Archives de catégorie : Historical Fiction

THE CLOCK STRUCK MURDER de Betty Webb

One woman’s trash is another woman’s—lost Chagall masterpiece?!?

THE CLOCK STRUCK MURDER
by Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, April 2024

Expat Zoe Barlow has settled well into her artist’s life among the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. When a too-tipsy guest at her weekly poker game breaks Zoe’s favorite clock, she’s off to a Montparnasse flea market to bargain with the vendor Laurette for a replacement. What Zoe didn’t bargain for was the lost Chagall painting that’s been used like a rag to wrap her purchases! Eager to learn whether Laurette has more Chagalls lying about like trash, Zoe sets off to track her down at her storage shed. With no Laurette in sight, Zoe snoops around and indeed finds several additional Chagalls—and then she finds Laurette herself, dead beneath a scrap heap, her beautiful face bashed in.

With Paris hosting the 1924 Summer Olympics, the police are far too busy with touristrelated crimes to devote much time to the clock seller’s murder. After returning the paintings to a grateful Marc Chagall, Zoe begins her own investigation. Did the stolen paintings play any part in the brutal killing? Or was it a crime of passion? Zoe soon discovers that there were many people who had reason to resent the lovely Laurette. But who hated the girl enough to stop her clock permanently? When Zoe discovers a second murder victim, the pressure is on to find the killer before time—and luck—run out.

As a journalist, Betty Webb interviewed U.S. presidents, astronauts, and Nobel Prize winners, as well as the homeless, dying, and polygamy runaways. The dark Lena Jones mysteries are based on stories she covered as a reporter. Betty’s humorous Gunn Zoo series debuted with the critically acclaimed The Anteater of Death, followed by The Koala of Death. A book reviewer at Mystery Scene Magazine, Betty is a member of National Federation of Press Women, Mystery Writers of America, and the National Organization of Zoo Keepers.

THE IMMORTALITES de Claire Robertson

In frontier country, travelling in a van containing a mysterious diva, a young woman must find her feet.

THE IMMORTALITES
by Claire Robertson
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

By the winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Ellen Kent has been called several things in her short life: orphan, governess, harlot. None is accurate, but here she is, a problem to be solved by her party of English settlers on an African shore in the year 1834. She is placed in the care of a retired cavalryman, and together they become the custodians of a van, a white horse and a silent, abundant woman – a grubby goddess and a thorough mystery. They travel through the war-struck frontier lands; Ellen is protector and handmaiden as the questions grow in her: how to find accommodation with this uncanny place of enchantment and death. How to find a way to stay.

For 30 years, award-winning journalist Claire Robertson has reported from South Africa, the US and the USSR. She has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Her debut novel, The Spiral House, won South Africa’s most important literary award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, as well as a South African Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. She is the author of three more novels: The Magistrate of Gower, Under Glass, both shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and ISLE. She lives in Sydney.

THE ENGLISH PROBLEM de Beena Kamlani

A lyrical and ambitious debut that is set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement that looks at the insidiousness of colonialism and one young man’s sexual awakening.

THE ENGLISH PROBLEM
by Beena Kamlani
Crown, February 2025

In 1931, a young man from India arrives in London. Ten years later he will be on a ship bound for India, in a coma, accompanied by a nurse. But that is a decade away. For now, he is not dressed for the British rain, and shivering, rings the doorbell of the people who have agreed to host him during his stay in this strange land. He finds that his hosts are having a party and warmly welcome him in. He is the only Brown person in the room. It is the first time for what will become an everyday experience.

Shiv Advani is eighteen years old. He has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their rules of law, and then return home and help drive the British out of India using their own laws against them. Before he leaves his family insists he fulfill his arranged marriage and is hastily betrothed.

Shiv thinks he knows his duty: come to London, become a barrister, figure out how to overcome these oppressors, return home, and help his people. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell you, The English Problem is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of the sun never sets and seeps into everything—not just landed territories, but territories of the mind: literature, religion, sex, self-identity.  As Shiv sets out to beat the English at their own game, he will also learn how colonialism is insidious, and how the people he sought to be liberated from are now the people he desperately wants to be a part of.

Beena Kamlani was a senior editor for the Penguin Group. She taught book editing at New York University for nearly two decades. Kamlani is also a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer whose work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Identity Lessons: Learning to be American, Growing Up Ethnic in America, The Lifted Brow, World Literature Today, and other publications. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ledig House, Hawthornden Castle, Jentel Arts, and Hedgebrook. The English Problem is her first novel, and it is based on the life of her uncle. She lives in New York.

THE SECRETS OF LOVELACE ACADEMY de Marie Benedict et Courtney Sheinmel

From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and Courtney Sheinmel comes a historical adventure about a young girl plucked from a London orphanage to begin attending a boarding school with more secrets than she could imagine—perfect for fans of Enola Holmes.

THE SECRETS OF LOVELACE ACADEMY (Book 1)
by Marie Benedict and Courtney Sheinmel
Aladdin (Simon & Schuster), April 2025
(via Laura Dail Literary Agency)

London, 1904.

Lainey Phillips has lived at the Sycamore Home for Orphaned Children since she was three years old. Now nearly a teenager, her life is difficult, and she doesn’t expect it to get better—until a chance encounter during an open house changes everything when Lainey meets a woman who invites her to attend the prestigious Lovelace Academy.

Fitting in amongst the many privileged students at Lovelace Academy proves challenging in a different way, though. Terrified she’ll be cast out of the academy, Lainey grabs the chance to prove herself by traveling to Switzerland to witness a female scientist craft a groundbreaking theory. The journey that includes a train, a ferry, and a mysterious boy named Gen is treacherous, but the real test is what awaits her at the home of Mileva Maric, wife of Albert Einstein.

Marie Benedict is the New York Times bestselling author of several adult books of historical fiction, including The Other Einstein, the inspiration for this book. She found her calling unearthing the hidden historical stories of women. Her mission is to excavate from the past the most important, complex, and fascinating women of history and bring them into the light of present day where readers can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions as well as the insights they bring to modern day issues. THE SECRETS OF LOVELACE ACADEMY, written with Courtney Sheinmel, is her first book for kids. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Courtney Sheinmel is the author of nearly thirty books for kids and teens, including the acclaimed Stella Batts and My Pet Slime series for young readers. Her book, Helen Keller, was part of Chelsea Clinton’s She Persisted series. Courtney received a National Scholastic Outstanding Educator Award for her work as a writing instructor at the non-profit Writopia Lab. She lives in New York City.

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS de Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Crown, March 2025

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father’s sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He had told her this day might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers?

In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the University. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Castle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been dubbed a target by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time, and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it’s a rumor, or true.  And the only people who know first-hand are not talking.

What does a young woman who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online have to do with a circle of intellectuals debating time and space in Vienna on the eve of World War II? Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.

Steeped in math and misfortune, THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS is a taut, genre-bending historical mystery perfect for readers looking for their next dark academia fix.

“A touching and deftly constructed story about the most precious thing we have—time. From modern-day San Francisco to Croatia before the Great War and 1930s Vienna, Kirsten Menger-Anderson follows her characters as they try to solve the mysteries of science, faith, and love. A glorious book.”―Laila Lalami, author of Pulitzer Prize-finalist The Moor’s Account

“The Expert of Subtle Revisions begins with a mysterious disappearance and ends with a moving discovery. Along the way, Kirsten Menger-Anderson weaves together history, time travel, and a haunting love story. She also manages to raise stirring questions about identity, family, and what it means to record and revise history, especially one’s own. A powerful and original novel that defies expectations in almost every chapter.”―Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life and The Object of My Affection

“Smart. Propulsive. Addictive. Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s The Expert of Subtle Revisions grabbed hold with the opening sentence and didn’t let go until its surprising and satisfying conclusion. Brilliantly plotted and filled with deft twists and unforgettable characters, this dual-timeline novel about obsession, madness, and love is a must-read for fans of both mystery and historical fiction. I loved this book.”―Peggy Townsend, author of The Beautiful and the Wild

Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain (Algonquin), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in fiction and one of Time Out Chicago’s top ten books of the year. Her short stories and essays have appeared in publications including Ploughshares, the Southwest Review, LitHub, and Undark. She currently lives in San Francisco with her family.