New books by Historical Novel Society members, May 2026
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.
