Historical Fiction

Michael Ondaatje does it again with his new novel, Warlight. He creates an oddly uncomfortable and somewhat satisfying story in an ambivalent historical time. I need to explain that. Warlight was oddly uncomfortable because I loved the writing style but not the story...

In the acknowledgements for The Thief Taker, C.S. Quinn tells how hard it was to convince agents and editors that women could write historical fiction thrillers. Imagine that. They wanted her to write more like historical fiction divas like Philippa Gregory. I’m glad...

A Quiet Genocide from new author Glenn Bryant is a quiet book. Right up until it punches you in the gut. It’s historical fiction with a topic I’ve never seen broached. And I’ve read WW2 stories for decades now. It opens in post-WW2 Munich with the Diederichs. They’re...

His Bloody Project is historical fiction from author Graham Macrae Burnet that reads like true crime. But the crime was committed in 1869 in Culduie, Scotland. It’s a tiny burg between the poetically-named Toscaig and Camusterrach. Yes, I indulged my habit of checking...

Way way backlist book The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is an stirring historical fiction novel. It evokes a variety of emotion from the reader, as its characters go through many decades of life in Middle Ages England. But I’ll admit some of my emotions were...

Reading I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon is a bit like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. You start with the edges and work your way back towards the middle. Lawhon tells the first-person narrative of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, but mixes it in with a third-person...