New Books by HNS Members, August 2017
compiled by Sarah Johnson
We have a bumper crop of new releases from our prolific membership. Books are in order by date, with descriptions provided by the authors. Congrats to all!
Current HNS members: if you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published between June-Dec 2017, please write us with the following details by Oct. 7, 2017: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Details will appear in November’s column.
Jacqueline Reiter’s The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham (Pen & Sword, Jan 11) is the first ever biography of the elder brother of British prime minister Pitt the Younger, infamous for commanding the disastrous Walcheren Expedition of 1809.
In Moriarty Takes His Medicine by Anna Castle (Anna Castle, Jan 15), Professor & Mrs. Moriarty tackle a case too ticklish for Sherlock Holmes to handle on his own.
M. L. Greer’s first historical novel, Thrice Blest (CreateSpace, Mar 20), begins early in the 20th century, in a village near the Dniester River, where Ukrainian people have struggled against poverty, oppression, and efforts to obliterate their identity, language, culture, and religion; the story follows one family through the century.
In Harper’s Rescue: Book 2 of the Shiloh Trilogy by Sean K. Gabhann (Sundown, Mar 23), Lieutenant Jamie Harper and Corporal Gustav Magnusson arrive in Paducah, Kentucky after escaping a Confederate prison and are recruited to help General Grant’s spymaster disrupt a ring of saboteurs based out of the establishment where saloon-girl Katie Malloy is indentured.
Griff Hosker has three new releases, all from Sword Books. In From Arctic Snow to Desert Sand (March 30), a WWI Ace thinks his war is over in 1918, but he is sent to fight first the Bolsheviks and then the Mad Mullah. In Crusader (April 24), a Norman knight goes to the Holy Land to atone for his sins, while in Viking Weregeld (May 7), the Dragonheart is forced to join with Danes to fight King Egbert when his son commits murder.
Jennifer Moore’s Miss Whitaker Opens Her Heart (Covenant Communications, Apr) takes place in the harsh colony of New South Wales; Sarah Whitaker lives by the motto that nobody is to be trusted, but as she develops feelings for her new neighbor, can she forgive his past?
In Anna Belfrage’s Under the Approaching Dark (Troubador, Apr 10), England in the early 14th century is a messy place: a king has been deposed, the new king is a boy, and the power behind the throne is the young king’s mother, Isabella of France, and Roger Mortimer. Quite the quagmire for the honourable knight Adam de Guirande to navigate!
Raven’s Feast by Eric Schumacher (Creativia, Apr 23) tells the true story of the most unlikely Norse king, Hakon Haraldsson, a Christian teenager who has wrested the High Seat of Viking Age Norway from his ruthless brother, Erik Bloodaxe, and now must fight the land-hungry Danes and the religious beliefs of his pagan countrymen to keep it.
Power and passion collide in Donna Russo Morin’s The Competition: Da Vinci’s Disciples, Book Two (Diversion, Apr 25), a sumptuous Renaissance historical novel of shattering limitations, one brushstroke at a time.
Alison Morton’s Retalio (Pulcheria, Apr 27) is the sixth alternative history thriller in the award-winning Roma Nova series. Can exiled Aurelia liberate Roma Nova from the brutal consulship of Caius?
Volume Three in D.K.R. Boyd’s The Reflecting Man series (Wonderdog, May) continues the antic tale of unreliable narrator, Kurtis De’ath, on his discerning journey through chaotic people and events leading to WWII.
Eileen Charbonneau’s I’ll Be Seeing You (Book 1 of Code Talker Chronicles; BWL, May 2017) is set as America enters WWII; a young Navaho idealist finds his innocence shattered by his initiation into the fledgling O.S.S. as it tries out the newly developed code on a secret mission in the mountains of Spain.
Caro Soles’s A Friend of Mr. Nijinsky (Crossroad, May 8), follows a young American man who befriends the great ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky in 1916 and is drawn into his paranoid world.
Traitor’s Knot by Cryssa Bazos (Endeavour, May 9) is a sweeping tale of love and conflicted loyalties set against the turmoil of the English Civil War.
None of Us the Same by Jeffrey K. Walker (Ballybur, May 15) poses the following question: The Great War would change everything and everyone… then what?
Inspired by real events, part unsolved murder and part epic love story, Vanessa Lafaye’s At First Light (Orion, Jun 1) is set in Key West, Florida, in 1919 and dramatises what happened to one couple when the Ku Klux Klan set up a chapter there.
Rick Deragon’s Fire in the Year of Four Emperors (de Ventadorn Press, Jun 1) shows Batavian prince Julius Civilis battling Roman corruption and tribal insurrection on his homeward journey to lead his people against their oppressors.
In Cynthia Ripley Miller’s The Quest for the Crown of Thorns (Knox Robinson, Jun 13), second in the Long-Hair Saga, a Roman senator’s daughter and her warrior husband must solve a gruesome murder, a mysterious riddle, and complete one of history’s most challenging missions.
Blood Moon: A Captive’s Tale (Amika, Jun 14) by Ruth Hull Chatlien is a work of adult-level historical fiction set during the Dakota War of 1862; it is based on the true experiences of Sarah Wakefield and her two young children, held captive for the length of the deadly six-week conflict.
Perilous Prophecy by Leanna Renee Hieber (Tor, June 20) is a ghost-filled Gaslamp Fantasy set in 1860s Cairo and London, where ancient myth plays out in dangerous mortal reality.
Set in 10th-century England and Ireland, Caerthwaite, Book 1: Love’s Vows by Kate Grannis chronicles the love of Josselin Ironstone and Sven Augensson, two people who cannot be together yet cannot live apart (Endeavour Press, June 21).
Set in 1882, River with No Bridge by Karen Wills (Five Star, Jun 21) features immigrant Nora Flanagan, who finds love, tragedy, scandal, danger, and finally romantic wilderness adventure in her journey into Montana Territory.
During the French Revolution, Countess Bettina is kidnapped back to France, but will she find the lover she lost in England? Find out in Diane Scott Lewis’ Hostage to the Revolution (BooksWeLove, Jul 19), the sequel to Escape the Revolution.
In The Secret of Summerhayes by Merryn Allingham (HQ/HarperCollins, Jul 27), Bethany Merston, bombed out of London by the Blitz, takes up a post as companion to the elderly owner of Summerhayes, now a shadow of its former glory, and unravels the dark secrets of the house and its almost-forgotten scandals.
Without Warning by Thomas C. Sanger (River Grove, Aug 1) tells the forgotten story of passengers’ heroism and sacrifice when their ship, the Athenia, is torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine at the start of WWII; it’s based on actual events and people, including the author’s grandmother.
In Eileen Charbonneau’s Watch Over Me (Book 2 of Code Talker Chronicles; BWL, Aug), set in the crucible of a world at war, O.S.S. agents New Yorker Kitty Charante and Navaho Luke Kayenta leap hurdles of class, race and their soul-searing time.
Carol McGrath’s The Woman in the Shadows (Accent, Aug 4) tells the story of Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of Henry VIII’s statesman Thomas Cromwell.
In Slow Train to Sonora by Loyd Uglow (Five Star, Aug 16), two American army officers sent into revolutionary Mexico in 1911 find danger and romance—and danger in romance.
In Spellhaven, a historical fantasy by Sandra Unerman (Mirror World, Aug 17), Jane, a young English musician, is kidnapped just before the outbreak of the First World War, and taken to an island ruled by magicians.
Workhouse Orphans (Ebury, Aug 24), first in a projected quartet by Hilary Green, writing as Holly Green, follows the orphaned May and Gus, who endure harsh conditions in the Brownlow workhouse in mid-19th c Liverpool; May, however, has a talent for design which will lift her out of that environment, while Gus runs away to sea, determined to find his missing father.
The Green Phoenix by Alice Poon (Earnshaw, Sept 1) is a novelized account of the life of Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, born a Mongolian princess who became a consort in the Manchu court and then the Qing dynasty’s first matriarch; she succeeded against the odds in leading the early Qing Empire out of a dead end to peace and stability.
Eager to shed her better-known identity as frivolous Amy March in Little Women, May Alcott pursues independence and a career as a professional painter in Elise Hooper’s debut The Other Alcott (William Morrow, Sept 5).
