Jonathan Cape
Strange Music
England and Jamaica, 1837 to 1840. There are three narrators: the young poet Elizabeth Barrett, before she married Robert Browning,…
The Enchantress of Florence
Wearing a multicolored leather coat, a Florentine traveler arrives at the emperor of India’s court armed with magic tricks, a…
The Seance
This is an excellent Gothic tale set in the second half of 19th-century England. Narrated by a number of different…
Sway
As I stood on the outside and watched the careers of musical groups like The Beatles and The Stones, I…
The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century
In 1816, the French frigate Medusa, bound for Senegal, hit a reef off the coast of Africa. This book is…
House of Meetings
Editors' choice
Written as a confession, House of Meetings is the story of two brothers—the unnamed narrator and Lev—and the beautiful, free-spirited…
Lionheart And Lackland And The Wars Of Conquest
This is a scholarly but somehow nostalgic look at the “Devil’s Brood”, the quarrelsome sons of Henry II and Eleanor…
The Last Revolution: 1688 and the Creation of the Modern World
The Revolution of 1688 has been called ‘bloodless’. On the whole the description holds. But as Patrick Dillon’s fascinating book…
Henry VIII’s Last Victim
This book is rightly subtitled ‘The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.’ The author is to be…
The Truth About Sascha Knisch
Set in the oppressively hot summer of 1928 Berlin, this is a fascinating, though often obscure novel. The eponymous Sascha…
About our Reviews
Over the last 15 years The Historical Novels Review (the society’s print magazine for our members) has published reviews of some 12,000 historical fiction books. We plan to upload them all and make them searchable here.
