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A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende's epic of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath

Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...

The Secret

A visual preview of the winter 2018-19 season in historical fiction

The winter season is nearly upon us!  What historical novels are you looking forward to over the next few months?  Here are a dozen that caught my attention. What they offer: less familiar settings, new perspectives, and/or intriguing characters.  I haven't read any of these yet but am looking forward to them all.


The story of two women, a child, a difficult journey, and the aftermath of war, set in Spain and southern France at the end of WWII.  Now this is an eye-catching cover. Lake Union, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



Secrets surround the marshy English landscape where a 10-year old girl arrives in 1939 to meet the couple who will adopt her. Her father's rescue of a downed German airman spurs a chain of events that haunt her, decades later, as an old woman. Readers in the UK can find it under the title Call of the Curlew. Tin House, January 2019. [see on Goodreads]


A new novel set to reveal a little-known story about America's first president: his relationship with his first love, Mary Philipse, and how it affected his views going forward.  St. Martin's, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



The author's second novel takes place in colonial Malaysia in the 1930s, focusing on an apprentice dressmaker working in a dance hall, a houseboy with an unusual task, and what happens when their paths collide. Flatiron, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



This literary saga promises intrigue surrounding glass designer Tiffany and his opulent mansions, his gardener's family, and repercussions of past choices spiraling down from 1916 over the next century.  Sarah Crichton Books/FSG, February 2019.  [see on Goodreads]



The 17th century continues to be fertile ground for new fiction. The witch trials of early 17th-century England sit at the backdrop of this debut, in which two young women - a wife desperate for a child, and a midwife accused of witchcraft - join together amid desperate circumstances.  MIRA (US/Canada), Zaffre (UK), February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



Bartolomeo Scappi was a historical figure, a famed chef in Renaissance Italy. In King's second novel (after Feast of Sorrow, also on a culinary subject), Scappi's nephew, Giovanni, searches for secrets in his late uncle's past. Atria, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



Knowing his days are numbered, a consumptive attorney teams up with an ex-soldier to track a killer in late 18th-century Stockholm. The author's surname, Swedish for "night and day," indicates he's a descendant of one of Sweden's oldest noble families. [see on Goodreads]



There's been considerable buzz about this literary debut, which isn't the first to reveal the story of model/photographer Lee Miller in the 20th century, but the author's style and language are receiving accolades. Little, Brown, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]


The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

A historical mystery set in Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy's Egypt, as she asks her friend to investigate her spy's recent murder; first in a new series. Head of Zeus, December 2018. [see on Goodreads]



The story of Cherokee America Singer (called "Check"), a farmer and mother of five in the Cherokee Nation West of 1875, and the family dramas and culture clashes that involve her and her community.  Western fiction from a perspective not seen enough in the genre.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]



A Mormon woman, living in a remote town along a canyon floor in Utah, finds her life turned upside down when a stranger requests her help. Weisgarber's novels always show mastery of setting and character development. Skyhorse, February 2019. [see on Goodreads]

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The Almanack by Martine Bailey, a richly atmospheric mystery of mid-18th-century England

Saturated with beautiful images of the natural world in mid-18th century rural England, Bailey’s third mystery evokes a time when people regulated their lives according to the change of seasons and were fascinated by mechanisms, scientific and not, used to predict future events. It takes place during a pivotal period rarely seen in fiction: the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, when eleven days were “lost.” A young woman named Tabitha Hart is robbed by her latest bedmate while traveling from London to her home village of Netherlea at her ailing mother’s request. Alas, she arrives too late: the Widow Hart lies cold in her bed, presumably having drowned in the river. Although she is shamed for her loose behavior, and for leaving behind an infant girl for her mother to raise, Tabitha is well-educated, and she takes up her mother’s former post as village searcher. She also picks up her mother’s favorite Almanack, and the scribbled marginalia in the little book, along with a threa...

The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey, a mystery set in 1920s India

Perveen Mistry’s position as the only female lawyer in 1921 Bombay keeps her services in demand. When Sir David Hobson-Jones, the governor’s chief councillor, asks her to investigate a legal matter for the Kolhapur Agency, a British civil service branch, she’s wary of getting into bed with India’s colonizers. It’s a lucrative, prestigious short-term opportunity, however, and she feels compelled to accept. The maharaja of the small princely state of Satapur is a ten-year-old boy, and his widowed mother and grandmother disagree on his education. Because they live in purdah, a woman lawyer is the best choice as mediator. While this premise is similar to the series opener, The Widows of Malabar Hill , Perveen quickly finds herself in a very different situation that tests her physical strength and negotiating skills and lands her into danger. Massey devotes ample time to illustrating the politics and culture of a remote Indian princely state and the personalities of a new cast before introd...

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, a novel about books, dedication, and female friendship during the Depression years

Books provide people with education and entertainment; they change lives as they introduce different worlds and unfamiliar experiences. During the Depression, the women who transported books in their horses’ saddlebags to isolated Kentucky mountain residents, in all seasons, as part of the WPA’s Pack Horse Library Initiative provided a lifeline of literacy to their audiences. Hearing about this unique job after a dull church service, Alice Van Cleve grows intrigued and immediately volunteers to join. After getting swept off her feet by Bennett Van Cleve, a burly, handsome Kentuckian visiting her native England, Alice feels stifled by the insularity in her new home of Baileyville, a small Appalachian town, and surprised by her new husband’s unexpected aloofness. Alice had never fit in at home, and with her clipped British accent and dislike for frivolous social pursuits, she’s an outsider in Kentucky, too. She finds an unofficial new family with the four other pack-horse librarians, inc...

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