New books by Historical Novel Society members, November 2023
Congrats to our author members on these new releases! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in August 2023 or after, send the following details in via our contact form by January 7, 2024: 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 February 2024 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.
In Vindicta by Mark Carlson (Milford House, Dec. 16, 2022), fourth and final novel of the Vengeance of the Last Roman Legion alternative history thriller series, the most impossible invasion in history has begun: two armies – one modern and armed with advanced weapons, and another carrying only swords and spears – are about to clash in a battle to the death.
Immigrant, anarchist, midwife: Sue Stern’s The Girl from Kyiv (Red Bank Books, May 31) is a love story set against the backdrop of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Return to mysterious Measham Hall in Anna Abney’s The Messenger of Measham Hall (Duckworth Books, June), a page-turning tale of espionage and intrigue in the years leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Susan Shalev‘s The German Dressmaker (independently published, June 18), set against the backdrop of WW2 in Germany and England, is the unforgettable, heart-wrenching story of love, loss, friendship and survival involving Lily, a talented aspiring seamstress, and Heinrich, a charming major in Hitler’s Wehrmacht with a dangerous secret.
A young British woman meets and falls in love with a young German man, sweetly unaware the Great War is about to explode, in Gary Baysinger’s A Kind of Homecoming (See Square Press, June 21).
In The Solace of Stars by Kathleen Ernst (Level Best Books/Historia, July 4), four months after her turbulent 1855 arrival, Pomeranian immigrant Hanneke Bauer’s fledging equilibrium vanishes when a dear friend finds her father dead from a vicious attack.
Ged Melia’s Liverpool (Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd, July 6) tells the story of an Irish Catholic family’s survival in 1840s Liverpool.
In The Mists of Middleham: An Alianore Audley Novel by Brian Wainwright (Self-published, July), Alianore and her husband receive a new commission from King Edward IV: he has heard that the Holy Grail is to be found somewhere within his dominions – and he wants them to find it!
In Annette Kane’s debut novel, Dolly Butler’s Eight-Day Week (The Book Guild, July 28), a reckless cross-dressing detective is tricked by her mysterious lover.
An enchanting boardinghouse tale, Henderson House by Caren Simpson McVicker (Inkshares, Aug. 1) serves up family and friendship with a side of romance as three middle-aged Oklahoma women struggle to embrace change, forgiveness, and love in May of 1941.
Two sisters must reconcile the legacy of their family trauma and the complications of love and work in 1946 Detroit in The Bookkeeper: A Novel by Jan M. Walton (Windcove Publishing, Aug. 4).
Jennifer Marchman’s The Mender (Independently published, Aug. 6), first in the Mender trilogy, features a lost time traveler, a Comanche warrior, and their love across clashing worlds. Book 2, The Captive (Independently published, Aug. 15) features a lost time traveler making a place for herself in 1836 Texas, while Book 3, The Guardian (Independently published, Aug. 15), features a reformed assassin choosing between loyalty and justice as she tries to stop her former partner from altering history.
Mirrors & Smoke by Adrienne Stevenson (Equae books, Aug. 9) tells a story of courage, strength, and resilience of a woman caught up in the War of 1812 in Upper Canada.
In Nancy Bilyeau’s The Orchid Hour (Lume Books, Aug. 10), Zia De Luca’s life is about to be shattered: having lost her husband to The Great War, she lives with her in-laws in Little Italy and works at the public library, but when a quiet poetry-lover is murdered outside the library, the police investigation focuses on Zia.
War Angel: Korea 1950 by Mike Weedall (Outskirts Press, Aug. 15) tells the story of US Army Nurses through the eyes of one reluctant reservist operating room specialist; at a time when Army regulations precluded men from serving as nurses, this is the real MASH.
Shimon Avish’s second novel in his series on ancient Jewish history, The Rebel’s Niece (MarbleStone Press, Aug. 22), is about the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. and tells the story of Sarah, a mother of two young girls who find themselves trapped by the violence visited upon Jerusalem by the Romans and by the messianic aspirations of Sarah’s uncle, one of the leaders of the Jewish rebellion.
In Night Train to Odessa by Mary L. Grow (Studio17, Aug. 23), unlikely allies join a young widow to search for her missing children in the beautiful but beleaguered seaport, Odessa, during the Russian Civil War (1919 – 1920).
England, 1645, and a young widow dares to hope her life may change for the better when she catches the eye of a wealthy Royalist, but others have different ideas, and nearly 400 years later, the valuable engraved ring he gives her is unearthed in an Oxfordshire garden, in The Woman in the Painting by Amanda Roberts (Independently published, Aug. 31).
Babylon by Michelle Cameron (Wicked Son, Sept. 12) is a multi-generational biblical saga of captivity, romance, faith, and redemption, set against the Judean exile in Babylon.
In Gary Baysinger’s Margaret’s Last Prayer (See Square Press, Sept. 20), a young woman’s courageous action is rewarded with a pair of matching amulets that may possess the power to shape her family’s destiny.
In Dennis Tomlinson’s Burning House (Kindle, Sept. 20), Noah Marshall grows up in what is described as an all-Black town in Oklahoma, but the reality is a racial mixture and, knowing that, Noah voluntarily participates in school integration twice; racism hands him a torched home and a grand jury investigation.
Lyn Squire‘s Immortalised to Death (Level Best Books, Sept. 26) embeds an original solution to Charles Dickens’s unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood within the evolving and ultimately tragic consequences of a broader mystery surrounding the great author himself.
In Brock Meier’s The Stone Cutter (Blue Sevens Pub., Sept. 30), an orphan rises as a gifted young sculptor in the fabulous city of ancient Petra, but a brilliant songstress distracts his progress, and a calamitous injury ends his career, sending him on a quest to find a powerful and mysterious object—its cost, more than he could possibly imagine.
The Countess Game by Deborah Cay Wilding (Independently published, Oct. 1) is set amidst the Jacobite Rising of 1715 where acts of allegiance, betrayal and courage are seen through the eyes of a heroic young woman, cousin to the Pretender, James Stuart, as she straddles two worlds torn between family loyalty and the love of an earl pledged to King George.
The country is changing, and her own world is being turned upside down; Homeward by Angela Jackson-Brown (Harper Muse, Oct. 10) follows Rose’s path toward self-discovery and growth as she becomes involved in the Civil Rights Movement, finally becoming the woman she has always dreamed of being.
The Line of Splendor: A Novel of Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution by Salina B. Baker (Culper Press, Oct. 12) is the epic story of a self-educated Quaker from Rhode Island who rose to become a major general in the Continental Army and a national hero by resuscitating and then propelling the American states to victory in their War for Independence and the personal cost of that war.
Marina Osipova’s The Drau River Flows to Siberia: The Victims of Victory (Self-published, Oct. 25) tells the story behind a sensational WWII historical controversy through the fates of two strangers whose lives converge on an isolated peninsula of a Siberian river, and who are connected to one another in inextricably entangled ways they do not yet realize.
In The Hunt by Griff Hosker (Sword Books Limited, Nov. 9), Gerald Warbow is needed, once more, by King Edward to hunt down the elusive William Wallace, who is the focus of the Scottish rebels and is seeking help in Europe, where Lord Edward’s Archer must fight off an increasing number of enemies to bring the rebel to justice.
Wages of Empire by Michael J Cooper (Koehler Books, Nov. 30) is YA historical fiction that follows sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair, who leaves home in August 1914 to join the Great War for Civilization, but little does he know that, despite the war raging in Europe, the true source of conflict will emerge in Ottoman Palestine—where the German kaiser dreams to rule as Holy Roman Emperor from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
It’s Overboard in 1799 Wales in Misty Urban‘s historical romance debut, Viscount Overboard (Oliver Heber Books, Dec. 2023), when an English viscount washes up in Newport minus his memory, and the Welsh healer who finds him decides not to tell him he owns the abandoned priory where she’s built a community of outcasts that he threatened to evict.
There is only one known queen who ruled a kingdom on American soil: based on the true story of the Kingdom of the Happy Land, The American Queen by Vanessa Miller (Thomas Nelson, Jan. 30, 2024) is an unforgettable and triumphant story of courage, beauty, and second chances; long live Queen Louella Montgomery.
In The Arsenic Eater’s Wife by Tonya Mitchell (Bloodhound Books, Feb 8, 2024), based on a real 1889 case, a young woman convicted of murdering her husband with arsenic is freed 15 years later and sets out to find who framed her, unaware the killer is after her.
Neferura, princess and high priestess, and the only daughter of the legendary pharaoh Hatchepsut, must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to protect the people of Kemet before everything crumbles at the hands of a tyrant in Neferura: The Pharaoh’s Daughter by Malayna Evans (Sourcebooks, Feb. 13, 2024).
A serial killer is on the loose in Jazz Age Philadelphia in the debut historical mystery from Jenny Adams: A Deadly Endeavor (Crooked Lane, Mar. 5, 2024)
