About C. P. Lesley

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest novel, The Merchant's Tale, co-written with P.K. Adams, appeared in November 2023.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book, The Merchant's Tale, co-written with P.K. Adams, appeared in November 2023.

C. P.'s website

NBN Episodes hosted by C. P.:

October 21, 2024

Murder in Highbury

Vanessa Kelly

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

For a woman who published only four novels during her lifetime, with two others appearing shortly after her death and several incomplete or shorter wo…

September 25, 2024

A Daughter of Fair Verona

Christina Dodd

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

It takes a certain gall to update one of William Shakespeare’s most enduring and most beloved tragedies. Anyone who has survived an English literature…

September 10, 2024

The Booklover's Library

Madeline Martin

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

The Booklover's Library (Hanover Square Press, 2024) has one of the most dramatic openings I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of novels. It’s 1931 in…

August 19, 2024

Death and the Visitors

Heather Redmond

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Today I talked to Heather Redmond about her new novel Death and the Visitors (Kensington, 2024). In this second Regency-era mystery featuring Mary Go…

July 8, 2024

Daughters of Shandong

Eve J. Chung

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Daughters of Shandong (Berkley Books, 2024), the author’s first and based on the life of her grandmother, follows the fortunes of a mother and three d…

June 18, 2024

A Shore Thing

Joanna Lowell

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Joanna Lowell is known for her witty historical romances set in late Victorian England, a period both undergoing and resisting dramatic social change.…

May 25, 2024

A Fool for an Heir

A. Engels

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Few destinies are more challenging than life in the orbit of a man obsessed with expanding his power at all costs. Such is the fate endured by Ivan Iv…

April 19, 2024

The Paris Novel

Ruth Reichl

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Stella St. Vincent, a thirty-something copy editor in 1980s New York, has survived a relationship with her mother, Celia, so complicated that even the…

March 19, 2024

A Wild and Heavenly Place

Robin Oliveira

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

When Samuel Fiddes and Hailey MacIntyre meet by chance in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1878, their worlds appear to be far distant from each other. Samuel li…

February 25, 2024

The Phoenix Crown

Kate Quinn and Janie Chang

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Kate Quinn and Janie Chang are independently acclaimed authors of historical fiction, both of whom have previously appeared on this podcast channel. H…

February 6, 2024

The Ways of Water

Teresa H. Janssen

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Josie Belle Gore is only six years old when we meet her in 1908, yet her father has tied a rope around her waist and is lowering her into a dark well …

January 23, 2024

The Diamond of London

Andrea Penrose

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

I’ve interviewed Andrea Penrose before about her mysteries set in the Regency period—most notably, her ongoing series starring the Earl of Wrexford an…

December 11, 2023

Shoot the Moon

Isa Arsén

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Annie Fisk—an only child in Los Alamos, New Mexico—spends a lot of time investigating the treasure trove of objects at the back of her garden. Her fat…

November 21, 2023

The Winthrop Agreement

Alice Simpson

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Rivkah Milman is just one of the thousands of young women who fled their homes in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, looking for better pr…

October 19, 2023

The Boy in the Rain

Stephanie Cowell

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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Robert Stillman, an eighteen-year-old Londoner, has few expectations when he travels to Nottingham to study with the Reverend George Langstaff. Life h…

September 18, 2023

Harlem After Midnight

Louise Hare

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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After a tumultuous journey across the Atlantic (detailed in last year’s Miss Aldridge Regrets), Lena Aldridge has reached New York City only to discov…

September 1, 2023

The Last Saxon King

Andrew Varga

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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Daniel Renfrew is a typical American sixteen-year-old. His main gripe when the story opens is that his dad insists on home schooling even though Danie…

August 18, 2023

The Witch and the Tsar

Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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Any novel set in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533–1584) is an instant draw for me; that is, after all, the setting for most of my ow…

July 17, 2023

Endpapers

Jennifer Savran Kelly

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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Today I talked to Jennifer Savran Kelly her new book Endpapers (Algonquin Books, 2023). Dawn Levit has reached a crossroads in life. What seemed like…

June 30, 2023

The Seeing Garden

Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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Nineteen-year-old Catherine Ogden appears to have everything: youth, wealth, birth, breeding, and beauty. No one in New York high society is surprised…

June 20, 2023

A Fatal Illusion

Anna Lee Huber

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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A Fatal Illusion (Berkley Books, 2023)—the eleventh installment in Anna Lee Huber’s Lady Darby Mysteries featuring Kiera and Sebastian Gage—opens in Y…

June 5, 2023

Killingly

Katharine Beutner

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

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In 1897, a Mount Holyoke College junior named Bertha Mellish disappears from campus overnight, leaving no word for her family. It’s a time when female…

May 9, 2023

Out of Ireland

Marian O'Shea Wernicke

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Today I talked to Marian O’Shea Wernicke about her new novel Out of Ireland (She Writes Press, 2023). Most people have heard of the Irish famine in 1…

April 17, 2023

Who Cries for the Lost

C. S. Harris

Hosted by C. P. Lesley

Fans of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, know that the individual tales that form his saga combine complex, fast-paced, often political mysteries w…