Archives de catégorie : Historical Fiction

SALT BLOOD de Francesca De Tores

Mary Read. Mark Read. Unwanted daughter. Dead son. Feared pirate. Wife. Mother. Lover.

SALT BLOOD
by Francesca De Tores
‎ Bloomsbury, 2024
(via Mushens Entertainment)

SALT BLOOD follows Mary Read – sometimes living as Mark Read – the infamous pirate who terrorised the seas in the Golden Age of Piracy. Raised as a boy in order to collect inheritance money, they continued to live as a man during a stint in the navy, before returning to sea as a woman and eventually becoming a feared pirate alongside Anne Bonny.
Mary Read lived untold lives, and this novel takes you on a coming-of-age journey from grand houses to ships sailing beneath a flag of death, from the misery of loss to the untold pleasures of love. Francesca’s research was impeccable and she was fascinated by the intricacies and nuances of Mary’s existence, gender presentation, and love.

Francesca De Tores has previously been published as Francesca Haig (where she has published award-winning poetry, a YA fantasy trilogy, and a literary contemporary novel). This is her historical debut. Francesca is a former creative-writing lecturer and her previous novels have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and Library Journal with rave reviews from Jessie Burton, the Guardian and the Daily Mail amongst others.

MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES: THE HAPLESS MILLINER de Jessica Bull

The first in a series set in Regency Britain, sprinkled with the wit and liveliness of Jane Austen and the addictive intrigue of cosy crime novels such as The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett and The Appeal by Janice Hallett.

MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES: THE HAPLESS MILLINER
by Jessica Bull
‎ Michael Joseph UK/Union Square US, early 2024
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Hampshire, 1795: A young Jane Austen is plotting to secure a marriage proposal from Tom Lefroy when she uncovers the body of a murdered woman. After her beloved brother, Georgie, is implicated in the crime, Jane has six weeks to expose the real killer, or Georgie will face the gallows.
Jane Austen – witty, spirited, and incredibly clever – is suddenly thrust into a mystery when a milliner’s dead body is found locked inside a cupboard in the middle of a ball. When Jane’s brother Georgie is found with some jewellery belonging to the deceased, the local officials see it as an open and shut case: one which is likely to end with his death. Jane is certain that he is innocent, and there is more to the murder than meets the eye. Her investigations send her on a journey through local society, as Jane’s suspect list keeps on growing – and her keen observational skills of people will be put to the test to solve the crime, and save her brother.

The second volume, MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES: THE FOREIGN PRINCESS, will be published by Michael Joseph in early 2025.

Jessica Bull grew up in South East London, where she still lives with her husband, two daughters, and far too many pets. She’s addicted to stories and studied English Literature at Bristol University, and Information Science at City University, London. She began work as a librarian (under the false impression she could sit and read all day), before becoming a communications consultant. MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES: THE HAPLESS MILLINER is her debut novel.

MADDALENA AND THE DARK de Julia Fine

For fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Mexican Gothic, a novel set in 18th-century Venice at a prestigious music school, about two girls drawn together by a dangerous, magical wager.

MADDALENA AND THE DARK
by Julia Fine
Flatiron/St. Martin’s Press, June 2023

What do you want most? What will you pay for it?
Venice, 1717. Before she meets Maddalena, fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. She aspires to join the highest ranks of Ospedale della Pietà’s illustrious girls’ orchestra, to no longer be just an orphan but a star, a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.
Sent to the Pietà to be reformed until the rumors about her noble family have passed, Maddalena is unlike anyone Luisa has met. Clever, reckless, and passionate, Maddalena can promise the world to Luisa, and when she does, their fates intertwine. But Maddalena has made a dangerous wager with something deep in the waters of Venice, and there will be a price to pay.
Heady, sumptuous, and utterly enthralling, Maddalena and the Dark is the love story between two girls and the boundless desires that might ruin them.

This is a novel for readers of historical fiction and fans of stories about the complexities of female friendship. Set in 18th-century Venice, with opulent palazzos, world-class concerts, atmospheric canals, and romantic gondolas, this is the kind of transporting historical fiction that readers will want to lose themselves in. The author brings to life a fascinating piece of Italian history with the Pietà, a girls’ orphanage renowned for also being one of the premier music schools in the world, where Vivaldi himself was a teacher and patron. And at the heart of this novel is a fierce, messy, passionate relationship between two teenage girls.

Julia Fine is the author of What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award and the Chicago Review of Books Award. Her second novel, The Upstairs House, is forthcoming from Harper in 2021. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children.

THE GOLDEN GATE de Amy Chua

A propulsive historical thriller set in the San Francisco Bay Area before and during WWII, Chua’s page-turning debut brings to life an historical era rife with turbulent social forces and groundbreaking forensic advances, when race and class defined the very essence of power, sex and justice.

THE GOLDEN GATE
by Amy Chua
Minotaur, February 2023
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

As Detective Al Sullivan attempts to solve the case of murdered presidential candidate Walter Wilkinson, shot in his suite at the fabled Claremont Hotel, he finds his investigation leading back again and again to the 1930 death of 7 year-old Iris Stafford, a descendant of the Bainbridge clan, one of San Francisco’s wealthiest families. Yet the threads connecting candidate Walter Wilkinson to the long-dead girl are tangled – and the clues obscured by the turbulent crosswinds of the ongoing war, the Japanese American internment, California’s racist legacy and simmering labor unrest.
At the center of the mystery are the three beautiful Bainbridge heiresses: sisters Nicole and Cassie, and their enigmatic cousin Isabella, sister of dead Iris. Did one of them have a reason to kill Wilkinson? Did Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, in residence in Berkeley under opaque circumstances, have something to do with his presence at the Claremont? What about the Communist labor radicals, whose hatred of Wilkinson’s establishment ties were matched only by the brutality of police repression? Caught between an ambitious D.A., the heiresses’ iron-willed grandmother, the geopolitical forces of the war, and his conflicted attraction to the fascinating Isabella, Sullivan must navigate a landscape in which his own history is a double-edged sword.

Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and the author of previous nonfiction narratives, including A World On Fire and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

EINE FAST PERFEKTE DEBÜTANTIN de Hannah Conrad

True love and scandals in nineteenth-century Munich…

EINE FAST PERFEKTE DEBÜTANTIN
[An Almost Perfect Debutante]
The Lily Palace Saga, vol. 1
by Hannah Conrad
‎ Heyne/Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, November 2022

Munich, 1827. Johanna von Seybach has moved from Königsberg to the magnificent Lily Palace, her uncle’s family seat – where an exciting season awaits her! Even before her official debut, it looks like a proposal from the eligible bachelor Friedrich Veidt is all but certain. But then Johanna has an unguarded moment of passion, and her reputation is suddenly in tatters. Friedrich drops her, and she’s left broken-hearted. Will anyone want to marry her, after such a scandal? Then she meets Alexander von Reuss at a glittering masked ball. That same evening, they grow closer than they should, experiencing a sensuous moment of surrender. But Johanna’s scandalous past is making such waves that even true love may not be enough to save her.

Hannah Conrad has already published many popular novels across various genres. She studied German and cultural journalism, and has won several awards, including the DeLiA Book Prize, the Selfpublisher prize and a short-story prize. She uses her extensive travels to research her novels, and is at home in several German cities.