New books by HNS members, May 2018

Congrats to the following authors on their new releases! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in 2018 or after, please send the following details to us by July 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Details will appear in August’s magazine. Submissions may be edited for space reasons.

Faith A. Colburn’s debut The Reluctant Canary Sings (Prairie Wind Press, Aug. 3, 2017), set in Cleveland, Ohio, begins during the second dip of the double-dip Depression (1937-1941); the only way Bobbi could save her family was to sing, but that made her a target in unexpected ways.

K. M. Sandrick’s debut The Pear Tree (IngramSpark, Aug. 27, 2017), a recent Global Ebook Award nominee, tells about the Nazis’ destruction of the small Czech town of Lidice in response to the killing of the head of Occupied Czechoslovakia; the execution of the town’s men; the separation and racial profiling of Lidice’s women and children; and survivors’ efforts to overcome fear and betrayal, seek the truth about lost loved ones, and find hope.

Preston Fleming’s Maid of Baikal (PF publishing, Oct. 15, 2017) is a richly imagined speculation on the Russian Civil War that answers the question: What if a Siberian Joan of Arc had rescued the White Armies at a critical point of the Russian Civil War in 1919?

In Rivers of Stone (Amazon Kindle, Nov. 19, 2017), Book 3 of Beth Camp’s family saga, Catriona McDonnell, disguised as a boy and employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and artist Paul Kane, crosses Canada in the 1840s in search of her husband.

Friendships deepen, romances blossom, and mysteries unfold in Julie Klassen’s The Ladies of Ivy Cottage (Bethany House, Dec. 5, 2017), Book 2 of Tales from Ivy Hill.

Steven Neil’s The Merest Loss (Matador, Dec. 15, 2017) is a story of love and political intrigue, set against the backdrop of the English hunting shires and the streets of Victorian London and post-revolutionary Paris.

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the longest running theatrical riot in British history, Carol M. Cram’s The Muse of Fire (Kindle Press/New Arcadia, Jan. 9) features a young actress who makes her debut at the famed Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and becomes ensnared by intrigues and setbacks that mar the pathway to stardom she craves.

In Christy Nicholas’s Misfortune of Vision, #4 in The Druid’s Brooch Series (Tirgearr, Jan. 10), set in 12th-c Ireland, Orlagh is Seer to her Chief, but she is determined to fulfill her own quest: to find a worthy heir for her magical brooch.

Tamar Anolic‘s novel Triumph of a Tsar (CreateSpace, Jan. 11) explores a world in which the Russian Revolution is averted and the hemophiliac Alexei, son of Tsar Nicholas II, comes to the throne.

In Paul W. Feenstra’s For Want of a Shilling (Mellester Press, Jan 21), about the mysterious Russian invasion hoax that shook colonial New Zealand, what begins as a local murder investigation turns into a plot of global proportions.

She wants her home; he wants control; the Fascists want both. This is the premise of Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger’s No Man’s Land: Reschen Valley 1 (CreateSpace, Jan. 25).

Christine Hancock’s Bright Sword: The Byrhtnoth Chronicles, Book 1 (The Book Guild, Jan. 28), set in the 10th century, centers on a boy who searches for a sword—but only when he defeats his own fears and becomes a man, can he claim it, and become Byrhtnoth, a great Anglo-Saxon warrior.

In Tiernan’s Wake (AudioArcadia, Jan. 30) by Richard T. Rook, an artist, lawyer/genealogist and historian use their different skills to locate the first identifiable portrait of the 16th-century Irish Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley—and discover that Grace was close to finalizing a deal with England’s Queen Elizabeth that would have altered the course of European history.

In Sara Dahmen’s Widow 1881 (Sillan+Pace+Brown, Feb. 14), a very proper Boston widow hides an unexpected pregnancy under layers of lies by heading to Flats Junction, Dakota Territory, only to discover her physician employer threatens to upend all her best laid plans.

Set in the 13th century, as England and France struggle over territory, Erica Laine’s Isabella of Angouleme: The Tangled Queen Part 2 (SilverWood, Feb. 14) follows King John’s widow, Isabella of Angoulême, as she moves back to France to claim her inheritance amid forceful men who would stop her.

C.J. Heigelmann’s An Uncommon Folk Rhapsody (Common Folk Press, Feb. 23) is about an orphaned Asian boy who is adopted and grows up to fight in the American Civil War, where he falls in love with a slave.

Marilyn Pemberton‘s debut The Jewel Garden (Williams & Whiting, Feb. 23) tells of one Victorian woman’s physical, emotional and artistic journey from the East End of London to the noisy souks and sandy wastes of Egypt via the labyrinthine canals of Venice, and her fictional relationship with Mary De Morgan, a writer of fairy tales and one of William Morris’s circle of friends.

The Mark of Wu: Hidden Paths by Stephen M. Gray (Helu Press, Feb. 28) is an exotic action-adventure story set in ancient China with palace intrigue, epic battles and an emerging hero.

Set in New England and London in 1630-1677, Judith Guskin’s Longing to Be Free: The Bear, The Eagle, and The Crown (WonderSpirit Press, Mar. 1) tells a story of conflict through the life of a stalwart woman, Comfort Bradford, daughter of Gov. of Plymouth, who fights against the intolerance, both religious and cultural, that shaped American values.

In Animal Dances by Jim Saunders (Shorehouse, Mar. 1), Harry Edwards is conscripted into the Great War and discovers a new and unrealized capacity for decisiveness and action in the face of danger, while back home, Fannie, his girlfriend, struggles to remain faithful, and his family must deal with a killing flu.

Set in 1585, in an England beset by foreign enemies and swirling rumours of Catholic plots, Forsaking All Other by Catherine Meyrick (Courant, Mar. 12) tells the story of a young woman’s struggle to avoid an arranged marriage at a time when duty and obedience were valued above personal wishes.

A reluctant aristocratic sleuth finds she’s investigating her own family in Jane Steen’s Lady Helena Investigates (Aspidistra Press, Mar. 14).

In The Breach: Reschen Valley 2 by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger (CreateSpace, Mar. 15), burying the past comes at a high price.

The Lace Weaver, the debut novel from Lauren Chater (Simon & Schuster Australia, Mar. 19), is a sweeping tale of love and loss set in 1940s Estonia.

The Blood of Princes, second in Derek Birks’ Craft of Kings series (CreateSpace, Mar. 31), is a savage tale of love, treason and betrayal surrounding the “Princes in the Tower.”

Penny Ingham’s The Saxon Plague (Nerthus, Apr. 2) is set in 5th-century Britain: When Vortigern recruits Hengist’s Saxon warband to subdue the northern tribes, he unwittingly unleashes a reign of terror, treachery and bloodshed; and when he forces Hengist’s sister Anya to marry him, only the gods can foresee the devastating chain of events set in motion.

In Misfortune of Song by Christy Nicholas, #5 in The Druid’s Brooch Series (Tirgearr, Apr. 4), set in 12th-c Ireland, Maelan must decide between his own honor and his headstrong granddaughter’s happiness.

In Michal Strutin’s Judging Noa: a Fight for Women’s Rights in the Turmoil of the Exodus (Bedazzled Ink, Apr. 10), based on brief biblical verses, Noa pursues justice for her sisters and herself to escape bondage in the face of family squabbles, political tricksters, and deadly religious fanatics set against the sweeping turbulence of the Exodus.

The Scarlet Pimpernel meets Gone with the Wind in Jessica James’s The Lion of the South: A Novel of the Civil War (Patriot Press, Apr. 12), a suspenseful novel that leaves the lives of two men—and the destiny of a nation—in one woman’s hands.

In Ghosts and Exiles by Sandra Unerman (Mirror World Publishing, Apr. 17), set in 1930s London, Tilda Gray and her family fight the ghosts which threaten a young friend and spirits whose powers they do not understand.

In J. G. Harlond’s A Turning Wind (Penmore, Apr. 23), set in 1640, from the trading colony of Goa to the royal courts of England and Spain, the wily Ludo da Portovenere fulfils dangerous secret commissions on his own terms and for his own reasons.

An Unwilling Alliance by Lynn Bryant (indie, Apr. 30) is a novel of war and romance set during the Copenhagen campaign of 1807.

The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland (Penguin Canada, May 1; also Penguin US, Jun. 23) is a YA novel based on the teen years of Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine Bonaparte’s daughter and Napoleon’s stepdaughter.

Karen Lee Street’s novel Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru (Pegasus, May 8) is set in Philadelphia in 1844: as violent tensions escalate between nativists and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe and his friend C. Auguste Dupin strive to unravel a mystery involving old enemies, lost soul-mates, ornithomancy, and the legendary jewel of Peru.

Kate Heartfield’s Armed in Her Fashion (ChiZine, May 17), set in Flanders in 1328, follows a widow who leads a raiding party into the mouth of Hell to claim her inheritance and protect her daughter.

Set in England in 1176, E.M. Powell’s The King’s Justice (Thomas & Mercer, Jun. 1), first in a new medieval mystery series, features Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, who is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York.

In Mark Scott Smith’s The Osprey and the Sea Wolf~The Battle of the Atlantic 1942 (CreateSpace/IngramSpark, Jun. 3) a seasoned U-boat captain and a rookie Mexican-American B-25 pilot engage in a hit and run battle off the coast of North America and deal with love, betrayal and loss on the home front.

Set in 1810 England, The Thieftaker’s Trek by Joan Sumner (Bastei Lubbe AG – Bastei Entertainment, Jun. 12), tells a tale of revenge, blackmail, and murder. Frobisher, the thieftaker, is hired to rescue a 5-year-old boy abducted from Spitalfields to work with child slaves in a cotton mill, while murder is investigated by a Bow Street detective in London; is this coincidental or linked?

Give Up the Dead (The Mystery Press, Jul. 5) the fifth book in C.B. Hanley’s medieval mystery series, sees Edwin Weaver travelling with an army to repel a French invasion; however, he soon realises that danger is nearer at hand, and that the French aren’t the only ones trying to kill him.

In Last Dance in Kabul by Ken Czech (Fireship, Aug 2), British army captain Reeve Waterton tries to warn of an impending insurrection in 1841 Afghanistan, but the only one who listens is Sarah Kane, who not only detests him, she is also betrothed to his bitterest rival.

In The Eyes That Look: The Secret Story of Bassano’s Hunting Dogs (Universe Press, Oct), Julia Grigg’s richly-imagined coming-of-age adventure, Francesco Bassano sets out to unravel the mystery of the portrait which his father, Jacopo, painted and furnish Giorgio Vasari with information entertaining enough to guarantee a favourable mention in his Lives of the Artists.