Literary
The Last Runaway
Editors' choice
A young Quaker woman, Honor Bright, has left her civilized home of Bridport in England for the wild, untamed wilderness…
Sarah Thornhill
As she did in the first book of this trilogy, The Secret River, Kate Grenville delves into her family history…
All the Beauty Of the Sun
A superbly written book, this is a poignant and very readable novel. The rich, colourful and complex characters bring this…
A Woman of Angkor
Sray is the “Woman of Angkor.” It’s a simple name for a simply named novel about the momentous historical events…
A Possible Life
Editors' choice
How do the choices we make radically change our lives, in terms of our overall trajectory, our relationships, our beliefs?…
The Island of Second Sight: From the Applied Recollections of Vigoleis
When protagonist/author Vigoleis’s brother-in-law sends a message from Mallorca that reads, “Am dying. Zwingli,” Vigoleis and his wife, Beatrice, set…
A World Elsewhere
Two young men meet at Princeton University in the late 1890s: one, the articulate Landish Druken, son of a wealthy…
Bone River
Editors' choice
This beautifully written, lyrical literary novel engages with the themes of the despoliation of the Pacific Northwest’s native culture and…
Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
This is the eighth novel in prolific American author William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle, which began way back in 1975 with…
The Balloonist
It’s seldom you read a book that’s both funny and terrifying, deeply unsettling and deeply satisfying, all at once. The…
About our Reviews
Over the last 20 years The Historical Novels Review (the society’s print magazine for our members) has published reviews of some 15,000 historical fiction books.
