New Books Network
Historical Fiction
Literature December 23, 2021

Stoking Hope

C. K. McDonough

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to …

Historical Fiction

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Interviews with writers of historical fiction about their new books.

Literature December 21, 2021

Night Came With Many Stars

Simon Van Booy

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Night Came With Many Stars (Godine, 2021) ebbs and flows with people who only take or destroy, balanced by those who give or heal. And everything centers on a family …
Historical Fiction January 5, 2022

Sunday's Orphan

Catherine Gentile

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Even for someone trained from birth to manage a farm, stepping into an inheritance at the age of twenty is not easy. Yet this is the situation facing Promise Mears …
Historical Fiction December 20, 2021

Bedtrick

Jinny Webber

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
As Jinny Webber explains in this interview, a “bedtrick” is a literary device through which a character is deceived into spending the night with someone unexpected, trapping that character into an …
Literature December 7, 2021

Gone Missing in Harlem

A Novel

Karla FC Holloway

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Gone Missing in Harlem by Karla FC Holloway (TriQuarterly 2021) tells the story of an African American family trying to survive the early decades of the twentieth century. The Mosbys …
Literature November 30, 2021

Nermina's Chance

Dina Greenberg

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Today I talked to Dina Greenberg about her new novel Nermina's Chance (Atmosphere Press, 2021).Nermina is a medical student in Sarajevo. She’s been raised in an educated family of Westernized, secular …
Historical Fiction November 29, 2021

Murder at the Royal Botanic Gardens

A Riveting New Regency Historical Mystery

Andrea Penrose

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Great Britain’s Regency Era (1811–1820) has long been wildly popular as a subject of historical fiction yet overly focused on the romance genre. The towering figures of Jane Austen and …
Historical Fiction November 22, 2021

All Things That Deserve to Perish

A Novel of Wilhelmine Germany

Dana Mack

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Despite all the attention paid to the two world wars of the twentieth century, not a great deal of historical fiction focuses on the period that preceded them. Dana Mack’s …
Literature November 16, 2021

The Cry of the Hangman

Susanna Calkins

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
It’s December 1667 and London is still recovering both from the Plague and the Great Fire. Lucy Campion visits retired judge Master Hargrave and discovers that he’s been attacked and …
Historical Fiction November 1, 2021

Miss Moriarty, I Presume?

Sherry Thomas

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Since Arthur Conan Doyle first created Sherlock Holmes, the great detective has gone through many permutations and been the subject of much study. As Sherry Thomas admits in this latest New …
Historical Fiction October 20, 2021

The Artist Colony

Joanna Fitzpatrick

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
By 1924, Sarah Cunningham has spent years in France establishing her own artistic style, more contemporary than the landscapes that have made her older sister, Ada Belle Davenport, famous. She …
Historical Fiction October 11, 2021

God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen

Rhys Bowen

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Back in the days when brick-and-mortar bookstores were common in suburban America, I was browsing the shelves at my local Borders when a title caught my eye: Her Royal Spyness …
Historical Fiction September 13, 2021

No Accidental Death

Garrett Hutson

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Despite the deluge of novels about World War II that has characterized the last few years, the period leading up to the war on the Pacific Front has received far …
Historical Fiction September 7, 2021

The Collector's Daughter

A Novel of the Discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb

Gill Paul

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings almost a century ago revolutionized the study of ancient Egypt and its pharaohs. The splendors that surrounded the burial …
Literature August 31, 2021

What Passes as Love

Trisha R. Thomas

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Today I talked to Trisha R. Thomas about her new novel What Passes as Love (Lake Union Publishing, 2021).In 1850, at age six, Dahlia Holt is taken from the only home she …
Literature August 10, 2021

Devil by the Tail

Jeanne Matthews

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Today I talked to Jeanne Matthews about her new novel Devil by the Tail (D.X. Varos, 2021) It’s 1867, and a 20-something civil war widow has just set up a detective agency …
Historical Fiction August 6, 2021

The La Motte Woman

Mary Martin Devlin

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
Jeanne de St.-Rémy has a grudge against the world. Born into the French royal family—if admittedly by a somewhat labyrinthine route—she spends years of her childhood so disinherited and ignored …
Literature July 20, 2021

The Book of Lost Light

Ron Nyren

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Ron Nyren’s The Book of Lost Light—winner of Black Lawrence Press’s 2019 Big Moose Prize and finalist in the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction—tells the …
Historical Fiction July 5, 2021

The Play's the Thing

Jessica Barksdale Inclán

Hosted by C. P. Lesley
In a sense, those of us who love historical fiction live vicariously in the past. Many of us also fantasize about traveling in time—meeting our favorite writers in the flesh …
Asian Review of Books July 1, 2021

The Flower Boat Girl

A Novel Based on a True Story

Larry Feign

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
It can be easy to forget amongst the glistening skyscrapers, bustling streets and neon lights, but the Pearl River Delta used to be a haven for banditry and piracy. As …