Historical fiction
Warriors by Jack Ludlow
Arduin of Fassano is paid by Michael Doukeianos, a young Byzantine general, to keep the peace in Apulia. Arduin is a Lombard, however, and secretly plans to revolt and take Apulia for himself, hiring a group of Norman mercenaries to help him do the job. These Normans are William de Hauteville and his brothers, famed warriors with their own conflicts and a desire to gain titles and wealth for their sons. Even if Arduin and the Normans could take Apulia, there are no guarantees that they could hold it in a land full of treachery and bribes. Full review...
The Loveday Conspiracy by Kate Tremayne
Trevowan Manor has been the home of the Loveday family for generations. It will still be owned by a Loveday but St John Loveday lost the house on the throw of a dice before killing himself – and now his cousin Tristan has the house. St John's twin, Adam, vows that he will punish the man responsible. Amelia has been forced from Trevowan and is now living in a cottage with the other dispossessed women. As if this wasn't enough of a problem, her son from her first marriage, Richard, has become even more than wayward and Amelia is forced to make a difficult choice. Full review...
The Great Death by John E Smelcer
'As Western Europeans settled Alaska, they brought with them diseases against which the indigenous people had no natural immunity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, fully two thirds of all Alaska natives perished from a pandemic of measles, smallpox, and influenza. No community was spared. In most cases, half of a village's population died within a week. In some cases, there were no survivors. It was the end of an ancient way of life. Natives still refer to the dreadful period as the Great Death.' Full review...
Requiem (Brethren Trilogy) by Robyn Young
It's December 1295, and the bedraggled remnants of the Third Crusade are returning home. Not all have given up the dream of a Christian Jerusalem, and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, is eager to find patrons to fund a fresh invasion. But the West has turned inward, and, with the Order's reason for existence vanished with the Crusader states, factions within both the English and French courts covet the wealth and military might of the Temple. With his homeland of Scotland under assault by his old rival Edward, and his position usurped by former comrades who wish to turn the Order to sinister ends, peace for series protagonist Will Campbell seems far away. Full review...
Wounds of Honour (Empire) by Anthony Riches
Riding to the Northern outpost of the Roman Empire to deliver a message, Marcus Valerius Aquila is seemingly attacked by a band of barbarians, but is rescued by a group of Tungrian irregulars, fighting as part of the Roman army. Arriving at his destination, it soon becomes clear that the attack was deliberate, as his father has been condemned as a traitor back in Rome by Emperor Commodus and his whole family have been put to the sword. Full review...
House of Angels by Freda Lightfoot
The novel focuses on the Angel family who live in the Lake District in the late 1900s. Josiah Angel is the head of the family and appears to be a respectable business man, bringing up his three daughters after the death of his wife. The family live in a beautiful house and – to outsiders – the daughters seem to have everything – comfort, money, beauty and an easy life, in great contrast to the poverty around them. Not far from Josiah's department store are the workhouse with its brutality and the blocks of slum flats infested with rats. Full review...
Trades of the Flesh by Faye L Booth
I read Trades of the Flesh in about 2 hours, speeding through it, and think I've spent about double that time figuring out how to review it! Apart from anything else, it's taken me well over an hour to settle on a genre (and I reserve the right to change that by the end of the review, although if I do I guess I could just delete this part…) Full review...
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Ah, the benefits to a good book of a classic first line. 'Call me Ishmael.' 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Who can forget Iain Banks' 'It was the day my grandmother exploded'? Or those timeless words by Jane Austen, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.' Full review...
Breathe the Sky: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Amelia Earhart by Chandra Prasad
Prasad's first novel On Borrowed Wings followed a young girl entering the male-dominated arena of Yale in the 1930s. Her heroine took inspiration from the likes of Amelia Earhart (who has a walk-on part in the book), women who were finding their way in the world on their own terms and refusing to let their womanhood get in the way of it. Full review...
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A revisionist look at Henry VIII's minister, Thomas Cromwell. Rich, absorbing and intelligent, it's a beautiful, beautiful book. Full review...
Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell
A photograph opens the story. A black and white picture of a family, husband, wife and their three children, smiling for the camera. Thin, underfed, in their summer clothes despite the four inches of snow, they smile. Partly they smile because they do not know what is to come.
A page and five years later we catch up with the Mykolayenkos. In the Spring of 1938 Ivan and his cousin are catching mice in the barn and taking bets on which of the farm cats will pounce on the individually released rodents first. The game is interrupted by a man with a loaded .22 rifle. It takes a while for it to sink in, that this is Ivan's father, Teodor, free after a prison sentence for stealing his own grain. Full review...
The Concubine's Secret by Kate Furnivall
As a sequel to Kate Furnivall's first book, The Russian Concubine, The Concubine's Secret helps to tie up some hanging storylines and in general provides an entertaining follow-up. In the first book, we watched Chang An Lo and Lydia Ivanova fall in love against all the odds. Here, they must remain in love despite being separated by most of a continent. As you might expect, the reader spends most of the book hoping for them to find a way to finally be together. Full review...
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
It's 1464 and a young widow stands at the side of the road, clutching the hands of her two young sons, waiting for the new King to ride past. She is Elizabeth Woodville and the King is Edward IV. What happens is a matter of history: a secret marriage, a shocking reveal, and a vicious contest for the young King's ear (and purse) that forces civil war to drag on in England for much longer than perhaps it would have. Without this meeting, English history would have been critically different. Full review...
The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger
Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon was a well-known figure in Victorian London when tuberculosis forced her to move to a hot climate. She travelled to Egypt, accompanied only by her Lady's Maid, Sally Naldrett and left her husband and children in London, not knowing if she would ever see them again. Lady Duff Gordon's story is told in The Mistress of Nothing but it's Sally Naldrett who is the focus of the book. Full review...
All Our Worldly Goods by Irène Némirovsky
Pierre Hardelot and Agnes Florent were in love and had been since they were children, but there were problems - not the least of which was that Pierre was engaged to marry Simone Renaudin. Simone was an appropriate match for the grandson of a mill owner and member of the bourgeoisie, but Agnes was descended from brewers and lower middle class. In northern France, just before the outbreak of the First World War, such distinctions mattered. But Pierre and Agnes meet alone and rather than ruin her reputation Pierre proposes. In doing so he alienates his grandfather and the wealthy Renaudins. Pierre and Agnes' marriage and its consequences would reverberate for decades. Full review...
Troubadour by Mary Hoffman
In Troubadour, 13-year-old noblewoman, Elinor de Sévignan, flees from her parents' choice of suitor by posing as a boy singer with a group of travelling minstrels in 13th century Southern France. As her transition from her pampered but restricted existence to roaming troubadour takes place on the roads of Provence, so begins the Albigensian Crusade. Forces from Northern France attempt to crush the Cathars, whose religious beliefs are seen as heretical, making their lands and wealth fair game for both fanatical followers of the Pope, and opportunistic mercenaries. Full review...
Flint by Margaret Redfern
Will and his brother Ned have been plucked from their home in the Fens. They're on their way to Flint, ditch diggers for Edward I's new castle. Will is unwilling to go, and he's only eleven, but he can't abandon his strange older brother to strangers. Ned can't talk and most people dismiss him as an idiot, but he has skills. He can whisper to horses and calm them, he's a skilled herbalist, and he can make music that moves men's hearts. Ned is glad to be on this journey because he hopes to be reunited with Ieuan ap y Gof, an exiled bard and the man who taught him music. Full review...
The Incendiary's Trail by James McCreet
This book opens with a bang and except for brief slow-downs in the middle, is an exciting and riveting read. It's both a historical mystery and a thriller, teaching the reader a little bit about Victorian London while still making the book an immersive experience that can be hard to leave. The policemen really have very little idea who is behind the initial murder, much less the ones that follow, and I loved learning what happened along with them. Full review...
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
In Bengal, India on a June day in 1870 two young mounted policemen are hot on the trail of dacoit suspected of the recent daylight robbery of a train of bullock carts. The chests taken from the carts were full of Opium.
Meanwhile a few thousand miles away in Boston, USA, a young office boy is chased through the docks by a dark stranger of Hindoo appearance wielding a walking stick topped by a ferociously fanged idol. Full review...
Outlaw by Angus Donald
When Alan Dale is caught stealing from a market stall in Nottingham he narrowly escapes with his life and limbs in tact. To protect him from the justice of Sir Ralph Murdac, Alan's mother begs the mercy of the great outlaw, Robin Hood. Robin agrees to take Alan into his protection, and so begins Alan's life as an outlaw. Full review...
The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale
Agnes Trussel leaves her home to save her family from the disgrace of learning that she has been raped and is carrying an illegitimate child. With limited options and in despair at her situation she takes money from the home of a neighbour to pay her way to London. Once there, her life as assistant to the dour John Blacklock, a firework maker, gives her security and a sense of worth. But she is sure that all she values is likely to be lost once her pregnancy and her status as a thief becomes known. The crux of her situation, and that of many women like her at the time, is well summarised in her thoughts: the child is almost all I have, I think. And its existence will ensure that anything else will be taken away from me. Full review...
Hodd by Adam Thorpe
Like every other English child I was brought up on tales of Robin Hood.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.
The theme music to the 1950s TV series starring Richard Greene says it all. The legends and myths surrounding Robin of Loxley, faithfully recreated in all of the outings from Walter Scott's Ivanhoe through the Errol Flynn films, to the BBC's recently lamented Jonas Armstrong depict the Outlaw as Saint. Full review...
Missy by Chris Hannan
This begins so well, with just the right sort of first sentence to hook you into a book: I expect you have the consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous, or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats. So says our heroine of the piece, 19 year old Dol McQueen, who narrates us through her exploits in America's nineteenth century Wild West. She's rough, she's determined, but ultimately she's very damaged: a young, drug addict prostitute who trails hopelessly after her alcoholic mother from country to country. Full review...
The Silver Eagle (Forgotten Legion) by Ben Kane
I thought Ben Kane's debut novel The Forgotten Legion was excellent, but that it ended a little abruptly, even with the knowledge there was more to come. Having now read that 'more to come', I feel a lot better about it. The story is so relentless that there was no obvious place to pause between books. Full review...
In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan
It's September 1666 and although the mortals' Civil War is over the war amongst the fae is still raging in London. There's now a greater threat to the Onyx Court and it could destroy everything when a spark starts a fire which for three days spreads through the city devouring everything in its path. Can the mortals and the fae unite to find a way to defeat a foe which neither can better on their own? Full review...
Secretum by Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti
Back in 2002, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti shocked Italy with Imprimatur, a historical fiction novel which cast aspersions on the behaviour of past Popes. Despite being a very well researched and well-written mystery, it was boycotted in Italy, although it proved popular in other parts of the world. However, the lack of recognition in their home country meant that the follow up that such a good story deserved has been seven years in the making. Full review...
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig
I used to have months when I would gorge on chick lit before I got married. I lived in London and would wile away the tedium of the tube by escaping into easy, comforting reads of twenty-somethings who worried about shoes and shopping and men. It was reassuring to know that the girl, albeit after a series of highs and lows, would ultimately get the guy. I'm a different kind of person now, a stay at home mum more likely to be found playing in the park than shoe-shopping in London, and so it's been a while since I've felt like picking up a chick lit book. Something about this one intrigued me though. From the back cover blurb it's hard to tell if it's a historical novel, or contemporary chick lit, or perhaps some kind of mystery. I have a feeling that if you come to it with any particular expectations of it fulfilling one of these genres you might be disappointed. But if you see it as a fun, exciting, genre-less read then, hopefully, you won't be able to put it down. Full review...
A Proper Education for Girls by Elaine di Rollo
A Proper Education for Girls is a knowing satire about Victorian attitudes towards women, focusing on the enduring bond between twin sisters, Alice and Lillian Talbot. The novel opens with a description of their father, a man with a very Victorian belief in Progress and a penchant for scientific experiment. He is obsessively devoted to his indiscriminate collection of 'interesting and useful artefacts' which has gradually subsumed their entire house. Mr. Talbot had expected his daughters to equal his enthusiasm and devote their entire lives to The Collection with only a bunch of old ladies (their aunts) for company, but, it didn't quite work out that way. Full review...
The Hidden Dance by Susan Wooldridge
It is 1933, and the SS Etoile has just left Southampton harbour en route for New York. On board is Lily Sutton, a timid, disturbed woman whose posh accent seems unsuited to her situation of travelling in steerage. Through a series of flashbacks to various years in Lily's life we learn why she is so frightened and what has brought her to make this secretive journey to New York. As well as learning about her romantic aspirations through the story we also see her stumble into a difficult situation on board ship that lends a crime mystery feel to the latter half of the book. Full review...
The Heart of the Night by Judith Lennox
When Kay is hired as Miranda's companion, she has no idea what to expect; she just knows that she would like to leave behind her quiet life in the English countryside. She quickly befriends Miranda and becomes her partner in crime, evading Miranda's 'aunt', really her father's ex-mistress, and seeking out adventures in a variety of European cities. Trouble begins, however, when Miranda meets Olivier, a young aspiring filmmaker who believes that Miranda would be a stunning actress. Unsurprisingly, Miranda truly falls in love with Olivier, which inadvertently leads to Kay's dismissal and return to England. Now separated, these best friends must find their way on their own throughout World War II. With Kay in England and Miranda in East Prussia, the women's lives are completely different, providing us with a huge backdrop in which to fall in love with these characters and become enchanted with their lives. Full review...
Death on the Ice by Robert Ryan
In 1917, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's widow seeks to get a book on the market to redress the balance, to counter the rumour, public opinion and growing thought that not all was right with Scott and his exploits in Antarctica. Seemingly, in 2009, Robert Ryan seeks the same. However his book is certainly not just concentrating on Scott - we get a lot of Oates, Evans, the other Evans, and all the rest of the fatal party - as well as Shackleton, Amundsen and more. Full review...
Imprimatur by Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti
My history teacher at school would be stunned to see the number of historical fiction books I've been reading recently. He would be even more surprised to discover that I've mostly enjoyed them. Whilst I've always loved reading, history was a subject for which I showed great ineptitude and disinterest in my younger years. How times change. Full review...
Invitation to Dance by Marion Urch
Lola Montez was an undeniably fascinating woman, a product of and producer of scandal. Born Eliza Gilbert to a young Irish girl and an English junior officer, she spent her early childhood in India before being shuffled off to relations in Scotland and then school in Bath. This novel chronicles her life and career as a Spanish dancer, all over Europe of the mid-nineteenth century and as far away as America and Australia. Full review...
Duchess by Night by Eloisa James
In this third instalment of the Desperate Duchesses series the focus is on Harriet, the Duchess of Berrow. A widow of two years, Harriet manages her vast estate, makes judgements in the local court (where the judge is only a drunken figurehead) and is generally settled into her life. But she feels unattractive, old and boring; ready to find another husband but doesn't attract too many dancers, never mind suitors, when she turns up at a costume ball dressed as a dumpy Mother Goose (complete with a stuffed bird). When her friend sets off on a visit to a permanent house party at a residence of a certain very disreputable Lord Strange (in order to create a scandal and entice a husband she never met back to the country), Harriet decides to go with her, but worried about the debauchery, she goes as a young man, a nephew of Duke Villiers who also accompanies the ladies. Full review...
The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane
Since the release of Gladiator, Roman life has been a growth industry in the entertainment world, with even Doctor Who visiting Pompeii at one point. The last time I visited Roman times in written form was when I was still doing Latin at school. Fortunately, Ben Kane's The Forgotten Legion is far more engrossing than school ever was. Full review...
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
Nikola Tesla, born in 1856, was a young engineering student in Croatia, a Serb with a ferocious talent for invention when he sailed to America armed only with a note of introduction from his former employer to Thomas Edison which said: I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man. Promised prodigious amounts of money to reorganise Edison's workshops, he was in the end cheated by Edison, who made a joke about the American sense of humour when Tesla asked to be paid. Full review...
Carry Me Home by Terri Wiltshire
1904. Alabama. A white girl is raped by a black man, a hobo from the last train through town. The townsfolk are up in arms.
The opening to Carry Me Home is so reminiscent of the novel I read immediately before it (Scottsboro) that I worried I might be in for a re-run. I was worried because Scottsboro is perfect, and any imitator is bound to fail. I worried unnecessarily. The starting premise aside, the two books have nothing at all in common. Full review...
The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne
There must have been countless people reading the book after watching the film made from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and wondering what John Boyne was going to do next, with no idea he had already done something else - the brilliant ribaldry of Mutiny on the Bounty. If nothing else the pair showed up the chameleonic brilliance of this young author. Full review...
Kill-Grief by Caroline Rance
Mary Helsall began work as a nurse in Chester in 1756, but she was rather impatient and caring for others didn't come naturally to her. Her solution was gin and oblivion - and a volatile relationship with a hospital porter, but it was only when a diseased beggar came to the hospital for treatment that it became clear that Mary had secrets to hide. Full review...
Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman
The quote is ascribed to Haywood Patterson, one of the Scottsboro boys. With Feldman's magic, it's hard to know whether the quote is true, or is part of the fiction. That's the difficulty when you tell stories that rely for their power on the truth of the events on which they're based. How much is the reader to believe? Full review...
The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri
Shiva might be the Destroyer in the Hindu trinity which gives us Brahma as the creator and Vishnu as the preserver, but life is never that simple. It is never made explicit what The Age of Shiva refers to in the title of the novel. Who is the analogical Shiva who wreaks such destruction on the lives we encounter? Full review...
Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings by Julia Stoneham
During the Second World War many women in Britain were seeing their men leave them to go and fight, but Alice Todd finds herself abandoned by her husband for a younger woman. She has to find a way to support herself and her young son, Edward, so she applies for the post of Warden on a farm, taking care of a group of young women working as Land Girls. Mostly the horrors and tragedies of war seem very distant to the girls as they struggle more with the horrors of sharing bath water, their blisters from hard farm work and living in a cold, isolated farmhouse. However, even here they find that they aren't protected from the hostilities, and the tragedies that enter their lives serve to bring them closer together as a make-shift family. Full review...
Little Gods by Anna Richards
Forty-seven days into the war, long before the Luftwaffe came anywhere near our capital, an explosion wrecked the house in which Eugenia (Jean) had suffered her first nineteen years. Full review...
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber
Do you remember reading The Red Pony at school? If you shed tears at John Steinbeck's short masterpiece, be sure to find time for this story of rural hardship from new American author, Ann Weisgarber. I thought 'The Personal History of Rachel DuPree' was a stunning read, with more than a nod at Steinbeck, yet enough distance to place the writer in her own territory. The two settings, Chicago and South Dakota, convinced me of their authenticity immediately. The family grabbed my sympathy from the opening scene and every character was satisfyingly 3-D. Unsurprising, then, that this novel took seven years to write. Full review...
Hand of Isis by Jo Graham
Once long ago, three sisters were born in the same year. All were children of the Pharaoh Ptolemy Auletes, the eldest born to a serving woman, the middle to his Queen, the youngest to a slave from Thrace, who died in childbirth. The middle child, of little consequence when born, being the forth legitimate child of the Pharaoh and a girl, would one day become Egypt's most famous Queen. Her name was Cleopatra. Full review...