fantasy, or alternately, a great fantasy novel hung on a scaffolding of history)
Sandra Dallas, Little Souls, SMP (tale of sisterhood, loyalty, and secrets set in Denver amid America’s last deadly flu pandemic)
Jasmine Darznik, The Bohemians, Ballantine (novel of celebrated photographer, Dorothea Lange, exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring)
Martin Davies, Mrs Hudson and the Spirits’ Curse, Canelo US (a group of merchants are dying one by one and the unique gifts of housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, and her orphaned assistant Flotsam, will be needed to solve the case)
Patrick Dearen, The End of Nowhere, Five Star (based on what actually happened at Porvenir, Texas, in 1918 – the blackest moment in Texas Rangers’ history)
Margaret Dickinson, Wartime Friends, Pan (set in the 1940s, a tale of unbreakable bonds in times of strife)
Lianne Dillsworth, Theatre of Marvels, Hutchinson Heinemann (novel about a woman’s search for justice in Victorian London)
Gerry Docherty, Beyond Revanche, TrineDay (exposes the mayhem and horror of the little-known destruction of Paris in the First World War)
Donna Douglas, A Daughter’s Hope, Orion (third in the Yorkshire Blitz novels, 1942)
Adrian Duncan, The Geometer Lobachevsky, Tuskar Rock (In 1950, Nikolai Lobachevsky receives a telegram calling him back to Leningrad for a ‘special appointment’. A musing on life, death and the meaning of home)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Claridge’s, Allison & Busby (one of the Claridge’s kitchen porters is found dead)
Genevieve Essig, A Plot Most Perilous, Bookouture (murder mystery set in Florida, 1883)
Jenni Fagan, Hex, Polygon (explores the lingering connections between womanhood and the occult, and the obsessive mania of a king who saw the threat of demons and witches all around him)
David Field, Traitor’s Arrow, Sapere (second book in the Norman Conquest series)
W. H. Flint, Hot Time, Arcade Crimewise (thriller set in the Gilded Age New York)
Leo Furey, The Good Thief, Flanker Press (a novel about an ordinary young man who finds himself in an extraordinary situation in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1960s)
Craig Gallant, Jamaica: A Blood & Plunder Novel, Winged Hussar Publishing (start of a new series of historical fiction)
Hélène Gaudy (trans. Stephanie Smee), A World With No Shore, Zerogram Press (retraces and reimagines an 1897 North Pole adventure and reflects on the human need to discover, describe, conquer, and ultimately shrink the world)
J. H. Gelernter, Captain Grey’s Gambit, W. W. Norton (military thriller set in 1803)
David R. Gillham, Shadows of Berlin, Sourcebooks Landmark (1955― Rachel Perlman arrives in New York as part of the wave of Jewish displaced persons who managed to survive the brutalities of the war)
John J. Gobbell, Somewhere in the South Pacific, Severn River (historical thriller inspired by the true story of John F. Kennedy’s daring naval mission at the height of World War II)
Cathy Gohlke, A Hundred Crickets Singing, Tyndale (in wars eighty years apart, two young women living on the same Appalachian estate determine to aid soldiers dear to them and fight for justice)
Adrian Grafe, The Ravens of Vienna, Addison & Highsmith (story follows Herr Lichtblau, torn between his love for his family and his desire to fight the Nazi plague in Vienna, as he decides to set out for England)
Genevieve Graham, Bluebird, S&S (novel set during the Great War and postwar Prohibition about a young nurse, a soldier, and a family secret that binds them)
Jane Green, Sister Stardust, Hanover Square/HQ Digital (re-imagines the glamorous and tragic life of fashion icon and socialite Talitha Getty)
Molly Green, Summer Secrets at Bletchley Park, Avon UK (first in a new WWII saga series)
Linda Griffin, Bridges, Wild Rose (1960s romance in which the gulf between two people is bridged by a shared love of books)
Nicola Griffin, Spear, Tordotcom (a queer recasting of Arthurian myth)
Elly Griffiths, The Midnight Hour, Quercus (Brighton, 1965; an old man lies dead and it looks like poison, but his wife isn’t the only one who had reason to kill him)
Jody Hadlock, The Lives of Diamond Bessie, Spark Press (1860s―a tale of betrayal and redemption that explores whether seeking revenge is worth the price you might pay)
Dianne Haley, The Watchmaker’s Daughter, Bookouture (in Nazi-occupied France, Valérie smuggles messages for the Resistance, hidden among her father’s watch deliveries, and hides Jewish children in his old workshop)
Stacey Halls, Mrs. England, Mira (a young governess must navigate the challenging dynamics of family life underneath the polished surface in this powerful examination of an Edwardian marriage, truth and deception)
Amy Harmon, The Unknown Beloved, Lake Union (story of two people whose paths collide against a backdrop of mystery, murder, and the Great Depression)
C. S. Harris, When Blood Lies, Berkley (Sebastian S. Cyr historical mystery)
Victoria Hawthorne, The House at Helygen, Quercus (dual-timeline mystery suspense novel set in Cornwall in 2019 and 1881)
Sophie Haydock, The Flames, Doubleday (debut novel about the intertwining lives of four women, the muses who inspired the artist Egon Schiele)
Lorraine Heath, Girls of Flight City, Wm Morrow (novel about the brave American women who trained the British Royal Air Force. Inspired by true events)
Nancy Herriman, No Refuge from the Grave, Beyond the Page (murder mystery series featuring Detective Nick Greaves and nurse Celia Davies, set in 1860s San Francisco)
Catherine Hokin, The Pilot’s Girl, Bookouture (post-WWII novel about finding the strength to survive when all hope seems lost)
Steven Hopstaken, Melissa Prusi, Land of the Dead, Flame Tree (Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde team up with old friends Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Burton to protect our world from intruders from the Land of the Dead)
Anna Lee Huber, A Perilous Perspective, Kensington (series features inquiry agents Lady Kiera Darby and her husband, Sebastian Gage)
Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation, Lake Union (two women fight for their dreams in an early twentieth-century America roiling with racial injustice, class divides, and WWI)
Sonallah Ibrahim (trans. Bruce Fudge), The Turban and the Hat, Seagull Books (novel of the invasion and occupation of Egypt by Napoleonic France as seen through the eyes of a young Egyptian)
Eloisa James, How to be a Wallflower, Piatkus (novel in which an heiress engages a rugged American)
Lola Jaye, The Attic Child, Macmillan UK (dual narrative historical story about two children locked in the same attic almost a century apart)
William W. Johnstone, J. A. Johnstone, Forever Texas, Kensington (frontier fiction based on true events in 1852)
Ben Kane, King, Orion (Autumn 1192. Richard the Lionheart will face not just his arch-enemy Philippe Capet of France, but also his treacherous younger brother, John)
Alma Katsu, The Fervor, Putnam (psychological and supernatural look at the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II)
J. Kelly, The Silent Child, Hodder & Stoughton (a novel of memory, identity, and the long shadow of war – set in 1944 and early sixties)
Kim Kelly, The Rat Catcher, Brio (during a plague outbreak in Sydney, summer of 1900, a young wharf labourer is offered a job as a rat catcher)
Suzanne Kelman, Garden of Secrets, Bookouture (1940, Russia: an English-speaking young woman is recruited to be a Russian spy working with the Nazi party, and is sent to work as a land girl in a the English countryside)
Uzma Aslam Khan, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, Deep Vellum (an epic telling of a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the subcontinent, set during the WWII Japanese invasion)
Eliza Knight, The Mayfair Bookshop, Wm Morrow (dual-narrative story about Nancy Mitford and a modern American desperate for change, connected through time by a little London bookshop)
Lucy Knight, Maria Bertram’s Daughter, Meryton Press (a Mansfield Park sequel)
Mark Knowles, Argo, Aries (reimagining of the famous Greek myth, Jason and the Golden Fleece)
Chris Kraus (trans. Ruth Martin), The Bastard Factory, Picador (story of two brothers, brought together and divided by betrayal, secrecy and self-delusion, spanning seventy years of German history: from the Russian Revolution, to WW II)
Carole Lawrence, Cleopatra’s Dagger, Thomas & Mercer (a journalist in nineteenth-century New York matches wits with a serial killer)
Anne Lazurko, What is Written on the Tongue, ECW (historical novel about finding morality in the throes of war and colonization)
Pam Lecky, Her Last Betrayal, Avon UK (a tale of one woman’s bravery in WW2 Britain)
Jane Lewis, The Wylder Rose, Wild Rose (Wild West romance)
Graham Ley, The Baron Returns, Sapere (historical saga set against the backdrop of the French Revolution)
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, A Woman of Endurance, Amistad (illuminates the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade—witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to bear more slaves)
Posy Lovell, The Kew Gardens Girls at War, Putnam (novel about a new class of courageous women who worked at London’s historic Kew Gardens during World War II)
Elizabeth Lowry, The Chosen, Riverrun (featuring an ageing Thomas Hardy, novel searches the unknowable spaces between man and wife; memory and regret; life and art)
Robert N. Macomber, Code of Honor, Naval Institute Press (1904, the Russo-Japanese War is raging in Korea and Rear Admiral Peter Wake, is in his White House office as special assistant to President Theodore Roosevelt)
Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility, Picador/Knopf (novel of love and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later)
Gama Ray Martinez, God of Neverland, Harper Voyager (re-imagining of Peter Pan, in which the grown-up Michael Darling must return to the life he left behind to save Neverland and keep humanity safe from magical and mythological threats)
Guillermo Martinez, The Oxford Brotherhood, Pegasus (literary thriller set at Oxford University puts a maths student at the center of a murder mystery sparked by the discovery of hidden secrets in the life of famed author Lewis Carroll)
Elsie Mason, A Wedding for the Biscuit Factory Girls, Orion (third in WWII saga set in South Shields, England)
Maggie Mason, The Halfpenny Girls at War, Sphere (WWII saga – third in series)
Imogen Matthews, Hidden in the Shadows, Bookouture (a tale of love, betrayal and sacrifice set in Nazi-occupied Holland, 1943)
Heather McCollum, Highland Justice, Amara (Sons of Sinclair historical romance)
Carol McGrath, The Stone Rose, Headline Accent (the Rose Trilogy series — based on the true story of the female stonemason who carved Queen Isabella’s tomb)
Catriona McPherson, In Place of Fear, Hodder & Stoughton (new crime novel set in 1940s Edinburgh at the birth of the NHS)
Fenella J. Miller, New Recruits at Goodwill House, Boldwood (romance in WWII Britain)
Also: Duty Calls at Goodwill House (July 2022)
Larry Millett, Rafferty’s Last Case, Univ. of Minnesota Press (ninth and final Minnesota mystery, in which Shadwell Rafferty, with the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, may have solved his own murder)
Derville Murphy, A Perfect Copy, Poolbeg Press (an historical mystery set in 19th century Russia, Vienna, and London where secrets of a family portrait uncover a family’s hidden past)
Stacie Murphy, The Unquiet Dead, Pegasus (new Gilded Age mystery featuring the uniquely talented Amelia Matthew—who has the ability to communicate with the dead)
Annie Murray, Secrets of the Chocolate Girls, Pan (new WWII saga following the lives of the women and girls who worked at the Cadbury Factory in Birmingham)
Donald S. Murray, In a Veil of Mist, Saraband (haunting exploration of the Cold War arms race that tells the story of a true, covered-up germ warfare incident in a remote part of Scotland, involving the US, Canadian, and UK governments)
Sheila Myers, The Truth of Who You Are, Black Rose (Great Depression saga explores the value people place on stories to hide uncomfortable truths)
Lars Mytting, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, The Overlook Press (spanning a century and navigating themes of revenge and forgiveness, love and loneliness)
Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club, Constable/Pegasus (murder and mayhem in 1920s India)
M. J. Neary, Ulster Lament, Crossroad Press (1903; a young man travels to Belfast to study journalism but finds himself siding with the rebels and questioning his loyalty to the crown)
John D. Nesbitt, Coldwater Range, Five Star (when Del Rowland begins to doubt his boss’s integrity, he quits his job and goes to work with the homesteaders who are being terrorised by the cattlemen)
Billy O’Callaghan, Life Sentences, David R. Godine (spanning more than a century, novel weaves together the journey of an Irish family determined against all odds to be free)
Clare O’Dea, Voting Day, Fairlight (explores the day in Feb 1959, when Switzerland held a referendum on women’s suffrage, through the eyes of four very different Swiss women)
David Park, Spies in Canaan, Bloomsbury (parable about guilt, atonement and redemption, set in present day and at end of Vietnam War in 1970s)
Alan Parks, May God Forgive, World Noir (fifth installment of Harry McCoy series)
Phillip Parotti, In the Shadows of Guadalcanal, Casemate (the men of PC-450, an advanced sub chaser, face Japanese submarines and air attacks as they support the U.S. Marines)
Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi, Redhook/Orbit (historical fantasy debut reimagines the life of Kaikeyi, the queen from the famous Indian epic the Ramayana)
Anne Perry, Three Debts Paid, Ballantine (a serial killer is on the loose, targeting victims with a mysterious connection, which Daniel Pitt must figure out)
S. W. Perry, The Rebel’s Mark, Corvus (fifth novel in the Jackdaw Elizabethan crime series)
Angela Petch, The Tuscan Secret, Forever (the sacrifices made for love and the tragic consequences of war echo through two generations of an Italian family)
Gary Phillips, One-Shot Harry, Soho Crime (Los Angeles, 1963- crime novel about an African American forensic photographer seeking justice for a friend)
Stephanie Phillips, illus. Peter Krause, Ellie Wright, We Only Kill Each Other, Dark Horse (with WW II on the horizon, Nazi sympathizers and fascists have taken root on American soil, intending to push the U.S. towards an alliance with Germany)
Cecile Pivot, The Little French Bookshop, Hodder (when a French bookseller loses her father, she places an ad in a newspaper, inviting struggling readers to join her secret letter writing workshop. WWII novel)
Marguerite Poland, A Sin of Omission, EnvelopeBooks (novel about a young black preacher in the 1870-80s, trained by the Anglican Church in England, then sent back to Cape Colony to face unresolved issues)
Devika Ponnambalam, I Am Not Your Eve, BlueMoose (literary story of Teha’amana, the Tahitian muse and child-bride of the painter Paul Gauguin)
Jane Rawson, A History of Dreams, Brio (in 1930s Australia, a group of young women with the power to alter dreams takes on a rising fascist movement)
Sheila Riley, The Mersey Mothers, Boldwood (Reckoner’s Row saga series set in Liverpool, 1953)
Elaine Roberts, Secret Hopes for the West End Girls, Aria (inspirational WWI saga set in 1915)
Maya Rodale, The Mad Girls of New York, Berkley (novel based on reporter Nellie Bly, who would stop at nothing to expose injustices against women in early 19th century)
Bill Rowe, The Reincarnation of Winston Churchill, Boulder Books (burdened by a secret of his aboriginal ancestry, Winston Churchill is driven to reveal the truth as death looms)
Shari J. Ryan, The Doctor’s Daughter, Bookouture (WWII novel that shows that even if your freedom has been robbed, and your loved ones torn from you, nobody can steal your hope)
Jennifer Saint, Elektra, Headline Wildfire (story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to a curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods)
Vince Santoro, The Final Crossing, Tellwell Talent (a tale of self-discovery, adventure and romance set in the ancient Middle East)
Audrey Schulman, The Dolphin House, Europa Editions (based on the true story of the 1965 “dolphin house” experiment, novel captures the tenor of the social experiments of the 1960’s)
Bianca M. Schwarz, The Memory of Her, Central Avenue (third romance in the Gentleman Spy Mysteries)
Antonio Scurati (trans. Anne Milano Appel), M; Son of the Century, Harper (chronicles the birth and rise of fascism in Italy, witnessed through the eyes of its founder, Benito Mussolini)
Ellee Seymour, The Royal Station Master’s Daughters, Zaffre (World War I saga of family, secrets and royalty)
Kyung-Sook Shin (trans. Anton Hur), Violets, W & N (set in South Korea, 1970, story reveals the high stakes involved in one woman’s search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society)
Nina Shope, Asylum, Dzanc (delves into the disturbing and seductive relationship between a young hysteric and renowned nineteenth-century French neurologist)
Brad Smith, Copperhead Road, At Bay Press (a story of moonshine, set in 1936, Wilkes County, North Carolina)
Wilbur Smith, Storm Tide, Zaffre (saga set against the backdrop of the American revolution)
Kris Spisak, The Baba Yaga Mask, Wyatt-MacKenzie (when their Ukrainian grandmother is lost on a trans-Atlantic Flight, two sisters are swept into a quest across eastern Europe to find the woman who had always told more tales than truths)
John Spurling, Arcadian Days, Duckworth (five tales centre on male-female pairs – Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and the sorceress Medea, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, Achilles and his mother Thetis, Odysseus and Penelope)
Richard Stevenson, Knock Off the Hat, Amble Press (a dishonorably discharged World War II vet takes a job as a private investigator and begins looking into a sudden and extraordinary wave of gay-bashing in Philadelphia)
Tara M Stringfellow, Memphis, The Dial Press (provides a literary portrait of three generations of a Southern black family, as well as an ode to the city they call home)
Kelli Stuart, The Master Craftsman, Revell (transports readers into the opulent and treacherous world of the Russian Revolution to unearth mysteries long buried)
Margaret Sweatman, The Gunsmith’s Daughter, Goose Lane (Manitoba 1971 – coming-of-age tells a story of ruthless ambition, and one young woman’s journey toward independence)
Jodi Taylor, A Catalogue of Catastrophe, Headline (book 13 in the Chronicles of St Mary’s time travel historical fantasy series)
Will Thomas, Fierce Poison, Minotaur (a Barker & Llewelyn novel set in London, 1893)
Adriana Trigiani, The Good Left Undone, Dutton / Michael Joseph (novel about a hardworking family of Tuscan artisans with long-held secrets)
Janyre Tromp, Shadows in the Mind’s Eye, Kregel (eerie, Hitchcockian story filled with love and suspense, set after WWII. Inspirational)
Simon Turney, The Capsarius: Legion XXII, Aries (warrior and combat medic, Titus Cervianus, must lead a legion and quell the uprisings in Egypt in a new Roman adventure)
V. L. Valentine, Begar’s Abbey, Viper (a gothic tale of hauntings, family secrets and dark deeds)
Giorgos Vlachos, illus. Thanasis Karabalios, The Archipelago on Fire, Europe Comics (tale of love and war based on the adventure novel by Jules Verne)
Michelle Wamboldt, Birth Road, Nimbus (set in early 20th-century Nova Scotia, story follows Helen, as she recalls the relationships and significant moments that have led to the birth of her child)
Martha Waters, To Marry and to Meddle, Atria (witty novel follows a seasoned debutante and a rakish theater owner as they navigate a complicated marriage of convenience)
Fiona Watson, Dark Hunter, Polygon (1317: a young squire joins the garrison of Berwick-upon-Tweed, the last English-held town in Scotland after the spectacular Scottish victory at Bannockburn. Murder mystery)
Nicola White, The Rosary Garden, Serpent’s Tail (in an Ireland riven by battles of religion and reproduction, the case of a murdered newborn becomes a media sensation, even as the church tries to suppress it)
Iona Whishaw, Framed in Fire, Touchwood (a shallow grave, a missing person, and near-fatal arson keep Lane, Darling, and the Nelson police on high alert in 1948)
Michelle Willingham, The Iron Warrior Returns, Harlequin Historical (a medieval friends-to-lovers romance)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Souls of Lost Lake, Bethany House (when a little girl goes missing, an all-out search ensues, reviving the decades-old campfire story of Ava Coons, the murderess, who still roams the woods)
Jess Wright, A Stream to Follow, SparkPress (explores the life of a battlefront surgeon who must hide his deep, emotional wounds as he attempts to build a new life in post-WWII America)
Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Four Treasures of the Sky, Flatiron (debut novel, set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West)
May 2022
Ibrahim al-Koni (trans. Nancy Roberts), The Night Will Have Its Say, Hoopoe (retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the Middle Ages)
Mesu Andrews, Potiphar’s Wife, WaterBrook (one of the Bible’s most notorious women longs for a love she cannot have)
Diane Armstrong, Dancing with the Enemy, HQ Fiction (story of betrayal, collusion, revenge, and redemption set in German-occupied Jersey during World War II and in present day)
Kelley Armstrong, A Rip Through Time, Minotaur (a modern-day homicide detective finds herself in Victorian Scotland—in an unfamiliar body—with a killer on the loose)
K. M. Ashman, The Promises of a King, Canelo (the Road to Hastings series, book 2)
Michael Aye, The Rise of the Gray Ghost, Bitingduck (Civil War era western showing the aftermath of the war and a man’s effort to rebuild himself from its damage)
Scott Badler, JFK & the Muckers of Choate, Bancroft Press (literary fiction reconstructs the years JFK spent at Choate, an elite and stifling boarding school for boys)
Mary Balogh, Remember Love, Piatkus/Berkley (new Ravenswood series about Devlin Ware who publicly called his family to account, but now as the new heir he is being called home from exile)
Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons, Doubleday (feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world)
Polina Barskova (trans. Catherine Ciepiela), Living Pictures, Pushkin Press (fiction about the siege of Leningrad and its aftermath)
Ron Base and Prudence Emery, Death at the Savoy, Douglas & McIntyre (new mystery series introducing a plucky Canadian heroine and set in the world’s most famous hotel in 1968)
Allan Batchelder, This Thing of Darkness, Macabre Ink (alternative history posing a second life, in the New World, for William Shakespeare after his recorded death)
Louis Bayard, Jackie & Me, Algonquin (witty novel about the young Jacqueline Bouvier before she became that Jackie—and about a marriage that almost never happened)
Misty M. Beller, A Healer’s Promise, Bethany House (Levi and Audrey are forced to discover just how far they’ll go to ensure the safety of the other and the love growing between them)
John Bemrose, The River Twice, Thistledown (World War I novel set in factory town where residents are reeling as the wounded return and the list of local young men who have been killed continues to grow)
Sian Ann Bessey, An Unfamiliar Duke, Covenant (two people, betrothed since childhood begin with a rocky start to their marriage. Set in 1772)
Nancy Bilyeau, The Fugitive Colours, Lume Books (reveals a dazzling world of glamour and treachery in Georgian England, when beauty held more value than human life)
Daniel Birnbaum (trans. Deborah Bragan-Turner), Dr. B., Harper (literary debut about book publishing, émigrés, spies, and diplomats in World War II Sweden based on author’s grandfather’s life)
Audrey Blake, The Surgeon’s Daughter, Sourcebooks Landmark (in the 19th century, Nora’s unconventional, indelicate ambitions to become a licensed surgeon offend the men around her)
Chris Bohjalian, The Lioness, Doubleday (a luxurious African safari turns deadly for a Hollywood starlet and her entourage)
Miguel Bonnefoy (trans. Emily Boyce), Heritage, Other Press (family saga that weaves together the private lives of individuals and major historical events in South America and Europe)
Graham Brack, The Lying Dutchman, Sapere (book 6 in the Master Mercurius murder mystery series set in 1685)
Eileen Brill, A Letter in the Wall, SparkPress (multi period novel inspired by a 1971 letter found hidden in the wall of a Pennsylvania home more than half a century later)
Elizabeth Buchan, Two Women in Rome, Corvus (an archivist who discovers a valuable 15th-c painting is drawn to find out more about the woman who left it behind, unraveling a tragic love story beset by the political turmoil of post-war Italy)
Janet Calcaterra, Burden of Memories, Latitude 46 (through WWII letters about their father’s death, two sisters discover how memories haunt us despite the effort to bury them)
Joy Callaway, The Grand Design, Harper Muse (story of interior designer Dorothy Draper and how the historic retreat influenced her bold shift from illustrious New York socialite to world-renowned decorator)
Elizabeth Camden, Written on the Wind, Bethany House (from the steppes of Russia to the corridors of power in Washington, Natalia and Dimitri will fight against all odds to save the railroad and share the truth)
Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda, Berkley (supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence)
Francesca Capaldi, Trouble in the Valleys, Hera Books (romantic wartime saga, set in Wales, 1919)
Mark Carlson, Legionary, Milford House (a legionary in the army of Emperor Augustus seeks revenge)
J’nell Ciesielski, The Brilliance of Stars, Thomas Nelson (amid the chaos of the Great War, two master assassins risk it all for love)
Rosie Clarke, Victory Bells for the Harpers Girls, Boldwood (Harpers Emporium series, book 6; set at the end of WWII)
Chanel Cleeton, Our Last Days in Barcelona, Berkley (dual timeline narrative set in Barcelona in 1936 and 1964)
Elena Collins, The Witch’s Tree, Boldwood (separated by three hundred years, two women are drawn together by a home bathed in blood and magic)
Cressida Connolly, Bad Relations, Viking (family saga ranging from the battlefields of the Crimea to the 1970s and present day)
Roma Cordon, How to Bewitch a Highlander, CamCat (a healer with witchery in her blood and a future Highlander clan chief risk everything for family and a forbidden romance)
Sinéad Crowley, The Belladonna Maze, Aria (dual timelines entwine in a story of old secrets and forbidden passion)
Jennifer Dance, Gone but Still Here, Dundurn (as her recent memories fade, Mary lives increasingly in the past — returning to the secrets of her interracial love story & prejudice)
Brenda Davies, The Girl Behind the Gates, Hodder (dual timeline novel based on a true story – set in 1939 and 1981)
Martina Devlin, Edith, Lilliput Press (biographical fiction based on the life of Irish novelist Edith Somerville)
Hernán Diaz, Trust, Riverhead/Picador (novel about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Last Queen, Wm Morrow (story of Jindan, who transformed herself from daughter of the royal kennel keeper to powerful monarch)
Nadine Dorries, A Wicked Woman, Aria (tale of two families linked by one historic secret and the lies that hide it, but separated by hatred and a deadly rivalry, spans the great heyday of the cotton industry in Lancashire. First in six-book series)
Jabbour Douaihy (trans. Paula Haydar), (trans. Nadine Sinno), Firefly, Seagull Books (paints a portrait of Beirut at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in the early 1970s, as seen through the eyes of its protagonist, Nizam al-Alami)
Mark Ellis, Dead in the Water, Headline Accent (WWII crime thriller. Book 5 in DCI Frank Merlin series)
T.P. Fielden, Betraying the Crown, Thomas & Mercer (intrigue and scandal threaten to rock the monarchy in wartime Britain. Guy Harford #3)
Leah Fleming, The Rose Villa, Aria (from the French Riviera between the wars to a terrifying endgame in WWII occupied France, a story of doomed but triumphant love)
Jentry Flint, Games in a Ballroom, Shadow Mountain (Regency romance in London, 1815)
Brooke Lea Foster, On Gin Lane, Gallery (in June of 1957, one young socialite begins to realize that her glamorous summer is giving her everything—except what she really wants)
J. Fremont, Magician of Light, She Writes (based on René Lalique’s illustrious life as a leader in the decorative arts, the people most important to him, and the anguish of some of those personal relationships)
Jean Fullerton, A Ration Book Victory, Corvus (a woman’s past catches up to her in London, final months of WWII)
Ann H. Gabhart, When the Meadow Blooms, Revell (explores the tender places within the human heart in a story of trusting God to turn our burdens into something beautiful)
Amanda Geard, The Midnight House, Headline Review (dual timeline story of secrets, war, love and sacrifice, set in 1940 and 2019)
Elizabeth Gill, A Miner’s Daughter, Quercus (romance between a Durham miner’s daughter and an aristocrat)
C. P. Giuliani, The Road to Murder, Sapere (espionage adventure thriller series set during the Elizabethan era in Tudor England)
Charlie Garratt, A Malignant Death, Sapere (mystery set against the backdrop of the Second World War)
Guinevere Glasfurd, Privilege, Two Roads (a story of adventure and mishap set against the turmoil of mid-18th century France at odds with the absolute power of the King)
Tamara Goranson, The Flight of Anja, One More Chapter (haunted by the shadows of a family history she does not know, Anja, daughter of Freydis, must seek a perilous path into an unfamiliar wilderness to find her answers)
C. W. Gortner, The American Adventuress, Wm Morrow (story of Jennie Jerome Churchill, mother of Winston, a New York born heiress who always lived life on her own terms)
Luis Goytisolo (trans. Brendan Riley), Antagony, Dalkey Archive (follows the youth and education of Raúl Ferrer Gaminde, son of a well-connected, middle-class Catalan family that embraces Franco and Spanish Nationalism)
Claudia Gray, The Murder of Mr. Wickham, Vintage/Viking (a summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when one of literature’s most notorious rakes, finally gets what’s coming to him)
Annabelle Greene, The Servant and the Gentleman, Harlequin/Carina (a surly gentleman and his overworked clerk fake a relationship in this Regency romance)
Kerry Greenwood, The Lady With the Gun Asks the Questions, PPP (amateur sleuth mystery in 1920s)
Louise Hare, Miss Aldridge Regrets, HQ (murder mystery exploring class, race and pre-WWII politics)
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree, Picador (Strasbourg, 1518 — story of lust, family secrets and women under the eye of the Church)
Elodie Harper, The House with the Golden Door, Apollo (The Wolf Den book 2, set in Pompeii)
Sarah Hawkswood, A Taste for Killing, Allison & Busby (another murder case for Bradecote and Catchpoll)
Evie Hawtrey, And By Fire, Crooked Lane (separated by centuries, two female detectives track a pair of murderous geniuses who will burn the world for their art)
Jody Hedlund, To Tame a Cowboy, Bethany House (historical western)
M. B. Henry, All the Lights Above Us, Alcove Press (on what history will call D-Day, five unforgettable women from all walks of life strive to survive the most terrifying night of their lives)
Adriana Herrera, A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, HQN (debut set at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, where a financially ruined rum heiress from the Dominican Republic agrees to a marriage of convenience with a not-so-secret Scottish duke)
Rachel Hore, One Moonlit Night, S&S UK (WWII novel about loyalty and betrayal, hope and despair, and a husband and wife separated by secrets as well as by distance)
Christopher Huang, Unnatural Ends, Inkshares (murder mystery in which the inheritance goes to the offspring who solves his/her father’s murder first)
Greg Hunt, On Savage Ground, Five Star (novel set in the little village settlement of New Orleans, destined to become the capital of the vast lands that France claims on the new western continent)
Damion Hunter, Shadow of the Eagle, Canelo (an adventure of Ancient Rome)
Conn Iggulden, The Lion, Michael Joseph/Pegasus (first book in The Golden Age series)
Sophie Irwin, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, HarperCollins/Viking (1818; a woman uses her cunning to launch herself into London society and marry a fortune)
Dr Hilary Jones, Frontline, Welbeck (first in series charting the rise of a prominent medical family in the 20th Century)
Joanne Joseph, Children of Sugarcane, Jonathan Ball (set against the backdrop of 19th century India novel paints a picture of indenture from a woman’s perspective)
Lydia Kang, The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding, Lake Union (mystery about hidden identities, wartime paranoia, and the tantalizing power of deceit)
Walter Kappacher (trans. Georg Bauer), Palace of Flies, New Vessel Press (conjures up an individual state of distress and disruption at a time of fundamental societal transformation that speaks eloquently to our own age)
Guy Gavriel Kay, All the Seas of the World, Hodder & Stoughton/Penguin Canada (drama that offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives—in the past, and today)
Susanna Kearsley, The Vanished Days, S&S UK (love story set against the Jacobite revolution)
Christopher Kerr, The Barbarossa Secret, The Book Guild (based around true events about a cover-up during WWII over an alliance between Germany and the Allies)
Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, Bloomsbury/McClelland & Stewart (a meditation on colonization, displacement, and the lengths we go to remain connected to our families and ancestral lands. Follows a Tibetan family’s journey through exile)
Suzan Lauder, The Barrister’s Bride, Meryton Press (a twist on the Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy story)
David Laws, The Martyr of Auschwitz, Bloodhound (a researcher seizes an opportunity to find out what happened to her grandfather during WWII—and discovers a present-day threat as she retraces his steps)
Ann Leary, The Foundling, Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books (the story of two friends, raised in the same orphanage, whose loyalty is put to the ultimate test when they meet years later at a controversial institution)
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, The Evening Hero, S&S (novel following a Korean immigrant pursuing the American dream)
Preston Lewis, Rio Hondo, Five Star (in the aftermath of the Lincoln County War, rancher Wes Bracken must rebuild a life for himself and his family amid the lingering animosities)
Eleanor Limprecht, The Coast, Allen & Unwin (a universal story of love, courage, sacrifice and resilience set in early 1900s)
Erin Litteken, The Memory Keeper of Kyiv, Boldwood (inspired by the history of the man-made famine that stole almost 4 million lives in the Ukraine, and that the Russian government denies)
Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the English House Party Murder, Kensington (as lady’s companion to a wealthy widow, Lady Caroline Morton soon finds her duties entail investigating a murder in first of a new Regency-set series)
A.J. Mackenzie, The Fallen Sword, Canelo (finale to the Hundred Years’ War series)
Grace Marcus, Visible Signs, TouchPoint (story of two women in the turbulent 1970s, rethinking assumptions about family and friendship)
Edward Massey, Forever Sheriff, Five Star (novel featuring a young deputy who grows into a determined lawman in the early part of the 20th-century through WWI and the Spanish flu)
Sarah McCoy, Mustique Island, Wm Morrow (set in early 70s on the world’s most exclusive private island, where Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger were regulars and scandals stayed hidden from the press)
Kathleen McGurl, The Storm Girl, HQ Digital (dual timeline; a chance discovery behind an old fireplace reveals the former inn’s secret history as a haven for smugglers in the 1780s)
Laura McKenna, Words to Shape My Name, New Island Books (in 1857, Harriet Small is given her father’s True Narrative of his life – his escape from slavery in America and his journey into the heart of revolutionary Ireland)
Diane C. McPhail, The Seamstress of New Orleans, John Scognamiglio (in 1900 two women, separated by geography and circumstance, are fated to meet in the jasmine scented humidity of New Orleans, a city of decadence and danger)
Gabrielle Meyer, When the Day Comes, Bethany House (Libby has been given a powerful gift: to live one life in 1774 colonial Williamsburg and the other in 1914 Gilded Age New York City. Time-travel romance)
Coirle Mooney, The Cloistered Lady, Sapere (historical drama set in Medieval France ― Medieval Ladies series Book 2)
Christopher Moore, Razzmatazz, Wm Morrow (novel returns to the mean streets of 1940s San Francisco in this follow-up to Noir)
Elizabeth Morton, The Girl From Liverpool, Macmillan UK (romantic saga set against the backdrop of WWII)
Boyd & Beth Morrison, The Lawless Land, Aries (first in a Templar Knight series set in 1351)
Julie Owen Moylan, That Green Eyed Girl, Michael Joseph (novel about jealousy, loyalty, and the secrets we keep to protect those we love. Set in 1955 and 1975)
J. B. Mylet, The Homes, Viper (the stories the author’s mother’s story of growing up in the infamous Quarrier’s Homes in Scotland in the 1960s, along with a thousand other orphaned or unwanted children)
Leslie Johansen Nack, The Blue Butterfly, She Writes (tells the story of Hollywood star Marion Davies)
Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club, Pegasus (first in a new cozy series featuring murder and mayhem in 1920s India)
Phong Nguyen, Bronze Drum, Grand Central (novel of ancient Vietnam based on the true story of two warrior sisters who raised an army of women to overthrow the Han Chinese)
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, N., Coffee House Press (Napoleon, obsessed with securing eternal admiration and renown, pens his posthumous memoirs through a woman who his spirit has inhabited)
Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Take My Hand, Phoenix/Berkley (inspired by true events, a novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients)
Charlotte Philby, Edith and Kim, The Borough Press (spy novel based on the true story of the woman behind the Cambridge spies in Cold War espionage)
Anne Whitney Pierce, Down to the River, Regal House (family saga set in the late 1960s in Cambridge, Massachusetts against the backdrop of the Vietnam War)
Bianca Pitzorno (trans. Brigid Maher), The Seamstress of Sardinia, Text (set at the dawn of the 20th century, novel follows a girl as she grows into a woman, strives to educate herself and falls in love, in a world dominated by men)
Dawn Promislow, Wan, Freehand Books (when an anti-apartheid activist comes to hide in her garden house, the carefully constructed life of a privileged artist begins to unravel)
Philip Purser-Hallard, Sherlock Holmes: Masters of Lies, Titan (Holmes and Watson uncover a murderous forgery ring with ties to the British government)
Amanda Quick, When She Dreams, Piatkus/Berkley (return to 1930s Burning Cove, California, the glamorous seaside playground for Hollywood stars, mobsters, spies, and a host of others who find more than they bargain for)
Barbara Quick, What Disappears, Regal House (multi-generational tale that begins in 1880s Tsarist Russia and ends in WWI Paris; explores how girls and women define their identity and search for meaning in a world that tries to hold them back)
Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman’s Daughter, Sourcebooks Landmark (sequel to The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek)
Mandy Robotham, The Resistance Girl, Avon Books (operation Shetland bus smuggles British agents, fugitives and supplies across the North Sea into occupied territory)
Jaroslaw Rymkiewicz, The Hangings, Winged Hussar (an historical alternative query into “what if’s” of revolutionary politics at the time of the French Revolution and the Polish Partitions)
Jennifer Saint, Elektra, Flatiron (story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to a curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods)
Shelly Sanders, Daughters of the Occupation, Harper (explores how trauma is passed down in families and illuminates the strength and grace that can be shared by generations)
Michèle Sarde (trans. Rupert Swyer), Returning From Silence: Jenny’s Story, Swan Isle Press (a novel that tells the story of a Jewish family in World War II and reaches deep into Jewish history)
Shyam Selvadurai, Mansions of the Moon, Knopf Canada (a reimagining of ancient India through the extraordinary life of Yasodhara, the woman who married the Buddha)
Cathy Sharp, The Lonely Orphan, HarperCollins (a runaway orphan builds a new life but is threatened with being pulled into the criminal underworld)
Lady Murasaki Shikibu, Sean Michael Wilson, illus. Inko Ai Takita, Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji, Tuttle (offers an intimate look at the social mores and intrigues in the Heian-era court of medieval Japan, and Prince Genji’s representation as the ideal male courtier. Manga)
Victoria Shorr, Mid-Air: Two Novellas, WW Norton (family, ambition, class, and status explored in the fall and rise of two twentieth-century American families)
Laraine Stephens, Deadly Intent, Level Best (celebrated crime reporter, Reggie da Costa, pursues a cold-blooded, manipulative killer with deadly intentions in 1923)
David O. Stewart, The Burning Land, Permuted Press (Book 2 of the Overstreet Saga returns to the Civil War and its aftermath, when Americans fought each other over what the nation would become)
Karla Stover, Mr. Singer’s Seamstress, Five Star (story of a girl determined to buck convention and follow her own path, in New Tacoma, 1882)
Linda Stryk, The Teacher’s Room, Bywater Books (1963-a novice 5th-grade teacher embarks on a clandestine love affair with another teacher, which sets her on the tumultuous path of self-discovery. LGBTQ)
Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz, Bookouture (inspired by a true story, a WW2 novel of one woman’s bravery and determination to bring life and hope into a broken world)
Kung Li Sun, Begin the World Over, AK Press (a fictional alternate history of how the Founders’ greatest fear—that Black and indigenous people might join forces to undo the newly formed United States—comes true)
Victoria Thompson, Murder on Madison Square, Berkley (Sarah and Frank Malloy must catch a scheming killer in this latest Gaslight Mystery)
Liz Tolsma, A Promise Engraved, Barbour (inspirational romance set in 1836)
Lorraine Tosiello, Jane Cavolina, The Bee & the Fly, Clash books (presents a life-long exchange of imaginary letters between Dickinson, the reclusive poet, and Alcott, the most renowned author of the time)
Joanna Toye, Wedding Bells for the Victory Girls, HarperCollins (new book in the WW2 family saga series)
Liz Trenow, Searching for my Daughter, Bookouture (novel about bravery, enduring love and keeping hope alive in the darkest of times. Set at the close of WWII)
Kimberlee Turley, Circus of Shadows, Sweetwater (when 17-year-old Gracie Hart gets caught stealing a rideon a circus train, she expects to be arrested. Instead, she is offered a job as assistant to the circus knife-thrower)
Nicola Upson, Dear Little Corpses, Faber & Faber (1939; as the mass evacuation takes place across Britain, thousands of children leave London, but one little girl vanishes without a trace)
Nghi Vo, Siren Queen, Tordotcom (exploration of an outsider achieving stardom, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page)
Sarai Walker, The Cherry Robbers, Harper (a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up)
Ashley Weaver, The Key to Deceit, Minotaur (World War II mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and wit)
Alison Weir, Elizabeth of York; The Last White Rose (UK), The Last White Rose: A Novel of Elizabeth of York (US), Headline Review/Ballantine (when her father, Edward VI, dies, Elizabeth must choose her destiny with care)
Jeri Westerson, Oswald the Thief, Old London Press (a mediaeval caper set in 1308, in early reign of Edward II)
Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White, The Lost Summers of Newport, Wm Morrow (novel of money and secrets set among the summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to the present day)
Holly Williams, What Time is Love?, Orion (love story of two lives inextricably bound together at generation-defining moments, 1940s post-war Britain, psychedelic 1960s, hopeful 80s)
Mary Wood, The Orphanage Girls, Pan (saga about an orphanage in London’s East End)
Sarit Yishai-Levi, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, Swift Press (novel of mothers and daughters, stories told and untold, and the ties that bind four generations of women)
June 2022
Malka Adler, The Polish Girl, One More Chapter/Harper360 (a World War II novel set in 1939 Poland as the Nazis invade)
Nekesa Afia, Harlem Sunset, Berkley (a Harlem Renaissance mystery featuring a young Black woman working in a new speakeasy when she gets caught up in a murder)
Marie-Célie Agnant (trans. Katia Grubisic), A Knife in the Sky, Inanna (based on the lived history of those who survived the Duvaliers regime)
Joy Allyson, Whiskey Love, Wild Rose Press (romance in which the protagonists are in a deadly tangle against revenuers, moonshiners, and robber barons)
Lynn Austin, Long Way Home, Tyndale (a young woman searches for the truth her childhood friend won’t discuss after returning from World War II)
Karen Barnett, When Stone Wings Fly, Kregel (uncovering a long-lost family story is the only way Kieran can bring her grandmother peace before she dies)
Kerry Barrett, The Book of Last Letters, HQ Digital (dual timeline narrative set in 1940 and present day, inspired by a true story of a young nurse who captures the final letters of injured soldiers)
Jade Beer, The Last Dress from Paris, Berkley (dual timeline mystery set in London, 2017 and Paris, 1952)
Judith Berlowitz, Home So Far Away, She Writes (a diary, abandoned in Barcelona as Franco’s fascist troops storm into the city in 1938, reveals the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family)
Shelley Blanton-Stroud, Tomboy, She Writes (in 1939 a budding journalist is torn between writing a column which will damage her new friend’s career, or investigating a murder and its connection to the upcoming war)
Corina Boman (trans. Michael Meigs), Matilda’s Secret, AmazonCrossing (in pre-WWII Sweden, fate and secrets change an impetuous young woman’s life in a novel of deception, true love, and reinvention)
Matt Bondurant, Oleander City, Blackstone (in the wake of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, three lives converge despite persecution from the Ku Klux Klan)
Maggie Brookes, Acts of Love and War, Century (1936; civil war in Spain with one woman caught in the crossfire)
Geraldine Brooks, Horse, Viking/Little, Brown UK (based on the true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred, Lexington, who became America’s greatest stud sire; novel is a reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America)
Julie Brooks, The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay, Headline (Molly uncovers a photograph and a letter from her grandmother, asking her to find out what happened to her own mother, Rose, who disappeared in the 1960s)
Thomas T. Chin, Unpredictable Winds, TouchPoint (a story of unrequited love, secrets, desire, and an unintended friendship that leads to devastating consequences)
Joanne Clague, The Ragged Valley, Canelo (saga inspired by the real events of the Great Sheffield Flood)
Paul M. Clark, The Witchfinder’s Mark, Brio Books (dark folk horror novel set during the English Civil War)
Steven T. Collis, Praying with the Enemy, Shadow Mountain (based on the true story of an American POW during the Korean War and a North Korean soldier who become unlikely allies)
Paddy Crewe, My Name is Yip, The Overlook Press (revisionist take on the Western novel set in the Georgia gold rush)
Norma Curtis, The Hideaway, Bookouture (dual timeline story in which a granddaughter uncovers her estranged grandmother’s WWII story)
Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing, Wm Morrow (a new spin on a familiar tale, this is the Trojan War unlike before, and an Achilles whose vulnerability is revealed by the people she chooses to fight…and chooses to trust)
Damien Dibben, The Colour Storm, Michael Joseph (story of art and ambition, love and obsession in Renaissance Venice)
David Santos Donaldson, Greenland, Amistad (literary novel in which a young author writes about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl)
Kate Eastham, The Sea Nurses, Bookouture (in 1914 a young Scottish fisher girl joins the war effort as an army nurse)
Maria Escobar, The Teacher of Warsaw, Harper Muse (inspired by a real-life hero of the Holocaust, novel reminds the world that one single person can incite meaning, hope, and love)
Mary Anna Evans, The Physicists’ Daughter, PPP (New Orleans, 1944 –a young factory worker suspects that the carbon parts she assembles might have something to do with a top-secret government initiative)
Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Woman of Light, One World/Corsair (epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West)
David Field, An Uncivil War, Sapere (Stephen and Matilda battle to rule Medieval England in 1120)
Fiona Ford, The Good Time Girls at War, Embla Books (In the face of the Blitz, a devastating chain of events is set in motion for the members of the Hammersmith Palais de Danse)
Jamie Ford, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, Atria (exploration of the love that binds one family across the generations)
Maggie Ford, Mile End Girl, Ebury (saga of an East End girl who tried to forge a new life for herself and her baby)
Rachel Fordham, Where the Road Bends, Revell (in a desperate bid to save her family’s land, Norah King agrees to marry a man she barely knows)
Dianne Freeman, A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder, Kensington (Countess of Harleigh Mystery #5 set in Victorian England)
Nathaniel Gee, Of Pigs and Priests, Sweetwater (in 1557 Father Young and Bishop Goldheart find new hope when Queen Elizabeth comes to the throne and officially institutes the Church of England, which allows priests to marry)
Todd Gitlin, The Opposition, Guernica World Editions (story of civil rights and America’s 1960s New Left movement)
Michael Giutierrez, The Swill, Leapfrog Press (1929. Joshua Rivers, his pregnant wife Lily, his criminal sister Olive, a geriatric dog Orla, and a cast of ne’er-do-wells eke out life in The Swill, a speakeasy passed down through the Rivers family)
Leonard Goldberg, The Blue Diamond, Minotaur (Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series – the fate of the allied forces lies in the hands of Joanna and the Watsons)
Gabriele Goldstone, Crow Stone, Ronsdale Press (follows a worker at an ammunition factory who flees with her two sisters as the Third Reich begins to collapse under the weight of the Red Army)
Adrian Goldsworthy, The City, Aries (City of Victory, book 2, set on the Eastern Frontier AD 113)
Alex Gough, Emperor’s Lion, Canelo (historical thriller set in Ancient Rome)
Molly Green, Wartime at Bletchley Park, Avon (first in a new World War II historical fiction series)
Melody Groves, Trail to Tin Town, Five Star (it’s the end of the Civil War, the demand for beef is high and James Colton convinces his three brothers there’s money to be made in a cattle drive)
George Gurley, The Griefmaker, Anamcara Press (novel explores the American struggle for progress and tradition. A story of love, death, and perhaps atonement)
Emma Harcourt, The Brightest Star, HQ Fiction AU (a thirst for learning and a passion for astronomy draw a young woman into the political complexities and religious extremism of Renaissance Florence)
Rick Harsch, The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, Zerogram Press (multi-generational family drama unfolds into an observation of violence in American history)
Robin Lee Hatcher, I’ll Be Seeing You, Thomas Nelson (a young college student learns the truth about her great-grandmother’s World War II heartbreak and love. Inspirational fiction)
Ray Herbeck, To the Color, Five Star (the continuing true story of John Riley, after Changing Flags)
Werner Herzog (trans. Michael Hofmann), The Twilight World, Penguin Press (tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of WWII)
Kate Hewitt, The Angel of Vienna, Bookouture (WWII story based on real events—about tragedy, friendship and courage in the face of impossible odds)
Sophia Holloway, The Season, Allison & Busby (Regency romance)
Vanessa Hua, Forbidden City, Ballantine (a teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong’s protégée and lover—and a heroine of the Cultural Revolution)
Piper Huguley, By Her Own Design, Wm Morrow (story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of slaves, rose to design and create one of America’s most famous wedding dresses for Jackie Kennedy)
Angela Hunt, The Apostle’s Sister, Bethany House (Aya, daughter of Zebulon of Tarsus, does not want a traditional life, but wants to use her gifts and be something more than a wife and mother)
Douglas Jackson, The Wall, Bantam (AD 400 – adventure set at Hadrian’s Wall as the Roman Empire’s grip on Britain weakens)
Jane Johnson, The White Hare, Aria (a house has lain neglected since the war. It comes with a reputation and a strange atmosphere, which is why it is so cheap in the fateful summer of 1954)
Kathleen Kaska, Murder at the Menger, Anamcara Press (1953 – cosy Sydney Lockhart murder mystery)
Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons, Crooked Lane (London, 1923 – Saffron Everleigh is in a race against time to free her wrongly accused professor)
Sean Kikkert, Sweetheart’s Lake, Sweetwater (romantic suspense novel set during the regency period)
Laurie R. King, Castle Shade, Bantam (a queen, a castle, and a dark and ageless threat all await Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes)
Rosalie Knecht, Vera Kelly: Lost and Found, Tin House (in spring 1971 Vera puts her private detective skills to good use and tracks a trail of breadcrumbs across southern California to find her missing girlfriend)
Bob Kroll, The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney, ECW (a 19th-century family saga about a father’s love as expressed through his twenty- year quest across Canada and the U.S. to find his three children)
Alexandra Lapierre (trans. Tina Kover), Belle Greene, Europa (a young girl enamoured of rare books defies all odds to become the director of J. P. Morgan’s private libraries)
Mohamed Leftah (trans. Lara Vergnaud), Captain Ni’mat’s Last Battle, Other Press (charts the late-in-life sexual awakening of a retired army officer who embarks on a dangerous affair with a male servant. LGBTQ+)
Amy Licence, Dangerous Lady, Sapere (historical drama set at the court of King Henry VIII and featuring Anne Boleyn. First book in the Marwood Family Tudor Saga)
A.M. Linden, The Valley, She Writes (The Druid Chronicles, Book two)
Sean Lusk, The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley, Doubleday (18th-century tale of a clockmaker whose son possesses unusual talents)
Jeanette Lynes, The Apothecary’s Garden, HarperAvenue (story about the mysteries of life, the enchantment of flowers, and wonders of love, set in Victorian Canada)
Mathieu Mariolle, Fabio Piacentini, The Final Secret of Adolph Hitler, Humanoids, Inc (a chase between Allied and Nazi submarines at the dawn of the Cold War)
William Martin, December ’41, Forge (a desperate chase from Los Angeles to Washington, D. C., in the first weeks of the Second World War)
Robert Marshall, Storm From the East, Canelo (brings to life a time when East and West finally came face to face and the contours of modern Asia were set)
Anna Maxymiw, Minique, McClelland & Stewart (loosely based on the lives of real 17th-century figures, novel is a feminist fable, a survival story, and a turbulent romance)
Fiona McIntosh, The Chocolate Tin, PenguinAU (historical mystery romance)
Ann McMan, Dead Letters from Paradise, Bywater Books (1960― a spinster postal investigator finds herself enmeshed in the mystery of solving who is sending undeliverable letters to the town’s 18th-century hortus medicus)
Catriona McPherson, In Place of Fear, Mobius (new crime novel set in 1940s Edinburgh at the birth of the NHS)
Judii Merle, Wabanang,Daughter of the Stars, Crossfield (follows Wabanang (Morning Star) as a child, as a residential school student and as a medicine woman for her people through her granddaughter’s search for the truth)
Mikael, Bootblack, Papercutz (WWII graphic novel)
John Anthony Miller, The Drop, TouchPoint (Havana, 1958; when a brutal dictator steals the family fortune, wealthy Ariana Rojas joins the revolution, determined to get back what she lost)
J. M. Miro, Ordinary Monsters, Flatiron/Bloomsbury/McClelland & Stewart (England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a man made of smoke. Historical fantasy)
Allison Montclair, The Unkept Woman, Minotaur (in London, 1946, Miss Iris Sparks has to deal with aspects of her past exploits during the recent war that have come back around to haunt her. Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery)
Coirle Mooney, The Cloistered Lady, Sapere (historical drama set in the nunnery at Fontrevault, in Medieval France)
H.B. Moore, Hannah: Mother of a Prophet, Covenant (fictional account of Samuel’s life as a prophet in the making, and how his mother, Hannah, made impossible decisions guided by her deep and abiding love of God)
Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona, Penguin Press (in a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle)
Tara Moss, The Ghosts of Paris, Dutton / Harper Avenue (a search for a missing husband puts former war reporter Billie Walker on a collision course with an underground network of Nazi criminals in post-war London & Paris)
Robert Lee Murphy, Bozeman Paymaster, Five Star (the story of how, in the nation’s drive to advance Manifest Destiny, it blundered into one of its most distressing reverses. Set in 1866)
Jack Murray, The Shadow of War, Lume Books (follows the lives of two boys, one English, one German, who are destined to meet at the battle of El Alamein)
Naomi Musch, Season of My Enemy, Barbour (series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII)
Robbi Neal, The Secret World of Connie Starr, HQ Fiction AU (an evocation of Australian life through WWII to the 1950s)
Patrice Nganang (trans. Amy B. Reid), A Trail of Crab Tracks, FSG (chronicles the fight for Cameroonian independence through the story of a father’s love for his family and his land)
Carol Nickles, Thumb Fire Desire, Wild Rose Press (romance set in 1881, when indigent seamstress Ginny Dahlke arrives in one of the earliest Polish American settlements—Parisville, Michigan)
Paraic O’Donnell, The Maker of Swans, Tin House (tale of murder and secrets on a country estate in early 20th-century)
Janette Oke, Laurel Oke Logan, Unfailing Love, Bethany House (When Hope Calls, book 3 – inspirational)
Lizzie Pook, Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, S&S (in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice and blackmail, Eliza soon learns that the truth can cost more than pearls, and she must decide just how much she is willing to pay)
MJ Porter, Wolf of Mercia, Boldwood Books (Eagle of Mercia Chronicles, book two)
Natasha Pulley, The Half Life of Valery K, Bloomsbury (Cold War novel set in a mysterious town in Soviet Russia)
Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre, Penguin UK/Fig Tree (novel about an irrepressible young heroine who becomes an undercover agent during World War II)
Luca Rastello (trans. Cristina Viti), The Rain’s Falling Up, Seagull Books (novel set in the late 1960s and 1970s Italy, a tempestuous period that shaped the lives of generations to come in many countries)
Kelly Rimmer, The German Wife, Graydon House (as anti-German sentiment sweeps America, the aristocratic wife of a German scientist must face the social isolation, hostility and violence in the aftermath of WWII)
Bill Rivers, Last Summer Boys, Lake Union (coming-of-age debut of a determined Appalachian boy who will go to any length to save his family over the course of one life-changing summer in 1968)
Jennifer Ryan, The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle, Macmillan UK/Ballantine (novel inspired by true events in the Second World War)
Shari J. Ryan, The Lieutenant’s Girl, Bookouture (WWII romance about the heartbreaking reality of war and the power of love to overcome all)
Lynsay Sands, The Chase, Avon Books (a Highlands hellion flees the handsome “English devil” she’s been promised to, and he realizes that his enchanting prize will be much harder to win than he imagined)
Gabor Schein (trans. Ottilie Mulzet), Autobiographies of an Angel, Yale Univ. Press (narrative of family history in Hungary’s Jewish community and the nation’s deep complicity in the Holocaust)
Katharine Schellman, Last Call at the Nightingale, Minotaur (new jazz-age mystery series set in New York 1924)
Sarah Schmidt, Blue Hour, Hachette AU (novel magnifies the fractures between a mother and a daughter, and reveals the cost of allowing grief and trauma to reach down generations)
Cat Sebastian, The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, Avon Books (tale of a reluctant criminal and the thief who cannot help but love her, set in Georgian London. LGBTQ+)
Steve Sem-Sandberg (trans. Saskia Vogel), W., The Overlook Press (tale of jealousy, love turned to hate, and murder and its consequences)
Nancy Cole Silverman, The Navigator’s Daughter, Level Best (after traveling to Hungary to photograph where her father’s downed B-24 came to rest in WWII, Kat finds herself in the middle of an international art theft ring)
Amanda Skenandore, The Nurse’s Secret, Kensington (a young female grifter in 1880s New York evades the police by conning her way into Bellevue Hospital’s training school for nurses)
Phyllis M. Skoy, As They Are: A Turkish Trilogy, Black Rose (story of three generations of women, set in Turkey against the background of two world wars)
Lauraine Snelling, A Time to Bloom, Bethany House (despite Del and her sisters’ best-laid plans, the future might surprise them all. Leah’s Garden, book 2)
David Starr, The Colour of Glass, Ronsdale Press (chronicles the relationship between Indigenous people and the fur traders, politicians, judges, police, priests and school staff who looked to profit from, assimilate, or eradicate Indigenous people and their cultures)
Nell Stevens, Briefly,A Delicious Life, Picador/Scribner (when George Sand and Frédéric Chopin arrive at a monastery in Mallorca, the resident ghost, Blanca, falls head-over-heels in love with George – this striking woman in a man’s clothing. LGBTQ)
Joseph J. Swope, Dark Age Monarch, Black Rose (re-telling of Arthurian legend that maintains elements of the traditional tale but set in a historical perspective—with a bit of magic thrown into the mix)
John Theobald, The Drowned Land, Aries (first in trilogy set 8,000 years ago during the last days of Doggerland, the North Sea’s Stone-Age Atlantis)
Julia Bryan Thomas, For Those Who Are Lost, Sourcebooks Landmark (Isle of Guernsey — one woman’s split-second decision on the eve of World War II will tear a family apart)
Karen Thornell, Edward and Amelia, Covenant (an inevitable scandal follows Edward and Amelia’s ill-conceived meeting, forcing them to marry. Regency romance)
Gábor Vida (trans. Jozefina Komporaly), Story of a Stammer, Seagull Books (describes life in the 1970s and ’80s under Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauçescu’s authoritarian regime, & chronicles the ways in which tyranny and exploitation seep into family relationships)
Nina Wachsman, The Gallery of Beauties, Level Best (Venice, 1612; a notorious courtesan and a Talmudic scholar are brought together by an artist when they pose for a “Gallery of Beauties,”)
Sarai Walker, The Cherry Robbers, Serpent’s Tail (a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up)
Jack Wang, We Two Alone, HarperVia (weaves a complex portrait of the Chinese immigrant experience in a collection of stories that move through time and place)
Mark Warren, The Westering Trail Travesties, Five Star (Five Little-Known Tales of the Old West That Probably Ought to A’ Stayed That Way)
Pam Weaver, The Runaway Orphans, Avon (desperate to escape their stepfather’s house, sisters Amy and Lillian stow away aboard a train full of children being evacuated from London)
Andrew Williams, The Prime Minister’s Affair, Hodder & Stoughton (1921 –when Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister, is blackmailed by a former lover, MI5’s Frenchie must go to Paris to buy her silence)
Karen Witemeyer, In Honor’s Defense, Bethany House (Hanger’s Horsemen book 3 – inspirational western romance)
Benjamin Wood, The Young Accomplice, Viking (story of two recently released Borstal offenders who are given a second chance at life by being offered an apprenticeship at a school of architecture)
Caroline Woods, The Lunar Housewife, Doubleday (an up-and-coming journalist stumbles onto a web of secrets, deceptions, and mysteries—inspired by the true story of CIA intervention in Cold War America)
James Garcia Woods, Death of a Matador, Lume Books (tale that immerses the reader in the realities of the Spanish Civil War and the driving forces of contemporary Spanish culture)
Seishi Yokomizo (trans. Louise Heal Kawai), Death on Gokumn Island, Pushkin Vertigo (locked room murder mystery set at end of WWII)
Georgina Young-Ellis, Kiss Me Good Night Major Darcy, Meryton Press (WWII novel featuring the women of Longbourn as they navigate the rocks and shoals of wartime Great Britain to endure misunderstandings and discover lasting love)
Ovidia Yu, The Mushroom Tree Mystery, Constable (in Singapore, amid rumours the Japanese occupiers are preparing to wipe out the population of the island, a young aide is found murdered beneath the termite mushroom tree)
July 2022
Anastasia Abboud, Tremors Through Time, The Wild Rose Press (medieval Scottish time travel romance)
Nick Alexander, Perfectly Ordinary People, Lake Union (in occupied France, two people sacrificed everything and now their granddaughter has come looking for the truth)
V. S. Alexander, The War Girls, Kensington (based on the true stories of the ghetto, life in Warsaw during the Occupation, and the women who served the Allies as agents and spies)
Merryn Allingham, Murder at the Priory Hotel, Bookouture (Sussex, 1957 — Flora Steele, bookshop owner, bicycle-rider, and amateur detective, faces her most puzzling case yet)
Ann Aptaker, Hunting Gold, Bywater Books (New York, 1955― Cantor Gold, dapper art thief and smuggler, finds herself threatened by a mysterious predator seeking to destroy everything she holds dear)
Tessa Arlen, A Dress of Violet Taffeta, Berkley (novel based on the true story of icon Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, a woman determined to shatter the boundaries of the fashion world and support herself and her young daughter)
Libby Ashworth, A Mother’s Fight, Canelo (after her husband is transported to Australia as a convict, Hannah and her children are sent to the workhouse, but problems increase when he unexpectedly comes home)
Ethan Bale, Hawker and the King’s Jewel, Canelo (new series of intrigue and adventure set in the twilight of the Wars of the Roses)
Pepper Basham, The Heart of the Mountains, Barbour (to escape marriage, Cora Taylor runs away from her home in England to join her brother in the Blue Ridge Mountains)
Julie Bates, A Taste of Betrayal, Level Best (suspicion falls on the wife after a wealthy man is poisoned in Williamsburg in April, 1775)
Christophe Bernard (trans. Lazer Lederhendler), The Hollow Beast, Biblioasis (generational comic saga about revenge perpetrated for a wrong done at a hockey game in 1911)
Andrea J. Buchanan, Five-Part Invention, Pegasus (spanning five generations of women, literary novel wrestles with the question—is the love we transmit enough to undo the trauma of the past?)
J. L. Buck, The Dead Betray None, Camel Press (1811 England, an aristocratic spy and a highborn lady cross paths over a dead body)
Estelle-Sarah Bulle (trans. Julia Grawemeyer), Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails, FSG (unveils the history of the Ezechiel clan, and with it, that of the island of Guadeloupe over the course of the twentieth century)
Jessie Burton, The House of Fortune, Picador (sequel to The Miniaturist, set in Amsterdam in 1705 — a story of fate and ambition, secrets and dreams, and one young woman’s determination to rule her own destiny)
Sandra Byrd, Heirlooms, Tyndale (dual-narrative 20th-c story of four women intertwines across generations to explore the secrets we keep, and the love we pass down)
Roberto Calasso (trans. Tim Parks), The Tablet of Destinies, FSG (the eleventh part of a literary work in progress that began in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch)
Kristy Cambron, The Italian Ballerina, Thomas Nelson (journeys from the Allied storming of the beaches at Salerno to the London ballet stage and the war-torn streets of WWII Rome. Dual-timeline narrative)
Ella Carey, The Lost Sister of Fifth Avenue, Bookouture (novel about the strength of sisterly love and the courage of the women of the Resistance)
Deborah Carr, The Beekeeper’s War, One More Chapter (two women, two wars and a secret that threatens to tear them apart. Set in 1916 and 1940)
Katherine J. Chen, Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc, Random House (secular reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc)
Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers, Wm Morrow (novel of the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who broke down gender barriers, and battled a pandemic as they helped lead the Allies to victory)
Mary Connealy, Inventions of the Heart, Bethany House (The Lumber Baron’s Daughters, book 2 – inspirational)
Richard Cullen, Shield Breaker, Aries (historical adventure set in England and in the royal court of Dublin in 1068)
Siobhan Curham, The Secret Keeper, Bookouture (wartime novel based on the true stories of the female secret agents sent into occupied Europe)
Abigail Cutter, Long Shadows, She Writes (a ghost from the Confederate army finds an unexpected ally in the 21st-century owner of the house in which his spectre resides)
Paul Daley, Jesustown, Allen & Unwin (multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft)
Alice Elliott Dark, Fellowship Point, Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books (story of a lifelong friendship between two singular women across the arc of the 20th century)
Lindsey Davis, Desperate Undertaking, Minotaur (Flavia Albia mystery, book 10)
Rusty Davis, Justice Warrior, Five Star (two men become the focal point for keeping peace – John Dooley and his Cheyenne co-worker Fox Running)
Jill Dawson, The Bewitching, Sceptre (novel that draws on the 16th-century case of the witches of Warboys)
Tetyana Denford, The Child of Ukraine, Bookouture (based on the true story of the author’s grandparents, a tale of love, loss and family secrets)
P. T. Deutermann, The Last Paladin, SMP (tale of anti-submarine warfare in the World War II Pacific Theater)
Shirley Dickson, The Lost Children, Forever (can two orphans survive a world at war when they discover the shocking truth of their past?)
Paul Doherty, Realm of Darkness, Headline (Hugh Corbett murder mystery set in spring of 1312)
Ruth Druart, The Last Hours in Paris, Grand Central/Headline Review (novel of love, sacrifice, identity, and the lasting consequences of WWII – set in 1940s and 1960s)
Caroline Dunford, Hope for Tomorrow, Headline Accent (in 1940 the Battle of Britain takes to the air as Hope Stapleford embarks on her third adventure)
Rachael English, The Letter Home, Mobius (while researching the 1840s Famine, Jessie is drawn into the story of a brave young mother called Bridget Moloney & determines to discover what happened to her and her daughter)
Jessica Ellicott, Murder Through the English Post, Kensington (a Beryl and Edwina Mystery #6 set just after WWI)
KG Fleury, Friends in Funchal, The Book Guild (1811 — novel outlines a vivid picture of an island occupied by military forces, the ravages of consumption and the traumatic remedies that a doctor must endure for his health)
Eric Flint, 1812: The Rivers of War, Baen (alternate history of the American frontier and the Jacksonian era, during which a small change takes place at the Battle of the Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812)
Kate Forsyth, The Crimson Thread, Blackstone (Crete during World War II — a young resistance fighter finds herself caught between her traitor of a brother and the man she loves)
Suzanne Fortin, Beyond a Broken Sky, Aria (dual timeline mystery set in 2022 and 1945)
W. Michael Gear; Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Lightning Shell, Forge (conclusion to the People of Cahokia. North America’s Forgotten Past, book 27)
Alex Gerlis, Agent in Peril, Canelo (WWII espionage thriller)
Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris, Bookouture (in Nazi-occupied Paris, one brave young woman risks everything to save the lives of those around her)
Irving A. Greenfield, The Carey Blood, Sapere (adventure story with themes of loyalty and retribution, set in 1800s America)
Tessa Harris, The Light We Left Behind, HQ Digital (novel based on true events at the stately English manor, Trent Park, during World War II)
Lorraine Heath, Return of the Duke, Avon Books (the son of a disgraced duke teams up with a sultry beauty to thwart an assassination plot against Queen Victoria)
Robert Hillman, The Bride of Almond Tree, Text (a journey through the catastrophic mid-twentieth century—from summer in Almond Tree to Moscow’s bitter winter and back again)
Tim Hodkinson, The Bear’s Blade, Aries (Einar and his Wolf Coats must sail to Brittany to find the famous religious scholar, Israel of Trieste; Fifth book in Whale Road Chronicles)
Sandra Howard, Love At War, The Book Guild (in March 1940 Laura boards a ship to chase after a man she has fallen in love with, who has joined up to fight with the King’s African Rifles in Uganda)
Graham Hurley, Katastrophe, Aries (thriller set against the final stages of the Second World War)
Sophie Irwin, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, Pamela Dorman (1818; a woman uses her cunning to launch herself into London society and marry a fortune)
Angela Jackson-Brown, The Light Always Breaks, Harper Muse (story of a star-crossed romance and the way love has the power to change everything)
Sarah James, The Woman with Two Shadows, Sourcebooks Landmark (story of a woman caught up in one of the most closely held secrets of World War II)
Jim Jones, Halo Moon, Five Star (a Western adventure of revenge and retribution)
Susan Kaberry, The Good Shepherd and the Last Perfect, The Book Guild (based on Inquisition records, a fictionalised account of the true story of Pierre Maury and Guillaume Belibaste)
Steve Kelton, Elmer Kelton’s The Unlikely Lawman, Forge (new adventure in Elmer Kelton’s Hewey Calloway series)
John Keyse-Walker, Havana Highwire, Severn House (novel set in 1950s revolutionary Cuba)
Jess Kidd, The Night Ship, Atria (illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island)
Chris Kraus (trans. Ruth Martin), The Bastard Factory, Picador (a drama of betrayal and self-delusion spanning the years 1905 to 1975, taking us from Riga to Moscow, Berlin and Munich all the way to Tel Aviv)
Leyna Krow, Fire Season, Viking (imagines the greed and misogyny of the American West to tell a story about finding purpose in the face of injustice)
Marion Kummerow, The Orphan’s Mother, Bookouture (a tale of courage, heartbreak and motherhood in wartime)
Stephanie La Cava, I Fear My Pain Interests You, Verso (an exploration of bodies, trauma and 1960s cinema)
Gregory J. Lalire, The Call of McCall, Five Star (western adventure set after the Civil War)
Sarah Lee, An Ocean Apart, Macmillan UK (inspired by real life stories of the Windrush Generation and the author’s mother’s own experiences as a nurse in the 1950s)
Norman Lock, Voices in the Dead House, Bellevue Literary Press (in the ninth American Novels series book, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott meet the horrors of the Civil War as they minister to its casualties)
George Mann, The Albion Initiative, Tor (steampunk series concludes as our special agent heroes discover a plot of empire-changing proportions. A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation)
Shirley Mann, Hannah’s War, Zaffre (WWII Land Girl saga)
Nev March, Peril at the Exposition, Minotaur (Captain Jim Agnihotri and his new bride return in the follow up to Murder in Old Bombay)
Anthony Marra, Mercury Pictures Presents, Hogarth (moving from Mussolini’s Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice)
Madeline Martin, The Librarian Spy (US) / The American Librarian (UK), Hanover Square (novel inspired by the true history of America’s library spies of World War Two)
Susan Anne Mason, A Feeling of Home, Bethany House (Redemption’s Light, book 3 – inspirational romance)
Mary McMyne, The Book of Gothel, Redhook (historical fantasy – retelling of Rapunzel filled with dark magic, crumbling towers, mysterious woods, and evil princes)
Tom Mead, Death and the Conjuror, Mysterious Press (a magician-turned-sleuth in pre-war London solves three impossible crimes)
Connie Monk, Full Circle, Canelo (an unexpected inheritance offers the chance for a fresh start in 1957)
Jennifer Moore, Renae Weight Mackley, Carolyn Twede Frank, Carla Kelly, Where Dreams Meet, Covenant (inspirational historical romance collection)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Del Rey (reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico)
Louise Morrish, Operation Moonlight, Century (a novel about a generation of women and men who truly knew what it meant to survive)
Mutt-Lon (trans. Amy B. Reid), The Blunder, Amazon Crossing (a satirical reimagining of an overlooked episode in Cameroon’s colonial past)
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, The Evening Hero, S&S UK (toggling between past and present, Korea and America, a man looks back at his life asking questions about what is lost and what is gained when immigrants leave home for new shores)
Lizzie Page, An Orphan’s Song, Bookouture (England, 1951; story about children orphaned by war, the grieving young woman who cares for them, and their journey together to healing)
Kurt Palka, The Orphan Girl, McClelland & Stewart (story about friendship and courage, and about promises made and kept, set during the final months of WWII)
Mary Paulson-Ellis, Emily Noble’s Disgrace, Picador (two women, a trauma cleaner and a young detective, embark on a journey into the heart of a forgotten family)
Daniel Peltz, Witness, The Book Guild (1960s Germany, after the trial of Adolf Eichmann — novel explores aspects of German society, including the limitations of the German Penal Code in prosecuting ex-Nazis )
Andrea Penrose, Murder at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kensington (the wedding of the Earl of Wrexford and Lady Charlotte Sloane is not-to-be-missed, but the murder of a brilliant London scientist threatens their plans—and their lives)
Tracie Peterson, Beyond the Desert Sands, Bethany House (the last thing Isabella Garcia wants is to spend Christmas in a small silver-mining town when she’d rather stay in California with the handsome Diego Morales)
Tracie Peterson, The Alaska Saga, Barbour (three historical romances)
Sarah Priscus, Groupies, Wm Morrow (shines a bright light on the grungy yet glittery world of 1970s rock ’n’ roll and the women—the groupies—who unapologetically love too much in a world that doesn’t love them back)
Frances Quinn, That Bonesetter Woman, S&S (a woman follows in the family tradition to become a bonesetter in Georgian London)
Joanna Rees, The Sister Returns, Pan (third novel in the historical trilogy A Stitch in Time, set in New York, 1929)
Alex Reeve, The Blood Flower, Raven (1883 – the next installment of the series featuring transgender journalist and amateur detective Leo Stanhope)
Evelyn Richardson, Mistress of Music, Camel Press (when Grace Owen meets Maximilian Hawkesbury, she learns that hurting someone you care for is far more painful than love)
Vanessa Riley, Sister Mother Warrior, Wm Morrow (based on the true-life stories of two women who helped lead the rebellion that drove out the French and freed the enslaved people of Haiti)
Madeleine Roux, The Proposition, Dell (a woman trapped in a loveless engagement joins forces with a mysterious man bent on revenge against her fiancé)
Michael Russell, The City Underground, Constable (Stefan Gillespie WWII series featuring German spies in 1941 Ireland)
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho, Text (reimagines the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late 19th and early 20th century)
Anika Scott, The Soviet Sisters, Wm Morrow (novel filled with secrets, lies, and betrayals, following two spy sisters in the years after WWII)
Roger Smith, The Conductor, Milford House (in 1835, Jules Freeman, one of the few Black men in Philadelphia placed in charge of whites, introduces Rian to the Underground Railroad)
Don J. Snyder, The Tin Nose Shop, Legend (1916. After a military tribunal finds him guilty of cowardice artist Sam Burke is spared death by firing squad so his skills can be used to help fellow soldiers who have been brutally disfigured in the trenches)
Carl Spitteler, The Bombardment of Abo, Central European Univ. Press (farcical tale tells how the British bombing of a Finnish port city changes the life of the Russian governor, his wife, their cook, and the cook’s Finnish fiancé)
David Stafford, Skelton’s Guide to Blazing Corpses, Allison & Busby (murder mystery set on November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, 1930)
Francesca Stanfill, The Falcon’s Eyes, Harper (set in France and England at the end of the 12th century―story of a spirited young woman, Isabelle, who defies convention to forge a remarkable life)
Sarah Steele, The Lost Song of Paris, Headline Review (story of lost love, danger and espionage and one woman’s bravery in World War Two)
James Stejskal, Direct Legacy, Casemate (1970s – a young American Special Forces soldier must stop his vengeful former comrade-in-arms before he carries out a devastating terrorist strike for the IRA)
Rebecca Stott, Dark Earth, Random House (novel about two sisters fighting for survival in male-dominated Dark Ages Britain)
Maggie Sullivan, The School Mistress, One More Chapter (the Our Street at War series takes an ordinary street during wartime and looks inside at the life of the residents)
Karen Swan, The Last Summer, Macmillan (two strangers from different backgrounds meet on St Kilda in the summer of 1930)
Mary Ellen Taylor, The Brighter the Light, Lake Union (dual-timeline novel detailing one woman’s journey to discover the hidden stories of her family’s seaside resort)
Peter Tremayne, Death of a Heretic, Headline (Sister Fidelma mysteries, book 33)
M. J. Trow, The Yeoman’s Tale, Severn House (poet-sleuth Geoffrey Chaucer is caught up in the chaos of the Peasants’ Revolt as he attempts to track down a brutal killer)
Harry Turtledove, Three Miles Down, Tor (an alternative history novel of alien contact set in the tumultuous year of 1974, Watergate scandal and all)
Elle van Rijn, The Orphans of Amsterdam, Bookouture (based on the true story of an ordinary young woman who risked everything to save countless children from the Nazis)
Alexandra Walsh, The Jane Seymour Conspiracy, Sapere (a Tudor conspiracy with a modern-day twist. Time shift thriller, book four in Marquess House Sagas)
Minette Walters, The Swift and the Harrier, Blackstone (historical adventure set during one of the most turbulent periods of British history. Set in Dorset, 1642)
Charles Whiting, Operation Afrika, Sapere (first book in a World War Two military adventure trilogy)
Barbara Whitnell, The Ring of Bells, Sapere (family saga set in the English countryside, spanning from the late Victorian era to World War I and its aftermath)
Ethan J. Wolfe, The Illinois Detective Agency: The Case of Duffy’s Revenge, Five Star (book three picks up where The Case of the Stalking Moon leaves off, with the murder of James Duffy’s future wife in the town of Miles City, Montana)
George H. Wolfe, Aftershock, Livingston Press Univ. of West Alabama (novel examines the changes facing men and women returning from World War II)
Patrick Worrall, The Partisan, Bantam (espionage thriller takes readers from Cambridge to the Moscow underworld, from 1960s London to the Eastern Front in the Second World War)
Michelle Wright, Small Acts of Defiance, Wm Morrow (debut WWII novel the small but courageous acts a young woman performs against the growing anti-Jewish measures in Nazi-occupied Paris)
Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Four Treasures of the Sky, Michael Joseph (debut novel, set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West)
August 2022
Sara Ackerman, The Codebreaker’s Secret, Mira (dual-timeline story of codebreaking, secrets, murder, romance and longing)
Jane A. Adams, The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Severn House (DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens must crack a darkly complex case, in 1930 Leicester, when the community close ranks)
Sarah Adlakha, Midnight on the Marne, Forge (set during World War I, and in an occupied France in an alternative timeline, novel explores the responsibilities love lays on us and the rippling impact of our choices)
Diane Allen, A Child of the Dales, Macmillan UK (a novel of family, deceit, separation and love)
Santiago Amigorena (trans. Frank Wynne), The Ghetto Within, HarperVia (story of the author’s Jewish grandfather, a Polish immigrant in Argentina, and the guilt he experiences when he is unable to help his family leave the Warsaw ghetto)
Suad Amiry, Mother of Strangers, Pantheon (set in Jaffa in 1947-51, a tale of young love during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people)
Addison Armstrong, The War Librarian, Putnam (novel inspired by the first female volunteer librarians during World War I and the first women accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy)
Lindsay Jayne Ashford, A Feather on the Water, Lake Union (for three women in postwar Germany, 1945 is a time of hope)
Jennifer Ashley, The Secret of Bow Lane, Berkley (in Victorian-era London, amateur sleuth and cook Kat Holloway must solve a murder to claim an inheritance she didn’t know she had. Below Stairs Mystery #6)
Bernardo Atxaga (trans. Margaret Jull Costa), Water Over Stones, Graywolf/MacLehose (captures a span of time from the early 1970s, when the shadow of the Franco dictatorship still loomed, to 2017)
Vicki Beeby, A Wrens’ Wartime Christmas, Canelo (German U-boats are getting through the defences and it’s up to the Wrens to stop them)
Erin Bledsoe, The Forty Elephants, Blackstone (inspired by the true story of Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants, the first all-female gang of London, set in the 1920s)
Katarzyna Bonda (trans. Filip Sporczyk), Conspiracy of Blood, Hodder & Stoughton (Sasza Zaluska is plunged into a web of corruption and criminality that has engulfed all levels of Polish society since the fall of Communism)
Rhys Bowen, Where the Sky Begins, Lake Union (a woman’s future is determined by fate and choice in a WWII novel about danger, triumph, and second chances)
Tom Bradby, Yesterday’s Spy, Atlantic Monthly (espionage novel about a father searching for his disappeared son against the backdrop of the 1953 coup in Tehran)
Verity Bright, Death Down the Aisle, Bookouture (historical cozy whodunnit full of intrigue and wit. Lady Eleanor Swift, book 11)
Stela Brinzeanu, Set in Stone, Legend (in medieval Moldova, two women from opposing backgrounds fall in love)
Fern Britton, The Good Servant, HarperCollins (the story of Marion Crawford, governess to the Queen)
Joe Brown, A Cowboy’s Destiny, Artemesia (1917 – a young man’s dream of being the best cowboy at the best ranch is tested by something he never expected)
Fiona Buckley, Golden Cargoes, Severn House (May 1589 — Ursula Stannard returns to solve another Tudor mystery in a tale of suspicious riches, murder and hidden treasures)
Jessie Burton, The House of Fortune, Bloomsbury (sequel to The Miniaturist, set in Amsterdam in 1705 — a story of fate and ambition, secrets and dreams, and one young woman’s determination to rule her own destiny)
Jay Carmichael, Marlo, Scribe US (in 1950s conservative Australia a young gay man moves to ‘the City’ to escape the repressive atmosphere of his tiny hometown)
James Carroll, Supply of Heroes, Blackstone (World War I, Douglas Tyrrell leaves Ireland to fight in the English Army, and his sister meets a revolutionary determined to fight for Irish independence even if it means siding with the Germans)
Jerome Charyn, Big Red, Liveright (set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age, story reimagines the life of Rita Hayworth)
Thomas D. Clagett, Blood West, Five Star (1885 – Pinkerton agent Hattie Lawton is sent to investigate happenings in the railroad town of Las Vegas in the Territory of New Mexico)
Alys Clare, The Man in the Shadows, Severn House (private investigators Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham tackle a puzzling miscarriage of justice and the curious case of a missing child, in this World’s End Bureau Victorian mystery)
Sara Goodman Confino, She’s Up to No Good, Lake Union (on a road trip to a seaside town Jenna’s grandmother, Evelyn, spins the tale of the star-crossed teenage romance that captured her heart and changed the course of her life)
Bobi Conn, A Woman in Time, Little A (a woman challenges the constraints of life in Prohibition-era Appalachia in this novel about endurance, survival, and redemption)
Tea Cooper, The Fossil Hunter, Harper Muse (a fossil discovered at London’s Natural History Museum leads one woman back in time to nineteenth century Australia)
Dilly Court, Sunday’s Child, HarperCollins (fourth book in Nancy Sunday’s story)
Christina Courtenay, Hidden in the Mists, Headline Review (dual timeline Viking romance)
Janis Robinson Daly, The Unlocked Path, Black Rose (in 1897 Philadelphia, Eliza enters medical college at a time when only five percent of doctors are female)
Oscar de Muriel, The Sign of the Devil, Orion (this Victorian melodrama is the conclusion of the Frey & McGray mysteries)
Kaye Dobbie, Keepers of the Lighthouse, HQ Fiction AU (a windswept lighthouse island in Bass Strait hides a dangerous secret hundreds of years in the making—dual timeline set in 2020 and 1882)
Angus Donald, The Loki Sword, Canelo (a Viking quest for a legendary blade, set in AD 776)
Emma Donoghue, Haven, Little, Brown/HarperAvenue/Picador (in seventh-century Ireland, a priest’s dream sends him on a quest to find an isolated spot on which to found a monastery)
Susanne Dunlap, The Portraitist, She Writes (based on the true story of Adélaïe Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris)
Shaunna J. Edwards, Alyson Richman, The Thread Collectors, Graydon House (novel set during the Civil War about two women whose resourceful sewing to support their communities leads them on unexpected, dangerous journeys)
Courtney Ellis, The Forgotten Cottage, Berkley (connected through time to her great-grandmother by a shared English countryside home, an American nurse tries to piece together her family’s tangled history)
Esther Erman, Rebecca of Salerno, She Writes (continues the story of Rebecca from Walter Scott’s 1820 novel Ivanhoe)
Lyndsay Faye, Observations by Gaslight, Aries (a collection of Sherlock Holmes tales that shows the detective and his partner as their acquaintances saw them)
David Field, The Lion of Anjou, Sapere (fourth book in the Medieval Saga Series)
Karen Frost, The Lady Adventurers Club, Bella Books (a club of three disparate members gets together to open a tomb that promises to be even grander than that of King Tutankhamun. LGBTQIA fiction)
Arno Geiger (trans. Jamie Bulloch), Hinterland, Picador (1944; a young injured German soldier is recovering at Mondsee, where he meets two young women who share his hope that life will begin again)
Juliette Godot, From the Drop of Heaven, Sunbury Press (novel set in 1582, in a time when books are banned, and witches live next door)
Robert Gott, The Orchard Murders, Scribe US (novel about revenge, obsession, and the dangerous gullibility of religious fanatics set in Melbourne during WWII)
Susanna Gregory, The Pudding Lane Plot, Sphere (continuation of the adventures of Thomas Chaloner)
Jessica Gregson, After Silence, Deixis Press (novel of the siege of Leningrad, 1941)
Vasily Grossman (trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler), The People Immortal, MacLehose (novel that illuminates the realities of Barbarossa and the horror of warfare)
Olivier Guez (trans. Georgia de Chamberet), The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Verso (novel situates the reader in a literary manhunt on the trail of one of the most elusive and evil figures of the twentieth century)
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives, Riverhead (multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa)
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Affairs of Ashmore Castle, Sphere (second novel in the Ashmore Castle historical family drama series)
Steven Hartov, The Last of the Seven, Hanover Square (based on the “X Troop” – a team of European Jews who escaped the Continent only to join the British Army and return home to exact their revenge on Hitler’s military)
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels, Canongate (from a yellowing manuscript Nico learns a history lesson from his grandfather and a secret he must keep from his father)
James Hitt, Storm Riders, Five Star (an escaped slave becomes enmeshed in the life of Waco Joseph Callahan, and joins forces with him when Waco’s brothers set out to kill him)
Elisabeth Hobbes, Daughters of Paris, One More Chapter (1939; as Paris becomes an occupied city, the promise two friends made as children will have consequences they could never have imagined)
Adele Holmes, Winter’s Reckoning, She Writes (in 1917 a widow fights for the home she has built for herself despite racial segregation and KKK threats)
Emma Hooper, We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky, Hamish Hamilton (tale of five young women rapt in rebellion against an era that relies on their submission. Set towards the end of the Roman Empire)
Anna Hope, The White Rock, Fig Tree (four stories are told of people visiting the Rock in 1775, 1907, 1969 and 2020)
Emma Hornby, A Daughter’s War, Bantam (second book in the Worktown Girls at War series)
Francine Thomas Howard, Scattered Seed, Lake Union (three sisters navigate the horrors of the Middle Passage in a novel about family, honor, and the will to live)
Anna Lee Huber, A Certain Darkness, Kensington (agent Verity Kent employs her Secret Service skills to investigate a complex murder; book #6)
Julie Janson, Benevolence, HarperVia (spanning two decades, from 1816-1835, novel sheds light on the violence and erasure of colonization, as well as survival and resistance—a portrait of the Aboriginal Australians whose way of life is forever altered)
Beverly Jenkins, To Catch a Raven, Avon (features a fearless grifter who goes undercover to reclaim the stolen Declaration of Independence)
Jerry B. Jenkins, Dead Sea Conspiracy, Worthy Books (archaeologist Nicole Berman is about to discover the key to unifying three major religions. Book 2 of Dead Sea Chronicles)
Krista Jensen, Hearts of Briarwall, Shadow Mountain (romance set in London and the English countryside, 1906)
Bernadette Jiwa, The Making of Her, Dutton (spanning the nineties and the sixties, with Dublin as its backdrop, a story of marriage, motherhood, and a culture that would not allow a woman to find true happiness)
Elaine Johns, Be Brave For Me, Bookouture (as the war tears the world apart, Maddie is torn between loyalty to her country and love for the gentle German she has been helping)
Lynn Johnson, The Potteries Girls on the Home Front, Hera Books (a WWI saga of friendship and romance beginning in 1911)
Adele Jordan, The Gentlewoman Spy, Sapere (historical espionage adventure set in Elizabethan London with a feisty female lead)
Otohiko Kaga (trans. Albert Novick), Marshland, Dalkey Archive (epic Japanese literary novel running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan)
Khaled Khalifa (trans. Leri Price), No One Prayed Over Their Graves, FSG (story of two close friends whose lives are irrevocably changed when they survive a 1907 flood that devastates their village near Aleppo)
Vaseem Khan, The Lost Man of Bombay, Hodder & Stoughton (third installment in series pits Persis against a mystery from beyond the grave, unfolding against the backdrop of a turbulent post-colonial India)
Jess Kidd, The Night Ship, Canongate (illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island)
Gwendolyn Kiste, Reluctant Immortals, Gallery (historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967)
Mark Knowles, Jason, Aries (Jason and his Argonauts have won the fabled Golden Fleece and now he dreams of glory, of taking back his uncle’s throne, rightfully his, and of home)
R. F. Kuang, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence, Harper Voyager (grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire)
Jaan Kross (trans. Merike Lepasaar Beecher), A Book of Falsehoods, MacLehose (third part in an historical trilogy set in 1578)
Charles Lambert, The Bone Flower, Gallic (a young gentleman in Victorian London is drawn into a dark and dangerous world when he falls for a beautiful flower seller)
Tim Leach, The Iron Way, Aries (cast to the edge of the Empire, the Sarmatian army must fight in defense of Rome. Second of trilogy set in 2nd– century AD, following A Winter War)
Melanie Levensohn (trans. Jamie Lee Searle), A Jewish Girl in Paris, Macmillan (inspired by true events and set against the backdrop of WWII, novel explores forbidden love between a young Jewish girl and a son of a Nazi sympathizer)
Sarah MacLean, Heartbreaker, Avon Books (featuring a fierce, fearless heroine on a mission to steal a duke’s secrets)
S. G. MacLean, The Bookseller of Inverness, Quercus (historical thriller set in Inverness in the wake of the 1746 battle of Culloden)
Sarah MacLean, Heartbreaker, Piatkus (Hell’s Belles, Book 2, featuring a fearless heroine on a mission to steal a duke’s secrets…and his heart)
Andreï Makine (trans. Geoffrey Strachan), The Armenian Friend, Arcade (a portrait of friendship, a coming-of-age tale, and a dive into the memory of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire)
Kirsty Manning, The Paris Mystery, Allen & Unwin (glamour and mystery set in pre-war Paris)
Beryl Matthews, An Onerous Duty, Allison & Busby (romance in which a soldier uncovers a web of treachery in which it seems that someone is supplying secrets to Napoleon; meanwhile his search for a wife continues)
Imogen Matthews, The Boy in the Attic, Bookouture (dual timeline story about a girl who risked everything, including her life, to save the man she loved)
Alyssa Maxwell, Murder at Beacon Rock, Kensington (in June 1900, reporter Emma Cross discovers the body of a woman in the waters below the Morgans’ mansion)
J.J. McAvoy, Aphrodite and the Duke, Dell/Quercus (a jilted beauty and a regretful duke discover that second chances can be divine in this diverse Regency romance)
Andrew McBride, Cimarrón, Five Star (Calvin Taylor faces some hard choices when he comes up against a desperate band of kidnappers, whose leader may be his best friend)
Ellie Midwood, The Wife Who Risked Everything, Bookouture (based on a true story which shows that, in the face of evil, love is power, courage is infectious—and the voices of many will not be silenced)
Rod Miller, This Thy Brother, Five Star (driven by disagreements with their father, eldest sons Richard and Melvin abandon the Pate family to join eastbound freighters on the Santa Fe Trail)
Coirle Mooney, My Lady’s Shadow, Sapere (medieval adventure set in 1198, France)
Peter Murphy, To Become an Outlaw, No Exit (1964–under Apartheid law, mixed race couple Danie & Amy can’t marry so they flee to England from where they are recruited four years later to help undermine the South African regime)
Elizabeth Musser, By Way of the Moonlight, Bethany House (two courageous young women, tied together by blood and shared passion, will risk everything to save what they love most)
B.R. Myers, A Dreadful Splendor, Wm Morrow (in Victorian London a fake spiritualist is summoned to hold a séance for a bride who died on the eve of her wedding, but as nefarious secrets are revealed, the line between hoax and haunting blurs)
Kitty Neale, A Family Secret, Orion (WWII family saga)
Sheila Newberry, The Girl by the Sea, Zaffre (WWII family saga)
Ben Okri, The Last Gift of the Master Artists, Apollo (novel about life in the time immediately before the arrival of the Atlantic slavers to Nigeria)
Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio, Dialogue Books (WWII novel inspired by true events, set in Nazi occupied France in 1940)
Gill Paul, The Manhattan Girls, Wm Morrow (1920s ―Dorothy Parker—one of the wittiest women who ever wielded a pen—and her three friends navigate life, love, and careers in New York City)
Leslye Penelope, The Monsters We Defy, Redhook (a woman able to communicate with spirits must assemble a ragtag crew to pull off a daring heist to save her community. Washington 1925)
Andrea Penrose, Murder at the Serpentine Bridge, Kensington (story sends newlywed sleuths, Lady Charlotte and the Earl of Wrexford, through a web of international intrigue)
Allison Pittman, Laura’s Shadow, Barbour (dual-time line historical set in South Dakota 1890 & 1974. Doors to the Past series)
Mark Pryor, Die Around Sundown, Minotaur (new mystery series set in World War II era Paris, where a detective is forced to solve a murder while protecting his own secrets)
Michelle Rawlins, Steel Girls on the Home Front, HQ (book three in saga of three girls from Sheffield who step up to do their bit for their country)
Melody Razak, Moth, Harper (saga of one Indian family’s trials through partition—the 1947 split of Pakistan from India—exploring its impact on women, what it means to be “othered” in one’s own society)
Vanessa Riley, Murder in Westminster, Kensington (story of a widow whose skin color and family history have left her with few friends she can rely on. Start of new series)
Kelly Robson, High Times in the Low Parliament, Tordotcom (a lighthearted romp through an 18th-century London featuring flirtatious scribes, irritable fairies, and the dangers of Parliament)
Lisa Williamson Rosenberg, Embers on the Wind, Little A (past and present converge in this supernatural tale of women connected by motherhood, slavery’s legacy, and histories that span centuries)
Jennifer Ryan, Surrendering to Hunt, Avon Books (a by-the-book lawman tangles with a stubborn young woman)
Katharine Schellman, Death at the Manor, Crooked Lane (tortured spirits haunt a Regency-era English manor—but the true danger lies in the land of the living. Lily Adler mystery)
Emma Seckel, The Wild Hunt, Tin House (a young woman’s fated return, post WWII, to a wind-battered island off the coast of Scotland, and the dark forces—old and new—that she finds there)
Jack Serong, The Settlement, Text (reimagines the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalenna)
Zoe Sivak, Mademoiselle Revolution, Berkley (1790s — story of a biracial heiress who flees to Paris when the Haitian Revolution burns across her island home)
Anita Stansfield, The Scoundrel’s Widow, Sweetwater (Regency romance)
Belinda Huijuan Tang, A Map for the Missing, Penguin Press (debut set against a rapidly changing post–Cultural Revolution China, which reckons with the cost of pursuing one’s dreams and the lives we leave behind)
Penny Thorpe, The Quality Street Wedding, HarperCollins (the heroines at the Quality Street factory must be ready for anything as war looms)
Louisa Treger, Madwoman, Bloomsbury (based on a true story about the world’s first female investigative journalist)
Peter Tremayne, Death of a Heretic, Severn House (the suspicious death of a foreign bishop brings trouble to Sister Fidelma and the kingdom of Muman)
Nicola Upson, Dear Little Corpses, Crooked Lane (1939; as the mass evacuation takes place across Britain, thousands of children leave London, but one little girl vanishes without a trace)
Betty Walker, Courage for the Cornish Girls, Avon UK (WWII saga, book 3)
Julie Walker, Bonny & Read, Hodder & Stoughton (reimagining of the story of Anne Bonny & Mary Read, set in the Caribbean, 1720)
Maybelle Wallis, The Piano Player, Poolbeg Press (a 19th-century novel of music and medicine, of trust and trickery, of destructive secrets and lost love)
Molly Walton, A Mother’s War, Welbeck (WWII romantic saga)
Alana White, The Hearts of All on Fire, Atmosphere Press (2nd book the Guid’Antonio Vespucci mystery series set in Renaissance Florence)
Marianne Wiggins, Properties of Thirst, S&S (novel set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream)
Marty Wingate, The Orphans of Mersea House, Alcove Press (postwar England — historical drama about love lost—and promise found)
Ellen Marie Wiseman, The Lost Girls of Willowbrook, Kensington (evokes the real-life Willowbrook State School, the infamous mental institution that shocked a nation when exposed in the 1970s)
W. A. Winter, My Name is Joe LaVoie, Seventh Street (fiction inspired by a crime spree that shocked the Midwest in the 1950s)
Mary Wood, The Orphanage Girls, Pan (a gritty saga about an orphanage in London’s East End)
Don Zancanella, A Storm in the Stars, Delphinium (based on the lives and romance of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and their friendship with the larger-than-life Lord Byron)
September 2022
Belinda Alexandra, The French Agent, HarperCollins AU (a world in chaos; two very different women and the mystery of the man who may connect them)
Jenny Ashcroft, The Echoes of Love, HQ (story of love torn apart by war, of heroism and betrayal, set against an idyllic Greek island backdrop)
Rilla Askew, Prize for the Fire, Univ. of Oklahoma Press (evocation of Reformation England, from the fenlands of Lincolnshire to the London court of Henry VIII)
Kate Atkinson, Shrines of Gaiety, Doubleday (transports readers to London in the wake of the Great War in a tale of seduction and betrayal)
Ronald H. Balson, An Affair of Spies, SMP (spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb)
Shivani Bansal, Lilac Skies, Orion Dash (a young girl is sent away from her home in Punjab, India in 1942 to marry a man in Nairobi, Kenya)
Kristin Beck, The Winter Orphans, Berkley (novel based on the true story of children who braved the formidable danger of guarded, wintry mountain passes in France to escape the Nazis)
Mally Becker, The Counterfeit Wife, Level Best (1780. George Washington’s two least likely spies return, masquerading as husband and wife as they search for traitors in Philadelphia)
James R. Benn, From the Shadows, Soho Crime (WWII Billy Boyle mystery book 17)
Kim Taylor Blakemore, The Deception, Lake Union (a once celebrated child medium who has lost her abilities plays a dangerous game of deception which threatens to unravel everything)
Georgie Blalock, An Indiscreet Princess, Wm Morrow (novel about Queen Victoria’s most rebellious and artistically talented daughter, Princess Louise)
Tanya Blanchard, Daughter of Calabria, S&S AU (set in Mussolini’s Italy amid great upheaval, story tells of one woman’s determination to find her place in a world that men are threatening to tear apart)
Lauralee Bliss, Escape from Amsterdam, Barbour (inspirational adventure with intrigue and romance as a university student smuggles children out of Amsterdam)
Zoe Boccabella, The Proxy Bride, HQ Fiction AU (story told from migrant women’s untold experience, in a novel of family, food and love)
Pierre Boisserie, Philippe Guillaume, illus. Stéphane Brangier, The Gold Chase, Europe Comics (commando unit composed of a Free France officer, a Royal Marine, an alcoholic mechanic, and an Ivorian separatist is doing everything it can to stop the Nazis)
Elizabeth Brooks, The House in the Orchard, Tin House (gothic tale of corrupted innocence that asks—when we look closely—what it really means to know the truth. Set in 1876 and 1945)
Julie Brooks, The Keepsake, Headline (dual timeline novel set in 1832 and present day)
Kimberly Garrett Brown, Cora’s Kitchen, Inanna (a woman of color holds literary ambitions, during the Harlem Renaissance, when Langston Hughes encourages her to enter a writing contest)
Miles Cameron, Against All Gods, Mobius (set against an alternate Bronze Age, an epic tale of gods, men and monsters, conspiracy and war)
Richard Camp, Jedburghs, Casemate (when the French resistance ask the allies for help, a decision is made to parachute special operatives—Jedburghs—into France to determine the willingness of the French to fight)
Mark Carlson, Hunters and Hunted: Vengeance of the Last Roman Legion, Milford House (the remnants of a Roman army are led deep into Germany to seek revenge for a battle their comrades lost more than two thousand years before. Alternative fantasy/history)
Catherine Cavendish, Dark Observation, Flame Tree (gothic mystery set in 1941 with dark secrets and hints of the occult in underground London)
Jane Cawthorne, Patterson House, Innana (when Alden Patterson, the last of a once-wealthy Toronto family, is reduced to taking in boarders, one particular boarder threatens to destroy everything she thinks she wants)
Elzbieta Cherezinska, The Last Crown, Forge (conclusion of Swietoslawa’s journey from Polish princess to Queen of Denmark & Sweden and Queen Mother of England)
Yvette Manessis Corporon, Where the Wandering Ends, Harper Muse (two young friends, separated by tragedy during the Greek Civil War, are haunted by a vow to return to one another and their home on the island of Corfu)
Dilly Court, Snow Bride, HarperCollins (a chance encounter brings Nancy Sunday to the streets of London, where she finds herself amongst a band of street urchins)
Tad Crawford, On Wine-Dark Seas, Skyhorse (recounting of the life of Odysseus after his safe return to the island of Ithaca)
H. W. Crocker, Armstrong and the Mexican Mystery, Regnery Fiction (alternative history where George Armstrong Custer unearths a remnant of the lost city of Atlantis in the Old West)
James D. Crownover, Buffalo Soldier Odyssey, Five Star (the story of some of the activities of the Ninth Calvary as seen through the experiences of Thomas Cregan aka Bandy Huein and Isaac Casey)
Damian Dibben, The Color Storm, Hanover Square (novel captures the world of Renaissance Venice at the height of its power and in a moment of artistic invention)
Susanne Dietze, Patty Smith Hall, Cynthia Hickey, Christina Lorenzen, A Five and Dime Christmas, Barbour (four Christmas novellas set in an 1880s department store)
Eileen Joyce Donovan, A Lady Newspaperman’s Dilemma, Woodhall Press (based on actual events in a newspaper office in Montana, 1926, a lady journalist, frustrated at being cast aside in favour of men, is determined to hold on to her right to cover breaking news)
Lynn Ellen Doxon, Ninety Day Wonder, Artemesia (one man’s plan for the future is altered by the crucible of the war that formed the Greatest Generation)
Sarah M. Eden, The Bachelor and the Bride, Shadow Mountain (Victorian clean romance)
Martin Edwards, Blackstone Fell, Aries (Rachel Savernake investigates bizarre crimes in a dual timeline Gothic mystery; book 3 of series)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Allison & Busby (17th May 1899: a body is found in a trench not long after Queen Victoria lays the foundation stone on the site of a new museum)
Anne Emery, Fenian Street, ECW Press (an unsolved murder investigation in 1970s Ireland)
Suzanne Enoch, Something in the Heir, Griffin (heiress Emmeline Pershing’s little fib means that she and her completely unsuspecting husband are going to inherit big trouble in this Regency romance)
Jennie Felton, A Mother’s Heartbreak, Headline (story of family secrets, romance, and triumph in adversity)
Amanda Flower, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Berkley (Emily Dickinson and her housemaid, Willa Noble, realize there is nothing poetic about murder. First in a new series)
Katie Flynn, The Winter Rose, Century (WWII follow up to The Rose Queen)
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, The Witch and the Tsar, Berkley/Ace (the maligned and immortal witch of legend known as Baba Yaga will risk all to save her country and her people from Tsar Ivan the Terrible)
C. P. Giuliani, A Treasonous Path, Sapere (second book in the Tom Walsingham mysteries set in England, 1583)
Michelle Griep, The Bride of Blackfriars Lane, Barbour (continues the romantic adventures of Jackson and Kit)
Johana Gustawsson (trans. David Warriner), The Bleeding, Orenda Books (historical thriller in which a detective in 2022 makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism)
Eduardo Halfon (trans. Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn), Canción, Bellevue Literary Press (next installment in the nomadic odyssey as the novel’s hero searches for answers surrounding his grandfather’s abduction)
Elodie Harper, The House with the Golden Door, Union Square & Co. (The Wolf Den book 2, set in Pompeii)
Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion, Harper/Hutchinson Heinemann (imagines one of the greatest manhunts in history: the search for two Englishmen involved in the killing of King Charles I and the implacable foe on their trail)
Cora Harrison, Murder in the Cathedral, Severn House (Reverend Mother’s investigative skills are called into action again when one of her young pupils is found murdered)
Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind, Mantle (based on the myth of Medusa and how she was never a monster at all)
Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger, Berkely/Ace (Gothic novel in which a young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power)
Charlie N. Holmberg, Keeper of Enchanted Rooms, 47North (magical dual timeline; Rhode Island, 1846, where an author inherits a remote, haunted estate. Present day, where Hulda Larkin works to preserve the historical and magical significance of buildings)
Seth Hunter, Trafalgar: The Fog of War, McBooks (book 8 of the Nathan Peake novels)
Mark C. Jackson, Blue Rivers of Heaven, Five Star (frontier fiction – The Tales of Zebediah Creed)
Lola Jaye, The Attic Child, Wm Morrow (dual narrative historical story about two children locked in the same attic almost a century apart)
Maureen Jennings, Cold Snap, Cormorant (December 1936. Charlotte Frayne, Private Investigator, is pulled into a dangerous international plot)
Dan Jones, Essex Dogs, Aries (debut first installment in a trilogy set during the Hundred Years War)
Joy Jordan-Lake, A Bend of Light, Lake Union (a quiet coastal village in post–World War II America is shaken when the secrets of the past and present collide)
Jenni Keer, The Legacy of Halesham Hall, Headline Accent (dual timeline novel set in 1890 and 1920)
Vénus Khoury–ghata (trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan), Marina Tsvetaeva: To Die in Yelabuga, Seagull Books (biographic novel that captures the tempestuous life of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva)
Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden, Bantam (a fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life, with potentially fatal consequences)
Jane Kirkpatrick, Beneath the Bending Skies, Revell (story of hospitality, destiny, and the bonds of family, set in 1860s Montana)
Christian Klaver, Sherlock Holmes & Mr Hyde, Titan (Dr Jekyll claims his friend, Mr. Edward Hyde, has been wrongfully accused of hideous crimes)
Chelene Knight, Junie, Book*Hug Press (exploration of the complexity within mother-daughter relationships and the vitality of Vancouver’s thriving Black and immigrant neighbourhood of Hogan’s Alley, set in the 1930s)
Larissa Lai, The Lost Century, Arsenal Pulp (novel about war, colonialism and queer experience during Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong during World War II)
Kathryn Lasky, Light on Bone, Woodhall Press (new mystery set in New Mexico in the 1930s featuring amateur sleuth Georgia O’Keeffe)
Shauna Lawless, The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, Head of Zeus — AdAstra (historical fantasy series that intertwines Irish mythology with real-life history; begins in 981AD)
Amanda Lees, The Silence Before Dawn, Bookouture (first book in a WWII Resistance series based on true stories of the fearless women secret agents – and their tales of bravery, betrayal and love)
Natasha Lester, The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, Sphere (Alix St. Pierre was an ordinary woman, until she became a spy for the American government. Set in 1943 and 1946)
Graham Ley, Heir to the Manor, Sapere (book 2 of an historical saga set against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Sequel to The Baron Returns)
Linda Cohen Loigman, The Matchmaker’s Gift, SMP (story of two extraordinary women from two different eras who utilize their unique gift of seeing soulmates in the most unexpected places)
Charlie Lovett, The Enigma Affair, Blackstone (World War II thriller in which an art historian, a museum docent, and a collector of Nazi artifacts, must work together to stop a ruthless and resourceful opponent)
Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, Bantam (a mother and daughter stumble upon a Nazi cell in Los Angeles during the early days of World War II—and find the courage to go undercover)
Ann Mah, Jacqueline in Paris, Mariner (portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier’s college year abroad in postwar Paris — the coming-of-age of an American icon)
Tim Major, The Defaced Men, Titan (in 1896, a new client at Baker Street claims he’s being threatened via the new art of the moving image)
Alessandro Manzoni (trans. Michael F. Moore, The Betrothed, Random House (new English language translation journeys through the Spanish occupation of Milan, the ravages of war, class tensions, social injustice, religious faith, and a plague that devastates northern Italy)
Clare Marchant, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, Avon UK (dual timeline narrative set in the present day and in 1569 when a young woman’s mapmaking skills catch the eye of Queen Elizabeth)
Lee Martin, The Glassmaker’s Wife, Dzanc Books (historical crime thriller inspired by the true story of Betsey Reed, Illinois, 1844)
Simon Mawer, Ancestry, Little, Brown (with stories that explore the squalor and vitality of Dickensian London, seafaring in the last days of sail and the horror of the trenches of the Crimea, novel puts flesh on our ancestor’s bones)
Michael Mayo, Welcome to Jimmy’s Place, Coffeetown Press (prohibition has ended and his speakeasy is almost legal, but someone is trying to kill Jimmy Quinn, while millionaires plot to overthrow Roosevelt)
Ian McEwan, Lessons, Knopf (intimate story of one man’s life across generations and historical upheavals, from 1950s to present day)
Fiona Kelly McGregor, Iris, Picador AU (based on actual events and set in the 1930s, a literary tale of a woman who couldn’t be held back)
Kristina McMorris, The Ways We Hide, Sourcebooks Landmark (story about the wars we fight—between nations and inside ourselves—and the courage we find in unexpected places)
Roland Merullo, A Harvest of Secrets, Lake Union (novel of love, resistance, and courage set against the backdrop of WWII Italy)
Desideria Mesa, Bindle Punk Bruja, Harper Voyager (historical fantasy set in the Golden Twenties, where a club owner takes on crooked city councilmen, deadly mobsters, and society’s deeply rooted sexism and racism)
Mary Miley, Deadly Spirits, Severn House (medium’s assistant and reluctant sleuth, Maddie Pastore, is shocked when her long-lost sister is accused of murder)
William J. Miller Jr., Steel City, Lyons Press (story of a young man in 1890’s Pittsburgh who confronts issues such as immigration, tariffs, unionism and income inequality)
Marianne Monson, The Opera Sisters, Shadow Mountain (based on the true story of the Cook sisters, who smuggled valuables out of 1930s Nazi Germany to finance a daring, secret operation to help Jews)
Jennifer Moore, Healing Hazel, Covenant (a nurse embarks on a journey of healing to battle the demons of her past with the help of the doctor who has captured her heart. Blue Orchid Society, book #3)
Suzanne Moyers, ‘Til All These Things Be Done, She Writes (novel of triumph over loss, set against the rich and troubled history of Blacklands, Texas, during an era of pandemic, scientific discovery, and social upheaval)
Amy Sue Nathan, Well Behaved Wives, Lake Union (novel about upending the rules of behavior in 1960s America)
Chris Nickson, A Dark Steel Death, Severn House (Tom Harper must catch a traitor intent on disrupting the war effort and bringing terror to the streets of Leeds)
Claire North, Ithaca, Redhook (on the isle of Ithaca, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses—that will change the course of the world)
Kayte Nunn, The Only Child, Scarlet (a long-closed home for “fallen women” is the site of horrors in a historical thriller set in 1949 and 2013)
Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait, Knopf (novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the young duchess Lucrezia de Medici)
Jenni Ogden, Call My Name, Sea Dragon Press (spanning the 1960s to 1990s, two women are bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart)
Véronique Olmi (trans. Alison Anderson), Daughters Beyond Command, Europa Editions (spanning 1970 to 1981, a family story which doubles as the chronicle of an era)
Orhan Pamuk (trans. Ekin Oklap), Nights of Plague, Faber & Faber (historical epic of murder and mystery, set in 1901)
David S. Pederson, Murder at Union Station, Bold Strokes (Phoenix, May 6, 1946; Private Detective Mason Adler struggles to determine who killed a woman found in a trunk without getting himself killed in the process)
Anne Perry, The Fourth Enemy, Headline (Daniel Pitt mystery, book 6)
Anne Perry, A Truth to Lie For, Ballantine (Elena Standish must rescue an ingenious scientist from Hitler’s clutches in 1936)
Tracie Peterson, Under the Starry Skies, Bethany House (inspirational novel set in San Marcial, New Mexico. Love on the Santa Fe, book 3)
Robert Lee Primeaux, Will Chase: The Black Hills, TrineDay (based on the legend of Will Chase/Chasing Hawk previously only told within the Lakota of the Sioux Nation)
Oriana Ramunno, Ashes in the Snow, HarperCollins (historical crime thriller)
Don Reid, Piano Days, Mercer Univ. Press (story of three boys growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s in a small town)
Tanis Rideout, The Sea Between Two Shores, McClelland & Stewart (inspired by real events, novel follows two families brought together to reckon with what it means to make amends)
Gini Rifkin, Break Heart Canyon, Wild Rose Press (romance set in Colorado)
Karen Robards, The Girl from Guernica, Hodder & Stoughton/Mira (spanning the Spanish Civil War through WWII, novel follows a young woman trying to protect what remains of her family after the bombing at Guernica as they are hunted by Nazis)
Pam Royl, The Last Secret, Blue Denim Press (reveals the dark underbelly of a genteel Victorian Canadian town and explores the insidious power of secrets)
Rudy Ruiz, Valley of Shadows, Blackstone (neo-Western blend of magical realism and mystery sheds light on the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border)
W. C. Ryan, The Winter Guest, Arcade Crimewise (1921 -mystery set against the raw Irish landscape in a country divided)
Igiaba Scego (trans. John Cullen and Gregory Conti), The Color Line, Other Press (inspired by true events, intertwines the lives of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders in Italy)
Barbara Joan Scott, The Taste of Hunger, Freehand Books (fiction about a family of Ukrainian immigrants and a murder that changes everything; set in Saskatchewan in late 1920s)
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, On the Rooftop, Ecco (novel set in 1950s San Francisco, about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives)
Fred Skolnik, A Woman of Valor, Addison & Highsmith (centers around a heroine who grows up in Bialystok, survives the Holocaust fighting in the Underground, and rebuilds her family in Israel)
Anne Sloan, Her Choice, Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press (when a lynching occurs six days prior to the 1928 National Democratic Convention in Houston, Texas, a reporter gets an inside look at Houston’s shameful cover-up)
Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa, Hutchinson Heinemann (Lisa del Giocondo takes us from the dazzling world of Florentine studios to the French courts at Fontainebleau and Versailles, and into the twentieth century)
Mel Starr, Suppression and Suspicion, Lion Fiction (new medieval murder mystery in the Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton series)
Steve Stern, The Village Idiot, Melville House (tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine)
Libby Sternberg, Daisy, Bancroft Press (reimagining of The Great Gatsby from Daisy Buchanan’s point of view)
Defne Suman (trans. Betsy Göksel), At the Breakfast Table, Apollo (a story of hidden histories and family secrets told from four different perspectives)
Boston Teran, Crippled Jack, High-Top Pub (revisionist western set against a landmark era in American folklore)
Martha Anne Toll, Three Muses, Regal House (a Holocaust survival tale in which three muses—Song, Discipline, and Memory—weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph)
Leo Tolstoy, adapt. Alexandr Poltorak, illus. Dmitry Chukhrai, War and Peace: The Graphic Novel, Andrews McMeel (graphic retelling of Tolstoy’s classic 1869 novel)
Judith Turner-Yamamoto, Loving the Dead and Gone, Regal House (a 1960s freak car accident sets in motion a series of events that will change the lives of the characters in a novel that explores the transformative power of death)
L. C. Tyler, The Summer Birdcage, Constable (actress Kitty Burgess has a stunning future before her – until she vanishes after the opening performance of Aminta Grey’s new play. John Grey mystery, book #8)
Juan Gabriel Vásquez (trans. Anne McLean), Retrospective, MacLehose (portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit)
Jennifer Ivy Walker, The Wild Rose and the Sea Raven, Wild Rose Press (dark fairy tale adaptation of a medieval French legend)
S. K. Waters, The Dead Won’t Tell, CamCat (hired to investigate a cold-case murder, a novice journalist’s questions about race and police coverups in the 1960s ruffle one too many feathers)
C. M. Wendelboe, The Marshal and the Fatal Foreclosure, Five Star (a Nelson Lane frontier mystery, book 4)
Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara, Park Row (story of hope, resilience and unexpected love as one Black young mother finds refuge and friendship at a boarding house in Memphis, Tennessee, during the racially divided 1960s)
Roseanna M. White, Worthy of Legend, Bethany House (inspirational Christian historical fiction, Secrets of the Isles, book 3)
Amy Willoughby-Burle, The Other Side of Certain, Fireship (inspirational sweet romance about a pack-horse librarian, and set during America’s Great Depression)
Ethan Wolfe, When the Devil Comes A-Calling, Five Star (when two US marshals on a routine prisoner pickup never make it to their destination, Judge Parker sends Emmet and Jack Youngblood, considered two of the best marshals in the West)
Kimberley Woodhouse, A Gem of Truth, Bethany House (historical romance, Secrets of the Canyon, book 2)
Rita Woods, The Last Dreamwalker, Forge (story of two women, separated by nearly two centuries yet inextricably linked by the Gullah Geechee Islands off the coast of South Carolina — and their connection to a mysterious gift passed from generation to generation)
Jennifer L. Wright, Come Down Somewhere, Tyndale House (two young women come of age during the Trinity nuclear bomb test in 1945)
Vincent Wyckoff, Refuge from the Sea, North Star Press of St. Cloud (story set in spring of 1909, when four dozen individuals endeavored to construct a lighthouse on an escarpment overlooking Lake Superior)
James Yorkston, The Book of the Gaels, Oldcastle (a story of paralysing pain of grief and loss, tempered only by the hope of rescue and the redemption of parental love, set in Ireland mid 70s)
October 2022
Laurie Lico Albanese, Hester, SMP (reimagining of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne, the tragic heroine of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and a journey into the enduring legacy of New England’s witchcraft trials)
Tasha Alexander, Secrets of the Nile, Minotaur (narrative sends Lady Emily to Egypt, during both the British colonial rule and the era of the Pharaohs)
Nancy Campbell Allen, To Capture His Heart, Shadow Mountain (historical romance blended with mystery, set in 1886)
J. D. Arnold, Rawhide Jake: Lone Star Fame, Five Star (after the split with Wes Wilson at the end of Book One, Rawhide Jake works undercover at the huge Flying XC Ranch where he tracks down and arrests five rustlers)
Tracy Baines, The Women of Fishers Wharf, Boldwood (Great Grimsby, 1912; saga about a young newly wed who tries to break free of her mother-in-law’s insistence that they cling to the old ways)
Fiona Barnett, The Dark Between the Trees, Solaris (surrealist gothic folk-thriller taking place in 1647 and the present day)
Douglas Bauer, The Beckoning World, Univ. of Iowa Press (a love story set in the first quarter of the 20th century)
Blitz Bazawule, The Scent of Burnt Flowers, Ballantine (fleeing persecution in 1960s America, a Black couple seeks asylum in Ghana, but old secrets threaten their freedom)
Kate Belli, Treachery on Tenth Street, Crooked Lane (somebody’s killing the most glamorous models in Gilded-Age New York, in third Gilded Gotham mystery)
Kathy Biggs, The Luck, Honno (generational saga set in America’s rural west)
Len Boswell, Barnum’s Angel, Black Rose (historical fantasy stretching from the shores of Tierra del Fuego and the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle to the bustling crowds of Victorian London)
Irena Brezná (trans. Ruth Ahmedzai–kemp), The Thankless Foreigner, Seagull Books (novel offers a timely viewpoint on the immigration experience about the need for resistance to blind assimilation in a host country)
J. C. Briggs, The Jaggard Case, Sapere (London, 1851– with Superintendent Sam Jones away, his wife, Elizabeth, enlists the help of Charles Dickens when her beloved servant, Posy, goes missing)
Frances Brody, A Mansion for Murder, Piatkus (new Kate Shackleton mystery set in 1930, Yorkshire)
Colleen Cambridge, A Trace of Poison, Kensington (Phyllida Bright, housekeeper for Agatha Christie, must uncover a killer among a throng of crime writers)
C. J. Carey, Queen High, Quercus (alternative historical fiction set in England, 1955)
S. A. Chakraborty, The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy, Harper Voyager (Middle Eastern historical fantasy trilogy)
Patrick Chamoiseau (trans. Charly Verstraet and Jeffrey Landon Allen), Crusoe’s Footprint, Univ. of Virginia Press (uses the log entries of a slave ship’s captain and the story of a castaway to create a new perspective on the Crusoe myth)
Megan Chance, A Dangerous Education, Lake Union (novel about secrets and redemption set in the shadows of McCarthy-era America)
Ethan Chatagnier, Singer Distance, Tin House (literary novel set in 1960 about how far we’re willing to go to communicate with a distant civilization, and the great lengths we’ll travel to connect with each other here on Earth)
Lauren Chater, The Winter Dress, Allison & Busby (two women are separated by centuries but connected by one beautiful silk dress in this novel based on a real-life shipwreck discovered off Texel Island)
Jennifer Coburn, Cradles of the Reich, Sourcebooks Landmark (takes us inside the women’s homes that existed in several countries during WWII, when thousands of babies were taken from their mothers to be raised as part of the new Germany)
Paul Fraser Collard, Diamond Hunter, Headline (South Africa, 1871. With the worldly Anna Baker by his side, Jack Lark travels to the Cape Colony diamond fields determined to seek an adventurous new life together)
Paul Colt, Vaquero Padre, Five Star (in late 1600s, Eusebio Kino extended the frontier of Christendom west, enriching the lives of those he served, while his explorations changed the face of a continent; this is his story as he might have told it)
Mary Connealy, A Model of Devotion, Bethany House (inspirational romance)
C. J. Cooke, The Ghost Woods, HarperCollins (historical gothic horror set in 1965)
Nicola Cornick, The Winter Garden, Graydon House (inspired by the true story of Robert Catesby, leader of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, his wife Catherine Leigh, and the disappearance of the treasure of the Knights of the Order of St John)
Lecia Cornwall, That Summer in Berlin, Berkley (in summer of 1936, a courageous young woman struggles to expose the lies behind the dazzling spectacle of the Berlin Olympics)
Diney Costeloe, The Girl Who Dared to Dream, Aria (family saga set just before the Great War)
Dilly Court, Snow Bride, HarperCollins (fifth book in the six-part Rockwood Chronicles)
Michelle Cox, A Spying Eye, She Writes (a Henrietta and Inspector Howard mystery/romance saga series set in the 1930s Chicago)
Tania Crosse, The Convent Girl, Joffe (tale of secrets and betrayal, friendship and trust in a time of war)
Sadie Cuffe, Sophie Cuffe, The Golden Spoon, Five Star (adventure set in a frontier outpost fabricated on dreams, gold, and greed)
Michael Dean, A Diamond in the Dust, Holland Park Press (fictionalised account of the life of Charles I from his birth to the age of twenty-eight)
Clyde Derrick, The Ghost Trio, Univ. of Chicago Press (takes us to pre- and post-World War II Prague where a poignant and chilling love triangle finds its resolution)
Jude Deveraux, Tara Sheets, Thief of Fate, Mira (third in the Providence Falls series – a time-slip love story that crosses continents and centuries)
Alena Dillon, Eyes Turned Skyward, Wm Morrow (dual timeline novel about a daughter discovering her mother’s past as a female pilot during World War II)
Paul M. Duffy, Run With the Hare, Hunt With the Hound, Cynren Press (novel set in 12th-century Ireland)
Lesley Eames, The Wartime Bookshop, Bantam (WWII series about friendship and love)
Natalie Meg Evans, The Girl With the Yellow Star, Bookouture (Cornwall, 1943; story about how love shines brightly even in the darkest times)
Pat Flower, Wax Flowers for Gloria, Sapere (murder mystery set in 1950s Australia)
Fiona Ford, The Good Time Girls at Christmas, Embla Books (saga set in London, December 1940)
Justin Fox, The Wolf Hunt, Sapere (Jack Pembroke naval thriller series, book 2, after The Cape Raider, set in 1941)
Iain Gale, SBS: Special Boat Squadron, Aries (chronicles the exploits of the seaborne raiders who carried out WWII’s most daring covert operations)
Peter Gibbons, Warrior and Protector, Boldwood (Viking/Saxon adventure set in AD 989)
S. T. Gibson, A Dowry of Blood, Redhook (dark seductive tale of Dracula’s first bride, Constanta)
Laura Anne Gilman, Uncanny Times, Gallery / Saga Press (romantic fantasy set in America, 1913)
S. K. Golden, The Socialite’s Guide to Murder, Crooked Lane (a killer stalks the halls of a hotel in this debut murder mystery set in 1958)
Suzanne Goldring, The Woman Outside the Walls, Bookouture (dual timeline WWII novel)
Gigi Griffis, The Empress, Zando (novel reimagines the courtship between one of history’s most iconic and beloved couples: Sisi and Franz of Austria)
Annie Groves, The Three Sisters of Victory Walk, HarperCollins (book 6 — as rationing, blackouts and bombs start to bite, life will change forever for the three sisters)
Andrea Hairston, Will Do Magic for Small Change, Tordotcom (tale of alien science and earthbound magic and the secrets families keep from each other)
Dianne Haley, Under a Brighter Sky, Bookouture (novel about a woman who risks everything to reunite a family torn apart by war)
Rebecca Hardy, The House of Lost Wives, Headline Accent (regency tale filled with mystery, romance and secrets, set in 1813)
Stratis Haviaras, When the Tree Sings, Paul Dry Books (novel about a young boy coming-of-age in Greece during World War II)
Penny Haw, The Invincible Miss Cust, Sourcebooks Landmark (based on the true story of a woman ahead of her time, who defied the patriarchy, society, and her family’s wishes to pursue a career in a science-based field)
Olivia Hawker, The Fire and the Ore, Lake Union (novel of family, sisterhood, and survival featuring three wives and one husband in Utah, 1856)
Jody Hedlund, Falling for the Cowgirl, Bethany House (romance between a young female rancher and an undercover Pinkerton agent)
Linda Jo Heffner, The Other Side of the Gangplank, Dudley Court Press (story of five military wives whose husbands are deployed for nine months, fighting in the Vietnam War)
Beatriz Garcia Huidobro (trans. Jacqueline Nanfito), ‘Til She Go No More, White Pine Press (story of a female teenager and the broader historical and socioeconomic reality of Chile in the early 70s)
Lindsey Hutchinson, The Hat Girl’s Heartbreak, Boldwood (story of friendship and fun, love and second chances)
John Irving, The Last Chairlift, S&S/Knopf Canada (a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics set around Aspen, Colorado)
Michael Jecks, The Merchant Murderers, Severn House (set during the troubled reign of Queen Mary I, series features the amoral former cutpurse turned paid assassin, Jack Blackjack, as its cowardly, lecherous, yet likeable amateur sleuth)
William W. Johnstone, J. A. Johnstone, Old Cowboys Never Die, Kensington (new series proves that old cowboys only get wiser, bolder—and crazier—with age)
Paterson Joseph, The SecretDiaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, Dialogue Books UK (tale of adventure, artistry, romance, and freedom set in eighteenth-century London and inspired by a true story)
Chris Keefer, No Comfort for the Undertaker, Level Best (at the turn of the century an undertaker discovers brutal injuries that contradict the husband’s story about his wife’s death)
Karen Kingsbury, Just Once, Atria (World War II love story about a young woman torn between two brothers)
Liisa Kovala, Sisu’s Winter War, Latitude 46 (story of a woman who is haunted by the people of her past and by the promises she failed to keep after following her father to the front lines)
Marion Kummerow, Daughter of the Dawn, Bookouture (4th book in Margarete’s journey during WWII)
Franklin E. Lamca, The Devil Hound, Woodhall Press (set in mid-18th century Europe and the Americas, an evil priest dedicates his life to destroying two innocent Romani brothers because of their ethnic origin and because they are witnesses to his hideous crimes)
Caroline Laurent (trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman), An Impossible Return, Amazon Crossing (love story set against a backdrop of injustice, secrets, and the price of independence)
Ariel Lawhon, Kristina McMorris, Susan Meissner, When We Had Wings, Harper Muse (based on the true story of the women who came to be known as the “Band of Angels”)
Lee Geum-yi (trans. An Seonjae), The Picture Bride, Forge (journey of a young Korean “picture bride” and her immigrant experience in 1918 Hawai’)
Robert J. Lloyd, The Poison Machine, Melville House (1679 – Harry Hunt must go to Paris in search of a spy and imposter who has knowledge of a plot to kill the Queen of England. Sequel to The Bloodless Boy)
Laurie Loewenstein, Funeral Train, Kaylie Jones (takes place against the backdrop of the Great Depression—where bootlegging, petty extortion, courage, and bravado play out in equal measure)
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fayne, Knopf Canada (a tale of science, magyk, love and identity set in late 19th century)
Laura Marello, Matisse: The Only Blue, Guernica World Editions (portrays an eclectic mix of artists struggling through the upheavals of the first half of the 20th Century, including the devastating realities of two world wars)
Freya Marske, A Restless Truth, Tordotcom (second book in queer historical fantasy series set in Edwardian London)
Edward Marston, The Railway Detective’s Christmas Case, Allison & Busby (Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are under pressure to solve a murder quickly)
Mimi Matthews, The Belle of Belgrave Square, Berkley (a London heiress rides out to the wilds of the English countryside to honor a marriage of convenience with a mysterious and reclusive stranger)
Steven Mayfield, Delphic Oracle U.S.A., Regal House (small town romance set in 1925)
Suzette Mayr, The Sleeping Car Porter, Coach House (when a mudslide strands a train, a gay Black sleeping car porter must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair)
Ciera Horton McElroy, Atomic Family, Blair (a South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow of a nuclear bomb plan)
Stephenia H. McGee, The Secrets of Emberwild, Revell (early 1900s inspirational romance between a young woman who has inherited a struggling horse farm owner and her new horse trainer)
Briana Una McGuckin, On Good Authority, Thomas & Mercer (sensually charged novel of Gothic suspense, repressed desires, irresistible obsessions, and perception-twisting games)
Fiona McIntosh, The Orphans, Michael Joseph (story about a unique bond between two children that will echo down the years, and teach them both about the real meaning of life, of loss, and of love)
Clara McKenna, Murder at the Majestic Hotel, Kensington (in Edwardian England, newly married American heiress Stella Kendrick and British aristocrat Viscount “Lyndy” Lyndhurst are investigating murder on their honeymoon)
Shannon McNear, Mary, Barbour (inspirational reimagining of the Lost Colony of Roanoke)
Bill Meissner, Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire, Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press (1967; a family conflict illuminates the struggle between conformity and independent thought during the turbulent protest days of the Vietnam War)
Simon Michael, Nothing But the Truth, Sapere (1960s — will the Krays twins’ criminal hold over London finally be put to an end or will everything come crashing down for barrister Charles Holborne?)
Rod Millar, With a Kiss I Die, Five Star (a love story entwined in the tragedy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857)
Sarah Miller, Marmee, Wm Morrow (portrait of the paragon of virtue, Margaret March, known as Marmee, a wife left behind, a mother pushed to the brink, a woman with secrets)
Luis García Montero (trans. Katie King), Someone Speaks Your Name, Swan Isle Press (novel follows an idealistic student who explores the power of literature in Franco’s Spain)
Keith Moray, Death of a Poet, Sapere (first book in a series of historical murder mysteries set in Ancient Egypt)
Heather B. Moore, In the Shadow of a Queen, Shadow Mountain (story of an epic battle of wills Queen Victoria and her daughter)
Wanda M. Morris, Anywhere You Run, William Morrow (after the murder of a white man in Jim Crow Mississippi, two Black sisters run away to different parts of the country)
Pamela Mulloy, As Little as Nothing, ECW Press (on the eve of the Second World War outside a village in England, four people rush to an airplane crash and change their lives forever)
Donald S. Murray, The Call of the Cormorant, Saraband (biography of Karl Kjerúlf Einarsson: an artist and an adventurer, a charlatan and a swindler, forever in search of Atlantis)
Leonora Nattrass, Blue Water, Viper (a vital treaty to Congress that will prevent the Americans from joining with the French in their war against Britain, goes missing aboard ship)
James L. Nelson, The Falmouth Frigate, McBooks (book 6 in the Isaac Biddlecomb naval series)
Oliver L. North, David Goetsch, The Rifleman: From Disaster in Quebec to Victory at Saratoga, Fidelis (novel explores why Saratoga was a turning point in the war and how Daniel Morgan and his Riflemen contributed to that victory)
Karen Odden, Under a Veiled Moon, Crooked Lane (a fatal disaster on the Thames and a roiling political conflict set the stage for the second Inspector Corravan historical mystery set in 1878)
Daniel O’Malley, Blitz, Little, Brown (newest book in the Rook Files series, about a new recruit to the Checquy, who is accused of going rogue, and must go on the run to clear her name. Set in WWII and present day)
Patricia O’Reilly, Orpen At War, The Liffey Press (illustrated biographical novel featuring dozens of Orpen’s paintings and B&W drawings of the brutal reality of World War I)
Michael B. Oren, Swann’s War, Dzanc Books (with her husband, the island’s beloved police captain, away fighting in WWII, Mary Beth Swann steps into his role, when a murdered POW surfaces in a fisherman’s net)
Orhan Pamuk (trans. Ekin Oklap), Nights of Plague, Knopf (historical epic of murder and mystery, set in 1901)
Janice Pariat, Everything the Light Touches, HarperVia (an epic of travelers, of discovery, of human connection, and of the impermanent nature of the universe—a saga that unfolds through the adventures four intriguing characters)
Phillip Parotti, Riders Upon the Storm, Casemate (a young officer leads his crew in the game of hunting U-boats and sinking German mines in the English Channel in the last months of World War I)
Heather Parry, Orpheus Builds a Girl, Gallic (sinister literary novel based on a chilling true story about one man’s obsession)
R. L. Peterson, Leave the Night to God, Regal House (set in America’s Midwest of the 1950s, where racial injustice still has a tight grip, novel argues that “family” is not about the color of one’s skin)
Joanna Davidson Politano, The Lost Melody, Revell (novel explores the nature of women’s independence and artistic expression during the Victorian era)
John Poniske, Fire-Eaters, Fireship (book 2 in Snakebit series — the Garret and McCune families live in Maryland, a border state torn between abolitionists to the North and slavers to the South. The McCunes are slavers, the Garretts are not)
Margaret Porter, The Myrtle Wand, Gallica Press (novel based on the ballet Giselle and set during Louis XIV reign at Fontainebleu)
John Pruitt, Tell It True, Mercer Univ. Press (an African American serviceman is gunned down on a rural Georgia road in July 1964 and the murder ensnares a wide range of characters including civil rights leaders and politicians)
Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theatre, Knopf (debut novel that takes us from the gargantuan cavity of a beached whale into undercover operations during World War II. Set in England and France 1919-1945)
Heather Redmond, A Twist of Murder, Kensington (in Victorian England, aspiring author Charles Dickens is in pursuit of missing orphans, legendary treasure, and a cold-blooded killer)
Tracy Rees, The Elopement, Macmillan (historical romance spanning the luxury and poverty of late Victorian England)
Marcie R. Rendon, Sinister Graves, Soho Crime (mystery follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, as she attempts to discover the truth about the disappearances of Native girls and their newborns)
Mike Ripley, Mr Campion’s Mosaic, Severn House (Albert Campion travels to Dorset to attempt to get to the bottom of a series of shocking events connected to a TV adaptation of a famous novel)
Candace Robb, A Fox in the Fold, Severn House (Owen Archer suspects an old adversary is on his tail as he seeks to solve the mystery surrounding a dead body found on the road to York)
Lauri Robinson, The Captain’s Christmas Homecoming, Harlequin (romance set just after the end of WWI)
Lev AC Rosen, Lavender House, Forge (murder mystery with a queer twist, set in 1952)
Moriel Rothman-Zecher, Before All the World, FSG (story of three people in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old)
Andrzej Sapkowski, Light Perpetual, Orbit (Join Reynevan—scoundrel, magician, possibly a fool—as he embarks on a last great adventure across the war-riddled landscape of 15th century Bohemia. Hussite trilogy)
Douglas Skelton, An Honourable Thief, Canelo (atmospheric blend of crime, history and thriller set in 1715)
Luanne G. Smith, The Raven Song, Amazon (fleeing Victorian London, a witch finds her newfound independence comes with all-new perils—both mortal and immortal. Historical fantasy)
Wilbur Smith, Titans of War, Zaffre (next book in a brand-new Ancient Egyptian series)
Minerva Spencer, The Boxing Baroness, Kensington (first of a witty, Regency-set, feminist series exploring the role of women in a rigidly patriarchal society)
Julian Stockwin, Yankee Mission, Hodder & Stoughton (on reaching the US east coast, Kydd and his trusted Tygers realise that the hardest part of their mission will be drawing out one of the Yankee men-o’-war to engage in battle)
Tetsuo Ted Takashima, Ranshin: Samurai Crusaders, Museyon (in 1276 AD a group of crusaders fleeing the Holy Land by ship, find themselves adrift off the coast of modern-day Japan, under siege by the Mongolians)
Craig Thomas, Firefox, Canelo (techno-thriller set at the height of the Cold War when a new Soviet threat triggers a daring heist)
Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally), Olav Audunssøn: Crossroads, Univ. of Minnesota Press (third volume in the epic story of medieval Norway)
Phillipa Vincent-Connolly, The Anne Boleyn Cypher, Sapere (time-slip novel in which a student is carried back through time to Hever Castle in 1521)
Catriona Ward, Little Eve, Tor Nightfire (gothic horror set on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, at the dawn of WWI)
Peter Watt, Call of Empire, Macmillan Australia (as the reign of Queen Victoria draws to a close, the Steele family must face loss and heartbreak like never before)
Pam Webber, Life Dust, She Writes (romance in which Nettie and Andy are planning their wedding when he is suddenly deployed to Vietnam for a year)
Christine Wells, One Woman’s War, Wm Morrow (story of WWII British Naval Intelligence officer Victoire Bennett, the real-life inspiration for the James Bond character Miss Moneypenny)
Abigail Wilson, Within These Gilded Halls, Thomas Nelson (when a treasure hunt turns deadly, Phoebe Radcliff realizes she’s caught in a den of liars, forcing her to confront the demons from her past. Regency romance)
Danee Wilson, Murder at San Miguel, Radiant Press (despite initial misgivings about working in Spain under the shadow of Franco’s dictatorship, an archeological team accept a job to excavate the cemetery at San Miguel in Excelsis)
Daisy Wood, The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris, Avon UK (a WWII tale of love, loss and a betrayal that echoes through generations)
Baron Wormser, Some Months in 1968, Woodhall Press (literary fiction portrays a family of five, living in suburban Baltimore, who experience one of the most tumultuous moments in American history)
Jaime Jo Wright, The Premonition at Withers Farm, Bethany House (multi-period mystery set in 1910 and present day)
Yulia Yakovleva (trans. Rush Ahmedzai Kemp), Punishment of a Hunter, Pushkin Vertigo (an investigator is called upon to look into a series of bizarre and seemingly motiveless murders in 1930s Stalinist Leningrad)
November 2022
Alina Adams, My Mother’s Secret, History Through Fiction (novel rooted in detailed research about a little-known chapter of Soviet and Jewish history while exploring universal themes of identity, love, loss, war, and parenthood)
Tessa Afshar, The Hidden Prince, Tyndale House (a woman feels she has no future but soon discovers the fate of nations may rest in her hands – inspirational biblical fiction)
Neil Alexander, The Vanishing of Margaret Small, Embla Books (mystery with a dual timeline about a woman delving into her past)
Skye Alexander, What the Walls Know, Level Best (jazz singer Lizzie Crane accepts an invitation to perform at a Halloween party in a creepy castle)
E. A. Allen, The Tears of Buddha, Addison & Highsmith (three rare and priceless porcelain bowls of the Tang Dynasty become a motive for murder)
Merryn Allingham, Murder at St. Saviour’s, Bookouture (in 1956, bookshop owner and amateur detective Flora Steele teams up with handsome crime writer Jack Carrington to unravel a curious murder in the village of Abbeymead)
Misty M. Beller, A Daughter’s Courage, Bethany House (after accidentally destroying a treasured chalice, Charlotte Durand sets out on an expedition in search of a skilled artisan who can repair the damage)
Sian Ann Bessey, The Call of the Sea, Covenant (historical romance set in Wales in the mid 1100s)
Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills, Lake Union (novel about family bonds, the power of words, and the resilience of mothers and daughters in 1930s Appalachia)
Rhys Bowen, Peril in Paris, Berkley (a Royal Spyness mystery)
John Boyne, All the Broken Places, Bond Street (story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery)
Rita Bradshaw, Believing in Tomorrow, Pan (in the male-dominated society of the early 1900s, a young girl has to fight prejudice and hatred, and rejection comes from all sides)
Sylvia Broady, Orphans of War, Joffe Books (Kingston Upon Hull, 1941: a wartime story of hardship and hope)
Gun Brooke, The Amaranthine Law, Bold Strokes (LGBTQ romance set in 1761)
Camilla Bruce, All the Blood We Share, Berkley (novel based on the real Bloody Benders, a family of serial killers in the old West bound by butchery and obscured by the shadows of American history)
Serena Burdick, The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey, Park Row (in Edwardian England a writer’s wife goes missing, creating a literary scandal, and her great-great granddaughter must discover what truly happened. Set in 1898 & 2006)
Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study, Biblioasis (blurs the lines between patient and therapist, reality and dark imagination in a story set in London, 1965)
Dorothy Cannell, Peril in the Parish, Severn House (England, 1933 — Florence Norris and local pub landlord, George ‘Birdie’ Bird, are all set to marry when a mysterious stranger seeks out George to talk of an illegal burial years ago)
William Christie, The Double Agent, Minotaur (sequel to A Single Spy, a novel of WWII espionage in the most momentous and dangerous of times)
Joanne Clague, The Girl at Change Alley, Canelo (Sheffield, 1867; novel tells the story of a fallen woman and an opportunity for redemption)
Cassandra Clark, Dark Waters Rising, Severn House (1394; Can nun sleuth Hildegard solve the murder of a lay sister before the rising flood waters trap her with a cunning killer?)
Georgina Clarke, The Dazzle of the Light, Verve Books (novel set in the 1920s, inspired by the notorious all-female crime syndicate known as the Forty Thieves who operated out of the slums of south London)
Suzie Clarke, Enigma, Bold Strokes (LGBTQ romantic spy thriller set in 1941)
Jonathan Coe, Bournville, Viking (brutally funny and true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family)
Genevieve Cogman, Scarlet, Tor (reinvention of the tale of The Scarlet Pimpernel set during the French Revolution, with the addition of magic and even more mayhem)
Manda Collins, A Spinster’s Guide to Danger and Dukes, Forever (to uncover a murderer, a devilish duke and the lady who despises him must fake an engagement that will fool all of Society)
Elin Cullhed (trans. Jennifer Hayashida), Euphoria, Canongate (reimagines Sylvia Plath in fictional form as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through their first summer in Devon, and Sylvia turns to writing to express her pain and loss)
Judith Cutler, A House Divided, Severn House (amateur detective novel set in the Matthew and Harriet Rowsley series set in 1861)
Martin Davies, Mrs Hudson and the Christmas Canary, Canelo (a new caper based on the legend of Sherlock Holmes)
Anne Dimock, Against the Grain, Woodhall Press (during desegregation battles in the early 1960s, one African American family experiences barriers more hidden than they are in the South)
David Donachie, A Troubled Course, McBooks (John Pearce naval series set at the end of the 18th-century)
Sarah M. Eden, The Best Intentions, Covenant (inspirational romance full of hidden secrets)
Emily J. Edwards, Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man, Crooked Lane (debut set in New York City, 1950, about a Girl Friday working for the city’s top private investigator)
Susen Edwards, What A Trip, She Writes (relives the turbulent culture of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll, the first draft lottery since WW II, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, and the harsh realities of war)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at Aldwych Station, Allison & Busby (a London Underground mystery, set in December 1940)
Loren D. Estleman, Paperback Jack, Forge (1946; the rising industry of lurid paperback novels comes under fire from censorious politicians out to tame the paperback jungle in the name of public morality)
Jess Everlee, The Gentleman’s Book of Vices, Carina Adores (Victorian romance in which a collector of illicit erotica and his favorite author have to write their own love story in a society that doesn’t accept them)
Robert Fabbri, Babylon, Corvus (fourth book in a brutal and bloodthirsty series about the fight to regain Alexander the Great’s empire after his untimely death)
Michael W. Farmer, Trini! Come!, Five Star (a novel of Geronimo’s captivity of Trinidad Verdin)
Shannon Fay, External Forces, 47North (London, 1958; a mage for the British royals matches wits with a power-mad old foe in a novel of enchantments and daring)
David Field, The Absentee King, Sapere (fifth book in the Medieval Saga Series)
Eric Flint, Robert E. Waters, 1637: The Transylvanian Decision, Baen (alternative history Ring of Fire series continues the Eastern Europe storyline explored in The Polish Maelstrom)
Darry Fraser, The Forthright Woman, HQ Fiction AU (mystery romance set in 1955 and 1898, South Australia)
Mariah Fredericks, The Lindbergh Nanny, Minotaur (examines one of the most famous kidnapping cases in America from the lens of its favorite suspect, putting Betty Gow at the center of her own story)
Eric Gansworth, My Good Man, Arthur A. Levine (narrative takes us through the childhood of an indigenous journalist and his life stories on the reservation)
Sally Gardner, The Weather Woman, Apollo (novel set between the two great Frost Fairs beginning in London, January 1789)
Elizabeth Gill, An Orphan’s Wish, Quercus (family saga set in Wolsingham, 1900)
Alex Gough, Emperor’s Fate, Canelo (the Imperial Assassin series, book 6)
Amy Lynn Green, The Blackout Book Club, Bethany House (a group of women are buoyed by stories which offer an escape from hardship and danger during WWII)
Molly Green, A Winter Wedding at Bletchley Park, Avon (the Bletchley Park Girls series, book two)
Philippa Gregory, Dawnlands, S&S UK (Fairmile series continues as Alinor and her family find themselves entangled in palace intrigue, political upheaval, and life-changing secrets in 17th-century England)
Liz Harris, In a Far Place, Heywood Press (Birmingham 1967 –a man interferes in a romance between his best friend and the new love he has found)
Robert J. Harris, The Devil’s Blaze: Sherlock Holmes, 1943, Pegasus (set in London during World War II, the world’s greatest detective must uncover the truth behind a series of high-profile assassinations)
Terri J. Haynes, Passages of Hope, Barbour (Gracie Kingston begins renovations on the Philadelphia house inherited from her grandmother, and finds a secret room)
Virginia Heath, Never Rescue a Rogue, Griffin (when a Duke and a reporter team up to uncover his family’s secrets, their search brings up more than they bargained for. Regency rom-com)
Kate Hewitt, The Bride’s Sister, Bookouture (story about what it means to be a family, second chances, and the lengths we go to for those we love; set in England 1868 and present day)
Grace Hitchcock, His Delightful Lady Delia, Bethany House (explores New York’s great opera wars between old money and the nouveau riche, featuring a rising young soprano star)
Tim Hodkinson, The Spear of Crom, Aries (in first-century Britain, Celtic warrior Fergus rides out on a deadly quest for his Roman commanders)
Gill Hornby, Godmersham Park, Pegasus (inspired by the true story of Anne Sharp, a governess who became very close with Jane Austen and her family)
Pam Howes, A Royal Visit to Victory Street, Bookouture (saga about the power of family and a community trying to rebuild their lives after the terrible war that nearly destroyed everything. Liverpool, 1956)
Theresa Howes, The Secrets We Keep, HQ Digital (1944, the Cote d’Azur; captures the endurance and strength of ordinary people in the darkest of times)
Patricia L. Hudson, Traces, Fireside Industries/Univ. Press of Kentucky (explores rumors about Daniel Boone, exposes the harsh realities of frontier life, and gives voice to the women whose lives have been reduced to scattered footnotes)
Anna Jacobs, A Silver Wish, Hodder & Stoughton (new saga series begins in Lancashire 1887 as Queen Victoria celebrates her golden jubilee)
Roy Jacobsen (trans. Don Bartlett & Don Shaw), Just a Mother, MacLehose (fourth installment in WWII Barrøy Chronicles)
Eloisa James, The Reluctant Countess, Piatkus (romance between a proper earl and the lady who is entirely inappropriate for him)
Dinah Jefferies, The Hidden Palace, HarperCollins (follow up to Daughters of War, in which Florence escapes the brutality of war in 1944 France in Malta, where she uncovers her estranged mother’s secret past)
Gail Jones, Salonika Burning, Text (Greece, 1917; illuminates not only the devastation of war but also the vast social upheaval of the times)
Suzanne Kelman, We Fly Beneath the Stars, Bookouture (1942, Europe: Based on the true story of a female-only bomber battalion)
Louise Kennedy, Trespasses, Riverhead (set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion)
Gabriela Romero Lacruz, The Sun and the Void, Orbit (historical fantasy of colonialism and ancient magic, inspired by the history and folklore of South America)
George Lee, Dancing in the River, Guernica Editions (coming-of-age story set amid the turmoil of communist China, from the iron-fisted Party rule of the 1960s to the protests of the late 1980s)
Amanda Lees, Paris at First Light, Bookouture (novel about hope, betrayal and one mother’s limitless courage during WWII)
Hannah Linder, Beneath His Silence, Barbour (a gothic-style Regency romance)
Bryan Litfin, Caesar’s Lord, Revell (last in the Constantine’s Empire series novel tells a tale of struggle and redemption)
Bonnie MacBird, illus. Frank Cho, What Child is This?, HarperCollins (Sherlock takes on two cases during a Victorian Christmas)
Kate Manning, Gilded Mountain, Scribner (Moonstone, Colorado, 1907 — a tale of a hardscrabble education, about right and wrong, and the consequences of speaking out against injustice)
Kevin McCarthy, The Wintering Place, W. W. Norton (Dakota Territory, 1867; deserting to escape the horrors of the Indian Wars, novel tells a story of three people battling to survive in a vast and unforgiving landscape)
Kathleen McGurl, The Girl with the Emerald Flag, HQ Digital (1916; as war rages in Europe, Gráinne leaves her job in a department store to join Countess Markiewicz’s revolutionary efforts)
Rae Meadows, Winterland, Henry Holt (Russia, 1970s and 1930s; story of an era shaped by glory and loss and about forging a life when you no longer are what you were)
Fenella J. Miller, The Land Girls of Goodwill House, Boldwood (new installment of saga series set in August 1940)
John Winn Miller, The Hunt for the Peggy C, Bancroft Press (introduces Captain Jake Rogers, a hardened smuggler transporting contraband through the U-boat infested waters of the North Atlantic in the beginning phases of World War II)
Santa Montefiore, An Italian Girl in Brooklyn, S&S UK (novel about dark secrets and hidden sorrows—set in war-torn Italy and the streets of New York)
Marvel Moreno (trans. Isabel Adey and Charlotte Coombe), December Breeze, Europa Editions (novel exploring womanhood, and the ties of a middle-class, traditional life in 1950s Colombia)
Dora Levy Mossanen, Love and War in the Jewish Quarter, Post Hill (a journey across Iran where war, superstition, jealousy and betrayal rage behind the walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter)
Kent Michael Nerburn, Lone Dog Road, Polished Stone (indigenous tale of compassion and redemption played out against the backdrop of the American high plains during the drought-stricken summer of 1950)
Ben Okri, The Last Gift of the Master Artists, Other Press (reinvents the beautiful soul and resilient culture of Nigeria, through a story of the Atlantic slave trade)
Kelly Oliver, Chaos at Carnegie Hall, Boldwood (New York 1917; can Fiona Figg catch a killer and find a decent cup of tea before her mustache wax melts?)
Suzanne Parry, Lost Souls of Leningrad, She Writes (equal parts war epic, family saga, and love story, novel brings to life a little-known chapter of WW II in a tale of two remarkable women)
Anne Perry, A Christmas Deliverance, Ballantine (a courageous doctor and his apprentice fight to save London’s poor)
C. L. Polk, Even Though I Knew the End, Tordotcom (a supernatural historical fantasy in which a magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago’s divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life)
MJ Porter, Warrior of Mercia, Boldwood (an unknown danger lurks in the form of Viking raiders, who set their sights on infiltrating the waterways of the breakaway kingdom of the East Angles)
Jan Procházka (trans. Mark Corner), The Bug, Karolinum Press, Charles Univ. (historical thriller about life under surveillance in Soviet Czechoslovakia)
Sundara Ramaswamy (trans. Aniruddhan Vasudevan), The Tamarind Tree, Amazon Crossing (reflection about shared histories, loss, an affinity for nature, and a near-mythic center of life in a village in India)
Tracy Rees, The Elopement, Pan (1897 — romance in which a wealthy heiress falls for the artist commissioned to capture her image)
Joâo Reis (trans. Adrian Minckley), The Devastation of Silence, Open Letter (a captain in the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps finds himself in a German prison camp during WWI)
Alix Rickloff, The Girls in Navy Blue, Wm Morrow (dual timeline novel about three women who joined the Navy during WWI and the impact their choices have on one of their descendants in 1968)
Patrick Rimbaud (trans. Nicole Ball and David Ball), The Master, Seagull Books (spins out the extraordinary life of Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou in fifth century BCE)
Rebecca Roanhorse, Tread of Angels, Gallery/Saga (in 1883, a card sharp with a need for justice defends her sister who is accused of murdering a member of the ruling class of a mining town, in this dark historical fantasy)
Eden Robins, When Franny Stands Up, Sourcebooks Landmark (a woman creates her own “showstopper” in a WWII Chicago comedy night club)
William Rose, The Freedom of the Villainous, Sphinx Books (exploration of the fascination of identical twins set across 1860s Paris, the Tabernas Desert in Spain and Ancient Alexandria)
Noelle Salazar, Angels of the Resistance, Mira (World War II story inspired by true events, about courageous women who risked everything for country, for family, and for each other)
Simon Scarrow, Death to the Emperor, Headline (AD 60. Macro and Cato – two battle-scarred heroes of the Roman army – face tribal uprisings and battles to the death in barbaric Britannia)
Carly Schabowski, All the Courage We Have Found, Bookouture (novel about one woman’s decision to risk everything to save as many people as she can from the Nazis)
Cathy Sharp, The Boy with the Suitcase, HarperCollins (during the Blitz, to keep him safe, and out of trouble, Davey is sent away to a new life, far away in Canada and away from his little sister)
Li Zi Shu (trans. YZ Chin), The Age of Goodbyes, Feminist Press at CUNY (exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo)
Rosemary Simpson, Death at the Falls, Kensington (newly minted lawyer Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter travel to Niagara Falls on a mysterious assignment)
Dana Stabenow, Theft of an Idol, Head of Zeus (when Cleopatra’s most beloved actress disappears, her new Eye of Isis must solve a case that will lead to the darkest corners of Alexandria)
Peter Steiner, The Inconvenient German, Severn House (Willi Geismeier is proving to be a headache for the Nazis yet again as leader of the Flower Gang – a secret organisation helping people flee Germany)
Pat Stoltey, In Defense of Delia, Five Star (early 1800s Illinois frontier fiction; a Sangamon novel)
Joyce St. Anthony, Death on a Deadline, Crooked Lane (editor-in-chief Irene Ingram draws on her well-honed reporter’s instincts in the second Homefront News mystery)
Richard Stratton, Defending Alice, HarperVia (set in 1920s New York – real-life case in which the marriage between a working-class black woman and the scion of one of America’s most powerful white families ends in an annulment lawsuit)
Victoria Thompson, City of Fortune, Berkley (when a day at the races reveals sabotage and subterfuge, Elizabeth Miles must use every ounce of her craftiness to even the score. Counterfeit Lady, book #6)
S. J. A. Turney, Iron and Gold, Canelo (Wolves of Odin Book 3 set in AD 1043)
Jenni L. Walsh, The Call of the Wrens, Harper Muse (little-known story of the daring women who rode through war-torn Europe, carrying secrets on their shoulders)
Michael X. Wang, Lost in the Long March, The Overlook Press (novel set against the tense backdrop of the Long March and Mao’s rise to power in China, 1934)
R.E. Ward, Hot Keys, Bold Strokes (LGBTQ romance set in 1920s New York City)
Tori Whitaker, A Matter of Happiness, Lake Union (a cherished heirloom opens up a century of secrets. Dual timeline story set in present day and 1921)
Helen Yendall, The Highland Girls at War, HQ Digital (Scotland, 1942; the newest recruits in the Women’s Timber Corps are determined to do their bit for the war effort)
December 2022
Lyn Andrews, Goodbye, Mersey View, Headline (new saga evokes the ups and downs of life in the back streets of 1930s Liverpool)
Elizabeth Bailey, The Vengeance Trail, Sapere (the Lady Fan mystery series, book 9)
Stephen Preston Banks, Cashdown’s Folly, Five Star (saga of the Musgrave clan and a story of courage, resilience, triumphs, and losses among intrepid Washington Territory settlers)
Karen K. Brees, Crosswind, Black Rose (a search for a missing MI6 colleague and the microfilm he possesses leads Professor Katrin Nissen deep into the maelstrom of Nazi-controlled Berlin)
Kate Breslin, In Love’s Time, Bethany House (in summer of 1918, Captain Marcus Weatherford arrives in Russia on a secret mission to search for the Romanov tsarina and her son–who allegedly survived the murdering Bolsheviks)
Gina Buonaguro, The Virgins of Venice, HarperAvenue (novel set in 16th-century Venice, where one young noblewoman dares to resist the choices made for her: a marriage of strategic alliance or the convent)
Jerome Charyn, Big Red, No Exit (set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age, story reimagines the life of Rita Hayworth)
Géza Csáth (trans. Jascha Kessler), Opium and Other Stories, Europa Editions (rediscovered classic of Hungarian literature, collection depicts the darkest impulses of the human psyche against the backdrop of Europe’s moral and social decline on the eve of WWI)
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe Untitled, Harper (Spain, 1812. Richard Sharpe, the most brilliant but most wayward soldier in the British army, finds himself faced with an impossible task)
Iris Costello, The Secrets of Rochester Place, Penguin UK (mystery tells the story of two people, separated by time, yet connected through a Georgian house and the secrets within its walls. Dual timeline 1937 and 2020)
Jane Coverdale, Under a Cerulean Sky, One More Chapter (when two high society sisters find themselves down on their luck, an unexpected inheritance sends them on a voyage of discovery to face a wild destiny)
Paige Crutcher, The Lost Witch, St Martin’s Griffin (a witch discovers that finding your way home is sometimes the most perilous journey of all – set in 1922 and present)
Julie Daines, Meriden Park, Covenant (romantic rags-to-riches tale set in India and England)
Jennifer Delamere, Holding the Line, Bethany House (romance blossoms as a young widow joins forces with a man trying to protect his vulnerable niece from unscrupulous men)
Melanie Dickerson, Fortress of Snow, Thomas Nelson (sweet historical medieval romance, reimagining the Snow Queen tale)
Kevin Doherty, Landscape of Shadows, Oceanview (France, 1941. following the assassination of two German troopers, mayor Max Duval has to choose whether to surrender resistance fighter Sophie Carriere, or let innocent citizens be executed)
Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places, Bethany House (multi-period mystery in which a baby is discovered floating in a basket in 1807 Venice and a guild of artisans takes him in and raises him as a son who learns each of their trades)
Molly Fader, The Sunshine Girls, Graydon House (a dual-narrative set in 1967 & 2017, about two sisters who realize their mother isn’t who they’d always thought, when a legendary movie star shows up at her funeral)
María José Ferrada (trans. Elizabeth Bryer), How to Turn Into a Bird, Tin House (tale of coming of age, loss of innocence, and shifting perspectives that asks: how far outside of our lives must we go to really see things clearly?)
Michelle Gable, The Lipstick Bureau, Graydon House (inspired by one of the OSS’s few female operatives, Barbara Lauwers; novel set at OSS’s Morale Office in Rome, which was responsible for creating black propaganda and distributing it behind enemy lines)
Patty Smith Hall, On My Honor, Barbour (a girl scout troop joins the battle of the Atlantic during WWII)
William C. Hammond, To Distant Shores, McBooks (Captain Richard Cutler commands the new United States steam frigate Suwannee on a mission to the South Seas)
Matthew Harffy, Forest of Foes, Aries (Bernicia Chronicles #9 – Beobrand is caught between the intrigues of royalty and the Church)
Culley Holderfield, Hemlock Hollow, Regal House (bequeathed a cabin by her father, Caroline discovers a century-old journal in the attic and sets about exonerating the boy in the diary of a crime)
Mike Hollow, The Camden Murder, Allison & Busby (DI John Jago WWII murder mystery)
Sophia Holloway, Isabelle, Allison & Busby (historical romance by the author of Kingscastle)
Regina Jennings, Engaging Deception, Bethany House (romance abounds when a woman takes a job as a nanny to a widowed architect’s young children)
Adele Jordan, A Spy at Hampton Court, Sapere (espionage adventure set in Elizabethan London with a feisty female lead. Book 3 of 3)
Abraham Kawa, The Capricorn Murders, Sapere (first police procedural crime novel in a historical mystery thriller series ― the Bates and Briant Investigations —set in 1960s and 1970s London)
Julie Klassen, The Sisters of Sea View, Bethany House (when their father’s death leaves them impoverished, Sarah Summers convinces her sisters to open their seaside home to guests, the decision bringing a divide between love and duty)
Patrick Larsimont, The Lightning and the Few, Sapere (first book in the Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers series: historical adventures following a RAF pilot during the second world war)
Henriette Lazaridis, Terra Nova, Pegasus (haunting story of love, art, and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Antarctic exploration in 1910)
Amy Licence, Troubled Queen, Sapere (historical drama set at the court of King Henry VIII and featuring Anne Boleyn; second book in the Marwood Family Tudor Saga Series)
Chris Lloyd, Paris Requiem, Pegasus (World War II murder mystery & portrait of Paris under occupation)
Resoketswe Martha Manenzhe, Scatterlings, HarperVia (story of a multiracial family in 1927, when the Immorality Act is passed, prohibiting sexual congress between “Europeans” (white people) and “natives” (Black people))
Lee Martin, The Glassmaker’s Wife, Dzanc (1844 – historical crime thriller inspired by the true story of Betsey Reed, a woman who dabbled in herbal healing and was known about town as a witch)
L. J. Martin, Mud, Blood and Beer, Five Star (a collection of stories set in the Old West)
Aanchal Malhotra, The Book of Everlasting Things, Flatiron (1938; story of a Hindu perfumer and a Muslim calligrapher, who fall in love against the backdrop of Partition)
Bárbara Mujica, Miss del Río, Graydon House (biographical historical novel set over five decades about Mexican actress Dolores del Río, a proud Mexican woman who helped pioneer Mexican cinema’s Golden Age)
Andie Newton, A Child for the Reich, One More Chapter (story of a mother’s love battling against the determination of the Reich to create a pure Aryan race)
Noel O’Reilly, The Darlings of the Asylum, HQ (a novel of duty and desire, madness and sanity, about a woman locked in a Victorian asylum against her will)
Amita Parikh, The Circus Train, Putnam (a two-decade journey across Europe and a travelling circus where nothing is as it seems)
Glynis Peters, The Orphan’s letters, One More Chapter (a Red Cross nurse traverses the country during the second world with her only connection to loved ones being the arrival of the post)
Bianca Pitzorno, The Seamstress of Sardinia, Harper Perennial (a debut of manners, family, romance, and fashion set on the island of Sardinia at the end of the 19th century)
Pascal Quignard (trans. Chris Turner), The Tears, Seagull Books (novel about the turbulent lives of the twin sons of Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha, criss-crossed by contingent historical events which have shaped entire cultures)
Renee Ryan, The Secret Society of Salzburg, Love Inspired Trade (novel features an Englishwoman and an Austrian opera singer, through whose friendship and heroism countless lives are saved)
Sarah Shoemaker, Children of the Catastrophe, Harper Perennial (a family story of love and survival set against the backdrop of the massacre of Greeks and Armenians after World War I)
Jane Smiley, A Dangerous Business, Knopf (murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls)
Stephen Spotswood, Secrets Typed in Blood, Doubleday (Lillian and Will are hot on the trail of a serial killer whose murders are stranger than fiction: set in New York City, 1947)
John Straley, Blown by the Same Wind, Soho Crime (in 1968, a bumbling FBI agent, a tense hostage negotiation, and the disappearance of a young girl have the town of Cold Storage, Alaska, turned upside down)
Stephen Taylor, The Mystery of Rufford Abbey, Sapere (a medieval girl’s testimony holds the key to a present-day investigation)
Robert Temple, The Strange Courtship of Kathleen O’Dwyer, Five Star (in 1828, a woman heads west across the Great Plains, risking death among hostile Native Americans, brutish mountain men, and wild animals)
Darcie Wilde, The Secret of the Lost Pearls, Kensington (mystery series inspired by the novels of Jane Austen and set in 19th-century London)
Mary Wood, The Orphanage Girls Reunited, Pan (second installment of a saga series about an orphanage in London’s East End)
Kitty Zeldis, The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights, Harper (novel about three women in post-World War I New York City and the secrets they hold)
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18. Books are set in eras up to the early 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard and Susan Firghil Park using publisher descriptions and recommended age suitability.
Other than short excerpts, please remember to link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
Salima Alikhan, illus. Andrea Rossetto, Marika Marches for Equality, Stone Arch, Age 8-11 (a girl becomes involved with the Women’s Rights movement in 1970)
Salima Alikhan, illus. Jacqui Davis, Ollie Escapes the Great Chicago Fire, Stone Arch, Age 8-11 (an orphan in 1871 Chicago fights to escape with his sister and a young boy when fire breaks out)
Jeannine Atkins, Hidden Powers: Lise Meitner’s Call to Science, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (novel-in-verse recounting of the life of the pioneering Jewish woman physicist and her work during WWII)
Tracey Baptiste, illus. Tonya Engel, Because Claudette, Dial, Age 6-9 (picture book biography of the teen whose activism launched the Montgomery bus boycott)
Joseph Bruchac, Peacemaker, Dial BfYR, Age 9-12 (historical novel based on the creation of the Iroquois Confederacy)
Jessie Burton, Medusa, Bloomsbury YA, YA (feminist YA retelling of the Greek myth)
Selene Castrovilla, illus. E.B. Lewis, Seeking Freedom, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (the story of Fortress Monroe and the end of slavery in America)
Dhonielle Clayton, Shattered Midnight, Disney-Hyperion, YA (an 18-year-old girl arrives in Jazz Age New Orleans, fleeing a curse of her own magic; Book 2 of The Mirror series)
Jennieke Cohen, My Fine Fellow, HarperTeen, YA (a gender-bent take on My Fair Lady set in 1830s England)
Alice Faye Duncan, illus. Charly Palmer, Evicted! The Struggle for the Right to Vote, Calkins Creek, Age 9-12 (fictional account of the little-known Tennessee’s Fayette County Tent City Movement in the late 1950s)
Fabrice Erre, illus. Sylvain Savoia, Magical History Tour # 7: Gandhi, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (Annie and Nico go on a magical tour to explore India’s history and learn about Gandhi)
Also: Magical History Tour # 8: Vikings (April 2022) Magical History Tour # 9: The Titanic (June 2022); Magical History Tour # 10: The First Steps on the Moon (August 2022)
Jessica Gunderson, illus. Wendy Tan Shiau Wei, Audrey under the Big Top, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (in 1944, a girl must protect herself and her sister when fire breaks out at the circus; Girls Survive series)
Corey Ann Haydu, Lawless Spaces, S&S BfYR, YA (novel-in-verse about a girl delving into the journals of her grandmother and great-grandmother)
Leah Henderson, The Magic in Changing Your Stars, Sterling Children’s Books, Age 8-12 (journey back to 1939 Harlem in this time-travel adventure with an empowering message about believing in yourself and persevering)
June Hur, The Red Palace, Feiwel & Friends, YA (historical mystery set in Joseon (Korea), 1758)
Rachel Menard, Game of Strength and Storm, Flux, YA (with the aid of Castor & Pollux, two young women strive to accomplish a series of heroic, magical tasks to earn freedom for themselves and others)
Michael Morpurgo, illus. Benji Davies, The Puffin Keeper, Puffin Canada, Age 9-12 (a story of enduring friendship during and after WWII)
Pip Murphy, illus. Roberta Tedeschi, Christie and Agatha’s Detective Agency: A Discovery Disappears, Sweet Cherry, Age 7-9 (book 1 in the 1920s detective series that fictionalises discoveries and events of the 1920s with a whodunnit twist)
Jennifer A. Nielson, Words on Fire, Scholastic (Lithuania 1893 – story of a girl who discovers the strength of her people united in resisting oppression)
Linda Sue Park, A Single Shard, Oneworld, Age 8-12 (tale about finding belonging and beauty amidst hardship; set in 12th-century Korea)
Lesley Parr, When the War Came Home, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 10+ (WWI has ended, but the aftermath lingers for a young girl in an English village)
Gary Paulsen, Northwind, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR), Age 10-14 (set in a northern fishing community centuries ago, a young boy flees into the icy ocean in a canoe when plague reaches his village)
Amy Raphael, The Ship of Cloud and Stars, Orion, Age 9+ (it’s 1832 and Nico Cloud desperately wants to be an explorer, so she stows away on a scientist’s ship)
Dana Schwartz, Anatomy: A Love Story, Wednesday Books, YA (historical fantasy set in 1817 Edinburgh about a young woman trying to become a surgeon and the grave robber who helps her)
Neal Shusterman, illus. Andrés Vera Martínez, Courage to Dream, Graphix, Age 10-14 (novel explores one of the greatest atrocities in modern memory, delving into the core of what it means to face the extinction of everything and everyone you hold dear)
Nikki Shannon Smith, illus. Markia Jenai, Lena and the Burning of Greenwood, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (when racial tensions erupt into violence in 1920s Oklahoma, a girl and her family must flee for their lives; Girls Survive Series)
Lucy Strange, illus. Pam Smy, The Mermaid in the Millpond, Barrington-Stoke, Age 8-12 (in a 19th century English village a girl discovers a creature in the millpond)
Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illus. Yas Imamura, Love in the Library, Candlewick, Age 6-9 (picture book set in an internment camp where the United States cruelly detained Japanese Americans during WWII and based on true events)
Tamara Pizzol and Yolanda Gladden, illus. Keisha Morris, When the Schools Shut Down, HarperCollins, Age 4-8 (relating the untold experiences of an African American girl living in Farmville, Va., following the landmark civil rights case)
Charles Waters and Irene Latham, African Town, G.P. Putnam’s Sons BfYR, YA (novel in verse tells the story of the last Africans brought illegally as slaves to America in 1860)
Alison Weatherby, The Secrets Act, Chicken House, YA (story based on two young women who worked at Bletchley Park)
Brenda Woods, When Winter Robeson Came, Nancy Paulsen, Age 10-12 (in 1965 Los Angeles, children are thrust into the midst of the civil rights events and riots)
Genzaburo Yoshino (trans. Bruno Navasky), How Do You Live?, Puffin Canada, Age 8-12 (story of a young man who, like his namesake Copernicus, looks to the stars and uses his discoveries to answer the question of what kind of person he will grow up to be)
February 2022
Beth Anderson, illus. Susan Reagan, Revolutionary Prudence Wright, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (story of a real-life woman during the time of the American Revolutionary War who organized women to fight the British)
Avi, Loyalty, Clarion Books, Age 10-12 (story of a young Loyalist turned British spy navigating patriotism and personal responsibility during the lead-up to the War of Independence)
Livia Blackburne, Feather and Flame: The Queen’s Council #2, Disney-Hyperion, YA (continues the saga of Mulan in an Imperial-age China)
Linda Boroff, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, Santa Monica, YA (a young Jewish woman faces danger and persecution in 1940 Romania)
J.G. Bryan, Ventura and Zelzah, Santa Monica Press, YA (coming-of-age tale of four boys in suburban Los Angeles in the confusing, permissive 1970s)
Samantha Cohoe, Bright Ruined Things, Wednesday Books, YA (a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Tempest, set on a magic-imbued island in a 1920s world)
William Dumas, illus. Rhian Brynjolson, The Gift of the Little People: A Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Ithiniwak Story, HighWater, Age 9-11 (story of the Rocky Cree tribe’s first disastrous contact with Hudson Bay that led to sickness, and one member’s quest to obtain a cure)
Phil Earle, When the Sky Falls, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 9-11 (a boy and a gorilla create an unbelievable bond in this WWII tale for young readers)
Margarita Engle, Rima’s Rebellion, Atheneum BfYR, YA (in 1920s Cuba, a young woman falls in love while finding the courage to defend women’s voting)
Laura Gehl, illus. Timothy Banks, The Hiking Viking, Capstone, Age 4-7 (picture book story of a young Viking who prefers hiking to fighting)
Kate Hannigan, illus. Rebecca Gibbon, Nellie vs. Elizabeth: Two Daredevil Journalists’ Breakneck Race Around the World, Calkins Creek, Age 7-9 (real-life adventure story in picture book form)
Michael Levanthal, illus. Laura Catalan, The Chocolate King, Apples & Honey, Age 5-8 (set in France in the mid-1600’s, an intergenerational story of one family’s part in the migration of chocolate from the Americas to Spain and further)
Amina Luqman-Dawson, Freewater, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 8-12 (two enslaved children in the Antebellum south escape from a plantation and journey towards freedom)
Kelly McWilliams, Mirror Girls, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (in the Civil Rights era, two biracial twin sisters separated at birth discover their lives joined by family secrets and a curse)
Eva Wong Nava, The House of Little Sisters, Penguin Random House SEA, YA (a supernatural expose of a past system of indentured servitude that has a tight grip on Singapore and Malaysia)
Carolyn Tara O’Neil, Daughters of a Dead Empire, Roaring Brook, YA (in a re-telling of the Anastasia story, two girls flee across 1918 Russia to escape the Bolsheviks)
Betsy R. Rosenthal, When Lightnin’ Struck, Kar-Ben, Age 9-13 (after his father’s death, a boy in 1928 Odessa, Texas struggles to uncover a family secret)
Alisha Sevigny, The Oracle of Avaris, Dundurn YR, Age 9-12 (third book in adventure series set in Ancient Egypt)
Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh (+illus.), Squire, Quill Tree, YA (historical fantasy in which a young knight in training has to choose between loyalties)
Dan Smith, Nisha’s War, Chicken House, Age 9-13 (historical ghost story, full of adventure, grief, guilt, forgiveness and belonging. Set in Malaya, 1942)
Joel Edward Stein, illus. Sara Ugolotti, Raquela’s Seder, Kar-Ben, Age 5-9 (in Inquisition-era Spain, a young girl longs to celebrate a Passover seder)
Rosiee Thor, Fire Becomes Her, Scholastic, YA (in a Jazz Age-inspired world, a politically savvy teen must juggle her ambitions with her heart)
Gita Trelease, Everything That Burns, Flatiron, YA (in a revolutionary-era Paris where magic is outlawed, a young woman strives to understand her own dark magic. Enchantee #2)
Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem (trans. Kristen Gehrman), Ironhead, or Once a Young Lady, Levine Querido, YA (early 1800s – story of a fierce renegade and the silly men who try to bring her down)
Shirley Vernick, Ripped Away, Fitzroy, YA (when Abe consults a fortune teller, he and his crush Mitzy are swept back to Victorian London in the times of Jack the Ripper, and find their fates tied to the murders)
Gloria Wesley, For King and Country, Formac, YA (in WWI, a young man volunteers for Canada’s first and only all-black military regiment)
Alex Wheatle, Kemosha of the Caribbean, Black Sheep, YA (in 1668, a young Jamaican girl, Kemosha, secures her freedom from enslavement and finds her true self while sailing to Panama with the legendary Captain Morgan)
March 2022
Ayesha Harruna Attah, The Deep Blue Between, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (after a raid on their West African village in 1892, twin sisters Hassana and Husseina are torn apart)
Etan Basseri, illus. Rashin Kheiriyeh, A Persian Passover, Kalaniot Books, Age 4-8 (in 1950s Iran, two children prepare for their Passover celebration)
M. A. Bennett, The Ship of Doom, Welbeck Flame, Age 10+ (Greenwich, London, 1894; members of the Butterfly Club travel to 1912 to board a ship sailing from Southampton to New York)
Meghan P. Browne, (illus. Brooke Smart), Dorothy the Brave, Viking BfYR, Age 4-8 (picture book biography of Rosie the Riveter and how women worked to keep America safe)
J. G. Bryan, Ventura and Zelzah, Santa Monica, YA (coming-of-age story of a teenager in 1970s suburban Los Angeles)
Alexis Castellanos, illus. Alexis Castellanos, Isla to Island, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (a young girl in the 1950s struggles to adjust when she is sent from Cuba to Brooklyn; wordless graphic novel)
Christopher Denise, Knight Owl, Christy Ottaviano, Age 4-8 (a determined young owl builds strength and confidence in this medieval picture book)
Jill Esbaum, illus. Stacy Innerst, Jack Knight’s Brave Flight, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (story of a daring pilot, who in 1921 flew his biplane into a blizzard over America’s heartland and saved the US Air Mail Service)
Daniel Fehr, illus. Monika Vaicenaviciene, Ella in the Garden of Giverny, Prestel Junior, Age 4-8 (story of Claude Monet’s friendship with a young child in his famous garden)
Béatrice Fontanel, illus. Vanessa Hié, The Lady and the Unicorn, Princeton Architectural, Age 8-12 (story with characters and scenes from the medieval Unicorn Tapestries)
Kallie George, illus. Abigail Halpin, Anne’s Tragical Tea Party, Tundra, Age 8-12 (retold story from Anne of Green Gables)
Annelise Grey, Circus Maximus: Rivals on the Track, Zephyr, Age 9+ (Dido is the only girl ever to have won victory at the Circus Maximus, but now the whole Empire wants to know her true identity)
L. M. Elliott, Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves, Katherine Tegen, Age 8-12 (captures life on the US home front during World War II)
Dee Hahn, The Grave Thief, Puffin Canada, Age 9-12 (in a 19th-century world, a young grave thief is caught up in a royal heist)
A.M. Howell, The Secret of the Treasure Keepers, Usborne, Age 8-12 (historical mystery of stolen treasure, friendship and deep courage set in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War)
Lizz Huerta, The Lost Dreamer, FSG BfYR, YA (fantasy inspired by ancient Mesoamerica)
Shana Keller, illus. Margeaux Lucas, The Peach Pit Parade, Sleeping Bear, Age 4-8 (during WWI a young girl finds an unusual way to help the war effort)
Lillie Lainoff, One for All, FSG BfYR, YA (a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, in which a girl with a chronic illness trains as a Musketeer, and uncovers secrets, sisterhood, and self-love)
Véronique Massenot, illus. Élise Mansot, Paint Brushes for Frida, Prestel Junior, Age 4-8 (picture book based on the life of Frida Kahlo)
Cory McCarthy, illus. Ekua Holmes, Hope Is an Arrow, Candlewick, Age 6-9 (picture book story of poet Khalil Gibran)
Joy McCullough, Caroline Tung Richmond, Tess Sharpe, Jessica Spotswood, Great or Nothing, Delacorte, YA (Little Women reimagined as set in 1942, with separate authors writing each of the four March sisters’ points-of-view)
Hilary McKay, The Swallows’ Flight, Macmillan’s Childrens, Age 9-11 (World War II story of family and friendship on opposite sides of a devastating conflict. Companion novel to The Skylarks’ War)
David Barclay Moore, illus. John Holyfield, Carrimebac, the Town That Walked, Candlewick, Age 6-9 (story of how the freed Black citizens of Walkerton, Georgia learned to cope with ongoing racism after the Civil War)
Katrina Nannestad, We Are Wolves, Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy, Age 10-14 (based on the Wolfskinder, the German children left to fend for themselves at the end of WWII)
Anne Nesbet, Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (when a publicity stunt goes wrong, 12-yr-old Darleen, star of the silent film era, must defeat villains both on screen and off)
Jennifer A. Nielsen, Lines of Courage, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (weaves together the stories of five kids living through World War I, each of whom holds the key to the others’ futures)
Sonia Nimr (trans. M. Lynx Qualey), Thunderbird: Book One, Univ. Texas Press, Age 11-13 (a modern-day Palestinian girl must travel to different time periods to retrieve four sacred feathers. Historical fantasy)
Matt Phelan, The Sheep, the Rooster, and the Duck, Greenwillow, Age 8-12 (middle-grade adventure full of secrets, hijinks, and reimagined historical events)
Andrea Davis Pinkney, illus. Brian Pinkney, Loretta Little Looks Back, Little, Brown YR, Age 8-12 (members of the Little family each present the vivid story of their young lives, beginning in a cotton field in 1927 and ending at the presidential election of 1968)
Ransom Riggs, The Desolations of Devil’s Acre, Dutton BfYR, YA (sixth and final book in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series)
Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage, Razorbill, YA (dual-narrative coming-of-age told by two contemporary Muslim-American teenagers, including a past perspective from a parent in Pakistan)
Aminah Mae Safi, Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix, Feiwel and Friends, YA (in 12th century Jerusalem a band of rat-tag misfits use their cunning to foil the usurping Queen Isabella)
Jenni L. Walsh, Over and Out, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (story of a young girl from Cold War East Berlin forced to spy for the secret police… but who is determined to escape to freedom)
Nancy Werlin, Healer and Witch, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (Sylvie and her mother and grandmother are trusted healers in their medieval French village, though some whisper they deal in more than herbs and medicines)
Eloise Williams, illus. August Ro, The Tide Singer, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (in the wake of a tempest hitting her town, Morwenna is left to take care of a shipwrecked stranger who appears to be no ordinary girl)
Kip Wilson, The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin, Versify, YA (in 1930s Berlin, at the cusp of war, an orphaned teenager finds a job as a cabaret singer)
Amélie Wen Zhao, Crimson Reign, Delacorte, YA (conclusion of trilogy in which a princess, loosely based on the Russian princess Anastasia, struggles to liberate her people and regain her lost powers)
April 2022
Caroline Arnold, illus. Rachell Sumpter, Keeper of the Light: Juliet Fights the Fog, Cameron Books, Age 4-8 (picture book story of Juliet Nichols, lightkeeper on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay in the early 1900s)
Annette Leblanc Cate (+illus.), A Dragon Used to Live here, Candlewick, Age 7-10 (tongue-in-cheek story of a brother and sister in a medieval-style fantasy world complete with a castle and a dragon)
Dominique Conil (trans. Alison L. Strayer) No to Fear, Triangle Square, Age 10-14 (fictional story of the fearless, internationally recognized journalist who was assassinated for believing that ‘words can save lives’)
Melissa de la Cruz, Cinder & Glass, G. P. Putnam’s Sons BfYR, YA (a “Cinderella” retelling set in 17th-century Versailles)
Phil Earle, When the Sky Falls, Bloomsbury Children’s, Age 9-11 (a boy and a gorilla create a close bond in this WWII tale)
Debby Dahl Edwardson, illus. Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, Blessing’s Bead (c.2009), Lee & Low, Age 10-14 (dual timeline story of two young women generations apart in northern Alaska)
Sarah Ellis, illus. Nancy Vo, As Glenn as Can Be, Groundwood, Age 3-6 (picture book story of the pianist Glenn Gould’s life from boyhood in the 1940s through his recording career)
Shea Fontana, ed. Rebecca Taylor, illus. Agness Garbowska, Kenzie’s Kingdom, Wonderbound, Age 9-11 (Kenzie must help a squire get back to the past in this time-traveling fantasy adventure! Graphic format)
Fawzia Gilani-Williams & Bridget Hodder, illus. Harshad Marathe, The Button Box, Kar Ben, Age 8-13 (Ava and Nadeem discover that a button that will take them back in time to ancient Morocco, where Nadeem’s ancestor is running for his life)
Rachel Hausfater (trans. Alison L. Strayer), No to Despair, Triangle Square, Age 10-14 (portrait of the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and its young leader Mordechai Anielewicz)
Amy Hest, The Summer We Found the Baby, Candlewick, Age 10+ (set during World War II, novel relays the events of one extraordinary summer from three points of view)
Linda Williams Jackson, The Lucky Ones, Candlewick, Age 8-12 (1967 – story of Ellis Earl, who dreams of a real house, food enough for the whole family—and to be someone)
Adiba Jaigirdar, A Million to One, HarperTeen, YA (high-stakes heist in which four girls team up to steal a priceless jewel-encrusted book on board the infamous ship. Lesbian romance)
Ji-li Jiang, illus. by Nadia Hsieh, Eighteen Vats of Water, Creston, Age 7-11 (a boy in 4th century China wants to be a great calligrapher like his father)
Rukhsana Khan, illus. Ayesha Gamiet, The Clever Wife, Wisdom Tales, Age 4-8 (based on a traditional folktale from Kyrgyzstan; story of a spirited young heroine whose wit and courage draw the attention of the ruling Khan)
Beth Kephart, illus. Melodie Stacey, Beautiful Useful Things, Cameron Books, Age 4-8 (poetic picture book story about the life and work of William Morris)
Matt Koceich, Imagine: 6 Epic Adventure Stories for Kids, Barbour Kidz, Age 8-12 (retelling of six religious tales from Biblical times)
Amanda West Lewis, These Are Not the Words, Groundwood, Age 9-12 (semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel set in 1960s New York City)
Ian Lewis, The Balland of Billie Bean, Fitzroy Books, Age 9-12 (adventure set in London and California in the early 1900s)
Katherine Locke, This Rebel Heart, Knopf BfYR, YA (tale set amid the 1956 Hungarian revolution in post-WWII Communist Budapest)
D.M. Mahoney, Frances Finkel and the Passenger Pigeon, Red Cardinal, YA (frustrated with her responsibilities of running the household, aviator Fran flies out to the wilderness and winds up rescuing an injured pigeon that she trains to deliver messages)
Sonia Manzano, Coming Up Cuban, Scholastic Press, YA (story of four children who must carve out a path for themselves in the wake of Fidel Castro’s rise to power)
Amanda McCrina, The Silent Unseen, FSG BfYR, YA (historical novel of suspense and intrigue about a teenage girl who risks everything to save her missing brother; set in 1944)
Michelle Paver, Wolf Bane, Zephyr, Age 8-12 (in the ninth and final Wolf Brother story, Wolf is swept out to sea and hunted by an ice demon bent on eating his soul)
Tirzah Price, Sense and Second-Degree Murder, HarperTeen, YA (second book of the Jane Austen Murder Mystery series)
Onjali Q. Rauf, The Lion Above the Door, Orion Children’s, Age 9-11 (story about missing histories and the concept of a universal family: includes themes of historical racism & contains historical photos from WWII)
Mattie Richardson, Blue Skies West, Appaloosy Books, Age 8-12 (series that tells the story of events in American history–from the horse’s point of view!)
Michael Rosen, illus. Michael Foreman, Please Write Soon, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (inspired by a true family story, an account of perseverance, love and hope in wartime)
Liam Francis Walsh, Red Scare, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (graphic adventure featuring a clever 11-year-old girl who must, against all odds, protect her family and town during the height of the communist “red scare”)
Jill Paton Walsh, A Parcel of Patterns (c. 1983), Vintage Children’s Classics, Age 9-12 (based on the true events of the village of Eyam — a story of the plague of 1665)
Betty Yee, Gold Mountain, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (working on the Transcontinental Railroad promises a fortune―for those who survive)
Benjamin Zephaniah, illus. Onyinye Iwu, We Sang Across the Sea: The Empire Windrush and Me, Scholastic, Age 4-6 (picture book about the voyage of HMT Empire Windrush)
May 2022
Avi, Gold Rush Girl, Candlewick, Age 10-14 (1848, a girl stows away aboard ship following her father to Gold Rush & gets involved in a dangerous search for her kidnapped brother)
Alfreda Bearcrack-Algeo, The Land Grab: Legend of the Big Heart, 7th Generation, Age 8-12 (in 1929, a Lakota boy fights to survive and help protect his family’s land)
M. A. Bennett, The Ship of Doom, Welbeck, Age 8-12 (a girl is sent on her aunt’s time travel machine from 1894 London to 1912, on a mission to rescue Marconi from sinking on the Titanic)
Meg Caddy, Slipping the Noose, Text YR (imagines Anne Bonny’s subsequent exploits and whereabouts, after history left her languishing in a Jamaican jail when Calico Jack was hanged)
Eve Nadel Catarevas, illus. Martina Peluso, Rena Glickman, Queen of Judo, Kar Ben, Age 5-9 (fictional picture book biography)
William Durbin, Barbara Durbin, The Hidden Room, Lake Vermilion Press, YA (reveals little-known historical details of Ukraine, including Stalin’s brutal pre-war campaign of forced starvation)
Lindsay Eagar, The Patron Thief of Bread, Candlewick, Age 10-14 (adventure of street urchins set in medieval times)
Margarita Engle, Singing with Elephants, Viking BfYR, Age 8-12 (novel in verse about the friendship between a young girl and the poet Gabriela Mistral)
Nick Esposito, illus. Ricardo Tokumoto, Brave Like Jackie, Bushel & Peck, Age 6-10 (Lucky, Rudy, and Red take another trip back in time for a courageous adventure with Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player to play Major League Baseball)
Also: Sweet Like Milton (visit with Milton Hershey) Play on Like Ludwig (visit with Beethoven)
Alex Field, illus. Peter Carnavas, Mr. Darcy, New Frontier, Age 4-7 (picture book re-telling of the story of Jane Austen’s story with Mr. Darcy as a duck)
Deborah Lerme Goodman, illus. Suzanne Nugent, The Flight of the Unicorn, Chooseco, Age 9-12 (in a fantasy medieval Scotland, the reader tries to locate a missing person while raising magical creatures)
Rafael Grossman and Anna Olswanger, illus. Yevgenia Nayberg, The Visit, Graphic Arts, Age 8-12 (novel depicting a story from 1965 when an American rabbi visited the Soviet Union)
Rachel Hausfater (trans. Alison L. Strayer), Mordechai Anielewicz: No to Despair, Triangle Square, Age 10+ (portrait of the last days of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and its young leader)
Marianne Hering, Islands and Enemies, Tyndale House, Age 7-12 (time-traveling children journey to Magellan’s era)
Isabel Ibañez, Together We Burn, Wednesday books, YA (romantic fantasy adventure inspired by medieval Spain)
Terry Catasús Jennings, illus. Raúl Colón, The Little House of Hope, Neal Porter, Age 4-8 (story of a girl arriving in the US with her family from Cuba, based on the author’s experience in 1961)
Kendall Kulper, Murder for the Modern Girl, Holiday House, YA (romantic romp that captures the extravagance of the Roaring Twenties and the dangers of vigilante justice)
Patrice Lawrence, illus. Camilla Sucre, Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush, Nosy Crow, Age 4-6 (debut picture book help ensure that the struggles and achievements of the Windrush generation are never forgotten)
Michael Leali, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (an epistolary debut about one boy’s attempts to find himself in history)
Witold Makowiecki (trans. Tom Pinch), Out of the Lion’s Maw (c.1946), Mondrala Press, YA (an elderly Zoroastrian priest and his young teen apprentice slip their jailors in Carthage and race across the Mediterranean to fulfill their mission, pursued by agents and assassins)
Tracey Mayhew, illus. Mike Phillips, The Legends of King Arthur: Lancelot, Sweet Cherry, Age 7-9 (retelling of the Arthurian legends, adapted and illustrated to introduce children aged 7+ to classic folklore)
Also: The Quest for the Holy Grail (June), The Death of Merlin (July), The Fall of Camelot (August)
PJ McIlvaine, Violet Yorke, Gilded Girl: Ghosts in the Closet, Darkstroke, Age 8-12 (supernatural historical fantasy set in 1912)
Kim Oclon, The War on All Fronts, Trism, YA (an LGBTQ coming-of-age story of two young men, set in the Vietnam War era)
Jenny O’Neill, The Freethinker’s Daughter, Old Cove, Age 10-13 (explores a devastating year in the life of a young girl in 1833 Kentucky)
Monique Polak, What World is Left, Orca, YA (novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s mother, who was imprisoned in Theresienstadt during World War II)
R. M. Romero, The Ghosts of Rose Hill, Peachtree Teen, YA (a teenage girl becomes involved with the mystery of a boy who died one hundred years ago)
Samantha San Miguel, Spineless, Union Square, Age 8-12 (in Gilded-Age Florida, a boy discovers intrigue and mysterious cryptids in the swamps)
Arnon Z. Shorr, illus. Joshua M. Edelglass, José and the Pirate Captain Toledano, Kar-Ben, Age 8-12 (coming-of-age of a young refugee who forms a powerful bond with the mysterious Pirate Captain Toledano)
Ali Standish, Yonder, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (a boy on the home front of World War II must solve the mystery of his best friend’s disappearance)
Michael Sweater and Josue Cruz, Puppy Knight: Den of Deception, Silver Sprockett, Age 7-11 (humorous story of a young knight and his apprentice, told in comic book format)
Lauren Tarshis, illus. Berat Pekmezci, I Survived the Attack of the Grizzles, 1967, Scholastic Graphix, Age 8-12 (graphic format adaptation)
Kimberlee Turley, Circus of Shadows, Sweetwater, YA (seventeen-year-old Gracie Hart is swept into the supernatural secrets surrounding Vincenzio’s Circus Troupe & Menagerie)
Wendelin Van Draanen, The Peach Rebellion, Knopf BfYR, YA (set in post WWII America, a coming-of-age story of two young women, best friends in childhood, and the changes in their worlds)
Shelley Wilson, The Last Princess, BHC Press, YA (Anglo-Saxon tale of a girl’s journey to fully embrace a new world, as she grows into her own as a warrior)
Lauren Wolk, My Own Lightning, Dutton BfYR, Age 10-12 (returns to World War II–era Western Pennsylvania in sequel to Wolf Hollow)
Jane Yolen, illus. Alida Massari, Mrs. Noah’s Doves, Kar Ben, Age 5-9 (when the flood comes there is a special mission for Mrs. Noah’s doves)
June 2022
Sasha Alsberg, Breaking Time, Inkyard, YA (a young woman in contemporary times meets a Scotsman from centuries ago, and learns she is a Pillar of Time, and in danger)
Martha Attema, When the Dikes Breached, Ronsdale, YA (a young woman is caught between societal expectations and her own heart in the aftermath of the 1953 Netherlands flooding)
Avi, City of Magic, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (1492 Italy, a magician and a servant boy are sent on a quest to Venice to find a mysterious manuscript that describes a new type of bookkeeping)
Tony Bradman, illus. Tania Rex, Bruno and Frida, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (in East Prussia, 1945, a friendship forms between a young German boy and a Russian bomber dog)
Peter Bunzl, The Clockwork Queen, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (when her father is imprisoned in the dungeons of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg by Empress Catherine the Great, Sophie must help him escape)
Debra Amirault Camelin, Nathalie: An Acadian’s Tale of Triumph and Tragedy, Ronsdale, YA (1755; a young French-Canadian woman’s expulsion from Novia Scotia, and deportation by the British, separates her from her betrothed)
Emi Watanabe Cohen, The Lost Ryū, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (debut fantasy set in post-WWII Japan finds 10-year-old Kohei searching for the truth about his family history)
Lesley Crewe, Nosy Parker, Nimbus, Age 12-14 (a young would-be detective searches for the truth about her mother in 1960s Montreal)
Kat Dunn, Glorious Poison, Zephyr, YA (conclusion to the 18th-century French Revolution trilogy)
Phil Earle, While the Storm Rages, Andersen Press, Age 9+ (when the government advises people to have their pets put down in readiness for war, thousands of people do as they are told, while young Noah tries to save as many as he can)
Lindsay Galvin, My Friend the Octopus, Chicken House, Age 9-12 (Victorian mystery with a touching connection between a young girl and an octopus at its heart)
Melissa Grey, Valiant Ladies, Feiwel & Friends, YA (two teen vigilantes set off on an investigation to expose corruption and deliver justice)
Jim Grimsley, The Dove in the Belly, Arthur A. Levine, YA (follows two young gay men navigating a complex romance in late 70s North Carolina)
Jenny Laird, Mary Pope Osborne, illus. Kelly Matthews & Nichole Matthews, Mummies in the Morning, RH BfYR, Age 6-9 (get whisked back to Ancient Egypt with Jack and Annie)
Tanya Landman, The Battle of Cable Street, Barrington Stoke, YA (story explores the rise of antisemitic fascism in 1930s London)
Paul McHugh, Splinter, Bronzeville Books (WWII story in which two teenagers join the Resistance to fight the Nazi invasion of Norway)
Brad Meltzer, illus. Christopher Eliopoulos, I am Dolly Parton, Rocky Pond Books, Age 5-9 (fictional biography of the famous singer)
Mikael, Bootblack, Papercutz, YA (an American soldier, the only survivor of his WWII unit, immerses himself in the memories of his New York life in 1935)
Jenny Elder Moke, Rise of the Snake Goddess, Disney-Hyperion, YA (a young detective, in a 1920s world with mythic elements, travels to Greece to solve an archeological mystery; 2nd in Samantha Knox series)
Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz, A Secret Princess, Putnam BfYR, YA (reimagining of The Secret Garden and The Little Princess in a Victorian-inspired romance)
Marcia Vaughan, Abbie Against the Storm, Beyond Words, Age 6-10 (fictionalized account of a young girl’s triumph over a savage storm based on an actual incident that took place in the winter of 1856)
Shirley Reva Vernick, The Sky We Shared, Lee & Low/Cincos Puntos, YA (two girls, one in southern Japan & one in rural Oregon are inextricably linked by war)
Cao Wenxuan, Dragonfly Eyes, Candlewick, Age 9-12 (multigenerational saga takes the reader from 1920s France to a ravaged postwar Shanghai and through the convulsions of the Cultural Revolution)
J. T. Williams, The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries: Drama and Danger, Farshore, Age 8-12 (story set in 18th-century London and inspired by real Black British historical figures)
Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, illus. Daniel Sousa, Kapaemahu, Kokila, Age 4-8 (picture book of 15th century indigenous legend of four spirits coming to Hawaii, bringing gifts of science and healing)
Andrew Young, Paula Young Shelton, illus. Gordon James, Just Like Jesse Owen, Scholastic, Age 3-5 (story based on Ambassador Andrew Young’s early life in 1930s New Orleans in which a boy is taught by his parents how to respond to racism from the inspiration of Jesse Owens)
July 2022
Marcus Alexis, Thomas the Baker & the Fire of London, Cranthorpe Millner, Age 5-7 (the Great Fire of London in 1666, told in rhyme and pictures)
Gonzalo Alvarez, Piyoman and the Sun Warriors, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (graphic novel follows the journey of a timid boy who stumbles into a war-torn Aztec underworld where dangerous Legends come to life)
Serena Blasco, illus. Tanya Gold, Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels, Andrews McMeel, Age 9-12 (London 1889; when Sherlock receives a mysterious package, he knows he’ll need Enola’s help to decipher its meaning. Three mysteries included)
Terry Lee Caruthers, The Faithful Dog, Black Rose, Age 8-12 (based on a true story and the history of the Fifty-Eighth Illinois, novel illustrates the unwavering bond between dogs and their humans)
J. C. Cervantes, Fractured Path, Disney-Hyperion, YA (historical fantasy set in 1960s San Francisco. The Mirror book three)
Marita Conlon-McKenna, A Girl Called Blue (c. 2003), O’Brien Press, Age 10+ (a young girl in an orphanage is desperate to find out her real identity)
Nick Esposito, illus. Ricardo Tokumoto, Kind Like Mr. Rogers (The Good Guys Agency #1), Bushel & Peck, Age 6-10 (three friends travel back in back in time to talk to Mr. Rogers, as a role model of an honorable man)
Anna Fargher, The Fire Cats of London, Macmillan Children’s, Age 9-11 (two young wildcats seek to escape London and return to the forest, but are caught in the Great Fire of 1666)
Emily Gale and Nova Weetman, Elsewhere Girls, Text Publishing, Age 9-12 (two young swimmers, one from modern-day Melbourne, the other from early 1900s Sydney, swap places)
Jamila Gavin, Never Forget You, Farshore, YA (based on a true story, a WW2 historical fiction novel of heroism and female friendship)
Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows, My Imaginary Mary, HarperTeen, YA (a young Mary Shelley, and Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, learn their parents are actually powerful fae)
Anna Rose Johnson, The Star That Always Stays, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (coming-of-age story about an introspective and brilliant Native American heroine, set in 1914)
Andrew Komarnyckyj, The Revenge of Joe Wild, Santa Monica, YA (adventure set against the backdrop of the Civil War, with themes involving racism, sexuality, and misinformation)
Elizabeth Laird, The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown, Macmillan Children’s, Age 9-11 (inspired by the author’s own childhood growing up in post-war London)
Kieran Larwood, illus. Sam Usher, Carnival of the Hunted, Faber & Faber, YA (second of the Carnival series; story of a group of young misfits struggling to survive against a gothic Victorian society)
Karen McCombie, illus. Anneli Bray, Fagin’s Girl, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (Fagin’s infamous gang lives again in this Oliver-Twist-inspired adventure)
Caroline Starr Rose, Miraculous, Putnam BfYR, Age 8-12 (a traveling medicine show promises to cure all, but two kids learn it takes more than faith to fix things that are broken)
Tasha Suri, What Souls Are Made Of, Feiwel & Friends, YA (reimagining of Wuthering Heights set in Yorkshire, North of England, 1786, with multicultural protagonists)
Jonathan Tulloch, Cuckoo Summer, Andersen Press, Age 10-12 (when two children find a wounded Nazi airman in the woods, it starts a chain of events that leads to the uncovering of secrets and a summer neither child will ever forget)
Serena Valentino, Never, Never, Disney-Hyperion, YA (a spin-off of Peter Pan, in which one of the Lost Boys, rescued by his parents, yearns to return to Neverland)
Michael Wenberg, Elizabeth’s Song, Beyond Words, Age 4-8 (historical-fiction based on the young life of the noted African American folksinger, Elizabeth “Libba” Cotton)
Diane Zahler, Daughter of the White Rose, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (based on the royal scandal of the princes in the tower in 1483)
August 2022
Sufiya Ahmed, Rosie Raja: Churchill’s Spy, Bloomsbury, Age 8-12 (coming-of-age WWII adventure about the French resistance and their British allies)
Barbara Ciletti, illus. Maria Cristina Pritelli, Sashiko, Creative Editions, Age 8-11 (picture book celebrating the elegant textile art of sashiko, an embroidery style which originated as a way to strengthen the jackets of fishermen)
Natasha Deen, illus. Wendy Tan, Millie and the Great Drought, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (can Millie and her family survive the Dust Bowl and the hardships of the Great Depression? Graphic format. Girls Survive series)
Judith Eagle, illus. Kim Geyer, The Accidental Stowaway, Faber & Faber, Age 8-12 (a nautical adventure set in 1910)
Timothée de Fombelle (trans. Holly James), illus. François Place, The Wind Rises, Europa Editions, Age 8-12 (from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean, first installment in the Alma trilogy tells a story of hope, perseverance, and love in 1786)
Claudia Friddell, illus. by Jeremy Holmes, Road Trip: Camping with the Four Vagabonds, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (join Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs on their pioneering camping trips during the early 1900s)
Julie Gilbert, illus. Wendy Tan, Maddy and the Monstrous Storm, Stone Arch, Age 8-12 (Girls Survive series graphic novel account of the Minnesota Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888)
Danielle Greendeer, Anthony Perry, Alexis Bunten, illus. Gary Meeches Sr, Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story, Charlesbridge, Age 3-7 (two kids from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe learn the story of the first Thanksgiving)
Bryce Moore, Don’t Go to Sleep, Sourcebooks Fire, YA (in 1918, in the midst of the chaos of the Spanish Influenza outbreak, people are being killed by a lone man with an axe)
Pip Murphy, illus. Roberta Tedeschi, Christie and Agatha’s Detective Agency: Of Mountains and Motors, Sweet Cherry, Age 7-11 (2nd book featuring 1920s-era twin sisters Christie and Agatha)
Tom Palmer, Resist, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (life under wartime occupation, in a story inspired by the childhood of Hollywood legend Audrey Hepburn)
Skyler Schrempp, Three Strike Summer, Margaret K. McElderry, Age 8-12 (novel set in the 1930s about a strong-willed girl who finds her voice in a tale of moxie, and determination to thrive despite the odds)
Francesco Sedita, Prescott Seraydarian, illus. Steve Hamaker, The Legend of the Lost Boy, Viking BfYR, Age 8-12 (members of the Pathfinders Society are transported fifty years back in time and plunged into mysterious events)
Nancy Springer, Mickey George, illus. Giorgia Sposito, Enola Holmes, Mycroft’s Dangerous Game, Legendary Comics, YA (after a mysterious group of anarchists abducts her brother Mycroft, Enola investigates his disappearance in hopes of rescuing him)
Bethan Woollvin, Three Little Vikings, Peachtree, Age 5-9 (picture book fairy tale retelling about three brave and rebellious Viking girls)
September 2022
Kwame Alexander, The Door of No Return, Little, Brown BfYR, Age 10+ (first book in a trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the odyssey of an African family)
Claire Andrews, Blood of Troy, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (Daphne must use her wits and her precarious relationship with Apollo to find a way to keep her queen safe, stop the war, and uncover the true reason the gods led her to Troy)
Jabari Asim, illus. A.G. Ford, Me and Muhammad Ali, Nancy Paulsen, Age 4-7 (a little boy’s joyous encounter with boxing champion Muhammad Ali is everything he’s dreamed of)
William Augel, Young Agatha Christie, BiG, Age 8-12 (graphic novel of the famous mystery writer’s imagined detecting adventures as a child)
Randi Barrow, Finding Zasha, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (a daring WWII story set in 1941)
Andrew Beattie, The Secret in the Tower, Sweet Cherry, Age 8-12 (historical fiction book based on the famous story of The Princes in the Tower)
Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, illus. Vesper Stamper, Sisterhood of Sleuths, Christy Ottaviano, Age 9-14 (a mystery that pays homage to the 1930s origins of the classic Nancy Drew stories)
Kim Taylor Blakemore, The Deception, Lake Union, YA (New Hampshire, 1877; a celebrated child medium, now penniless, her guiding spirits gone, is desperate to regain her reputation―but doing so means putting her faith in deceiving others)
Kirsten Boie (trans. David Henry Wilson), Alhambra, Arctis, YA (on a school trip to Spain a boy stumbles across a gateway through time that send him to 1492, in the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition)
Ruby Bridges, illus. Nikkolas Smith, I Am Ruby Bridges, Orchard Books, Age 4-8 (story of the day in 1960 when Ruby became the first child to integrate the school system, told from her perspective as a six-yr-old girl)
Alice Brière-Haquet (trans. Emma Ramadan), Phalaina, Levine Querido, Age 8-12 (tale of a mysterious young orphan in 19th-century London)
Adrianna Cuevas, Cuba in my Pocket, Square Fish, Age 8-12 (novel about a 12-yr-old boy who leaves his family in Cuba, in 1961, to immigrate to the U.S. by himself, based on the author’s family history)
John DeMont, illus. Belle DeMont, To Boston With Love, MacIntyre Purcell, Age 5+ (commemoration story of Boston’s response to the December 1917 Halifax explosion)
Alda P. Dobbs, The Other Side of the River, Sourcebooks YR, Age 8-12 (a novel about building a new life in America after escaping the Mexican Revolution)
Kailin Duan (trans. Jeremy Tiang), Nine Color Deer, Levine Querido, Age 4-8 (story about generosity and gratitude, adapted from a traditional Buddhist tale)
Frances Durkin, illus. Grace Cooke, A Greek Adventure, Jolly Fish, Age 8-10 (the Histronauts travel back to ancient Greece in this graphic novel with facts and interactive reader activities)
Bruce Doucey (trans. Ruth Diver), No to Dictatorship: Victor Jara, Triangle Square, Age 10-14 (fictionalized biography of the Chilean songwriter and rebel during the Pinochet years)
Also: No to Homophobia: Harvey Milk
Caroline Fernandez, illus. by Dharmali Patel, Asha and Baz Meet Mary Sherman Morgan, Common Deer Press, Age 5-8 (first in a time-travel series featuring historical women who made an impact in STEM fields)
Chloe Gong, Foul Lady Fortune, Margaret K. McElderry, YA (in 1930s Shanghai, a pair of spies posing as a married couple investigate a series of murders)
Laurel Guillen, A Bellwether Christmas, Fidelis, Age 9-12 (a 13th century lamb named Bart wants to know more about a mysterious man from the town of Assisi who talks to animals)
Margaret Peterson Haddix, The Secret Letters, Katherine Tegen, Age 8-12 (a boy finds a shoebox full of old letters that illuminate a mystery from the 1970s)
C. C. Harrington, Wildoak, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (explores the delicate interconnectedness of the human, animal, and natural worlds)
Jay Hosler, Santiago!, Margaret Ferguson, Age 8-12 (graphic novel based on true story of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the pioneer of modern neuroscience, and his early dreams of becoming an artist)
Justina Ireland, Rust in the Root, Balzar + Bray, YA (in an alternate Depression-era America, a young mage struggles to find her place in a world split between magic and mechanism)
Catherine Johnson, Journey Back to Freedom: The Olaudah Equiano Story, Barrington Stoke, Age 8-12 (focuses on Equiano’s early life, demonstrating the resilience of the human spirit and one man’s determination to be free)
Catherine Johnson, A Nest of Vipers, Puffin, Age 9-12 (tale of a group of larger-than-life con artists who roam the streets of eighteenth-century London)
Angela Joy, illus. Janelle Washington, Choosing Brave, Roaring Brook, Age 6-10 (a picture book story of the mother of Emmett Till)
Kathy Kacer, Hidden on the High Wire, Second Story, Age 9-12 (a Jewish girl is forced to flee and hide when the traveling circus she works for shuts down in 1941)
Christian Klaver, Armadas in the Mist, CamCat Books, YA (finale to the Empire of the House of Thorns Victorian fantasy series, in which Justice and her rag-tag fleet of misfits sail out to meet the Faerie Armada)
Logan Kline, Finding Fire, Candlewick, Age 4-8 (a young boy in prehistoric times goes on a dangerous quest to renew fire for his family)
J. Kasper Kramer, The List of Unspeakable Fears, Atheneum BfYR, Age 8-12 (middle grade historical novel following an anxious young girl learning to face her fears–and her ghosts–against the backdrop of the typhoid epidemic)
Barbara Krasner, Ethel’s Song, Calkins Creek, YA (convicted traitor and suspected Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg shares the story of her beliefs, loves, secrets, betrayals, and injustices in this YA novel in verse)
Kathryn Lasky, illus. Johnson Yazzie, Yossel’s Journey, Charlesbridge, Age 5-9 (Yossel’s family flees anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and immigrates to the American Southwest in the 1890s)
Patrice Lawrence, illus. Jeanetta Gonzales, Our Story Starts in Africa, Magic Cat, Age 4+ (picture book story of a generational journey to the Caribbean; through the dark days of colonization and enslavement, to the thriving, contemporary community they now know)
Marian Lye, Patty McGuigan, illus. Rebekah Reif, Leonardo and the Time Travelers, Overcup Press, Age 8-10 (time-traveling tech adventure that takes kids through the centuries using modern technology as their tour guide)
Kerry L. Malawista, Meet the Moon, Fitzroy, YA (a coming-of-age story of sadness, guilt and redemption, set in 1970)
Andy Marino, Escape from East Berlin, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (dual time-line thriller of two children, one in 1961, the other in 1989 – and their attempts to cross the Berlin Wall)
Ellie Marney, The Killing Code, Little, Brown BfYR, YA (historical mystery about a girl who risks everything to track down a vicious serial killer)
L. L. McKinney, Escaping Mr. Rochester, HarperTeen, YA (a reimagining of Jane Eyre, in which Jane and Bertha Mason must save each other from the horrifying machinations of Mr. Rochester)
Anna-Marie McLemore, Self-Made Boys, Feiwel & Friends, YA (three teens chase their own version of the American Dream in New York, 1922, in this YA remix of The Great Gatsby)
Shelia P. Moses, We Were the Fire: Birmingham, 1963, Nancy Paulsen, Age 10+ (a boy and his classmates cut school to protest segregation and make history)
Sally Nicholls, The Silent Stars Go By, Candlewick, YA (WWI era romance involving love, loyalty and secrets at the end of the Great War)
Stacy Nockowitz, The Prince of Steel Pier, Kar-Ben, Age 8-13 (a young teen falls in with the mob, when he helps out at his Jewish family’s struggling Atlantic City hotel in mid 70s)
Sofiya Pasternack, Black Bird, Blue Road, Versify, Age 8-12 (historical fantasy in which a girl will do anything to save her twin brother from his illness)
James Patterson, Emily Raymond, The Girl in the Castle, jimmy Patterson, YA (reverse time travel adventure in which a girl from 1347 travels to the present to save her sister from certain death in their medieval village)
Adam Perry, Ghosts Come Rising, S&S Yellow Jacket, Age 8-12 (in 19th century America, two children, immersed in the Spiritualist movement, try to find answers to the mysteries around them)
Rodman Philbrick, We Own the Sky, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (in 1924 Maine, the rise of the KKK puts two orphaned boys at risk)
Isabel Pin, I am Coco, Prestel Junior, Age 6-9 (fictional biography of Coco Chanel’s life and career, from schoolgirl rebel to haute couture icon)
Aden Polydoros, Bone Weaver, Inkyard, YA (in a fantasy turn-of-the-century Russia, three young people unite to restore the usurped Tsar to power, with help from the undead and magic; LGBTQ+)
Lynette Richards, illus. Emily Burton, Call Me Bill, Emanata, YA (1873; set against the backdrop of the worst maritime disaster before the Titanic, story explores identity and courage of someone who took huge risks to live an authentic life)
Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Museum of Wonders, Dutton BfYR, YA (everything you need to know about the peculiar world, written by Miss Peregrine herself)
Joan Schoettler, illus. Jessica Lanan, Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth, Lee & Low, Age 5-8 (story of a royal seamstress brings the landscape and culture of ancient Korea to life)
Joni Sensel, A Curse on the Wind, The Wild Rose Press, YA (historical fantasy in which a would-be actress, a good-looking gravedigger, and a cemetery haunted by an invisible power collide with the unintended consequences of a curse)
Shirin Shamsi, illus. Tarun Lak, The Moon from Dehradun, Atheneum BfYR, Ages 4-8 (account of the harrowing journey faced by millions of migrants in the aftermath of the division of India and Pakistan)
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Winterkill, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (two brothers fight to survive the Great Famine in 1930 Soviet Ukraine)
Suzanne Slade, illus. by Edwin Fotheringham, Dazzlin’ Dolly, Calkins Creek, Age 5-9 (inspirational story follows Dolly Parton’s rise to fame, from her beginnings in East Tennessee to performing at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville)
David Michael Slater, The Vanishing, Library Tales, YA (to save her best friend from the horrors of Nazi Germany, an invisible girl must embark on an journey of redemption and revenge)
Nancy Springer, Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, Wednesday Books, YA (Sherlock’s much younger sister returns in an adventure of a confused young Baronet’s daughter who is on the run from her father’s devious schemes)
Vesper Stamper, Berliners, Knopf BfYR, YA (story about the rivalry between two brothers living on opposite sides of the Berlin wall during its construction in the 1960s)
Susan Tarcov, illus. Fotini Tikkou, Professor Buber and His Cats, Kar-Ben, Age 4-9 (humorous and accessible introduction to the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber)
Sheila Turnage, Island of Spies, Dial Books, Age 9-12 (a 12-year-old girl and her two best friends on Hatteras Island, N.C., during WWII, resolve to uncover German spies)
Jean Ure, Dandelion, HarperCollins Children’s, Age 9+ (in 1953, a young girl glimpses a strangely dressed girl with bright yellow hair, who is possibly from the future)
David Walliams, Spaceboy, HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Age 8-12 (when a UFO crash-lands in a cornfield, and Ruth rushes to help, she finds a mystery – and an adventure – set in 1960s America)
Renée Watson, illus. Bryan Collier, Maya’s Song, HarperCollins, Age 4-8 (a picture book biography in verse about Maya Angelou)
Kathleen Wilford, Cabby Potts, Duchess of Dirt, Walker, Age 8-12 (drops you right into 1870’s Kansas, with a whole lot of drama and a little bit of romance)
October 2022
Susan Austin, Drawing Outside the Lines, SparkPress, Age 10-14 (in 1883, 11-yr-old Julia Morgan visits the new Brooklyn Bridge & aspires to become an architect)
Linda Bailey, Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock, Tundra, Age 5-9 (humorous picture book biography of young Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures)
Rebecca E. F. Barone, Unbreakable, Henry Holt BYR, Age 10-14 (fictionalised true story of the codebreakers, spies, and navy men who cracked the Nazis’ infamous Enigma encryption machine and turned the tide of World War II)
Stephanie Baudet, Sherlock Holmes: The Creeping Man, Sweet Cherry, Age 7-11 (illustrated adaptation of Sherlock Holmes mystery – at an easy-to-read level for readers of all ages)
Also: Sherlock Holmes: The Lion’s Mane
M. A. Bennett, The Mummy’s Curse, Wellbeck Flame, Age 10+ (Luna, Konstantin and Aidan travel to Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1922; Butterfly Club book 2)
Barbara Binns, Unlawful Orders, Scholastic Focus, Age 8-12 (story of one man’s struggle for racial equality in the field of battle and the field of medicine)
Elizabeth C. Bunce, In Myrtle Peril, Algonquin YR, Age 10+ (Myrtle Hardcastle—twelve-year-old Victorian Amateur Detective—investigates the case of a missing heiress lost at sea)
Heather Camlot, illus. Sophie Casson, The Prisoner and the Writer, Groundwood, Age 9-12 (when a Jewish army captain is falsely accused of treason and sent to prison, a writer uses his pen to fight for justice)
Cinda Williams Chima, Children of Ragnarok, Balzer + Bray, YA (Viking fantasy based in Norse mythology)
Jan Coates, illus. Francois Thisdale, Anna Maria & Maestro Vivaldi, Red Deer Press, Age 6-9 (Antonio Vivaldi guides a young orphan toward becoming one of the most celebrated violinists of her time)
Betsy Cornwell, Reader, I Murdered Him, Clarion, YA (a girl becomes a teenage vigilante who roams Victorian England using her privilege and power to punish her friends’ abusive suitors)
Sandra Dallas, Tenmile, Sleeping Bear Press, Age 9-10 (story of a girl living in a gold mining town in Colorado in 1880)
Matt Faulkner, My Nest of Silence, Atheneum BfYR, Age 10+ (middle grade story about a Japanese American family during World War II)
Rhiannon Giddens, illus. Monica Mikai, Build a House, Candlewick, Age 7-10 (a story of a family who would not be moved, created by the singer and songwriter to commemorate the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth)
Julia Golding, Jane Austen Investigates: The Convict’s Canal, Lion Fiction, Age 9-12 (set in the early industrial revolution and the great canal building age, a young Jane Austen takes on the role of detective)
Amanda Glaze, The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond, Union Square, YA (supernatural debut inspired by lives of real teenage twin mediums in the 19th century)
Jas Hammonds, We Deserve Monuments, Roaring Brook, YA (multi-generational fiction in which Avery must decide if digging for the truth of the town’s history of racism is worth risking friendships. LGBTQ)
Natasha Hastings, The Miraculous Sweetmakers # 1: The Frost Fair, HarperCollins, Age 8-12 (fantasy set in 1683 London, in which a young girl makes a dangerous wish to bring her brother back from the dead)
Ana Cristina Herreros (trans. Sara Lissa Paulson), illus. Violeta Lópiz, The Amazing and True Story of Tooth Mouse Perez, Enchanted Lion, Age 5-7 (traces the Tooth Mouse and his changes throughout history; a playful, thought-provoking look at our changing world)
Crystal Hubbard, illus. Alleanna Harris, Marvelous Mabel, Lee & Low, Age 6-10 (picture book story based on Mabel Fairbanks’s determination to become America’s first black skating superstar)
Emily Inouye Huey, Beneath the Wide Silk Sky, Scholastic, YA (after Pearl Harbor, 1941, a Japanese-American girl uses her passion for photography to document the growing racism)
Jacqueline Jules, My Name Is Hamburger, Kar-Ben, Age 8-13 (set in 1962, story of a girl embarrassed by her German last name, her father’s accent, and the way her classmates tease her for being Jewish)
Bart King, Choose Your Own Adventure Spies: Moe Berg, Chooseco, Age 9-12 (adventure where the reader is a famous baseball player during the second World War)
Antony Barone Kolenc, The Merchant’s Curse, Loyola Press, YA (fourth book in the Harwood Mystery mediaeval adventure series)
Torben Kuhlmann (illus.) (trans. Mischa Damjan, Anthea Bell), The Clown Said No, NorthSouth, Age 4-8 (a newly illustrated historical classic from 1961)
Sacha Lamb, When the Angels Left the Old Country, Levine Querido, YA (a centuries-old angel and demon, travel to America, encountering corrupt Ellis Island officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, and poverty in search of a missing young emigrant)
Sara Latta, I Could Not Do Otherwise, Zest Books, YA (picture book story of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the Civil War surgeon, spy, and activist)
J. M. Lee, The Nightland Express, Erewhon, YA (in antebellum America, two teens bury their secrets and join the historic Pony Express, and soon discover the mortal world is not the only one on the brink of war)
Mackenzi Lee, The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks, Katherine Tegen, YA (Ashley Montague sets off to find his disowned siblings in an adventure set in an 18th century world)
Gail Carson Levine, Sparrows in the Wind, Quill Tree, Age 10+ (a retelling of the ancient Greek legend of Cassandra in the time before the fall of Troy)
Claudia Guadalupe Martínez, illus. Magdalena Mora, Still Dreaming, Lee & Low, Age 6-9 (recounts an often-overlooked period of 1930s and 1940s United States history–Mexican Repatriation)
Evan May, Easter Pinkerton and the Case of the Heretic Blood, Renaissance Press, YA (in 1883, crown secret agent Pinkerton latest investigation forces her to decide where her duty truly lies)
Rati Mehrotra, Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove, Wednesday Books, YA (debut set in an alternate medieval India infested with monsters)
Michael Morpurgo, illus. Michael Foreman, Flying Scotsman and the Best Birthday Ever, Thames and Hudson, Age 6-8 (celebrating the world’s most iconic train, and its greatest fan, a young girl named Iris)
Pip Murphy, illus. Roberta Tedeschi, Christie and Agatha’s Detective Agency: Tombful of Trouble, Sweet Cherry, Age 7-9 (travel 100 years back in time to solve 1920s crimes and mysteries with young twins, Christie and Agatha)
Sally Nicholls, illus. Nadiyah Suyatna, The Knight’s Kiss, Barrington Stoke, YA (an arranged marriage interferes with star-crossed love in this medieval romance)
Ovid, illus. Ana Sender, adapt. Heinz Janisch, The Golden Age: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, North South, Age 8-12 (collection includes some of Ovid’s most popular and potent stories)
Cathie Pelletier, Evangeline, Down East Books, Age 10-15 (the story of an Acadian girl as she searches for her lost love Gabriel amid the expulsion of the Acadians from maritime Canada and Maine)
Anne Rand, illus. Olle Eksell, Edward and the Horse (c. 1961), Thames & Hudson, Age 4-6 (a small boy named Edward lives in mid-20th-century New York City and yearns for a pet to keep him company)
Casey Rislov, The Rowdy Randy Wild West Show, Mountain Stars, Age 8-12 (Rowdy Randy is back, and this time instead of aggravating all the creatures in her path, she’s rounding them up to put on her very own Wild West Show)
Aida Salazar, A Seed in the Sun, Dial Books, Age 8-12 (a farm working girl with big dreams meets activist Dolores Huerta and joins the 1965 protest for migrant workers’ rights)
Marina Scott, The Hunger Between Us, FSG, YA (debut novel about a girl’s determination to survive, and save her best friend, during the Nazi siege of Leningrad)
Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown, The Captain, Trash Dogs Media, YA (third and final book in Tales of the Wendy)
Chana Stiefel, illus. Susan Gal, The Tower of Life, Scholastic, Age 6-8 (true story of a Jewish girl who survives the Nazi invasion of her Polish town and grows up to revive the town’s spirit with a tower made of 1,000 photographs)
Nita Tyndall, Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken, Harperteen, YA (two gay teens, part of the underground youth Swing movement in WWII Berlin, contend with the Nazi party; LGBTQ+)
Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders, illus. by Byron McCray, A Song for the Unsung, Henry Holt BYR, Age 6-10 (picture book biography of Bayard Rustin, the gay Black man behind the March on Washington of 1963)
Christine Welldon, Knight of the Rails, Red Deer Press, YA (thirteen-year-old Billy Knight leaves home to “ride the rails” across Canada during the 1930s)
Diane Worthey, illus. Helena Pérez García, Rise Up with a Song, Bushel & Peck, Age 6-9 (picture book biography of the composer and suffragette who wrote “The March of the Women”)
Camron Wright, The Orphan Keeper, Shadow Mountain, Age 10-14 (journey about discovering oneself and the unbreakable family bonds that connect us – adapted for young readers)
November 2022
Beth Anderson, illus. Anne Lambelet, Cloaked in Courage, Calkins Creek, Age 7-10 (fictionalised true story of Deborah Sampson, a woman who fought in the American Revolution disguised as a man)
Laura Best, This is it, Lark Harnish, Nimbus, Age 8-12 (follows a plucky 13-yr-old hired girl in rural 1919 Nova Scotia, and explores grief and love, poverty and privilege, and family)
Sandra Bradley, illus. Gabrielle Grimard, Cocoa Magic, Pajama Press, Age 4-7 (picture book story takes place in a cozy 1920s chocolate shop)
Gwendolyn Clare, In the City of Time, Feiwel & Friends, YA (dual timeline story ranging from 1891 Italy to 2034 San Francisco. Ink, Iron and Glass duology)
Lesa Cline-Ransome, illus. Ashley Yazdani, Of Walden Pond, Holiday House, Age 6-9 (story of Henry David Thoreau and businessman Frederic Tudor—and a changing world)
Judi Curtin, Lily Takes a Chance, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (adventure set in Lissadell House, Sligo, 1915, where Lily is housemaid)
Joan He, Strike the Zither, Text, YA (historical fantasy about found family, rivals and identity set in year 414 of the Xin Dynasty)
Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Torch, Carolrhoda Lab, YA (1969; three misfits face the wrath of the secret police when their best friend dies in protest of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia)
Mónica Montañés (trans. Lawrence Schimel), illus. Eva Sánchez Gómez, Different: A Story of the Spanish Civil War, Eerdmans BfYR (story of Socorro and her brother Paquito who flee Spain for a new life in Venezuela)
Alan Nolan, The Sackville Street Caper, The O’Brien Press, Age 8-12 (eleven-year-old Bram Stoker, future author of Dracula, escapes school to 1850s Dublin City seeking adventure)
Rosanne Parry, Last of the Name, Carolrhoda, Age 10-14 (story of an immigrant’s experience amidst class and racial tensions in 1863)
Lynn Ng Quezon, Mattie and the Machine, Santa Monica, YA (fictionalized yet historically accurate account of Margaret E. Knight’s fight to obtain recognition as a 19th century female inventor)
Solet Scheeres, The Lion Tamer’s Assistant, Penguin Random House South Africa, Age 5-10 (loosely based on the history of the Pagel Circus, which was known in every South African city and town in the 20th century)
Sasha Peyton Smith, The Witch Haven, Simon & Schuster BfYR, YA (murder mystery set in 1911 New York City)
Esme Symes-Smith, Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston, Labyrinth Road, Age 8-12 (in a magical medieval world filled with shape-shifters and witches, a 12-yr-old hopeful knight battles for the heart of their kingdom. LGBTQIA fantasy)
Robin Stevens, A Spoonful of Murder, S&S BfYR, Age 10+ (sixth book in the Murder Most Unladylike Mystery series)
Lauren Tarshis, I Survived the Wellington Avalanche, 1910, Scholastic, Age 8-12 (one child’s survival through the 6-day Cascade Mountains storm and resulting avalanche)
Duncan Tonatiuh, A Land of Books: Dreams of Young Mexihcah Word Painters, Abrams BfYR, Age 4-8 (a young Aztec girl tells her little brother how their parents create painted manuscripts called codices)
Jane Yolen, illus. Cosei Kawa, Deborah’s Tree, Kar-Ben, Age 5-9 (based on the story of the biblical heroine Deborah)
December 2022
Fabrice Erre, Magical History Tour #11: Slavery, Papercutz, Age 7-12 (Annie and Nico explain this tragic phenomenon with compassion, clarity, and the keys to how we can reconcile with history’s tragic past)
Miriam Halahmy, Saving Hanno, Holiday House, Age 8-12 (nine-year-old Rudi and his beloved dog Hanno escape from Nazi Germany)
Marianne Hering, Sled Run for Survival, Focus On The Family, Age 7-11 (after arriving in Alaska in the winter of 1925, the kids from the Imagination Station discover that a disease called diphtheria is sweeping through the town of Nome)
Adiba Jaigirdar, A Million to One, HarperCollins, YA (four young people aboard the Titanic plan the heist of the Rubaiyat, a jewel-encrusted book)
Lisa Maxwell, The Shattered City, Margaret K. McElderry, YA (book 4 of The Last Magician time travel series)
Alex Paz-Goldman, The Lost Spy and the Green Dress, Green Bean Books, Age 8-12 (tightly-plotted, funny, and complex story which explores heavy themes – the Holocaust, trauma, mental health and poverty)
Kip Wilson, One Last Shot, Versify, YA (coming of age historical fiction novel in verse about Gerda Taro, a photojournalist with a passion for capturing the truth amid political turmoil)
The Historical Novel Society lists a comprehensive range of titles from mainstream and small press publishers for novels set from ancient times to the mid-1970s.
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18, with settings from ancient times to the mid 1970s.
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for historical novels set in eras from ancient times to the mid-1970s. Details are based on publishers’ descriptions and are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press titles for readers aged 4 – 18, set in eras from ancient times to the mid 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ) using publisher descriptions and recommended age suitability.
