Susan Wiggs is known for novels with relatable characters and narratives that hook the reader from the start, and her newest novel, “Wayward Girls,” is historical fiction at its best. In this gripping story, we meet young girls who were forced to leave school, their homes, and their families, to work at a Catholic laundry masquerading as a charity home for wayward girls in New York.
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“How to Seal Your Own Fate” is a worthy sequel to Kristen Perrin’s debut novel, “How to Solve Your Own Murder.” The main character, Annie Adams, has now inherited not only the grand estate of Gravesdown Manor in the scenic, idyllic village of Castle Knoll, England, but also the millions of pounds that accompanied it. She inherited all that as a result of solving the murder in the first book. Annie now lives in the manor alone and is often lonely. But very quickly, trouble comes knocking on her door.
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In many ways, Mary Alice Monroe’s “Where the Rivers Merge” is an ode to the ACE Basin, a place in South Carolina where three rivers join. The main character, Eliza Rivers, shows us the beauty of this place as we learn about her life growing up at Mayfield, a large property that belonged to her father’s family.
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Lauren Willig’s historical fiction is always meticulously researched, and if she seems to demonstrate a superpower, it’s her ability to draw the readers in through her fictional characters. Her novels make reading—and learning about history—extremely enjoyable. In “The Girl from Greenwich Street,” Willig doesn’t create fictional characters—the real characters are compelling enough for her to work with. She has created a wonderful murder mystery based on a real trial in which Alexander Hamilton and his nemesis, Aaron Burr, were co-counsel.
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There are three female main characters in Laura Anthony’s “The Women on Platform Two,” and they couldn’t be more different.
The story opens with Saoirse in 2023, finding out that she is not pregnant. She is relieved; her fiancé is not. We quickly learn that while she doesn’t want a child, her fiancé Miles is desperate to have a child with her. They cannot reconcile their differences, and she leaves the apartment after they argue. She accidentally ends up on a train headed for Belfast as she returns a photograph to an elderly woman who dropped it in the station. The train leaves the station before Saoirse can get off, so she joins Maura, the woman who dropped the photograph. Maura is making her yearly pilgrimage to Belfast, and this year she tells Saoirse the story of why, every year on May 22, Maura travels from Dublin to Belfast on this train.
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Fans of Pam Jenoff know that her historical fiction novels don’t just tell a story. Instead, they insert us right into the middle of events most of us had never heard of — real events that are shocking and which deserve to be exposed. The French capitulated to the Germans during WWII, and many didn’t seem particularly opposed to assisting when it came to the impoundment of the Jewish French population. The French police joined in with the Gestapo to help round up the Jews of Paris, and many of the French population were only too happy to take for their own apartments that had belonged to Parisian Jews. Acclaimed author Pam Jenoff shares a little known facet of that war in “Last Twilight in Paris,” a fictional account that takes place partly in Lévitan, the French furniture store that served as both a Jewish detention center and a shopping mecca for Nazi officers during the war.
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Jess Armstrong’s newest mystery, “The Secret of the Three Fates,” continues the story of Ruby Vaughn, a transplant from New York to England. Ruby is no young simpering ingenue; she spent several years in the first world war helping wounded soldiers and facing the blood and trauma of battle. Now she calls Exeter home and lives with octogenarian Mr. Owen. She runs his bookstore and lives with him in his home. They have formed their own little family.
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Julia Kelly writes brilliant historical fiction. Her novels capture the essence of a bygone era, and “The Dressmakers of London,” her newest novel, brings wartime London to life through the eyes of two estranged sisters. Isabelle and Sylvia Shelton lost their father at a young age, and their mother was forced to work to ensure the family’s survival. She opened a dress shop and carefully eked out a living.
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In “All’s Fair in Love and Treachery,” author Celeste Connally follows up with a sequel to her first Regency era mystery “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord.” There’s a lot to like in this clever novel filled with real historical facts, more than one murder to solve, a seductive romance, and plenty of royalty and intrigue. Lady Petra Forsyth is the daughter of a wealthy earl who allows her to run his estate and live her life on her own terms. Thus Lady Petra, while unmarried, is unencumbered by the usual restrictions placed on young single women.
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“The Lotus Shoes” is a novel of old China, set there in the late 1800s. In this engrossing novel, Jane Yang recounts the sometimes-tragic lives of girls and women in a time and place where their lives have no value. Little Flower’s father died when she was six, and her mother was forced to sell her as a slave to a wealthy family in order that Little Flower’s brother not starve to death. She was to be a maidservant to Linjing, the daughter of the family, who was the same age as Little Flower.
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In “The Time Keepers,” Alyson Richman writes a novel that alternates between several time periods, 1969, during the Vietnam War; 1978, in post-war Vietnam; and 1979 in a suburb of New York, where all the characters in this touching story come together in an incredibly detailed picture of life during those times. While the novel is not a mystery or a thriller by any stretch, Richman keeps a bit of mystery going until the beautifully conceived ending, because we can’t imagine how life will turn out for these people, who are searching for belonging, and who ultimately find it with Grace and her family.
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Fans of Julia Kelly’s historical fiction novels first met Evelyne Redfern in the historical mystery, “A Traitor in Whitehall,” wherein Evelyne is hired as a typist in the war department of the British government during WWII. There she stumbles upon a murder, and she and spy David Poole, who becomes her romantic interest, solve the crime. In this new mystery, “Betrayal at Blackthorn Park,” Evelyne has been through training to become part of a unit that is involved in spying. For her first assignment, she is given something rather innocuous, checking to see if there is any pilfering going on at Blackthorn Park, the site of clandestine testing of weapons for use in the war.
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