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Caitlin Davies' Family Likeness, an affecting tale about the search for belonging in postwar and modern Britain 27 Aug 2013 | 05:51 am
Caitlin Davies' Family Likeness begins like a film that's been deliberately shot out of focus. Its two stories have no obvious connection at first, and it's only later, as the plots and characterizat...
The Purchase by Linda Spalding, an exploration of the morality of slavery in early America 23 Aug 2013 | 08:29 pm
In 1798, Daniel Dickinson brings his five children and new bride out of Pennsylvania and into southwestern Virginia. A recent widower, Daniel has been cast out of the Quakers for marrying his family’s...
An interview with Jessica Dotta, author of the Victorian Gothic novel Born of Persuasion 21 Aug 2013 | 05:56 pm
Jessica Dotta's debut opens as an older woman looks back on a traumatic episode from her early life, a time of poverty, betrayal, deception, and scandal. In the later months of 1838 in England, gentl...
Bits and pieces: contest winners, and new historical fiction course 20 Aug 2013 | 09:59 pm
University of Virginia English professor Bruce Holsinger, author of the excellent Burnable Books blog and author of the forthcoming A Burnable Book, a literary thriller set in 14th-century London (Wil...
Spy Island: The Story Behind the Story, a guest post by Sophie Schiller (plus giveaway) 19 Aug 2013 | 05:30 pm
Today Sophie Schiller is stopping by the blog with an essay that combines a personal story with details on the multicultural background of the Danish West Indies, the setting for her new historical no...
Robert J. Begiebing's The Turner Erotica, a thought-provoking exploration of Victorian art and morality 16 Aug 2013 | 07:58 pm
As the contemporary art world reacts to accounts that stolen masterworks may have been burned in distant Romania, a new novel, based upon claims of a similarly destructive episode from 150 years ago, ...
A treacherous review? A discussion about spoilers 14 Aug 2013 | 04:21 am
One of the items that popped up on my Bloglovin feed yesterday was a piece from the Guardian entitled "Has William Boyd spoiled Henning Mankell?" It noted the grumpy letters to the editor written to ...
Elsie Augustave's The Roving Tree, a historical novel of cultural exploration and rediscovery 7 Aug 2013 | 11:24 pm
Augustave’s expressive debut traces a young woman’s search for her cultural and emotional identity. Born in rural Haiti in the late 1950s and adopted by white American parents, Iris Odys is continuall...
Book review: The White Princess, by Philippa Gregory 5 Aug 2013 | 06:20 pm
Gregory charts the vicissitudes of a high-stakes political marriage in her latest diverting epic. It’s 1485; the Wars of the Roses have ended, but the victorious Henry VII sits insecurely on his thro...
Washington Then, Washington Now; Nothing Changes, a guest post by Richard Smolev 3 Aug 2013 | 06:17 am
My final contributor in this 10-day series of essays from historical novelists is Richard Smolev, whose novel In Praise of Angels: A Novel of the Reconstruction Era was published on Tuesday. Here he ...
