The following Historical Novel Society members are celebrating the release of their new books – congrats to all! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in December 2025 or after, send the following details via our contact page by July 7, 2026: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. You may also use the “Contact Us” form at the HNS website if you prefer. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the August 2026 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
The Boys from Umgazana (Reach Publishers, Aug. 19, 2025) is the first in Frank Collier’s four-book series exploring the largely unknown and traumatic history of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, about two boys: one a white castaway, the other his foster brother, the son of a tribal chief, who grow to manhood during a period when vastly different cultural groups—migrating from the east and expanding from the Cape Colony—clashed in an untamed landscape.
Finland’s Dawn by Paul Stein (Saksakivi Publishing, Oct. 2025) is a re-imagined account of true but extraordinary events and exceptional but real historical characters involved at the start of Finland’s quest for independence from Czarist Russia (1904-05) up to, and including, the infamous gun-running exploits of the ship John Grafton.
Corinne Hoebers’ Tethered Spirits (OC Publishing, Oct. 2025) is a story of survival and resilience in the face of displacement, lost culture, and British control in 18th-century Nova Scotia.
Presented as a dual timeline between 1830s Paris and present-day Warsaw, Chopin’s Last Manuscript by Elizabeth Kellam (The Sound of Genius Publishing, October 3, 2025) weaves a tale of genius, love, and revenge, drawing the reader deep into the minds and hearts of its characters.
In Never Let Me Go: A Novel of Love and Loss Set During the American Civil War by Ann Howell (Holand Press, Oct. 30, 2025), Rowan O’Clanahan dresses as a Confederate soldier to follow her already veteran brother back into the Civil War, convinced she must save his life.
Liverpool, 1861: Assassination, assault, robbery, bribery, blackmail; all are tools of the espionage trade as Union and Confederate agents carry on a clandestine war on the streets of this cosmopolitan port city vying for influence with Britain, clawing for advantage through any means available, as told in Bruce Davis’s Proud Waves Be Stilled (Independent, Nov. 1, 2025).
Both informative and entertaining, C.B. Harper’s I Am the House (Independent, Nov. 15, 2025), a 400-year historical saga set on Long Island’s North Fork, is a nuanced exposition of the interplay of humans and houses, ambition and architecture, but inevitably people and their passions, the perfect read for this nation’s semiquincentennial.
Told through the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Laurie Marr Wasmund’s Catching It Lovely (lost ranch books, Nov. 16, 2025) recreates the journey of her ancestors from a textile town in Scotland to and across America with the dream of homesteading in 1875 on the untamed Colorado prairie.
Set in Poland in the years around WW2 and based on real events, Finding Ida by Marya Burgess (The Book Guild, Nov. 28, 2025) casts a light on a family caught in the crossfire of war and turmoil.
In Book I of The Montbard Dynasty Saga: Legacy The Eagle by Eidgar Reice (Amazon KDP, Dec. 5, 2025), set in the dying days of the Roman Republic, a Gallic family’s fateful alliance with Caesar sets in motion a thousand-year legacy of power wielded from the shadows.
Jeri Westerson’s Devil’s Gambit (Old London Press, Jan. 1), book 4 in her King’s Fool Mystery series, is set in London, 1540: King Henry VIII agrees to strengthen Protestant ties by marrying a gentlewoman from Germany, Anne of Cleves; not only does it begin unfavourably, but the young Maid of Honour Anne was allowed to bring with her from Germany harbours a secret that soon manifests itself into murder—one that jester Will Somers must solve.
Meet Edward IV, Richard III, Henry IV, Elizabeth Woodville, and Margaret of Anjou in Susan Appleyard’s Wars of the Roses – 1452-1492 (Independently published, Jan. 12), an epic trilogy of war, love, betrayal, ambition and murder.
In Leslie Schover’s Fission: A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak (She Writes Press, Jan. 27), a young wife gives up her dreams to follow her husband to Oak Ridge for the Manhattan Project; she is drawn in by a charismatic army engineer, only to realize he may be a Soviet spy.
From pre-war Nazi Germany to blitz-torn London, a mother and her daughter endure persecution, lost love, and hardship in K. Lang-Slattery’s Ashes and Ruins: Love, War, and the Home Front (Pacific Bookworks, Jan. 31).
Willi Graf’s short life was filled with idealism, danger, courage, and great faith as he sought to bring down the Nazi regime through nonviolent resistance, as Deborah Lee Prescott conveys in her creative nonfiction account, Holy Idealist: Willy Graf, Hero of the White Rose (Westbow Press, Feb.).
The Reckoning, Book 3 of the Rebellion Trilogy by Paul Bernardi (Sharpe Books, Feb. 13) opens in January 1069: Northumbria has risen up again, determined to resist the fast-encroaching Norman overlords; a final reckoning is coming, and the consequences of defeat will be catastrophic.
Baku, 1901: A bank robbery. A mysterious amulet. Two women’s fight for survival. Anne M. Kennedy’s The Caspian Amulet (Wonky Cat Press, Feb. 17) is book two in The City of Winds series.
Set in Northumbria and Ireland, 6th–7th century, Aidan K. Morrissey’s Tácnbora (Larbok Creative, Feb. 26) tells of how after 1500 years, an unnamed body is found buried at the threshold of the Great Palace at Ad Gefrin, and imagines the life of that forgotten man—a warrior-monk who walks between rival kingdoms, faiths, and loyalties in a land always on the brink of war.
Spring Melt by Lori Duffy Foster (Speaking Volumes, Mar. 10) is a historical suspense set in the Adirondacks—a playland for the wealthy, where long-buried crimes awaken danger, expose corruption and shatter lives.
Linda Stasi’s The Descendant (Regalo Press, Mar. 10) tells the story of an Italian immigrant family in the Wild West whose crazy, brave, and magical women overcame impossible odds to become bootleggers, brides—and Mafia bosses.
The Boy with Five Names by Pamela Belle (Independently published, Mar. 18) centers on the search for an enslaved child through early 18th-century London.
When President Grover Cleveland and his pregnant wife, Frances, retreat to their summer residence in 1895, their first daughter vanishes and the family faces chaos in Marlie Parker Wasserman’s First Daughter (Level Best/Historia, Mar. 31).
Carole Penfield’s Jacques’ Fateful Journey (The Midwife Chronicles, Book 4) (Sycamore Lane Press, Mar. 24) recounts the missing years of a Huguenot silk designer arrested under Louis XIV in 1685 who escapes and rebuilds his life while searching for his family.
In Mary Lawrence’s Fool (Red Puddle Print, Apr. 14), a Jester in the court of King Henry VIII faces brutal consequences from eavesdropping and manipulates a plan of extortion to exact revenge on those who wronged him.
A haunting and magical story of a family with hidden gifts and secrets, Song of Belonging by Michelle St. Romain (She Writes Press, Apr. 21) follows Alice as she embarks on a journey to discover the truth about her ancestors and find her place in a lineage of women healers who protect the waters that surround their Louisiana home.
In Susie Helme’s second novel, Dreaming of Jerusalem (Independently published, Apr. 25), an action-adventure set in early Ottoman Anatolia, a young swordswoman finds love, adventure and religion, and has to challenge her beliefs, her dreams and herself to find happiness.
In the brutal Northern Crusades in Livonia, an exiled knight must prove his worth as faith, ambition, and betrayal close in and destroy him in Soldiers of Christ by Jon Byrne (The Book Guild, Apr. 28).
The Vampyre Client (Old London Press, May 1), the fourth book in Jeri Westerson’s Irregular Detective Mystery series, sees former Baker Street Irregular Tim Badger and his partner in detection Ben Watson garner a most unusual client; the strange Mister Jonathan Wicker has come to them in great distress to ask that they convince the villagers in Ashwell that he is not a vampyre!
When their worlds are upended, two women brought together by loss consider what they’re willing to risk for a second chance in These Empty Places by Sarah Loudin Thomas (Bethany House, May 5).
Alison Morton’s HEROICA (Pulcheria Press, May 14) presents three women, three centuries, three reckonings: Carina in 2020, Honoria in 1683 and Statia in 1849, all descendants of the founders of Roma Nova, face choices that threaten both their family’s honour and their state’s survival.
From London, 1875, to Paris and Tokyo, Kate Lord Brown’s The Silver Thread (Simon & Schuster UK, May 21) is a story of three cities, two women and one hundred years, an epic and intimate tale crossing oceans, cultures and timelines.
Thomas M. Wing’s Perilous Shores (Acorn Publishing, June) continues the story colonial sea captain Jonas Hawke as he navigates the tumult of the American Revolution, taking the war to British waters in search of vengeance.
Chuck Locklear’s A Storm Coming (Histria, June 2) is a sweeping historical 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.
Rue Baldry’s Dwell (Northodox Press, June 11) tells 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.
In Sparrow’s Song by Marilee Aufdenkamp (Old Fort Press, Sept.), a young German from Russia immigrant woman pursues opportunity through WWI nurse training and WWII school of nursing teaching while confronting prejudice and the costs of assimilation.
In Molly Sturdevant’s debut historical novel The Sleepers (Regal House, Sept. 1), a quiet letter-press printer in a silver-mining camp is on the edge of bankruptcy when she is injured on the job, the same day the nation flips to the gold standard and pits the bosses against her neighbors, her family, and her preference for an apolitical life.
The following Historical Novel Society members are celebrating the release of their new books – congrats to all! If you’re a current HNS member who’s written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in September 2025 or after, send the following details to us by April 7, 2026: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the May 2026 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
Dave Schechter’s A Life of the Party (Fulton Books, Feb. 2025) evokes the adventures of a Jewish woman from a privileged, religious background who devoted more than four decades of life to the cause of working men and women as a member of the Communist Party.
Love Habit by TL Clark (Steamy Kettle Publishing, Mar. 1, 2025) is a medieval romance about novice monks who must try to balance love and liturgy.
The Better Angels by Robin Holloway (Holand Press, June 5, 2025) weaves the true story of Laura Towne, a Northern abolitionist whose faith, courage, and compassion enabled her to travel to the Sea Islands of South Carolina in 1862 to teach former slaves in the vortex of the Civil War.
In Unspoken (A Dust Novel), an HNS Editors’ Choice title written by Jann Alexander (Black Rose Writing, July 2025), set in a Texas town where nobody knows how to fix air you can’t breathe, one tenacious girl makes her stand — and faces what’s unspoken.
Set in Viking-era Ireland, James Murphy’s The Sword of Malachy-High Kings Book 1 (Independently published, July 7, 2025) tells the story of Brian Boru and Malachy Mor, two men who both rose to be High King of Ireland.
The Strange Story of Maria Hallett by Richard F. Zapf (World Castle Publishing, Aug. 3, 2025) is an imaginative retelling of the wreck of the pirate galley Whydah in 1717, which alternates between the 18th century and the present, and includes romance, a magic book, and a centuries-old unpaid debt.
An Author’s Research Notes on Medieval England by TL Clark (Steamy Kettle Publishing, Sept. 8, 2025) will walk you through all the fundamental things you need to know with an overview of the entire medieval period, from key events to the weather and even their toilet habits. Also, swearing.
In The Tide Waits for No Woman by Richard K. Perkins (Köehler Books, Sept. 16, 2025), it’s 1860, and a recently widowed young woman risks everything to join the Underground Railroad, but when she’s stranded in the Maine wilderness by successive blizzards, she must fight for survival—and for a freedom larger than her own.
Scott Badler’s Becoming JFK: John F. Kennedy’s Early Path to Leadership (Bancroft Press, Sept. 23, 2025) is an intimate portrait of Jack Kennedy’s formative years from 1935-1946, and his journey to find his voice, purpose, and resilience.
In Skip Carter’s Solitary Journey, Emperor Gallienus’ Sole Reign During the Chaos of Third Century Rome (Ingram Spark, Sept. 26, 2025), Emperor Gallienus, sole ruler after his father is captured by Persians, must defend the entire empire against invading tribes and internal revolts, deal with a restive Senate, and guard against tempting women willing to use any means available to advance their own interests.
Edward Parr’s Tamanrasset: Crossroads of the Nomad (Edwardian Press, Oct. 1, 2025), set in the uncharted Sahara at the dawn of the 20th century, the fates of four strangers haunted by loss become entwined by a journey across a desert on the brink of war.
In A. E. Macdonald’s The Macdonalds of Cedar Park (Skye Lewis Books, Oct. 14, 2025), on Saturday, the family went skiing and shopping, the next day, Pearl Harbor was attacked, on Monday, the country was at war, and the Macdonald family’s lives were changed forever.
Steve Vesce’s One Ordinary Man (Verlibri Media LLC, Oct. 15, 2025) is a historically accurate novel about the inspiring, surprising, and remarkable true story of Harry L. Hopkins—who grew from obscurity to play a leading and pivotal role in helping America overcome the Great Depression, defeat Fascism, and win World War II.
Moving among generations of a German-Jewish-American family, Red Anemones by Paula Dail (Historium Press, Oct. 17, 2025) is a poignant exploration of the intricate bonds, untold secrets, and unspoken legacies our ancestors bestow upon us.
After being ensnared by the French Secret Service into suppressing the army mutinies in the trenches in the First World War, patriot and staunch Catholic Antoine Martinet finds himself travelling to colonial Indochina to track down communists in the jungle and then returning to France to go undercover to prevent an extremist right wing group, the Cagoule, from overthrowing the Popular Front government in The Hooded Man, v.1 of the Dark Years Trilogy by Charles Searle (The Book Guild, Oct 28, 2025).
In The Life and Death of Abercrombie Lyle by Stephen Small (Palatine Publishing, Oct. 30, 2025), Great War veteran Abercrombie finds friendship in the turbulent Milan of 1919 with Brio, a charismatic journalist, and Carla, his beautiful wife; but when Brio takes a job with Mussolini, he throws Carla into Abercrombie’s arms and lights a twenty-year fuse of betrayal, deceit and revenge.
In Samantha Ward-Smith’s Ravenscourt (Mabel and Stanley Publishing, Oct. 31, 2025), set in 1880s Venice, a disgraced viscount meets a tragic widow with whom he finds solace and redemption—until they return to England where Ravenscourt, her late husband’s decaying manor, draws him into a labyrinth of desire, deception, and a madness that whispers from the walls.
Sarah Good’s crime was not witchcraft; it was poverty, in The Life & Times of Sarah Good, Accused Witch by Sandra Wagner-Wright (Wagner-Wright Enterprises, Nov. 14, 2025).
Cheryl Potts’ debut, The Castles of Ann Lynch (MJA Publications, Nov. 22, 2025), inspired by a true story, tells of the author’s great-grandmother coming to America from Ireland in 1860 as a fourteen-year-old orphan.
In The Diva’s Daughter by Heather Walrath (The Book Guild, Nov. 28, 2025), a young aspiring singer in 1930s Europe fights to achieve her operatic dreams while confronting personal loss, political pressure, and the secrets of her famous mother’s past.
Michelle Elliott’s Of Heaven and Hellfire (Self-published, Dec. 5, 2025), set in 1587 in England, features Beth Dudley, who serves as a quiet maid in the grand halls of Bodsworth Manor, where loyalty to Queen Elizabeth is law–and hiding a Catholic priest is treason.
Julian Hawthorne, son of famous novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, joins Sherlock Holmes in a murder investigation involving a contemporary Count of Monte Cristo in Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the American Scalawag by Daniel D. Victor (MX Publishing, Dec. 8, 2025).
Brodie Curtis’s third historical novel Showboat Soubrette (Westy Vistas Publishing, Dec. 10, 2025) explores the romantic yet bigoted and sometimes lawless antebellum riverboat era when a river pirate viciously assaults star singer Stella Parrot, and she and her friends must run for their lives on the lower Mississippi River.
In the 1970s, singer Gunnar Erickson and guitarist Step Townsend leave small-town Nebraska for the burgeoning music scene of Los Angeles- only to struggle with the consequences of their fame when they make it big in Perfect Cadence by Tamar Anolic (Independently published, Dec. 15, 2025).
Catherine McCullagh’s latest alternate history novel, Murder and Masquerade (Big Sky Publishing, Dec. 30, 2025), takes place in London, 1946; an Irish policeman and ex-resistance leader joins forces with the man he hates obsessively, a former SS general, to thwart a fascist plot to overthrow the government and return Britain to a Nazi dictatorship.
The Double Standard Sporting House by Nancy Bernhard (She Writes Press, Jan. 20) is a timely and moving story about the women of an elite 19th-century New York City brothel fighting the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine.
The Last Gypsy Queen by Linda Paul (Black Rose Writing, Apr 16) follows a young Romani woman forced to read tarot cards at an amusement park, preventing her from becoming the doctor she longs to be while also facing prejudice and sabotage, demanding a choice between loyalty to her ancient heritage or pursuing her dreams.
In Fables & Lies by Elisabeth Storrs (The Book Guild, Apr. 28), set in 1940s Berlin, museum assistant Freyja Bremer marries SS scholar Kaspar Voigt to protect her father, unaware of his role in Himmler’s schemes; after falling for archaeologist, Darien Lessing, Freyja is drawn to aid a Jewish doctor, confronting moral corruption as she risks everything to safeguard truth, treasure and love amid chaos.
Lottie elopes with an actor when she is seventeen and a game of wits ensues, each vying for control in a world of comedy, illusions, and sleight of hand as they tour the length and breadth of Victorian Britain till tragedy strikes and the future is suddenly impossible to imagine, as told in Disappearing Acts by Helen Graham (Troubadour Publishing, May 28).
Miranda Miller’s seventh novel, The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd, telling the story of the celebrated Victorian painter Richard Dadd, confined to Bedlam after committing patricide, who is haunted by vicious fairies, his dead father and the Egyptian god Osiris, will be reissued by Never Give Up Books in June 2026.
In 1944, Deirdre Rowan from neutral Éire is a receptionist at the Mayfair Ladies’ Club, and is soon hot on the trail of a handful of members and staff who are suspected of spying for the British Union of Fascists; the new and enigmatic manager, Maxwell Forster, with his slight foreign accent, does not escape her attention either, but in an unexpected way, as told in Molly Green’s Wartime Secrets at the Mayfair Club (Avon/HarperCollins, June 4).
In Kim Rendfeld’s Duchess of the New Dawn (independently published, June 16), Chiltrude, the daughter of Francia’s ruling family, defies her kinsmen and risks everything to seize her heart’s desire, protect her child, and preserve her new homeland’s cherished independence.
In Daughters of Naples by Diana Giovinazzo (Alcove Press, July 21), set in the 1940s in Naples, three sisters’ lives are forever changed by war; as one runs a dress shop, another is a midwife, and the youngest joins the Italian resistance, each must navigate the boundaries of love, loyalty, and survival in a city under siege.
The King’s Ghost (Fitzroy Books/Regal House, July 21), the third volume of A. L. Sirois’ YA trilogy set in ancient Egypt’s Third Dynasty, unfolds as follows: on the day of King Djoser’s coronation, a priest is found dead in the Temple of Ptah, and the young architect Imhotep is convinced that it’s no coincidence–but the death masks a secret that poses a direct threat to him and Djoser both.
If you’re a HNS member who’s written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in June 2025 or after, send the following details via our contact form by January 7, 2026: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the February 2026 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
Congrats to everyone who sent in details on their new books!
The Queen’s Spade by Sarah Raughley (HarperCollins, Jan. 14) is a thrilling, Black feminist historical retelling of Queen Victoria’s real life African goddaughter Sarah Forbes Bonetta.
Sailing Toward the Tempest by Kent M. Schwendy (Black Rose Writing, Mar. 6) is a historical military fiction following the exploits of a British officer in 1795 as he learns that the French are not the only enemy he must face while he navigates the Caribbean Sea, naval politics, and personal adventures on land.
In The Rowans (Winter Island Press, March 21), Beverly Cooper Pierce braids the conflicted lives of a Massachusetts family in the years between witchcraft delusion and Revolution, as visionary daughter Tamsin tries to flee the lineage of trauma passed down by her great-grandmother Priscilla Rowan, a healer-mystic jailed for witchery in 1692.
Jessie Haas’s Dearest Blood, A Romance of the Revolution (West Parish Press, Apr. 9) is based on the life of Frances Montresor, who witnessed the first bloodshed of the American Revolution as a fifteen-year-old Tory girl in present-day Westminster, Vermont; returning to Westminster as a spirited young widow at war’s end, she met the Tory-hating American hero Ethan Allen, and discovered an unlikely attraction.
It’s late 1775, and colonial sea captain Jonas Hawke’s loyalty to his king is tested amid the chaos of impending revolution in Thomas M. Wing’s historically accurate In Harm’s Way (Acorn Publishing, Apr. 10); Hawke proves once again that the man who fights for his family is far more dangerous than the one who fights for his king.
In Marlo Faulkner’s The Second Mrs. London: Charmian Kittredge Shares Her Life with Jack London (Luminare Press, Apr. 23), the time is 1900 San Francisco when mutual instant chemistry between her and a young man ready for literary fame does not cease when he marries another, for she determines to be in his world no matter the consequences as his friend, editor, lover, sparring partner, wife, boat crew, enabler, nurse and, finally, widow of Jack London.
Nicknamed Hotspur (as if his spurs never cool) for tirelessly defending England, Sir Harry Percy builds an idyllic life with his sweetheart, until duty intrudes when Henry IV squanders the treasury, antagonizes the Scots, outlaws free speech, and brutalizes Wales, sparking a revolt that he dispatches Sir Harry to quell—only to reject the settlement Harry negotiates—as an old question arises anew: is the king above the law? Read more in To Be Worthy in Honor: Book II of the Epic of Hotspur by Liz Sevchuk Armstrong (BWL, May 1).
The two books in Cynthia Elder’s two-part historical fiction series, Tales of the Sea, The Journey Begins and The Drumbeats of War (both Holand Press, May), reveal the lives of a seafaring family from Massachusetts in the 1800s. Based on original letters, ship’s logs and personal journals, the novels elevate the voices of men, women, soldiers and formerly enslaved people during a time of political upheaval and change.
In Iron Age Ireland, a young man comes of age as his society faces the looming threat of Rome’s expansion in The Oak and the Eagles by Patrick Tooban (Atmosphere Press, June 23).
Set at the dawn of the eighth century, The Nautilus of Leonesse by T.J.S. Hayes (FJL Press, July 15) is the third volume in the epic series, The Song of the Francs, which recounts the youthful adventures in exile of Charles, son of Pepin, who would one day become Europe’s greatest hero.
This Leavened Land by Thomas Mauser (Munn Avenue Press, July 17) is set in eastern Tennessee during the American Civil War and tells the story of a plainspoken young farm boy as he experiences love, loss, and betrayal as the Civil War tragically turns long-time friends and neighbors into bitter enemies and hunts down the one man who has taken nearly everything away from him.
First in a series of novels about the Persian Empire’s beginnings, Kristin Swenson’s Howl of the Golden Jackal (PGB Press, July 25) tells the story of Amytis of Media (the bastard daughter of a paranoid king) who, upon learning that her wild, mountain country could be ravaged by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians, takes matters into her own hands, ultimately changing the course of human history.
In Lisa A. Traugott’s To Condemn a Witch (Rose Castle Media, Aug. 11), the prequel to To Rescue a Witch, it’s 1729 in Scotland; a healer, a scandalous mistress, and the ghost of a burned witch must form an unlikely coven to protect a changeling child from a sadistic witch hunter who wants to steal her magic.
From obedient daughter to dutiful wife, a story of love, loss and one immigrant’s struggle for self-determination in early 20th century America is revealed in Little Bird: A Novel by Barbara Viniar (Sibylline Press, Aug. 15).
In the young-adult novel Women of Glass and Steel by Mary Lash (Grist Mill Press, Aug. 15), 16-year-old Della Pereira struggles to find love, escape from the notoriety of her suffragist mother, and create a future beyond working in the mill in Seneca Falls, New York, on the World War I homefront.
Aboard the Titanic, where opulence knows no bounds and the horizon seems limitless, two women fight for the futures they dream of, fraught with secrets that could change everything in Donna Jones Alward’s Ship of Dreams: A Novel of the Titanic (One More Chapter/HarperCollins, Aug. 26).
J. M. Elliott’s Of Wind and Wolves (Warden Tree Press, Sept. 1) is a brutal, haunting epic set on the Scythian steppe, as young Sarmatian warrior Anaiti undertakes the kill that will seal her arranged marriage and save her besieged people—yet in a land bound by war and duty, refusing to take a life could grant her freedom… or cost her everything.
First in the new Dawn of America series, Regan Walker’s The Irish Yankee (Patriotic Books Publishing, Sept. 3) tells the real story of Irish Yankee Jeremiah O’Brien, who in 1775 seized a British-armed schooner to thwart her cargo of lumber from reaching British forces in Boston, becoming the “the hero of the Lexington of the Sea.”
The Austens by Sarah Emsley (Pottersfield Press, Sept. 15) is a debut novel contrasting Jane Austen’s choice to write fiction with her sister-in-law Fanny Austen’s choice to marry for love, in a world hostile to art and love and even the idea of a woman making a choice.
The Boy with the Jade by Charles Bush (HTF Publishing, Sept. 16) tells the story of a boy growing up amidst the opulence, turmoil, and cruelty of a high aristocratic family in eighteen-century China, a tale inspired by the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber.
In Hilary Llewellyn’s Right of Answer (Troubador, Sept. 28), Margaret de Badlesmere and her five young children are illegally imprisoned by her king in the Tower of London in 1321, which raises dramatic questions about whether Margaret—the first known woman to be imprisoned in the Tower—will be able to overcome the odds to save her children and regain her liberty.
Where In All the World (Bateman Books, Oct. 1) by Vanessa Croft is inspired by true events, and traces a young woman’s journey from colonial New Zealand to England and East Africa, where her marriage to an ambitious explorer forces her to reckon with love, empire, and the patriarchal systems that would silence her.
His Papa and little sister Rachel have been abducted, just because they are Huguenots, so will Gédéon be able to elude their pursuers and bring his family to safety? Read more in Greet Suzon for Me by Vince Rockston (Self-published, Oct. 25).
Susan Coventry’s Till Taught by Pain (Regal House Publishing, Nov. 4) explores the dawn of modern medicine in America while following the lives of a late 19th century Johns Hopkins surgeon with a devastating secret and the woman with the determination and devotion necessary to prevent his self-destruction.
Annie’s Day (Vine Leaves Press, Nov. 18) by Apple Gidley is a powerful story of love, loss, and the quiet courage needed to start again after facing the brutality of war in Singapore and New Guinea as an Australian Army nurse who, later, seeking a change, then finds herself embroiled in the Berlin Blockade.
In Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? (Northampton House Press, Dec. 2) by Amanda Cockrell, Elizabeth Sydney’s film career survives the Red Scare hunt for communists driven by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the blacklist that shatters lives, but that betrayal of friends by friends and by the country’s own government has a long reach.
In Who Cares? (a cynical shrug or a plea for dignity?) by Ann S. Epstein (Vine Leaves Press, Dec. 2), as the post-WW2 boom winds down, a struggling Midwestern city entertains a developer’s proposal to convert a public home for the indigent elderly into an expensive private retirement residence, precipitating a battle between the have-nots and corporate greed.
Based on real events, Anneke Jans in the New World: A Novel (She Writes Press, Jan. 6, 2026) by Sandra Freels tells the riveting story of a young mother who faces the unknowns of seventeenth-century New Amsterdam after fleeing the Old World in search of a better life.
Lucy never wanted the ring on her finger or the baby in the crib, but in 1922 there wasn’t much she could do about; how far will she go to live her dream life, and at what cost to herself and those she loves? Read more in Abandoning the Script by Linda Rosen (Black Rose Writing, Mar. 4, 2026).
The Making of a Witch by Judy Molland (She Writes Press, June 9, 2026) is set in the tumultuous era of 17th century England at the time of the Civil Wars and follows the life of ten-year-old Alice Molland, who is forced to attend the execution of Goody Luscombe, her mentor in the healing arts, and then must navigate a male-dominated world suspicious of women with mysterious gifts.
Congrats to everyone who sent in details on their new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in April 2025 or after, send in the following details via our contact page by October 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the November 2025 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
Despite its mean title, White Hell by Sean Tyler (Level Best/Historia, Jan. 21) is a love story at heart…though one loosely based on the Donner Party.
In Julie L. Brown’s Bend, Don’t Break (JAB Press, Feb. 4), drawing strength from the memory of their ancestor, Aisha, a slave born free on the west coast of Africa, seven generations of Black women across the sweep of American history will do anything to succeed—and will do even more to protect their daughters.
Blurb: In The Price of Eyes (Scotland Street Press, Feb. 14), fourth and final book in Janet McGiffin’s historically accurate series about the 8th-century Byzantine Empress Irini of Athens, the powerful empress tricks her emperor son into releasing her from house arrest and returning her to the throne of Constantinople where she manipulates him into divorcing and exiling his wife and daughters, leading to civil war and war between mother and son where neither can survive.
Born to Trouble (Independently published, Feb. 27), book 4 in Regan Walker’s The Clan Donald Saga, tells the story of Alexander of Islay, Lord of the Isles and Earl of Ross, who triumphed over a deceitful king to become one of Scotland’s ruling lords in the 15th century.
Charlotte Whitney’s A Tiny Piece of Blue (She Writes Press, Feb. 18) is a heartwarming novel following a homeless girl as she struggles to survive during the Great Depression while setting the traditions of rural Michigan against a backdrop of thievery, bribery, and child trafficking—a suspenseful yet tender tale.
Pawnee Prisoner: The Story of Jane Gotcher Crawford (Booklocker.com, Feb. 20) by Vivian McCullough is based on the true story of courage, determination and survival in 1830s Texas when the widow of an Alamo defender is taken captive along with three children.
In 1904 London, as unrest brews and a lord mysteriously vanishes from a gentleman’s club, young Prime Minister Felix Grey must confront buried secrets and mounting conspiracy to save a nation on the brink in Mario Theodorou’s Felix Grey and the Descendant (Neem Tree Press, Mar. 6).
In his quest to make gold, an alchemist in 1352 London, seeks the Key to the Philosopher’s Stone and, ultimately, divinity—a pursuit considered to be blasphemy in the eyes of the Church, in Through the Lion’s Gate, A Medieval Tale of Intrigue and Transmutation by Stuart Balcomb (Amphora Editions, May 1).
Unfamiliar Territory (mks publishing, May 3) by Mary Smathers is the gripping story of one woman’s journey through Gold Rush California to find her son, and herself.
At once an intimate love story and a multigenerational family drama inspired by a trove of politically charged, passionate love letters sent to his mother, Robert Kehlmann’s The Rabbi’s Suitcase (Koëhlerbooks, May 6) recounts his family’s 50-year migration odyssey from 1880s Lithuania to Ottoman, then Mandatory Palestine, to Depression Era America.
Jane Loeb Rubin’s Over There (Level Best/Historia, May 27), the third installment of the Gilded City trilogy, immerses readers in the gripping journey of four family members from Threadbare and In the Hands of Women, all dedicated doctors and nurses facing the daunting realities of The Great War.
Roger Hunt’s first novel, Vindicta (Troubadour, May 28), based closely on events of 1808/9, tells the remarkable story of a Scottish Benedictine monk who is sent on a secret mission to Germany.
A Tiger in the Garden by India Edghill (Talitho Press, June 1) is a sweeping tale of romance and politics set in the splendor of Victorian India.
In December 1971, as the Bangladesh War of Liberation faces its critical final battles, Doctor Meena struggles against the forces that threaten to undermine her commitment to the people she serves, as the full force of an army is unleashed against her and her community in the novel Niramaya: A Female Medic’s War Journey by Sean C. Ward (Troubador, June).
Enter the world of the 16th-century “Border Reivers” and ride with Fingerless Will Nixon as he carves his legend into the hills of Scotland’s Borderlands in The Legend of Fingerless Will Nixon: The Scottish Borderlands 1508-1509 by Richard Nixon (Amazon KDP, June 5).
In Daughter of Mercia by Julia Ibbotson (Archbury Books, June 6), medievalist Dr Anna Petersen is called to an archaeological dig to investigate mysterious runes on a seax hilt, but becomes fascinated by the strange burial of a 6th century body alongside that of modern remains, setting off a chain of events where past and present collide.
A Cruel Corpse (Holand Press, June 26), the first published novel of Reviews Editor Ben Bergonzi, takes place in Carlisle, northern England in 1747; a rebellion has been put down, but trouble persists for two soldiers in the government army: Jasper Greatheed is a man with a secret – as a ‘molly’ he could be hanged for sodomy; his friend is also living a lie – and Private Hayden Gray is in fact a woman, Grace Hayden. Their secrets unsuspected until now, they are part of the city garrison; when a vicious sergeant is murdered, Hayden comes under sharp suspicion, for her only alibi will wreck her masquerade, and if she is exposed, as her ‘dresser’ Jasper will also soon be unmasked. They set out to find the sergeant’s real murderer before time runs out – after all, the officer who is leading the official investigation has reason to hate Hayden.
Set in 1957 and 2018 Hollywood and Carmel-by-the-Sea, Meg Waite Clayton’s Typewriter Beach (Harper, July 1) is the story of an unlikely friendship between Leo and Iz—an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a young actress whose studio intends to make her the new Grace Kelly if she can toe the line—and, sixty years later, a mysterious manuscript Leo’s granddaughter finds in a hidden safe in his Carmel cottage.
In Cathie Hartigan’s The Luthier’s Promise (Independently published Jul. 9), it’s 1595; Will promises to bring the celebrated, but wayward musician, John Dowland, safely home from Italy, but when love delays them, it is not only Will’s promise that’s in jeopardy, but also their lives.
In Catherine Kullmann’s latest Regency novel, Lord Frederick’s Return (Willow Books, July 22), after 18 years in India Lord Frederick Danlow returns to England, where his plans to find a wife and make a home for himself and his motherless daughter are disrupted by a huge family scandal.
In Secretary to the Socialite by Amanda McCabe (Oliver Heber Books, July 22), set in the glittering world of mid-century America, Millicent Rogers is a woman ahead of her time—Standard Oil heiress, fashion icon, patron of the arts, wife, mother, lover—but behind the scenes, she harbors secrets of ill health and loneliness that only one person knows: her secretary Violet Redfield.
There’s comedy and tragedy in The Players Act 1: All the World’s a Stage by NYT bestselling author Amy Sparkes (Sword and Fiddle Publishing, July 29th), in which a down-on-their-luck troupe of strolling players have one last chance to save their failing theatre company.
Angela Shupe’s In the Light of the Sun (WaterBrook, Oct. 7) is WWII-era historical fiction that follows the stories of two sisters, one in the Philippines and one in Italy, who find themselves caught up in the secrets, devastation, and intrigues of war – inspired by the true wartime experiences of the author’s mother and aunt, and by the life of her great-grandmother, who performed with Gran Compania de Opera Italiana.
From backstage to centre stage and theatres of war, Dance of the Earth by Anna M. Holmes (The Book Guild, Oct.) is a sweeping family saga set against the backdrops of London’s gilded Alhambra music hall, Diaghilev’s dazzling Ballets Russes, and the upheavals of the First World War, as Rose and her children, Nina and Walter, pursue their ambitions, loves, and dreams.
The Great Forgotten by K. L. Murphy (CamCat Books, Nov. 4) is the gripping tale of a little-known American disaster, the five men whose lives became intertwined that fateful day, and the woman who knew them all.
Congrats to everyone who sent in details on their new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in January 2025 or after, send the following details to compiler Sarah Johnson via our contact form by July 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the August 2025 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
In The Mercenary’s Women by James L. Sweeney (Book Baby, May 2, 2024), set in the turbulent 17th century, a young African must deal with slavery, violent conflict between rival Portuguese and Dutch empires, adventures on two continents, and the Caribbean isles while seeking lasting love, identity, and a life of his own choosing.
Ellis Blackwood has published the first four Samuel Pepys Mysteries since summer last year. In The Brampton Witch Murders (Vintage Mystery Press, Aug. 31, 2024), set after the Great Fire of 1666, Pepys joins forces with his astute maidservant and anxious but brave protégé to clear his sister’s name of witchcraft. The Plague Doctor Murders (VMP, Sept. 30, 2024) finds them hunting a killer in plague-doctor guise at Deptford’s royal docks, while The Coffee House Murders (VMP, Oct. 31, 2024) draws them into the murky world of politics, royalist versus republican, ending in a deadly confrontation at Whitehall Palace. The jeopardy deepens in The King’s Court Murders (VMP, Jan. 31, 2025), as His Majesty’s mistresses are slain one by one, and failure to unmask the culprit may cost Pepys and his inquisitors their own mortal souls.
In 1349 England, disgraced knight Alister Warde must flee execution and a monstrous plague consuming Windsor as the world transforms around him in A. R. Zamaku’s Land of Morrow (Independently published, Sept. 30, 2024).
Defined by her brilliance, yet bound by Victorian society, Annabelle Pierce—once her physician father’s medical ghostwriter—must navigate scandal, heartbreak, and ambition to slash her way into history with a parasol in one hand and a scalpel in the other in Nora Hill’s Eve’s Rib (Three Little Sisters, Nov. 15, 2024).
Set in the mountains of post-WW2 Italy, Broken Madonna by Anna Lucia (Fluency Publishing, Nov. 16, 2024) is the beautifully told story about the mysterious visions of a fragile girl, Elisabetta, who draws crowds with her miracles—but her only friend Adelina doesn’t believe her, with far-reaching consequences that uncover dark secrets of the past.
The Mistake by Mara Schiffren (Woodhall Press, Nov. 20, 2024), set in the 2nd century, tells the tale of Marcus, half Roman and half Jewish, growing up in Judea at a time of increasing tension between Romans and Jews, and how he soaks up both cultures until the cataclysmic breakup of his family forces him to choose his own path forward.
As told in Annie R. McEwen’s The Corset Girls, Unlaced (Bloodhound, Jan. 8), Book One of a four-book series and set in 1892 Whitechapel, former gang fighter Kell has sworn off his violent ways, but when old enemies attack the woman he loves, he goes to war again to save her.
Set in the Tower of London during the 13th century, Samantha Ward-Smith’s Tower of Vengeance (Mabel & Stanley, Jan. 9) reimagines the story of Maude de Mandeville, who was imprisoned in the round turret of the White Tower for rejecting King John’s advances until she was finally poisoned on the king’s orders, and what happens when a murdered woman seeks revenge.
Jessica Brockmole‘s first work of historical nonfiction, Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way into the Driver’s Seat (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Jan. 14), is the story of how, across the twentieth century, the automotive industry and its female consumers battled to define what women wanted in a car.
A rule-following New York City schoolteacher arrives in Tombstone in 1881 and to her shock and delight, helps her father exonerate Wyatt Earp of murder and sets out to become a lawyer despite convention, setbacks, and tragedy in A New York Lady In Helldorado by VC Williams (Outlaws Publishing, Jan. 21).
In Rebellion by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Ltd., Jan. 24), when Edgar Ætheling, great-nephew of Edward the Confessor and former contender for the English throne, raises the banner of rebellion in the north of England, he unleashes a bloodbath that will echo for generations, and Richard Fitz-Malet, half-English and half-Norman, finds himself in the middle of the conflict.
In Tracy Wise’s Madame Sorel’s Lodger (Type Eighteen Books, Feb. 4), a novel inspired by the life and works of Vincent Van Gogh, an ailing artist’s arrival in a small village in southern France in the late 1800s forever changes both the lives of the people around him and his own.
Oil & Water completes Destiny Kinal’s Textile Trilogy (sitiotiempo press, Feb.), a tale of gains and losses during the 19th century in the eastern United States, with the greatest gain being European women’s regaining of freedoms under the influence of the matrilineal tribes like the Haudenosaunee and Lenape.
Based on Japanese history and folklore, Kate Shanahan’s The Iron Palace (ROAV Press, Feb. 10), an exciting sequel to Tangled Spirits, takes Mina and her mysterious friend Kenji to the year 1002 to save Masako from a curse, a demon, and several irritable warriors.
Can a newspaperwoman in 1899 save herself from old beaus and solve murders in a world ruled by railroad barons? Fedora Amis offers an answer in her fifth Jemmy McBustle mystery Vanderbilt in Peoria (Mardon Moore Books, Feb. 13).
When poverty strikes, an ageing farmer is forced to make a heartbreaking choice: relinquish his oldest son in the hope of appeasing the gods or see his family face certain starvation; and so it follows that young Lucius Ulpia Porcianus is sacrificed to Rome where he is accepted into the army of Pompey and finds himself engulfed in the civil war between Sulla and the Marians in Legionary by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Ltd., Feb. 21).
One Step Forward by Marcie Flinchum Atkins (Versify/HarperCollins, Mar. 4) is a young adult historical novel-in-verse about Matilda Young, the youngest suffragist to be imprisoned at Occoquan Workhouse for fighting for the right to vote.
In The Red Car to Hollywood by Jennie Liu (Carolrhoda Lab, Mar. 4), 16-year-old Ruby Chan of 1920s Los Angeles struggles to balance her first-generation parents’ expectations with her own dreams; her plans shift when she strikes up a friendship with young silent movie star Anna May Wong.
Jonathan Posner’s The River of Fire (Winter & Drew Publishing, Mar. 7) is a fast-paced adventure set mainly in 1530s Italy, featuring swashbuckling English heroine, Mary Fox.
Lori Joan Swick’s The Sculptor and the Saint (L.J. Hendricks Press, Mar. 24) is a gripping tale of passion and agony; two lives separated by centuries are united in their search for purity and purpose.
In Griff Hosker’s An Officer and A Gentleman (Sword Books Ltd., Mar. 28), the Desert Group garrisoned at Fort Farafra find themselves the only British soldiers guarding a huge piece of Egyptian desert, and these camel-riding soldiers fight ambush, nature and violent sandstorms as they are tested to their very limit when foreign powers begin encroaching on the land.
A Russian-American writer’s dream of revisiting her birthplace in Germany plunges her into a haunting journey through time, where, while transported to a WWI-era military hospital, she falls in love, faces moral dilemmas, and uncovers a chilling secret that threatens her life and her recently acquired happiness in Marina Osipova’s Beelitz-Heilstätten: Where Ghosts Never Die (Self-published, Mar. 28).
Abijah and the American Revolution by Kenneth Virgil (Wheatmark, Apr. 3) is based on the true story of Abijah Virgil, a sixteen-year-old from colonial New York who joins the Continental Army, following his journey through the brutal realities of the American Revolution—battles, imprisonment, and loss—while capturing the enduring hope and everyday heroism often lost in grander historical accounts.
Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh by Joan Fernandez (She Writes Press, Apr 15) tells the unacknowledged true story of Jo van Gogh’s fervent quest to save Vincent’s art from obscurity.
In Elaine Stock’s The Last Secret Kept (Black Rose Writing, Apr. 24), set against the backdrop of building the Berlin, three women unite on behalf of an intellectually disabled man, and old secrets force each to confront buried troubles.
A rousing adventure, a critique of Victorian literary tropes, and a mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, Pat Murphy’s The Adventures of Mary Darling (Tachyon Publications, May 6) shines a new light on familiar stories as it follows Wendy’s mother, the populist hero the Victorian era never knew it needed, on a journey halfway around the world to rescue her children—with Holmes and Watson in hot pursuit.
The East India Company have to do the impossible and rescue an ally whose enemies place a ring of armies in their way in The Tiger and the Thief by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Ltd., May 2).
In Conscript’s Call by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Ltd., June 6), when a young man loses his family and is conscripted into the army during World War II, he finds not only solace with his new comrades but a place in the world.
In Imhotep and the Quest to Kush (Fitzroy Books, June 24), the second volume in A.L. Sirois’s Imhotep Chronicles, author Sirois revisits ancient Egypt and his youthful healer-hero, Imhotep, who is tasked with seeking out new remedies to cure King Sanakhe, now in the throes of dementia, in the fabled land of Kush.
When the Norse warriors venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules they find themselves in a land where nothing is at seems, yet the Norns still guide their future, as told in Dragon Rock by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Ltd., July 11).
In Philadelphia in 1841, a young artist must confront her past when the man she’s been hiding from finds her and wants revenge, as told in Needle and Bone, a historical gothic by Tonya Mitchell (Bloodhound Books, Aug. 19).
The Man in the Stone Cottage by Stephanie Cowell (Regal House, Sept. 16), a novel of the Brontë sisters set in Yorkshire in 1846, follows Charlotte’s early writing journey and Emily’s secret romance with a shepherd living in a stone cottage on the moor.
Catherine Mathis’s debut novel, Inês: The Queens of Portugal Trilogy (Histria Books, Nov. 4), explores the 14th-century tale of King Pedro’s two pledges to Inês, his queen, to secure their sons as heirs and enact revenge to restore her honor.
We love hearing about our author members’ new historical releases. Congrats to everyone who sent in details on their new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in October 2024 or after, send the following details in to Sarah Johnson via our contact form by April 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the May 2025 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
In Try Before You Trust by Constance Briones (Historium Press, July 24, 2024), eighteen-year-old Elizabethan poet Isabella Whitney leaves her country home for London, where she has an ill-fated affair with the dashing nephew of her aristocratic employer, and sets out to shock the reading public with her poem about men and women in love in a time when women were required to be silent, obedient, and chaste.
Set in the Napoleonic-era Mediterranean, Jennifer Newbold’s On Wounds of Woe (Luminare Press, Aug. 12, 2024), second in the Nell Nobody trilogy, reveals a woman who has been a soldier, sailor, and mother, and who becomes entangled with a British intelligence network; determined to protect her new, unorthodox ‘family’, Nell must reconcile her feelings for two men, and must ultimately confront her greatest enemy—risking her humanity in the process.
John Daniel’s Follow the Dragon (Taupo Publishing, Aug. 20, 2024) follows a British son who returns to Hong Kong for his father’s funeral and discovers that a devil’s bargain with a Chinese billionaire from WWII has surfaced to threaten both of their family names and fortunes.
The Mare by Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press, Sept. 19, 2024) is based on the true story of Hermine Braunsteiner, a brutal Nazi concentration camp guard who hid her identity from her American husband, and what happened when he discovered what she had done.
Jessica McCann’s award-winning novel Bitter Thaw was narrated and produced by Jesse Ganteaume and released in audiobook by Perspective Books (Oct. 2024). Publishers Weekly called the novel “an engrossing family drama stacked with secrets and regrets.”
The Nabob’s Daughter by Rosemary Morris (Books We Love, Nov. 1, 2024), set in early 19th-century Madras and England, delves into an English girl’s deep-rooted love of life in India and Hindu culture, her homesickness at school in England, and her return to her material and spiritual home.
The concierge of a Parisian apartment building discovers the murderer of the building’s wealthy owner by reliving the terrible days of the twenty-five-year-old Paris Commune behind the glitter of the Belle Époque in Ann Chamberlin’s La Belle Époque and the Terrible Year (Epigraph, Nov. 14, 2024).
After losing his home, Richard joins the Swordbrothers as they embark on the Northern Crusades in Sword Brethren by Jon Byrne (The Book Guild, Nov. 28, 2024).
In the desert southwest of North America about a thousand years ago, two brothers fight for control of an ancient holy city wracked by drought, famine and disbelief in Thomas Christian Williams’s Kash Kachu(White House) (Amazon, Aug. 29, 2024).
In Nina Wachsman’s The Courtesan’s Pirate (Level Best/Historia, Sept. 3, 2024), Belladonna, former courtesan of Venice and her lover, the pirate captain Isaak, have sailed off to the Caribbean, where they must survive a hurricane, marauding Spanish and unscrupulous pirates.
In The Golden Door by Alice Mitchell (Arcanum Press Ltd., Oct. 1, 2024), a diverse group of emigrants who set sail for America in 1850 find their paths crossing and recrossing as they journey from New York to Kansas and Virginia, and they are caught up in the Civil War which will change their lives forever.
As told in Of Ships and Sealing Wax by Suzanne Shaw (Meryton Press, Oct. 16, 2024), in 1795, one of the England’s most successful frigate captains returns from war against the French but, estranged from his wife, he is faced with unexpected temptation, forcing him—along with two different yet remarkable women—to resolve a tangle of love, honor, and duty.
At a time when Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, declares war on the pagans of Denmark, Pomerania and the Baltic lands, in a small fjord in the north of Norway, a young Norse warrior is about to embark on a journey that will take him far to the south, beyond the land of the Angles and the Franks – as told in Norse Warrior by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Limited, Nov. 10, 2024).
In Our Desperate Hour – Novels of the Great War by John F. Andrews (46 North Publications, Nov.10, 2024), a father’s search for his estranged son plunges US Army Major Ab Johnson into a desperate battle in which honor, courage, commitment, and a father’s love are tested to their limits.
When murder inserts itself into the brutal landscape of sharecropping and convict leasing, irascible defense attorney J.B. Duckworth aims to set things right, no matter the lengths needed to secure justice for his clients or what others will do to stop him in Mike Vance’s The Devil’s Lease. (Dos Dogs Press, Nov. 20, 2024).
The Wicked of the Earth by A. D. Bergin (Northodox Press, Nov. 21, 2024) is dark historical crime fiction based upon Britain’s biggest witch trial, the brave women who dared to fight back, and one damaged man’s search for redemption.
Egypt, 1276 BC, and as the pharaoh Ramesses II prepares for war against the Hittite empire a young Egyptian chariot warrior finds himself caught in a deadly feud with a corrupt senior officer in The Road to Kadesh by A. W. Whinnett (Field of Reeds books, Nov. 21, 2024).
The Refugee’s Daughter by Carolyn Newton (Bloodhound Books, Nov. 21, 2024), inspired by the tragic history of the Wolfskinder, is a dual-timeline novel about a fractured family struggling to recover from a traumatic separation in the waning days of the Second World War and the quest of the next generation to bring about redemption and reconciliation.
Starting in 1917, in the final year of WWI, and concluding in 1956, at the end of the Mau Mau uprising, A Remembrance of Death by Andrew Tweeddale (Tweeddale Consulting Ltd, Dec. 1, 2024) takes the reader through modern history’s darkest moments with a story of hope and forgiveness, where, despite 30 years of a passionless marriage, Basil Drewe and Celia Lutyens find that love like rain cannot choose the grass on which it falls.
Behind the spotlights and glamour lurk secrets and murder in Deadly Performance (JDP Press, Dec. 9, 2024), twelfth in the Deadly Series by Kate Parker.
In Captain of Horse by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Limited, Dec. 20, 2024), with ample fortunes garnered as a Sword for Hire and a loving wife now at his side, Captain James Bretherton looks to the prospect of leaving the world of war, but plans for an easier life are thwarted when King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden seeks Bretherton’s services as a Captain of Horse to fight for the Protestant cause.
Sailors call her the Black Witch of Cornwall, but the wrecker’s daughter lives one step ahead of the Devil in G.M. Baker’s The Wrecker’s Daughter (Stories All the Way Down, Jan. 6).
Graham Ley’s saga of the Wentworth family in the 1790s concludes dramatically in its fourth volume, Moonlight at Cuckmere Haven (Sapere Books, Jan. 17) as Héloïse from the plantation on Saint-Domingue finds a new home and a lover in Brittany, while in England Amelia and Justin have to decide where their hearts and their loyalties lie.
Dean Cycon’s A Quest for God and Spices (Koehler Books, Jan. 21) is a literary romp through the geopolitical, religious and mercantile landscape of medieval Europe and beyond, as an older monk and younger merchant seek the fabled Christian king Prester John in the unknown east)
The Tudor Prophecy by Julie Strong (OCPublishing, Jan 25) is an epic tale set in the turmoil of the English Reformation which tells of two cousins, herbalists, one denounced for witchcraft; the other molested by Henry VIII, but who then becomes betrothed to a bard whose master has visions foretelling the return of the goddess of Wales in the person of Elizabeth the First.
My Lady Melisende (Oliver Heber Books, Feb.), book 6 in Misty Urban’s Ladies Least Likely series, is a historical romance featuring an exiled grand duchess trying to reclaim her kingdom with the help of a British spy.
Beth Ford‘s third novel is After the Spirits Come: A Continuation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (Independently published, Feb. 11).
Lynna Banning’s A Sunday Kind of Love (The Wild Rose Press, Feb) is an old-fashioned romance set in 1873 Oregon, putting a reformed gambler with a secret and a sensible, hard-working spinster on a collision course.
A tale of love, dishonesty and cunning in a museum in Suffolk, England, in 1948, The Woven Lie by Liz Harris (Heywood Press, Feb. 13) will grip readers as they follow Violet Hammond’s story.
Set against the backdrop of 18th-century London, Paris during the French Revolution, and the remote shores of Scandinavia, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft by N. J. Mastro (Black Rose Writing, Feb. 20) is biofiction about Wollstonecraft’s incredible rise as a writer and her ill-fated forays into love.
The most scapegoated heroine in Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, must decide where her loyalty and her safety lies, in Helen’s Judgement (Neem Tree Press, Mar. 20), the second novel in Susan C. Wilson’s epic The House of Atreus trilogy, which began with Clytemnestra’s Bind.
Alix Christie‘s The Shining Mountains (High Road Books/Univ. of New Mexico Press, out in pb on Mar. 4) is the epic saga of a Scots-Native family caught in the crossfire of American westward expansion in the 19th century Rocky Mountain West.
It is 1865, and Charles Agnew wants a life of daring adventure; Avarice of Empire by C.Q. Turnstone (Brindle Books, Mar.) is his untold true story.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, Lew Paper’s Legacy of Lies (Level Best, Mar. 18) provides a fast-paced historical thriller revolving around a former FBI Special Agent-turned-private investigator who is asked by a Mafia contact to follow Hoffa in the weeks before his abduction.
A Southern teenager wants to become a journalist to shed light on 1950s racial injustice, but she must overcome her fears, society’s constraints, and the power of family secrets in Half-Truths by Carol Baldwin (Monarch Educational Services, Apr. 2).
The Golden Hour by Kate Lord Brown (Simon & Schuster UK, Apr. 10) is an epic dual timeline story which interweaves glory-seeking desert archaeologists, the hunt for Nefertiti’s tomb and the decadent cabarets of WW2 Cairo with restless expat lives in bohemian 1970s Beirut.
Congrats to our author members on their new releases! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in July 2024 or after, send the following details via our contact form by January 7, 2025: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please shorten your blurbs down to one sentence, as space is limited. Details will appear in the February 2025 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
A tale of industrial espionage, love, and betrayal set against the backdrop of the glittering Gilded Age, Current of Darkness by Robert Brighton (Ashwood Press, Mar. 19) will draw readers in, and hold them under, until its final pages.
Mona Lisa’s Daughter by Belle Ami (Tema Merback, Apr. 15) is a dual-timeline novel that entwines the fates of two remarkable women against the backdrop of the glittering peak of the Renaissance and the darkest depths of World War II.
When Vincent van Gogh commits suicide and his brother Theo falls insane, Sigmund Freud and Julie Forette, the dream collector, pursue the reasons in R. W. Meek’s The Dream Collector, Book II, Sabrine & Vincent van Gogh (Historium Press, Apr. 30).
Set in the Forgotten War of WWII, Janyre Tromp’s Darkness Calls the Tiger (Kregel Publications, May 14) is steeped in true stories and calls forth mountain legends to tell the story of a missionary woman who descends into unrestrained vengeance against the Imperial Japanese army who destroyed the village she loved.
Intrepid heroines, the Welsh sisters Ardath and Gwyn, and their family return to Philadelphia in 1753 to find a raging yellow fever epidemic, the looming French and Indian War, the theft of all their money, and a summons from England for Ardath’s husband James to return and solve a family emergency in Susan Posey’s A Weave of Old and New (Great Rock Press, June 3).
In Murder in Mennefer by A.L. Sirois (Fitzroy Books/Regal House, June 18), set 4650 years ago in ancient Egypt’s pre-pyramid 3rd Dynasty, young Imhotep’s father is killed, landing him in the middle of a conspiracy threatening King Djoser’s throne.
Can they find a missing girl and foil a lethal Jacobite plot, before it’s too late? Pamela Belle’s first novel in more than 25 years, A Parcel of Rogues (Pamela Belle Books, June 21), is a historical mystery/adventure and first in a series set in early Georgian London.
The West in Her Eyes, Janet Hancock’s 2nd novel (Resolute Books, July 12), is a tale of exile, ambition and love in a fictional Russian family, spanning the decade after the 1917 revolution, two continents, and several countries.
A weaver’s daughter with a fascination for colour defies deep-rooted custom and personal tragedy to find a place in Gloucestershire’s 17th century dyeing business in Blue Hawk by Chloe Turner (Deixis Press, July 17).
From the dungeons of the Inquisition to the last days of the Reconquista and the fall of Granada, Colin Falconer’s Converso (Skyview Publishing, July 19) is a sweeping tale of loyalty, betrayal and courage set in medieval Spain.
Ravenous: A Life of Barbara Villiers, Charles II’s Most Infamous Mistress by Andrea Zuvich (Pen & Sword History, July 30/UK, Sept. 30/US) is a biography of Barbara Villiers, a woman so beautiful, so magnetic, and so sexually attractive that she captured the hearts of many in Stuart-era Britain… including that of King Charles II.
A 1940s ghost story set in the California wine country, Joie Lesin‘s The Passenger (The Wild Rose Press, Aug. 21) tells the tale of family connections, life-changing choices, and love—lost and found.
In The Monmouth Manifesto by James Arnett (FriesenPress, Sept. 12), the hanging of a Patriot by a New Jersey Loyalist leads to an outraged Patriot mob, his trial by court martial for murder, General Washington’s worst decision and an international incident—the Asgill Affair—involving America’s essential ally, the King of France.
In Katherine J. Scott‘s From the Ground Up (Glowing Log Books, Sept. 14), Elizabethan stonemason Robert Smythson must rebuild the great house of Longleat and solve a murder in a world where secrets are as deadly as the tools of his trade.
A crumbling castle is under attack while the ailing baron languishes, so the young baroness dons his armor, pretending to be the lord of the land, but as the threats increase, Rosalynde must give into her true nature and become the leader her people need in Lady by LCW Allingham (Mirror World Publishing, Sept. 17).
Beth Kanell‘s The Bitter and the Sweet, Winds of Freedom book III (All Things That Matter Press, Sept. 18), is set in Vermont in 1854: fifteen-year-old Almyra Alexander uncovers a network of home-brewed medicines, the mysterious women making them, counterfeiters, and a threat to the local funding of the Abolition movement.
In Richard R. Gayton‘s Love in Country (Northampton House, Sept. 20), an LGBTQ war action romance, two Army Rangers fall in love during Vietnam War combat, Tet Offensive 1968; based on the award-winning feature film of the same title, released 2023 on Amazon, Tubi and Dekkoo.
Sometimes death is not the end; a story of greed, grave-robbery, and love, Robert Brighton’s The Phantom of Forest Lawn (Ashwood Press, Oct. 8) will keep you guessing until its explosive end.
In Goodbye Bobby by JJ Harrigan (Bronzewood Books, Oct. 8), Charlie Parnell is mourning and helping his stepdaughter deal with the loss of her mother when an ominous visitor arrives at his door with a proposition, one they believe could put an end to the Vietnam War.
Harold Emanuel’s Aliyah – A Jewish Family Saga (Palmetto Publishing, Oct. 8) chronicles the tumultuous journey of 16-year-old Lazar Hermanski and his 12-year-old brother, Mendel, as they survive the 1881 Warsaw Christmas Day pogrom, travel to America, and begin their life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
In Soldiers (Independently published, Oct. 19), the final book in Sandra Chen’s 2nd Continental Light Dragoons series, the War for Independence hinges on the acquisition of intelligence that would decide America’s fate.
Ireland, 1847: As the nation starves and resentment grows, can Quin and Alannah trust the people living on their land? Their story is told in Juliane Weber’s Amid the Oncoming Storm, Book Three in the Irish Fortune Series (Independently published, Oct. 25).
The Immigrant Queen by Peter Taylor-Gooby (Troubador, Oct. 28) tells the true story of Aspasia, a courtesan in Ancient Athens; despite being despised as a woman and hated as a foreigner she became lover of Pericles, a close friend of Socrates, wrote philosophical dialogues and political speeches and was celebrated throughout Attica for her beauty and wit.
In Garden of Shadows (Fauve Press, Oct. 29), second in the Linnea Wren Mysteries series by Amy Marie Turner and set in the late 19th century, Linnea Wren has arrived in Spain, but her once in a lifetime opportunity to work at the famed Alhambra is complicated when she’s forced to solve a politically complex murder.
The Night of the Wolf by Cassandra Clark (Severn House, Oct. 31), trade pb release of the third in the Broken Kingdom trilogy featuring friar sleuth Rodric Chandler, takes place in 1400; rescued from the heretic fires of Westminster, Brother Chandler is entrusted with Chaucer’s last major work and seeks a place of safety.
It’s 1812 and young Percy Shelley, recently expelled from Oxford University, decides to begin his political life by trying to free the Irish from British tyranny while completing Robert Emmet’s 1803 rebellion; in Kathleen Williams Renk‘s alternate history No Coward Soul Have I (Bedazzled Ink, Nov. 12), Shelley meets Emmet’s colleague, Anne Devlin, who has no reason to trust Shelley or his wife, no matter how much they profess to possess Irish hearts.
Beth Ford‘s second novel Love Between Times (The Wild Rose Press, Nov. 27), a time slip romance, brings together a modern woman rebuilding her life and a medieval knight stuck in the twenty-first century.
In Ashley E. Sweeney’s The Irish Girl (She Writes Press, Dec. 10), feisty and adventurous 13-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne travels alone from Ireland to the U.S. in 1886 to begin a new life in America; an Irish immigrant’s tale.
Lyn Squire’s Fatally Inferior (Level Best Books, Dec. 12) is an extraordinary tale of retribution set against the furore triggered by Darwin’s theory of evolution.
By teaching school in the Utopian Community of Rugby, Tennessee, William and Lizzie heal from their grief, and she and the women bond as lace knitters in Ae Fond Kiss by Joan Donaldson (Black Rose Writing, Jan. 9, 2025).
In Jeri Westerson’s Rebellious Grace: A King’s Fool Mystery (Severn House, Jan. 7, 2025), 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.
Penny Haw’s latest work of historical fiction, Follow Me to Africa (Sourcebooks Landmark, Feb. 2025), is inspired by the life of paleoanthropologist, Mary Leakey.
The Macbeths you’ve never known: Destined to unite Scotland, they first had to survive childhoods as pawns in a dynastic struggle in Upon the Corner of the Moon: A Tale of the Macbeths by Valerie Nieman (Regal House, Mar. 11, 2025).
In Anne Labouisse Dean’s debut novel, Far Side of Revenge (GladEye Press, June 2025), 10th-century Irish prince, Brian Boru, tells how childhood rivalries with older brother, clan king Mahon, threaten his hopes for lasting peace in their kingdom of Munster, won by turning enemies to friends, not corpses.
In The Secret Ranch by Hillary Tiefer (Histria Books, July 29, 2025), a dual-time novel, an 85-year-old woman reflects upon her experience in the Women’s Army Corps and her work as an enemy code interceptor in Petaluma California during World War II.
Congratulations to our author members with new books out! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in April 2024 or after, send the following details in to compiler Sarah Johnson via our contact form by October 7 to be featured here: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please edit your blurbs down to one sentence before submitting; space is limited, and concise blurbs are appreciated. Details will appear in the November 2024 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
In Without the Thunder (Donovan Family Saga Book 4) by Gifford MacShane (self-published, Oct. 2023), an outcast society belle is banished to the Arizona Territory where she falls in love with a Navajo man; can they defeat the woman hell-bent on destroying their happiness?
In Victoria Vassari’s The Doublecross (Weehawken Studio Arts, Dec. 17, 2023), first in the White City Novellas set during Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition, Pistol Pete, star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, has been framed for murder, and his friends – Little Egypt, exotic dancer on the Midway Plaisance, and Max, Pete’s horse handler – are determined to find out who killed Pete’s inamorata, Annie Brennan, and Archie, Sol Bloom’s assistant. In Book Two, Diamonds in the Rough (Dec. 24, 2023), Little Egypt and her new schoolteacher friend, Lucy, decide to sample the fare at the White Horse Inn and end up with more than they bargained for, like stolen jewels, runaway heiresses, and murder.
Bruce Balfour‘s The River of Eternity (Scribbling Gargoyle, Jan. 9) is the first novel in an ancient Egyptian historical epic thriller series based on the Harem Conspiracy assassination of Pharaoh Ramesses III in New Kingdom Egypt.
A tale of dark glamour and sisterhood, Queens of London by Heather Webb (Sourcebooks, Feb. 6) is a look at Britain’s first female crime syndicate, the ever-shifting meaning of justice, and the way women claim their power by any means necessary.
In The Better Half: A Novel of the Nevada Divorce Ranch Era by P.W. Borgman (Ash Canyon Press, Feb. 13), set in 1952, a Chicago socialite’s only hope of escaping her abusive husband is a Nevada divorce, forcing her to return to the land she left behind as an Indian Boarding School runaway.
Daughters of Riga by Marian Exall (The Wild Rose Press, Feb. 28) traces the histories of two girls who meet at the Dutch consulate in Riga in 1940 and whose postwar lives are haunted by questions about what happened there.
David K. Wessel’s debut novel, Choosing Sides (Moonshine Cove, Mar. 7) tells the story of an ordinary family (the author’s own) torn apart by Hitler’s Germany and illustrates in moving prose the dilemma that everyday people faced as the forces of evil took control of their homeland in the 1930s – a time with many social and political parallels to today’s world.
The Civil War tore the country apart, but it also tore families too; while the men were away fighting, women were fighting their own battles at home. This story is told in Her Last Full Measure by Gail Combs Oglesby (MotownGirl Publishing, Mar. 24).
In Shannon St. Hilaire’s To Look Upon the Sun (Wild Sage Books, Apr. 10), set in pre-WWII Germany, 17-year-old Ilse’s only refuge looms in the form of a Nazi maternity program designed to propagate Aryan purity—but she has a secret: her baby’s father is Jewish.
Robert Lee Murphy’s Eagle Talons: The Iron Horse Chronicles—Book One (Audible, Apr. 11), narrated by Brian James Stenberg, is first in a trilogy (first released in hardcover by Five Star in 2014) about a young man’s triumphs and tribulations while helping build the first transcontinental railroad in the American West in the late 1860s.
History meets mystery in this suspenseful journey to find treasure; let present-day Nancy Caldwell lead you to it over the beaches, through the woodlands, and across the decades on old Cape Cod in Barbara Eppich Struna’s The Old Cape Map (Bestrunabooks, Apr. 3).
A captured witch prophesies 5 Tudor Age Queens will be murdered, but can the hunted become the hunter? in Jan Foster’s Destiny Arising (So Simple Published Media, Apr. 19), a thrilling historical fantasy.
Power and Obsession by Catherine McCullagh (Big Sky, May 1) is the gripping story of a young woman sent to spy on her SS boss by the resistance in the dark world of occupied London following Britain’s defeat in World War II — a world that the Germans plan to reshape under King Edward VIII and his American queen, Wallis, a plan the resistance will do anything to thwart.
The Trail of Blood by A. K. Nairn (Broken Man Books, May 13) is a twisty murder mystery, set in the brutal world of the Border reivers in 1516.
In Daniel Pugsley’s Saviour of Babylon (Self, May 14), when Bani learns his father King Hammurabi is ill, he must return to Babylon and prevent bloodshed between his brothers.
Hatfield 1677 by Laura C. Rader (Acorn Publishing LLC, May 21) tells the true tale of the 1677 Native American attack on Hatfield, Massachusetts, and the two men who tracked and rescued the captives taken.
Alice McVeigh’s Pride and Perjury (Warleigh Hall Press, May 30) includes twelve deliciously witty short stories inspired by Pride and Prejudice.
43 years of detailed research by author Angela Locke is the background to Tamarisk: Love and War in France (Top Hat, May 31), a powerful novel which evokes the French Resistance in the last year of the European war, the tragedies of the post-war world, all set against a haunting story of love and separation.
As told in The Sun Shines Even In Winter: A Novel of Invasion and Espionage In World War I by Mark E. Fisher (Extraordinary Tales Publishing, June 1), it’s 1914, and after the Germans invade Dieter’s home in Lille, France and imprison his family and fiancée in an internment camp, his uncle, a lieutenant-general in the Prussian army, tells him, “Spy for the Kaiser, and I’ll free them.”
In Leona Upton Illig’s Erawan: A Reckoning in Laos (Three Villages Media, LLC, June 7), Americans in post-war Laos discover that the stumbling block to a new U.S.-Lao rapprochement lies not in an external enemy, but within themselves.
A Sea of Spectres by Nancy Taber (Acorn Press, June 30) is a multi-POV multi-timeline novel in which, on the choppy coastline of Prince Edward Island, an ocean-phobic detective evades the deadly lure of a phantom ship by delving into her family’s history and harnessing her matrilineal powers of premonition.
Debbie Wastling’s The Soundtrack of Their Lives (Bell Publishing, July 1), a family saga of working-class folk from Hull, East Yorkshire, is a musical heart-wrenching novel about family pain; it starts the long-lasting grudges of a dysfunctional family, with the bombing of the city being the least of their problems.
As Napoleon rises from the ashes of the French Revolution, one woman dares to spy against him: Book Three of the Château de Verzat series pulls Geneviève, a fearless and resilient fighter, from the vineyard to the front lines in Debra Borchert’s Her Own War (Le Vin Press, July 14).
In Running in the Shadows by Skye Alexander (Level Best/Historia, Aug), jazz singer Lizzie Crane is looking forward to performing at a 1926 spring equinox gala hosted by a wealthy art collector, until she discovers the body of a talented artist tied to a tree and shot full of arrows––and police think Lizzie’s best friend murdered him.
In Beth Ford‘s In the Time of Spirits (Independently published, Aug. 6), when devout spiritualist Addy marries a medium in 1890s America, she has to confront the possibility that what she believes is fake – and that her husband may even be a criminal.
Set during WWII, in The Seventh Room by Nicola Bell (Independently published, Aug.), Book 1 of Ishtar’s Gate, a young midwife joins the SOE to set Europe ablaze, an Oxford graduate infiltrates the German General Staff only to become involved with the ill-fated German Resistance, and a maverick spymaster with his eyes fixed on the veiled menace of the Soviets puts them both into play in the stone-cold crucible of Colditz Castle.
In Liz Harris’s The Silken Knot (Heywood Press, Sept. 5), the day in 1948 that Iris Hammond married Pierre Rousseau and moved to live with him in Dinan, Brittany, was the first time she’d met Pierre; both Pierre and Iris were soon to discover that their expectations of the marriage differed greatly.
Caught in the terrible winds of history, Tom Canty, the pauper from Mark Twain’s classic The Prince and the Pauper, now a teen, knows only a boy with his wily skills can aid his best friend, King Edward VI, and rescue his first love, Lady Jane Grey, in Frederic Fahey‘s The Scoundrel’s Son (Goose River Press, Sept. 15).
Set in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Mila Evanovich’s No Bread Tomorrow (Independently published, Sept.) unravels against the backdrop of political unrest, the Third Reich’s invasion, and three sisters harboring secrets so dangerous that, if discovered, could lead to their swift demise.
In Molly Green’s Courage for the Cabinet Girl (Avon/HarperCollins, Sept. 24), Katie Valentine, a secretary, is transferred to the secret underground Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Churchill is directing the war to achieve victory at all costs.
Elizabeth Boyle’s O Little Town of Bethlehem (Independently published, Oct. 1) brings to life a heartwarming story of three women who find empowerment, redemption, and the healing balm of friendship found in a small, turn of the century town lost in time.
In Deborah Lee Prescott’s Taken Away (Dorrance Publishing, Autumn 2024), young Elfie Hoffmann is disturbed by her friends’ embrace of the Hitler Youth; however, when she discovers her father has Jewish heritage, Elfie grows in her courage to reject all that the Nazis stand for, even as she faces an uncertain future.
Lost between the timeless lines of Homer’s epic, the Trojan women finally stand to be counted and will change the fate of Troy forever in Daughters of Bronze by A. D. Rhine (Dutton, Nov. 26).
The Book and the Knife Part One: Thegn of Berewic by Paul Cobb (Troubador Publishing, Nov. 28) is set around a powerful medieval book that will put a ruler on a throne – but which ruler and what country, and what links the book to the struggle between England’s two foremost families and the events leading up to the Norman invasion of 1066?
As told in Disguised Love by Marie E. Bast (Bonnet & Buggy Publishing, Dec. 1), after their parents’ death from cholera in 1849, Swedish immigrants Ingrid and Lars are forced into a fake marriage to rescue their siblings from an Iowa orphanage and adoption, but the fake marriage is only until Ingrid can earn enough for passage back to Sweden and her fiancé; thing is, the vow is not pretend for Lars or his drive for the cheap land.
A skeleton discovered buried beneath a city sidewalk leads a group of student archaeologists to the 19th-century spiritualist movement and the journey of three women seeking answers from beyond the grave in Riddle of Spirit and Bone by Carolyn Korsmeyer (Regal House, Feb. 4, 2025).
If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in January 2024 or after, send the following details via our contact form by July 7 to be featured here: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Please edit your blurbs down to one sentence before submitting; space is limited, and concise blurbs are appreciated. Details will appear in the August 2024 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
In Jason Monaghan’s Blackshirt Conspiracy (Level Best, Oct. 2023), fascist plots swirl around the British king and his American mistress during the Abdication Crisis of 1936.
Most, if not all, adaptations of the biblical story of Wise Men from the East arriving at the Nativity assume the visitors knew who and what to expect; in We Three (Show Up Press, Nov 3, 2023), Kerry Ames claims no, they didn’t, and in lowly Bethlehem, those foreigners must confront their unfounded conjectures.
She is an ungovernable widow accused of witchcraft; he is a witch hunter, sworn to restore order, and together they ignite a passion that could consume everything they touch in Devil in Our Hearts, by Lizzie Jenks (Wheel Horse Press, Nov. 14, 2023).
DL Fowler’s Lincoln’s Angel: The Rebecca Pomroy Story (Harbor Hill Publishing, Jan. 3) is a novel of triumph over tragedy amid President Lincoln’s struggle to save the soul of the Union.
In James A. Humphrey’s Cherokee Rock, white exploitation in 1779 engulfs a boy who allies with a mentor squirrel, trains as a teacher, and blood-brothers with a freedman during pestilence and war, only to lose his people’s trust to a malignant medicine man. Cherokee Rose follows a Georgia Freedman’s half-Cherokee daughter as she battles pestilence, bigotry, alcoholism, and starvation during a forced removal led by her father’s murderer, only to face a white jury in a trial that sets national precedents for the rights of Native Americans. And in Cherokee Reel, a half-Cherokee woman loses her sister to a political assassin, marries a freedman, organizes a freedom railroad, and leads a Federal guerilla band in Oklahoma during the turmoil of the Civil War. All appeared from TSALAGI Books on Nov. 1, 2023.
Cape Corse (Independently published, Nov. 2023) is a complex novel with a compelling, fast-moving and historically plausible plot, set in the Napoleonic Wars, and inspired by author Paul Weston’s seafaring background.
Rebecca Hazell’s The War Queens (TellWell, Dec. 2023), primarily set in the 6th century, tells the true and tragic saga of rival queens who dominated Dark Age Europe and who passed into fairytale and legend.
Called “a rare feat, a seamless amalgam of an unflinching literary realism with an unsentimental affirmation of life” by Kirkus, To Steal a Moment’s Time by Katharina Berger with G. J. Berger (Acorn, Jan. 17) is a memoir by a remarkable woman: the most sought-after stage and film actress in pre-WWII Germany, she evaded Nazi fanatics and helped Jews escape during the war, scrounging for food and shelter while hoping she and her child might live to see a better world.
Set in both 19th-century and present-day Shetland and Canada, Beyond the Shetland Sea by Barbara Greig (Pegasus Publishing, Jan.) weaves the experiences of a young blacksmith, Gideon Thompson, who reluctantly leaves his island home, and the girl he admires, to join the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1849, with those of Eve Cummins who in 2019 embarks on a quest to discover the origins of an old valentine.
In the tradition of Olive Kitteridge and Winesburg, Ohio, the novel in stories Falling Through the New World by Cynthia Reeves (Gold Wake Press, Feb. 5) follows four generations of an Italian American family set against the often-tumultuous events of the past century.
D.P.G. Farrington’s Heathenesse (Two Dogs Books, ebook only, Feb. 6) sees a group of English soldiers following their lord on a hapless winter crusade against Europe’s last pagans in the freezing wilderness of 14th-century Poland and Lithuania.
In A Graveyard in Algiers, Book 4 in The Muhammad Amalfi Mysteries by AJ Lewis (Independently published, Feb. 7), when an exorcism goes wrong at a villa outside the city of Algiers in 1793, the bodies start piling up. This is followed by Book 5, An Affair of Honor in Algiers (Independently published, Feb. 7), in which a famed Algerian corsair captain is pitted against a Turkish shipowner who vows to avenge his family’s honor.
The Serpent and the Rose by Catherine Butterfield (Book Baby, Feb. 19) tells the story of Marguerite de Valois, 16th-century princess of France, and her stormy relationship with her Machiavellian mother, Queen Catherine de Medici.
116-year-old Rube Wingo recalls his captivating and hysterical journey through an American century of life, love, race and baseball in Wingo: The Remarkable Life of an Unremarkable Man by Mike Vance (Dos Dogs Press, Feb. 20).
In 1935 a shell-shocked war veteran wins a suicidal bet with a ghost from his past, but there are conditions attached and the dead will have their due, as told in Veterans Key by Richard Bareford (Independently published, Mar. 5).
In Jules Larimore’s Find Me in the Stars (Mystic Lore Books, Mar. 20), inspired by a true refugee’s tale of sacrifice, separation, and abiding love, an apothecary from a noble French Huguenot family and a holy-woman healer are separated by miles but connected by the stars as they each forge their destinies in a quest for a brighter tomorrow during Louis XIV’s persecutions against Huguenots.
Kampaku: The Rise and Fall of Ishida Mitsunari, by David Klason (AM publishers, Mar. 28) invites you to dive into the heart of feudal Japan, where honour and deception collide in the life of Ishida Mitsunari, a samurai caught in the deadly games of power and destiny, as he battles to shape the future of a nation on the brink of transformation.
Deadly Gamble, #11 in the Deadly Series, by Kate Parker (JDP Press, April 16) involves murder, spying, and a young orphan with the key to a mission by the Axis powers in neutral Portugal during WWII.
Katerina Dunne’s Return to the Eyrie (Historium Press, Apr. 23), set in 15th century Hungary, features a young Transylvanian noblewoman who must break the constraints of her gender and social status to avenge her father’s murder and reclaim her stolen legacy.
In The Sister Knot by Ann S. Epstein (Vine Leaves Press, Apr. 30), two girls orphaned by WWII survive on the streets of Berlin and are brought to the U.S. by a Jewish refugee agency, where their lives diverge when one is adopted and the other is sent to a group home.
AD 395: In a Christian Roman Empire, worshipping the old gods is a death sentence, and traditionalists Maelia, Lucius and Galla must choose whether to stay, hoping for the best, or leave Rome and go into exile forever in EXSILIUM by Alison Morton, the sequel to JULIA PRIMA (an HNR Editors’ Choice).
In a story of love, loyalty, power, and penance in post-colonial America, The Scandalous Life of Nancy Randolph by Kate Braithwaite (Lume, May), born into a wealthy plantation family, Nancy Randolph’s life should be one of ease and order, but the death of her mother sets off a chain of events, culminating in a trial where it is alleged Nancy has had a child with her sister’s husband – but what really happened, and is the truth overrated if it cannot heal?
Following the second in the Ladies Least Likely historical romance series, The Forger and the Duke by Misty Urban (Oliver Heber Books, Mar. 5), where young copyist (and suspected forger) Amaranthe Illingworth discovers a document that rewrites the future for illegitimate duke’s son Malden Grey, the third in the series, The Painter Takes an Earl (Oliver Heber, May 7), brings upheaval into the life of scarred the scarred Earl of Renwick when his hoydenish childhood friend Harriette Smythe climbs through his window with the demand he commission a painting that will save her reputation—but risk his heart.
In Kinley Bryan’s The Lost Women of Mill Street (Blue Mug Press, May 7), set during the American Civil War, two sisters are among 400 Georgia mill workers charged with treason and sent to the North, where they must summon unknown reserves of courage and strength if they are to survive in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming land.
Loretta Goldberg, author of The Reversible Mask: An Elizabethan Spy Novel, releases Bombs Over the Bukubuk Tree: A Novel of World War II (MadeGlobal, June), which is set in tropical Papua New Guinea, where an idealistic Australian Jewish army doctor finds forbidden love, medical challenges and the ultimate peril when Japanese bombs fall (IFBAward 2023).
In The Schoolmaster by Jessica Tvordi (Garden Scriptorium, June 1), when scholar Peter Young is appointed to help the famous George Buchanan create the perfect Protestant ruler in young King James VI, their goal is derailed when the young monarch’s seductive Catholic cousin, Esmé Stewart, Seigneur d’Aubigny, arrives at court.
The Keys of Hell and Death by Charles Cordell (Myrmidon, June 4), #2 in the English Civil War series Divided Kingdom, is described as “heart-pounding action, heartbreaking loss as a nation tears itself apart … vividly rich in historical detail … not to be missed” by David Gilman, author of the Master of War series.
In Edward McSweegan’s The Cottage Industry (Wild Rose Press, June 5), WWI pilot David Enders returns to 1922 Connecticut looking for emotional peace but finds small-town corruption and lingering national paranoia, which complicate his new job and relationship with an artist at Old Lyme’s famous art colony.
Alexandra Weston’s The Hollywood Governess (Boldwood Books, June 26) incorporates an English governess bound by her own strict rules, a 1930s movie-star tormented by grief, and a forbidden love story you won’t forget.
Carol McGrath’s latest historical novel, The Lost Queen (Headline Accent, July) focuses on Berengaria of Navarre.
American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas (Blackstone Publishing, Sept.) is a darkly humorous novel set in the aftermath of America’s Civil War about a Black woman living in the south who decides her best chance at survival is to journey north to the Midwest with a strange white woman whose most notable characteristic is an insatiable bloodlust.
Jillian Forsberg’s debut, The Rhino Keeper (History Through Fiction, Oct.) is a dual-timeline novel, set in both the modern day and the 18th century, that tells the true story of Clara the Indian rhino and her Dutch keeper.
We appreciate knowing about our members’ new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in November 2023 or after, send the following details to compiler Sarah Johnson via our contact form by April 7 to be featured here: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Space is limited, so concise blurbs are appreciated. Details will appear in the May 2024 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
Growing up in Queen Victoria’s rules, loving under the shadow of the law: read more in Jane Stubbs’ His Wife’s Sister (Independently published, June 6, 2023).
Flowers of Evil (WayBack Press, July 2023) by N. L. Holmes, first in the new Hani’s Daughter series, is a cozy mystery set in ancient Egypt.
As Good as a Fire by Sharon O. Lightholder (Albedo Press, Aug. 6, 2023) exposes the American presence in Tsingtao, China when Peg Ryan joins her Marine fighter pilot husband in 1947, lives a complex life in the city with her daughter, befriends others, and discovers the city’s layered complexity; but as Mao’s troops pose a threat, she wonders if her decision to move to China has saved or destroyed her family.
Shining Threads by Joy Bounds (The Book Guild, Aug. 30, 2023) is based on the remarkable life of composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth, who lived at a time when women were not expected to have ambitious dreams.
N. L. Holmes’s The Moon That Fell from Heaven (Red Adept Publishing, Sept. 2023) tells a tale of political intrigue and romance in Bronze Age Ugarit.
Growing up in Havana in the 1750s, José Albañez is drawn into his uncle’s Caribbean smuggling network and must decide where his duty lies, in Fearful Breakers by Janice Sebring (Antimacassar Books, Sept. 27, 2023).
Scott Douglas Prill’s Where the Corn Grows Tallest (Independently published, Sept. 29, 2023) is a murder mystery based in rural Iowa during primarily the fall of 1970, and inspired by a true event.
Offspring of the most notorious love affair in the Middle Ages, Astralabe has been ignored by historians and misrepresented by fiction writers; Brenda M. Cook’s biography Astralabe: The Life and Times of the Son of Heloise and Abelard (Palgrave Macmillan, Oct. 2, 2023) relates the story of the real man making his way through the upheavals of 12th-century Brittany and Burgundy.
Jakob, a simple farmer, is determined to gain justice for his daughter, against the odds, in The Matchstick Boy by Rowena Kinread (Goldcrest Books, Oct. 10, 2023).
At What Cost, Silence? by Karen Lynne Klink (She Writes Press, Oct. 17, 2023), set in East Texas just prior to the American Civil War, is about understanding the costs of silence—when something dire or abusive happens to a person and they feel they can’t speak up.
Fire on the Frontier by Kenneth Kunkel (Valeria Press, Oct. 17, 2023) is a novel of revenge and redemption where a Roman soldier vows vengeance against the barbarians who killed his parents when he was infant; his journey will lead to the Teutoburg Forest where three legions will clash with the tribes of Germania.
Deb Stratas’ The War Twins of London (Readmore Press, Oct. 26, 2023) throws identical twins Tillie and Maggie Kingston into dangerous war work, as the Blitz rains bombs all around them: can true love prevail when the skies are darkened by war?
While visiting Hastings, historian Maggie Winegarden discovers the diaries of Elizabeth Siddal, Dante Rossetti’s wife, and his sister Christina Rossetti, and wonders what secrets they hold, as told in The Rossetti Diaries, the second historical novel by Kathleen Williams Renk (Bedazzled Ink, Nov. 2., 2023).
The Bottle Conjuror: Book One – Stefan, co-authored by John Kachuba and Jack Gagliardo (Beck and Branch Publishers, Nov. 2023), is an 18th-century historical fantasy set in London.
Medical correspondent Alice Simmons turns defeat into the scoop of her career after an assault ends her journalistic ambitions and forces her work as a nurse at an American Red Cross hospital during 1918, in An American Nurse in Paris – Novels of the Great War, the debut novel of John F. Andrews (Amazon KDP, Nov. 7, 2023).
Alistair Tosh’s new Roman historical novel Warrior (Independently published, Nov. 10, 2023), set in AD 150, is third in the Edge of Empire Series.
Comfort’s Rebellion by E. Jax Willoughby (QsynQ Publishing, Nov. 12, 2023) portrays the early life of America’s first genderfluid preacher, the Public Universal Friend, as they struggle to save New Englanders from the wages of sin before the impending End Times, unless accusations of blasphemy crush their mission.
At the end of WW2, a wanna-be teen actress stuck on a small farm in Tennessee is assaulted by an escaped Nazi POW from a nearby camp, forcing her to choose between Motherhood or Hollywood; read more in The Farm by Randy O’Brien (Addison & Highsmith, Nov. 21, 2023).
In Remnants (Nov. 28, 2023), sequel to Pete Sheild’s debut, Bad Medicine, protagonist Jimmy Marino is struggling in his relationship with his girlfriend, Sarah, in 1977, and remnants of his past—including the life-threatening pursuit of the Thomas Jefferson Peace Medal with his grandfather and the disappearance of two crooked lawmen—ignite a spiritual journey.
Amsterdam Ascendant: A Novel of Rebellion, Faith, and Daring Enterprise that Launch a Golden Age by Judith W. Richards (Aries Books, Nov. 30, 2023) is a gripping action-adventure story set in the turbulent latter 1500s and is Book One of the Van der Voort Family Saga.
In Jason Zeitler’s debut novel The Half-Caste (Polyphony Press, Dec. 2023), two friends, who first meet in London, fight against the evils of fascism and imperialism in 1930s England and Ceylon.
Will Somers, Henry VIII’s court jester, is back in the second outing of the King’s Fool Mysteries, The Twilight Queen by Jeri Westerson (Severn House, Jan. 2), when a dead man is discovered in Queen Anne Boleyn’s private quarters and it’s up to Will to solve the crime and keep the queen safe from conspiracies designed to bring her down.
In Louis Mie and the Trial of Hautefaye by L.M. Twist (Books and Hooves Publishing, LLC), in the turbulent aftermath of Napoleon III’s fall, lawyer Louis Mie grapples with the conflicting forces of justice, love, and personal ambition as he defends a murderer in a high-stakes political trial that threatens to shatter his life and marriage.
The true story of the mixed race, bisexual mystic who became a bishop’s murderous obsession explodes the wiki-fable of Hypatia of Alexandria in Hypatia: In Her Own Words by Lukman Clark (Six Sticks Productions, Jan. 18).
The Queen of War is Book 6 in The Norsewomen Series by Johanna Wittenberg (Shellback Studio, Jan. 31).
In Locked in Silence by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Black Rose Writing, Feb. 1), it’s 1848 when a young woman accused of murdering her baby is sentenced to four years of solitary confinement in Philadelphia’s notorious Eastern State Penitentiary, where the unremitting silence and isolation take a toll on her sanity and leave her struggling after her release to reassemble the fragments of her broken life.
In Edward McSweegan’s The Fever Hut (Fireship Press, Feb. 21), epidemic yellow fever threatens national ambitions and individual lives as Duncan Cleary, a young army doctor, works with Walter Reed to find a cure—and fame—during the last days of the 19th century.
The Loose Thread by Liz Harris (Heywood Press, Feb. 27), first in a trilogy of standalone novels about the Hammond sisters, takes place in 1938, as Rose Hammond married and moved to Jersey; in the middle of June, 1940, the British Government cut the Channel Islands loose from its protection, and at the end of June, the Germans moved in and occupied Jersey for 5 years.
In Eric Foster‘s Becoming St. Patrick – His Mission (Matador, Feb. 28), sequel to His Slavery, Patrick defies the pagan Druids and builds Christian churches, incurring deadly retaliation culminating in an epic, bloody battle; this page-turning story sees Patrick elevated to patron saint of Ireland.
Susan Higginbotham‘s The Queen of the Platform (Onslow Press, Mar. 12) tells the story of the indomitable nineteenth-century feminist Ernestine Rose, whose fearless advocacy helped bring about the rights women enjoy today.
One lie changes a family’s path for generations—and finally brings them back to an Ireland changed beyond recognition in The Keeper of Secrets by Maria McDonald (Bloodhound Books UK, Mar. 26).
1584: an unsuspecting girl is plucked from an orphanage on the orders of the Medici family with the promise of a dowry and a husband; only when it is too late is she told how she must earn them, in The Maiden of Florence by Katherine Mezzacappa (Fairlight Books, Apr. 18).
