Forthcoming historical novels for 2021
Fiona Sheppard
Forthcoming historical novels for 2021. From mainstream and small press historical titles for books set in eras up to the early 1970s.
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Historical Novel Society
The Historical Novel Society lists mainstream and small press historical titles for books set in eras up to the early 1970s. Details are compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, AUS) and are based on publisher descriptions.

Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!

Last update February 2, 2022

January 2021

Anita Abriel, Lana’s War, Atria (story of a young woman recruited to be a spy for the resistance on the French Riviera during World War II)

Rose Alexander, Along the Endless River, Canelo (1890 – when her husband dies suddenly on the treacherous waters of the Amazon, a pregnant Katharine must decide whether or not to continue his dream, alone)

Susan Andersen, The Ballad of Hattie Taylor, Berkley (coming-of-age Western)

Gina Apostol, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, Soho Press (story of a visually impaired member of a 19th-c anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society)

Viola Ardone (trans. Clarissa Botsford), The Children’s Train, HarperVia (based on true events – about poor children from the south sent to live with families in the north to survive deprivation and the harsh winters)

Jenny Ashcroft, Meet Me in Bombay, SMP (romance set in Bombay, India, 1913)

Charles Belfoure, The Fabergé Secret, Severn House (historical adventure journeying from the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Russia to the grim violence of the pogroms)

Misty M. Beller, Faith’s Mountain Home, Bethany House (3rd in Hearts of Montana romance series)

Marie Benedict, The Mystery of Mrs Christie, Sourcebooks Landmark (1920s – explores one strong woman’s successful endeavor to write her own narrative and take her history into her own hands)

Melanie Benjamin, The Children’s Blizzard, Delacorte (a story of courage on the prairie, inspired by the devastating storm that struck the Great Plains in 1888)

Max Besora (trans. Mara Faye Lethem), Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Open Letter (faux-historical romp about a real-life conquistador who founded New Catalonia in the wilds of Venezuela)

Charlotte Betts, The Fading of the Light, Piatkus (historical saga)

S. Block, A Woman’s Courage, Bonnier Zaffre (in the depths of war, the members of one village’s Women’s Institute fight harder than ever to help the war effort)

Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Maharajah’s Jewel, Constable (book 10 of the brother and sister sleuthing team mysteries set in 1920s)

J. C. Briggs, The Mystery of the Hawke Sapphires, Sapere (London 1851 – Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones unravel two eerie mysteries)

Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite, Berkley (novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers, (Hell’s Belle) in American history)

Helen Bryan, The River, Lake Union (final chapter in the epic historical trilogy of love, loyalty, and family in the heart of Virginia)

Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana, Park Row (based on the true story of Estelita Rodriguez, a Cuban-born Hollywood actress and singer)

Maisy Card, These Ghosts Are Family, S&S (portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret)

Ella Carey, The Things We Don’t Say, Bookouture (historical novel about the relationships that shape us and the secrets we never forget)

Donis Casey, Valentino Will Die, PPP (murder strikes in Hollywood’s silent film era)

Megan Chance, A Splendid Ruin, Lake Union (novel of dark family secrets and a young woman’s rise and revenge set against the backdrop of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake)

Andy Charman, Crow Court, Unbound (Spring, 1840. In the Dorset town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion)

Jerome Charyn, Sergeant Salinger, Bellevue Literary Press (biographical portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations)

J’nell Ciesielski, Beauty Among Ruins, Thomas Nelson (an American heiress finds herself in Scotland amid the fallout of the Great War)

Ida Cook, The Bravest Voices, Park Row (documents two sisters’ bravery leading up to WWII)

Afonso Cruz (trans. Angel Gurria-Quintana and Rahul Bery), Kokoschka’s Doll, MacLehose (the discarded life-size doll of Oskar Kokoschka’s lover resurfaces to play a role in the fate of Dresden citizens who survived the bombings during WWII)

M. Allen Cunningham, Q & A, Regal House (1956 – based on true events – deliberates on how to be real in a world of screen-induced self-deception)

Siobhan Curham, An American in Paris, Bookouture (Florence 1937 – wartime saga)

Tove Ditlevsen (trans. Tiina Nunnally), The Faces, Penguin Classic (Copenhagen, 1968. A mother of three, is increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices)

Cecilia Ekbäck, The Historians, Harper Perennial (tale of murder and conspiracy in Sweden during WWII)

Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Ritz, Allison & Busby (1940, London. DI Edgar Coburg and Sergeant Ted Lamson are called in to investigate a murder at the Ritz)

Kate Ellis, The House of the Hanged Woman, Piatkus (1921, Derbyshire. When a Member of Parliament goes missing in a small Derbyshire village, Scotland Yard detective Albert Lincoln is sent to investigate)

Jessica Fellowes, The Mitford Trial, Minotaur (fourth installment in the Mitford Murders series, inspired by a real-life murder and a story full of intrigue)

Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett, Gorg Huff, The Macedonian Hazard, Baen (time-travel alternate history taking place in the ancient Mediterranean not long after the death of Alexander the Great)

Carolyn Twede Frank, His Accidental Bride, Covenant (a woman switches places with a mail-order bride and heads west to escape her violent brother)

Laura Frantz, Tidewater Bride, Revell (takes you to the salty shores of 17th-c Virginia in this exploration of pride, honor, and the restorative power of true love)

Jane Fraser, Advent, Honno Press (set in 1904, a story of a generation of young women who finally begin to take hold of the reins of their own lives)

Molly Gartland, The Girl from the Hermitage, Lightning Books (debut guides readers from the old communist world, with its obvious terrors and surprising comforts, into the glitz & bling of 21st-c St. Petersburg)

Sulari Gentill, Shanghai Secrets, PPP (a Rowland Sinclair murder mystery set in Shanghai 1935)

Éric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne (trans. Maren Baudet-Lackner), Hellbound, Hodder & Stoughton (Black Sun series Book 3))

Elizabeth Gifford, The Good Doctor of Warsaw, Pegasus (set in the ghettos of wartime Warsaw, inspired by the true story of one doctor who was determined to protect two hundred Jewish orphans from extermination)

Cathy Gohlke, Night Bird Calling, Tyndale (story of courage and transformation set in rural Appalachia on the eve of WWII)

Alex Gough, Emperor’s Spear, Canelo (Imperial Assassin Book 4)

Evie Grace, The Smuggler’s Wife, Arrow (set during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1800s)

Lily Graham, The Flight of Swallows, Bookouture (story of a brave brother and sister seeking safety during one of the darkest times in our history)

Molly Greeley, The Heiress, Wm Morrow (combines the knowing eye of Jane Austen with Gothic intrigue to reimagine the life of the mysterious Anne de Bourgh)

Molly Green, A Sister’s Song, Avon (2nd in Victory Sisters series. WWII)

Michelle Griep, The Thief of Blackfriars Lane, Shiloh Run (Christian romance in Victorian London)

Barbara Hambly, House of the Patriarch, Severn House (1840 – when Eve Russell vanishes into thin air, her frantic parents call on free man of color, Benjamin January, for help)

Arlem Hawks, Georgana’s Secret, Shadow Mountain (a Regency Romance on the high seas – 1811)

Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships, Harper (a women’s tale, after the battle for Troy)

Jody Hedlund, A Cowboy for Keeps, Bethany House (romance series follows the McQuaid family as they try to establish a ranch in 1862 Colorado. First in series of 5)

Kate Hewitt, Return to the Island, Bookouture (Amherst Island, book 3 – historical romance)

Catherine Hokin, All Who Wander, Bookouture (WWII story about survival and a mother’s enduring search for her child against all the odds)

Ben Hopkins, Cathedral, Europa Editions (story about obsession, mysticism, art, and earthly desire centering on the Cathedral, its design and construction in 12th & 13th centuries, in the town of Hagenburg)

Ladee Hubbard, The Rib King, Amistad (historical novel set in early 20th century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family)

Graham Hurley, Last Flight to Stalingrad, Head of Zeus (a journalist at the Ministry of Propaganda falls afoul of the Nazi elite and begins a terrifying descent into the hell of Stalingrad as the Russians encircle the city)

Conn Iggulden, The Gates of Athens, Pegasus (evokes two of the most famous battles of the Ancient World—the Battle of Marathon and the Last Stand at Thermopylae. Athenian, book one)

Harper Jameson, W.A.W. Parker, The Wasteland, Level 4 Press (the untold story of T.S. Eliot, his secret struggle with being gay, the people left in the wake of his meteoric career trajectory and the madness that helped produce his greatest work)

Julia Claiborne Johnson, Better Luck Next Time, Custom House (story of endings, new beginnings, and the complexities and complications of friendship and love, set in late 1930s Reno)

Sadeqa Johnson, Yellow Wife, 37 Ink (follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia)

Tara Johnson, All Through the Night, Tyndale (a novel of the American Civil War)

Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets, Quercus/G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Mississippi pre-civil war era – after a fellow slave seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, Isaiah and Samuel’s love, once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony)

Brian Kaufman, Dread Tribunal of Last Resort, Five Star (Decker Brown is a proud young Virginian, with plans to manufacture illuminations-fireworks and raise a family)

Georgia Kaufman, The Dressmaker of Paris, Hodder & Stoughton (WWII saga)

Julia Kelly, The Last Garden in England, Gallery (tale of five women living across three different times whose lives are all connected by one very special garden)

Sahar Khalifeh (trans. Aida Bamia), My First and Only Love, Hoopoe (after many decades of restless exile, Nadal returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe)

Vaseem Khan, Midnight at Malabar House, Hodder & Stoughton (as 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world’s largest republic, Detective Persis finds herself investigating a case that is becoming more political by the second)

Eleanor Kuhns, Death in the Great Dismal, Severn House (Will Rees and his wife get caught up in a dangerous murder case where no one trusts them)

Eleni Kyriacou, She Came to Stay, Hodder (story of friendship, family, love and loss set against the grimy and glittering streets of 50s Soho)

Tracy Lawson, Answering Liberty’s Call, Fidelis Publishing (war might be men’s business, but that doesn’t stop Anna Stone from trying to thwart a conspiracy against General George Washington)

Catherine Lloyd, Death Comes to the Rectory, Kensington (murder casts a dark shadow over the christening of Lady Lucy and Major Sir Robert Kurland’s daughter, Elizabeth)

Robert Low, Shake Loose the Border, Canelo (Border Reivers, Book 3)

Sharlene MacLaren, Her Steadfast Heart, Whitaker House (romance set during Civil War)

Charline Malaval (trans. Natasha Lehrer), The Sailor from Casablanca, Hodder & Stoughton (debut dual-timeline mystery set in 1940 and 2005)

Sarah Maine, Alchemy and Rose, Hodder & Stoughton (novel spans New Zealand, Scotland and Melbourne in the 1870s)

Paula Martinac, Testimony, Bywater Books (at a women’s college in rural Virginia in the 1950s, a history professor who has hidden her sexuality faces an investigation into her private life that threatens her career)

Paolo Maurensig (trans. Anne Milano Appel), Game of the Gods, World Editions (in an ultimate feat of manipulation, the exceptionally talented chess player Malik is turned into a human pawn in a game of warfare which will decide the outcome of World War II)

Alyssa Maxwell, A Sinister Service, Kensington (6th entry in the Lady and Lady’s Maid mystery series set after WWI)

Catriona McPherson, The Mirror Dance, Hodder & Stoughton (Dandy Gilver mysteries, book 15)

Mary Monroe, Across the Way, Dafina (in this Depression era novel, two couples find their grudges endangering more than their Alabama small town’s deceptive peace)

Kate Mosse, The City of Tears, Minotaur US/Mantle UK (follow-up to The Burning Chambers)

Katie Munnik, The Heart Beats in Secret, The Borough Press (dual time-line 1940 and 1970 – story of three women and the secrets and bonds that have defined them)

Stacie Murphy, A Deadly Fortune, Pegasus (mystery in which a young woman in Gilded Age New York must use a special talent to unravel a deadly conspiracy)

Amy Myers, Death and the Singing Birds, Severn House (1926, Kent – a summer festival ends in disaster for chef sleuth Nell Drury)

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, The Theory of Flight, Catalyst Press (alternative history with overlay of magical realism)

Chris Nickson, The Anchoress of Chesterfield, The Mystery Press (medieval mystery in which an anchoress’s murder must be solved)

Anna North, Outlawed, W&N/Bloomsbury (a feminist Western following a young midwife through her initiation into a notorious gang of outlaws, made up of women cast out of society)

Pamela Nowak, Never Let Go, Five Star (sacrificing dreams and risking family, five women follow their husbands to an isolated Minnesota settlement)

Nuala O’Connor, Nora, Harper Perennial (a love story of Nora and James Joyce)

Paraic O’Donnell, The House on Vesper Sands, Tin House (Victorian mystery set in London, 1893)

Connie Palmen (trans. Eileen J. Stevens, Anna Asbury), Your Story, My Story, Amazon Crossing (novel based on the volatile true love story of literary icons Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes)

Tracie Peterson, Kimberley Woodhouse, Endless Mercy, Bethany House (story of the need to forgive and the difficulty of forgetting: set in Nome Alaska)

Peter Pevel, The Cardinal’s Blades, Gollancz (Paris 1633 – historical fantasy set during the reign of Louis XIII)

Bill Pronzini, The Paradise Affair, Forge (the latest Carpenter & Quincannon mystery)

Laura Purcell, The Shape of Darkness, Raven Books (a struggling silhouette artist in Victorian Bath seeks out a renowned child spirit medium in order to speak to the dead)

Frances Quinn, The Smallest Man, S&S (inspired by the life of the historical figure Jeffrey Hudson, court dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria)

Jennifer Robson, Our Darkest Night, Wm Morrow (to survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer’s wife)

Andromeda Romano-Lax, Annie and the Wolves, Soho Press (a woman researches Annie Oakley’s life in hopes of finding what traumatic event caused Annie to fight for the right of every woman to own a gun)

Laura Joh Rowland, Portrait of Peril, Crooked Lane (Victorian London is gripped by belief in the supernatural—but a grisly murder becomes a matter of flesh and blood for photographer Sarah Bain)

Carly Schabowski, The Watchmaker of Dachau, Bookouture (novel of human kindness, inspired by a true story)

Bianca M. Schwarz, The Innkeeper’s Daughter, Central Avenue (first in a dark historical romance mystery series set in Regency London)

Amy Stewart, Dear Miss Kopp, HMH (told through letters, this novel weaves the stories of real life women into a fiction with historical detail and humor)

Deborah Swift, The Lifeline, Sapere (saga following the stories of a young man and woman through the years of the Second World War as they fight for freedom in Norway and the Shetland Islands)

Kate Thompson, Secrets of the Lavender Girls, Hodder & Stoughton (WWII saga)

Victoria Thompson, City of Schemes, Berkley (A Counterfeit Lady novel, book 4)

S. J. A. Turney, The Last Crusade, Canelo (finale of the Knights Templar series)

Eric Vuillard (trans. Mark Polizzotti), The War of the Poor, Picador (tells the story of one man whose terrible and novelesque life casts light on the times in which he lived)

Rysa Walker, Red, White, and the Blues, 47North (the United States’ past is hijacked in a time-warping alternative-history adventure of future interdimensional, high-risk games)

Joseph B Wallenstein, Flynn & Miranda: Your Right to Remain Silent, TrineDay Fiction (story of two men from opposite ends of the social spectrum, who came together in one moment of legal history and how that moment changed the lives of all Americans)

Amanda Wen, Roots of Wood and Stone, Kregel (dual-narrative inspirational novel set in present day and 1800s)

Rachel Wesson, A Baby on the Doorstep, Bookouture (Virginia 1934 – a baby is left at an orphanage where every day Lauren Greenwood struggles to feed those she cares for)

Roseanna M. White, Dreams of Savannah, Bethany House (Civil War-era novel of history and romance)

Eley Williams, The Liar’s Dictionary, Doubleday (dual-narrative chronicles the misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later. LGBTQIA)

Abigail Wilson, The Vanishing at Loxby Manor, Thomas Nelson (a romantic Regency mystery)

Marty Wingate, Glamour Girls, Alcove Press (during World War II, farmer’s daughter Rosalie Wright becomes a pilot assisting the RAF, but will a romantic rivalry send her aerial dreams plummeting?)

Jozef Wittlin (trans. Patrick John Corness), The Salt of the Earth, Pushkin Press (a classic war novel and a powerfully pacifist tale about the consequences of war for ordinary men)

Ethan J. Wolfe, Baker’s Dozen, Five Star (Murphy is called back into action to assist the New York City police with a serial killer on the loose in the city streets)

Reavis Z. Wortham, Laying Bones, PPP (1969 – Constable Parker finds himself involved in a high-stakes game of consequences with no end in sight)

Takis Würger (trans. Liesl Schillinger), Stella, Grove Press (novel of love and betrayal, set in Berlin in 1942)

K. Lyn Wurth, The Not So Quiet Life of Calamity Jane, Five Star (shatters the veneer of legends to reveal a tenacious heart, rowdy and seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction)

David Young, The Stasi Game, Zaffre (East German Stasi and British MI6 clash as the discovery of a body points to a WW2 war crime)

Hafsa Zayyan, We Are All Birds of Uganda, Merky Books (a multi-layered literary novel of love, loss, and what it means to find home, set in 1960s Uganda and present-day London)

February 2021

Hope Adams, Dangerous Women, Berkley (based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive)

Gil Adamson, Ridgerunner, House of Anansi Press (against the backdrop of WWI, novel is a literary Western with a cast of characters touched with humour and loss, and steeped in the wild of the natural world)

K.D. Alden, A Mother’s Promise, Forever (story based on the true U.S. Supreme Court case during the American Eugenics movement)

V. S. Alexander, The Sculptress, Kensington (novel set during WWI)

Rosie Archer, The Picture House Girls, Quercus (WWII saga of hope, love, and female friendship in 1940s Hampshire)

Judith Barrow, The Heart Stone, Honno (when war takes Jessie’s love away, she must fight for her own survival)

Lenny Bartulin, Fortune, Arcade (through people’s stories amid war, cataclysm, colliding cultures, and misadventure, novel imagines the ways that chance and the grand events of history shape the course of ordinary lives)

Greg Bear, The Unfinished Land, John Joseph Adams (an historical fantasy featuring Reynard, a young apprentice whose rare days off lead him into strange encounters)

Lisa Betz, Death and a Crocodile, Crosslink (lighthearted historical mystery set in first-century Rome, featuring a feisty amateur sleuth)

D. V. Bishop, City of Vengeance, Macmillan (historical thriller set against the backdrop of the Medici dynasty in 1530s Renaissance Florence)

J. C. Briggs, The Chinese Puzzle, Sapere (Charles Dickens Investigations book 8)

Robert Brooke, Oradour, Vanguard Press (June 10, 1944; when the D-Day invasion occurs, a French Resistance group spontaneously rises up against the Nazi occupiers and reprisals are brutal and ruthless)

Eric Brown, Murder by Numbers, Severn House (December, 1956. Donald Langham’s wife Maria Dupré, receives a chilling invitation to attend a death at the home of artist Maxwell Falwell Fenton)

D.J. Butler, Aaron Michael Ritchey, The Jupiter Knife, Baen (alternate history taking place in Depression-era, magic-filled early America)

Kristy Cambron, The Paris Dressmaker, Thomas Nelson (WWII – follows a seamstress through the brutal underbelly of a war-torn world)

Elizabeth Camden, The Prince of Spies, Bethany House (conclusion of the Hope and Glory series)

Heidi Chiavaroli, The Orchard House, Tyndale (multi period saga set in 2001, 1865 and 2019)

Rory Clements, Hitler’s Secret, Zaffre (Autumn 1941; the war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed)

Lori Copeland, Ruth, Tyndale (a western historical romance – Brides of the West #1)

Also: Patience (Brides of the West #2)

Janet Dailey, Calder Brand, Kensington (first book in a new saga set in 1800s Montana)

Justin Deabler, Lone Stars, SMP (follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America)

Jennifer Deibel, A Dance in Donegal, Revell (romance set in Donegal, Ireland in 1920)

Eoin Dempsey, The Longest Echo, Lake Union (against the backdrop of WWII-ravaged Italy comes a novel of love, survival, justice, and second chances)

Margaret Dickinson, Secrets at Bletchley Park, Pan (two young women from very different backgrounds meet in WWII and are plunged into a life where security and discretion are paramount)

Helena Dixon, Murder in the Belltower, Bookouture (Golden Age cozy murder mystery)

Angus Donald, The Last Berserker, Canelo (711AD, Northern Europe – an epic battle for the soul of the north)

György Dragomán (trans. Ottilie Mulzet), The Bone Fire, Mariner (novel set in the wake of a violent revolution about a young girl rescued from an orphanage by an otherworldly grandmother she’s never met)

Ruth Druart, While Paris Slept, Grand Central (a family’s love is tested when heroes-turned-criminals are forced to make the hardest decisions of their lives during WWII)

Stella Duffy, Lullaby Beach, Virago (novel about family secrets and the legacy of trauma, set against the changing fortunes of an English seaside town)

Caroline Dunford, Hope to Survive, Headline Accent (Book 2 of the Hope Stapleford mysteries)

Suzannah Dunn, The Testimony of Alys Twist, Abacus (a laundress is pressed into becoming a spy in the Princess Elizabeth’s household in 1553)

Kate Eastham, When the World Stood Still, Bookouture (1918; a novel of the deadly Spanish flu)

Allison Epstein, A Tip for the Hangman, Doubleday (Christopher Marlowe, an aspiring playwright, is pulled into the duplicitous world of international espionage)

Charles Fergus, Nighthawk’s Wing, Arcade Crimewise (second in Gideon Stoltz mystery series examines the oppressed status of women in the 1830s)

David Field, Death Among the Nightingales, Sapere (Carlyle and West Victorian Mysteries)

Charles Finch, An Extravagant Death, Minotaur (Sir Charles Lenox travels to Gilded Age Newport and New York to investigate the death of a beautiful socialite)

Suzanne Woods Fisher, The Moonlight School, Revell (inspired by the true events of the Moonlight Schools, novel brings to life the story that shocked the nation into taking adult literacy seriously)

Katie Flynn, A Mother’s Joy, Century (when war comes to Liverpool, Olivia seizes the opportunity to leave behind her unhappy life and join the WAAF)

Lauren Fox, Send for Me, Knopf (dual narrative moving between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin)

T. Frohock, A Song With Teeth, Harper Voyager (conclusion of the critically acclaimed Los Nefilim historical fantasy series)

Nicole Galland, Master of the Revels, Wm Morrow (sequel to The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.—a daring young time traveler must return to Jacobean England to save the modern world)

A. A. Gilbertsen, Of German Blood, Vanguard Press (when the British Government confirmed Winston Churchill as their new Prime Minister, on May 10th, 1940, Adolph Hitler’s hopes of avoiding war on two fronts were finally dashed)

David Gilman, Shadow of the Hawk, Head of Zeus (seventh installment of Master of War series)

Holly Green, Secrets of the Frontline Nurses, Ebury (historical wartime saga)

Jocelyn Green, Shadows of the White City, Bethany House (series brings the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to life)

Paula Greenlees, Journey to Paradise, Cornerstone (when her husband’s job takes them to Singapore, Miranda’s loneliness causes her to offer to help with sick children at a local hospital. Historical romance)

Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds, SMP (Texas 1934 – an epic of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of the Great Depression)

Suzette D. Harrison, The Girl at the Back of the Bus, Bookouture (novel about redemption, family secrets and the spirit of survival found at the hardest time)

John Hart, The Unwilling, SMP (set in the South at the height of the Vietnam War- a novel of crime, suspense and searing glimpses into the human mind and soul)

Kate Hewitt, The Girl from Berlin, Bookouture (haunting story about courage, love and betrayal set in war-torn Berlin)

Elisabeth Hobbes, The Secret Agent, One More Chapter (dropping silently behind enemy lines, Sylvia Crichton, codename Monique, is determined to fight for the country of her birth)

Inez Holden, There’s No Story There, Handheld Classics (about the lives of conscripted workers at Statevale, an enormous rural munitions factory somewhere in England during the Second World War)

Rachel Hore, A Beautiful Spy, S&S UK (story about resisting the norm and following your dreams, even if they come with sacrifices)

Emma Hornby, The Maid’s Disgrace, Bantam (when her beloved mistress dies, lady’s maid Phoebe Parsons is forced onto the poverty-ridden streets of Manchester)

Yaniv Iczkovits (trans. Orr Scharf), The Slaughterman’s Daughter, Schocken (tale of two Jewish sisters in late-19th-c Russia)

John J. Jacobson, All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone, Blackstone (adventure story of a young Texan living at the beginning of the twentieth century, who thinks of himself as the last true cowboy)

Lucy Jago, A Net for Small Fishes, Bloomsbury UK (navigating the Jacobean court is a dangerous game and one misstep could mean losing everything)

Beverly Jenkins, Wild Rain, Avon (Women Who Dare series features a female rancher who forges her own path in the wake of the Civil War)

Angela Johnson, Saved By Scandal, Sweetwater (Regency romance)

Nick Jones, And Then She Vanished, Blackstone (time-travel mystery. Joseph Bridgeman book 1)

Stephen Kanicki, There Are No Saints, Black Rose (In the summer of 1857, the Devil visited Titusville, Pennsylvania and was greeted by an exorcist with a drinking problem and a bad attitude. This is his story)

Alexis Landau, Those Who Are Saved, G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Orion (WW II novel of one mother’s impossible choice, and her search for her daughter against the odds)

Jenny Lecoat, The Girl from the Channel Islands, Graydon House (based on a true story about a Jewish woman trapped on the German-occupied British Channel Islands during World War II)

Lia Levi (trans. Clarissa Botsford), Tonight is Already Tomorrow, Europa (tells the tragic history of mid-century Europe through the eyes and lives of ordinary people)

Chalon Linton, Forever, Phoebe, Covenant (Regency romance)

Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, The Girl from the Mountains, Bookouture (novel set in the mountains of Czechoslovakia during the Second World War)

Edward Massey, Founding Sheriff, Five Star (an immigrant cooper named constable and then sheriff investigates a girl murdered in her bed and tracks her husband who escaped in Grandma’s buggy)

Shelagh Mazey, All That Glitters, Matador (fifth novel in The Heart of Stone saga)

Catherine McCullagh, Secrets and Showgirls, Blue Sky (a vibrant Paris cabaret is caught in the crossfire of the occupation during WWII)

Kerry McDonald, The Amber Room, Level 4 Press (3rd installment of the Spirit Walker series where Logan follows the trail of treasure stolen by the Nazis)

Susan Meissner, The Nature of Fragile Things, Berkley (April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed)

Rod Miller, A Thousand Dead Horses, Five Star (based on a historic horse-stealing adventure)

Stacie Murphy, A Deadly Fortune, Pegasus Crime (a young woman in Gilded Age New York must use a special talent to unravel a deadly conspiracy)

Annie Murray, Black Country Orphan, Macmillan (1898, Cradley Heath – an inspirational story of a young girl’s courage)

Erica Ruth Neubauer, Murder at the Mena House, Kensington (traveling Egypt, post WWI, as companion to her aunt, a young woman accused of murdering a flapper at the luxurious Mena House hotel must clear her own name)

Geoff Nowell, 1819: Dark Angelic, Vanguard Press (when the ghost of a one-time lord of the manor, is accidentally released, it soon becomes clear that it could become the difference between freedom and the continuance of tyranny)

Marcus Palliser, To the Bitter End, McBooks (1708―the English and the French are battling it out for control of Canada in the frozen waters off the coast of Newfoundland)

Pinkie Paranya, St. Louis Sam and the Desperados, Five Star (brother and sister seek revenge for their uncle’s part in the financial ruin of their father)

Renee Patrick, The Sharpest Needle, Severn House (Lillian Frost and Edith Head investigate a series of bizarre poison pen letters sent to a leading Hollywood actress)

S. W. Perry, The Saracen’s Mark, Atlantic Books (3rd installment of the Jackdaw Mysteries)

Charles Lamar Phillips, Estranged, Regal House (1950s historical noir – a controversial city editor excites the wrath of a reckless, corrupt, and ambitious U.S. Senator)

Chase Pletts, The Loving Wrath of Eldon Quint, Inkshares (on a winter morning in 1883, farmer Eldon Quint sets off to rid the world of the outlaw Jack Foss once and for all)

Allison Pittman, The Lady in Residence, Barbour (inspirational dual timeline novel set in 1915 and 2017)

Shelly E. Powell, Dear Clara, Sweetwater (Regency romance)

Victoria Princewill, In the Palace of Flowers, Cassava Republic Press (the fear of being forgotten sets two Abyssinian slaves on a path to find meaning, navigating the dangerous and deadly politics of the royal court, both in the government and the harem)

Amanda Prowse, An Ordinary Life, Lake Union (dual time-line tale of love and lost – 2019 and 1940s)

Deanna Raybourn, An Unexpected Peril, Berkley (Veronica Speedwell Mystery, book 6)

Sarah Rayne, The Devil’s Harmony, Severn House (discovery of an old scrapbook in a Warsaw library leads researcher Phineas Fox to uncover evidence of a devastating wartime atrocity)

Michael Ridpath, The Diplomat’s Wife, Corvus (a 30-year mystery haunts a diplomat’s wife. Dual timeline historical thriller)

Diana Rosie, Pippo and Clara, Mantle (Italy, 1938. Mussolini is in power and war is not far away and two siblings are divided by fate)

Rena Rossner, The Light of the Midnight Stars, Redhook / Orbit (combination of fantasy, history, and Jewish folklore)

Ed Ruggero, Comes the War, Forge (set against the heroism and heartbreak of WW II, novel captures the timeless stories of ordinary people swept up in extraordinary times)

Linda Rutledge, West with Giraffes, Lake Union (novel inspired by the true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America)

Neema Shah, Kololo Hill, Picador (set in Uganda in 1972, debut tells the story of one family’s escape, when Amin forces them to leave)

Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Daughters of Night, Mantle (London 1782 – sequel to Blood & Sugar – Captain Harry Corsham’s wife, Caro, pursues a murder case the city officials are refusing to investigate)

Michael Farris Smith, Nick, Oldcastle UK/Little, Brown US (a World War II novel imagining Nick Carraway’s life before The Great Gatsby)

Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual, Faber & Faber (traces the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London)

Rebecca Starford, The Imitator (AU) / An Unlikely Spy (US), Allen & Unwin (World War II novel follows a spy who goes undercover as a part of MI5)

Linda Stratmann, The Cyanide Ghost, Sapere (a Mina Scarletti Mystery set in Brighton 1872)

Maria Stepanova (trans. Sasha Dugdale), In Memory of Memory, Book*hug Press (faded photographs, old postcards, letters & diaries tell the story of how an ordinary Jewish family managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century)

Kevin Sullivan, The Art of the Assassin, Allison & Busby (Glasgow, 1898 – can Juan Camerón, photographer-cum-sleuth, bring to light what the eye may overlook?)

Sarah Sundin, When Twilight Breaks, Revell (Munich, 1938. Evelyn Brand is an American foreign correspondent determined to prove her worth in a male-dominated profession)

Katerina Tucková (trans. Véronique Firkusny), Gerta, Amazon Crossing (tells of the fate of one woman and the pursuit of forgiveness in a divided postwar world)

Charles Todd, A Fatal Lie, Wm Morrow (in one of his most puzzling cases, Inspector Ian Rutledge must delve deep into a dead man’s life and past to find a killer determined to keep dark secrets buried)

Jess Walter, The Cold Millions, Viking (story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that echoes our own time)

John Wingate, Submariner Sinclair, Sapere (responsible for protecting British convoys in the Channel in a small Chaser, young Peter Sinclair, R.N., is thrown head-first into the horrors of war)

Ethan J. Wolfe, The Illinois Detective Agency: The Case of the Missing Cattle, Five Star (1884 –the Stock Growers Association of Montana appeals to Porter for help with a major cattle theft problem inside the Montana Territory)

Val Wood, The Lonely Wife, Corgi (story about a woman’s struggle in a loveless marriage)

Julie Wright, A Captain for Caroline Gray, Shadow Mountain (a Proper Regency Romance)

Alice Zeniter (trans. Frank Wynne), The Art of Losing, Picador (multigenerational tale of a French Algerian woman reckoning with her family’s secret past and the inescapable legacies of colonialism)

March 2021

Hope Adams, Dangerous Women, Michael Joseph (based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive)

Jane A. Adams, Old Sins, Severn House (historical mystery takes DCI Henry Johnstone back to a difficult case in his early days as a police officer)

Tasha Alexander, The Dark Heart of Florence, Minotaur (Florence, 1903 – Lady Emily and Colin solve a murder with clues leading back to the time of the Medici)

Omaima Al-Khamis (trans. Sarah Enany), The Book Smuggler, Hoopoe (story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world’s great medieval cities)

Lyn Andrews, The Girls from Mersey View, Headline (evokes the ups and downs of life in the back streets of 1930s Liverpool)

Michael Aye, The Smugglers of Deal, Bitingduck Press (new naval series in 1790s England, just before war breaks out with France)

Juliet Blackwell, Off the Wild Coast of Brittany, Berkley (story of resilience and resistance set during WWII and present-day France)

A. K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches, Granta (fear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town. England 1643)

Kim Taylor Blakemore, After Alice Fell, Lake Union (an historical suspense novel set in post-Civil War New England)

S. Block, A Woman’s Courage, Bonnier Zaffre (saga in the Keep the Home Fires Burning series)

Verity Bright, Mystery by the Sea, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift mystery 5, set in 1921)

Malcolm Brooks, Cloudmaker, Grove Press (set during the Age of Aviation, in which a young tinkerer and an aspiring pilot, building their own airplane, unexpectedly come into possession of a rare Lindbergh flight watch)

Denny S. Bryce, Wild Women and the Blues, Kensington (weaves the stories of a grieving film student in 2015 and an ambitious chorus girl in 1925 into a tale of history, love, and secrets)

Amanda Cabot, Dreams Rekindled, Revell (set in 1850s Texas; Mesquite Springs series #2 of 3)

Patti Callahan, Surviving Savannah, Berkley (after a luxury steamship sank in 1838 with Savannah’s elite on board, their fates were lost to history, until the wreck was found 180 years later)

Jillian Cantor, Half Life, Harper Perennial (reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice)

Ella Carey, A New York Secret, Bookouture (story about a young woman striving to survive in a world where everything is set against her)

Marj Charlier, The Rebel Nun, Blackstone (based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church)

Alan Robert Clark, Valhalla: A Story of Love and Duty, Fairlight Books (account of the life of Queen Mary, one of the most formidable queens of Britain)

Mary Connealy, Braced for Love, Bethany House (new historical cowboy series, #1 of 3)

Tea Cooper, The Girl in the Painting, Thomas Nelson (a mathematical savant must unravel the story of a rich business woman whose grip on reality is failing fast)

Christina Courtenay, The Runes of Destiny, Headline (time-slip where an archaeologist blacks out on a dig and wakes in the 9th-C)

Judith Cutler, Legacy of Death, Severn House (Victorian murder mystery)

Emily M. Danforth, illus. Sara Lautman, Plain Bad Heroines, The Borough Press (multi-period horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls, a whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit)

Joie Davidow, An Unofficial Marriage, Arcade (dramatizes the tumultuous real-life love affair of the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev, and the celebrated French opera singer, Pauline Viardo)

T.L. Davis, Deputized, Five Star (Frank Whittaker is just an unemployed trail hand when he witnesses a bank robbery and is deputized into a posse to track the outlaws)

Patrick Dearen, Haunted Border, Five Star (in 1870, Jake Graves faced a choice: let Comanches carry off his sister, or shoot her. Unwilling to fire, he is haunted for decades by her fate)

Sean Dietrich, The Incredible Winston Browne, Thomas Nelson (a small 1950s town takes in a mysterious visitor whom they believe needs saving—but she might be the one who saves them)

Melanie Dobson, The Curator’s Daughter, Tyndale (a young girl, kidnapped on the eve of Word War II, changes the lives of a German archaeologist forced into the Nazi Party. Dual-timeline)

Paul Doherty, The Stone of Destiny, Severn House (series of grisly deaths are linked to the sacred Stone of Scone)

J. N. Dolfen, Darkness over Cannae, Zmok Books (216 BC. As Rome and Carthage vie for supremacy, the Mediterranean is shaken by a conflict that will go down in history as the Second Punic War)

Nadine Dorries, Coming Home to the Four Streets, Head of Zeus (next installment in the Four Streets saga)

David Downing, Wedding Station, Soho Crime (prequel to the Station series introduces John Russell, an Englishman with a political past who must keep his head down as the Nazis solidify their power)

Stephanie Dray, The Women of Chateau LaFayette, Berkley (based on the true story of a castle in the heart of France and the women bound by its legacy)

Ruth Druart, While Paris Slept, Headline Review (a family’s love is tested when heroes-turned-criminals are forced to make the hardest decisions of their lives during WWII)

Kimberly Duffy, A Tapestry of Light, Bethany House (set in Calcutta, 1886, novel tells of personal transformation and legacy)

Carol Edgarian, Vera, Scribner (adventure set in 1906 San Francisco, featuring an indomitable heroine coming of age in the aftermath of catastrophe)

Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman, Corsair (weaves together a story of past and future generations, of preservation and progress)

Loren D. Estleman, The Eagle and the Viper, Forge (alternative history – Christmas time, 1880 – a time of improvised explosive devices, terrorist training camps, international assassins, and war on civilians)

Elaine Everest, A Mother Forever, Pan (one woman’s journey through the worst trials of her life – poverty, grief, and betrayal; set in 1905)

Lynne Francis, The Secret Child, Piatkus (Regency romance set in Kent, 1814)

Justin Fox, The Cape Raider, Sapere (WWII military adventure)

Helen Fripp, The French House, Bookouture (inspired by the true story of how Nicole Clicquot blazed her own path to build the world’s greatest champagne house: Veuve Clicquot)

Nick Gosman, Beyond the Sandbar, Vanguard Press (based on true events; tells the contrasting stories of courage and fortitude by identical twin brothers during WWII)

Eliza Graham, You Let Me Go, Lake Union (a secret family history of love, anguish and betrayal)

Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie, Algonquin (inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States, this new novel resonates in our times)

Michelle Griep, Kathleen Y’Barbo, Kimberley Woodhouse, The Daughters of the Mayflower: Groundbreakers, Barbour (new romance series)

John Scott Gruner, The Infidel, Deep River Books LLC (a financial thriller set inside Nazi Germany which exposes the historical SS occult conspiracy against the Jews and the church)

John Guzlowski, Retreat, Kasva Press (a story of the terrible costs of war, of love amid crushing defeat, of complicity—and redemption)

Michelle Butler Hallett, Constant Nobody, Goose Lane (a Spanish War thriller that asks how far an individual will go to protect another. Set in Moscow, 1937)

Matthew Harffy, A Time for Swords, Head of Zeus (it is 8th June AD 793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun)

Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament, Lake Union (love story about a musical duo, New York 1960)

Cora Harrison, Summer of Secrets, Severn House (when a murder is staged at magnificent Knebworth House, Victorian writer-sleuths, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins investigate)

Helen A. Harrison, An Artful Corpse, PPP (third book in the Art of Murder mystery series, featuring the buzzing art scene of 1960s New York!)

Gracie Hart, The Gin Palace, Ebury (romance saga)

Sarah Hawkswood, Blood Runs Thicker, Allison & Busby (undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, the wily Serjeant Catchpoll and apprentice Walkelin have suspects aplenty in this new murder mystery)

Jane Healey, The Secret Stealers, Lake Union (a female American spy in Nazi-occupied France finds purpose behind enemy lines)

Stephen Henighan, The World After, Cormorant (ranging from a 1920/30s Oxford, to post-Referendum Montreal, war-ravaged former Yugoslavia, London, Moscow, Poland and Berlin – multi-narrative novel depicts the 1990s as an interlude of freedom and enriching self-discovery)

Grace Hitchcock, My Dear Miss Dupré, Bethany House (when the daughter of a sugar titan must secure a husband, all of society’s most eligible bachelors step forward. American Royalty #1 of 3)

Mike Hollow, The Dockland Murder, Allison & Busby (when a dock worker is found murdered, DI Jago uncovers a web of secrets about family, war and the British Empire)

Charlie N. Holmberg, Spellmaker, 47North (dead wizards, stolen enchantments, and broken promises force a young spell breaker out of the shadows in England, 1895)

Jenny Holmes, The Air Raid Girls, Bantam (in May, 1941 three young women are keen to do their bit during the Yorkshire blitz)

Yaniv Iczkovits (trans. Orr Scharf), The Slaughterman’s Daughter, MacLehose (tale of two Jewish sisters in late-19th-c Russia)

Anna Jacobs, A Woman’s Promise, Hodder (the only female cabinet maker in the valley in 1935, Frankie Redfern is unwilling to give up her independence or the work she loves for marriage)

Sara James, Mothering Sunday, Orion (story about motherhood, forbidden love, long-buried secrets, sacrifice and forgiveness)

Kathleen Marple Kalb, A Fatal Finale, Kensington (first book in a new historical mystery series set in Gilded Age New York and following the adventures of swashbuckling opera singer Ella Shane)

Mitchell James Kaplan, Rhapsody, Gallery (set in Jazz Age New York City – explores the timeless bond between two brilliant, strong-willed artists, Kay Swift and George Gershwin)

Martha Hall Kelly, Sunflower Sisters, Ballantine (tells the story of Georgeanna Woolsey, a Union nurse who joins the war effort during the Civil War)

Sarah Kennedy, Queen of Blood, Penmore (book Four of the Cross and the Crown series, continues the story of Catherine Havens, a former nun in Tudor England)

Emily R. King, Wings of Fury, 47North (a novel of Ancient Greece)

T. E. Kinsey, The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds, Thomas & Mercer (missing diamonds and mysterious deaths in London, 1925)

Marion Kummerow, Not Without My Sister, Bookouture (1944, Germany: After years of hiding from the Nazis, Rachel Epstein and her little sister Mindel are captured by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen)

A.D. Lawrence, The Purple Nightgown, Barbour (true but forgotten history when patients check into Linda Hazzard’s Washington state spa in 1912 and soon become victim of her twisted greed)

Hervé Le Corre (trans.Tina Kover), In the Shadow of the Fire, Europa (1871 – traces the Paris Communards’ tragic odyssey, while following a criminal investigation)

Chris Lloyd, The Unwanted Dead, Orion (murder mystery set in Paris during the German occupation)

McKendree Long, Curly Jack, Five Star (a story of justice in the early American West)

Bonnie MacBird, The Three Locks, Collins Crime Club (the next Sherlock Holmes novel from the author of The Devil’s Due)

A. J. MacKenzie, A Flight of Arrows, Canelo (1328. After years of civil unrest between England and France, Charles IV dies, leaving no apparent heir)

Shirley Mann, Bobby’s War, Zaffre (WWII story of women on the homefront)

Meghan Masterson, The Girl From Versailles, Bookouture (at the French court nothing shines brighter than Queen Marie Antoinette, but on the grim streets of Paris, the people are starving and revolution is in the air)

Peter May, The Night Gate, Quercus (dual-narrative thriller set in 1940 and 2020)

Rosie Meddon, Her Heart’s Choice, Canelo (WWII saga)

Ellie Midwood, The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz, Bookouture (novel tells the true story of Mala Zimetbaum, whose heroism will never be forgotten, and whose fate altered the course of history)

Mary Monroe, Mrs Wiggins, Dafina (tale of a woman determined to have a respectable life—and do anything to keep it. Set in Depression-era South)

Jess Montgomery, The Stills, Minotaur (Ohio, 1927 – third in the Kinship series)

Kathleen Morris, The Transformation of Chastity James, Five Star (when a schoolmistress arrives in Dodge City, she finds a turbulent town full of cowboys and saloons but she’s no prim spinster)

Robbie Morrison, Edge of the Grave, Macmillan (first in an historical crime series set against the backdrop of 1930s Glasgow)

Erica Ruth Neubauer, Murder at Wedgefield Manor, Kensington (post-WW I, Jane Wunderly is traveling abroad, enjoying the hospitality of an English lord, until murder makes an appearance)

Chris Nickson, To the Dark, Severn House (thief-taker Simon Westow is drawn into a deadly puzzle when the melting snow reveals a dark secret)

Kayte Nunn, The Last Reunion, Hachette AU (multi narratives of 3 women, inspired by the women who served in ‘the forgotten war’ in Burma)

Alan Parks, The April Dead, Canongate (Harry McCoy thriller, book 4)

Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary, Park Row/Legend Press (a female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course)

Tracie Peterson, Destined for You, Bethany House (1869 Duluth, Minnesota. Ladies of the Lake series, #1 of 3)

Steven Pressfield, A Man at Arms, W.W.Norton (AD 55. In the turbulent aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, agents of the Roman Empire receive information about a pilgrim bearing an incendiary letter from a religious fanatic calling himself Paul the Apostle)

Kate Quinn, The Rose Code, Wm Morrow (World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over)

Joanna Rees, The Runaway Daughter, Pan (first novel in A Stitch in Time trilogy)

Nick Rennison, American Sherlocks, No Exit Press (stories from the Golden Age of the American detective)

Nancy Revell, The Shipyard Girls on the Home Front, Arrow (next in Shipyard Girls series)

Craig Russell, Hyde, Constable (gothic horror set in Victorian Edinburgh)

Constance Sayers, The Ladies of the Secret Circus, Redhook (spanning from Jazz Age Paris to present-day America of family secrets, sacrifice, and lost love set against the backdrop of a mysterious circus)

Simon Scarrow, Blackout, Headline (crime thriller set in Berlin, December 1939)

Philipp Schott, The Willow Wren, ECW Press (based on the true story of a neuro-divergent boy growing up in Nazi Germany, surviving bombing, the Hitler Youth, and Russian occupation before escaping to the west)

Lisa Scottoline, Eternal, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (unfolding over decades, this is a tale of loyalty and loss, love and war as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy’s Fascists with Hitler’s Nazis)

Cathy Sharp, An Orphan’s Dream, HarperCollins (historical saga from the author of The Orphans of Halfpenny Street)

Victoria Shorr, The Plum Trees, W.W.Norton (one woman’s quest to recover her family’s history, and a story of loss and survival during the Holocaust)

Jill Eileen Smith, Miriam’s Song, Revell (follows Miriam’s journey from childhood to motherhood and yearning to fulfillment, as she learns that what God promises he provides)

Lauraine Snelling, The Seeds of Change, Bethany House (Leah’s Garden series #1 of 4, featuring the Western migration in post-Civil War America)

Amy Sommers, Rumors from Shanghai, Earnshaw Books (novel based on true events set in old Shanghai, Yokohama, Seattle and Honolulu)

Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters, Viking / Picador (inspired by a haunting true story, a novel about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote tower, miles from the Cornish coast)

Maryla Szymiczkowa (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones), Karolina and the Torn Curtain, Mariner Books (when amateur sleuth Zofia Turbotyńska’s beloved maid goes missing, she dives into Cracow’s web of crime, with only her trusted cook for company. Set in 1895)

M. J. Trow, Last Nocturne, Severn House (private detectives Grand & Batchelor’s latest case draws them into the arcane world of high art and high society)

Erica Vetsch, The Indebted Earl, Kregel (inspirational romance set in Devon, England)

Heidi von Palleske, Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack, Dundurn (literary novel with mythic and gothic overtones set between the shores of Lake Ontario and Berlin between the 1960s and the 1980s)

Peter Watt, The Queen’s Captain, Pan Macmillan Aus (Colonial series book 3 follows the fortunes of Ian Steele and Samuel Forbes)

Jeri Westerson, Spiteful Bones, Severn House (the restoration of a crumbling manor house leaves Crispin Guest grappling with a troubling discovery)

Lauren Willig, Band of Sisters, Wm Morrow (based on a true story – a group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I)

John Wingate, Jimmy-the-One, Sapere (second book in a series of nautical adventures starring Submariner Sinclair)

Also: Sinclair in Command (3rd in series)

Jacqueline Winspear, The Consequences of Fear, Harper (as Europe buckles under Nazi occupation, Maisie Dobbs investigates a possible murder that threatens devastating repercussions for Britain’s war efforts)

Richard Woodman, The Bomb Vessel, McBooks (1801. Cpt. Drinkwater is caught up in the Battle of Copenhagen)

Also: The Corvette (Cpt. Drinkwater escorts a whaling fleet to Greenland and meets disaster and treachery)

Toshihiko Yahagi (trans. Alfred Birnbaum), The Wrong Goodbye, MacLehose (loose strands flashback to Vietnam, and the string of official lies and mysterious allegiances build into a dark picture of the U.S.-Japan postwar alliance)

Alice Zeniter (trans. Frank Wynne), The Art of Losing, FSG (multigenerational tale of a French Algerian woman reckoning with her family’s secret past and the inescapable legacies of colonialism)

April 2021

Tomas Alamilla, Mario Acevedo, Luther, Wyoming, Five Star (after the end of hostilities, and disillusioned by bigoted treatment Adam Sanchez returns west and teams up with fellow veteran Nelson Cook, now the sheriff of Luther, Wyoming)

Jon Antonius, Sap in the Blood, Vanguard Press (tale of love, loss and secrecy amid the beauty of the English countryside)

Jeffrey Archer, Turn a Blind Eye, Macmillan (third installment of Detective Inspector William Warwick series)

Guillermo Arriaga (trans. Frank Wynne and Jessie Mendez Sayer), The Untameable, MacLehose (coming of age thriller of vengeance and destiny set between Mexico City’s murderous 1960s underworld and the bleak tundras of Canada’s most remote province)

Elizabeth Bailey, The Dagger Dance, Sapere (book 7 of the Lady Fan Mysteries)

David Baldacci, A Gambling Man, Macmillan/Grand Central (Aloysius Archer, the straight-talking World War II veteran is fresh out of prison and returns in this post-war thriller)

Dominique Barbéris (trans. John Cullen), A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray, Other Press (a married woman confesses her encounter with a mysterious man, which threatens the stilted calm of life in a Paris suburb)

Kerry Barrett, The Moon Girl, HQ Digital (historical time-slip from the author of The Girl in the Picture)

Pepper Basham, Hope Between the Pages, Barbour (historical adventure romance)

Tania Bayard, Murder in the Cloister, Severn House (Christine de Pizan is in danger when she is sent to the Priory of Poissy to catch the killer of a young nun)

Kristin Beck, Courage My Love, Berkley (when the Nazi occupation of Rome begins, two courageous young women are plunged deep into the Italian Resistance)

Kerry Bell, The Emmerdale Girls, Trapeze (saga set towards the end of WWII)

Chris Bohjalian, Hour of the Witch, Doubleday (Boston 1662 – a young Puritan woman plots her escape from a violent marriage)

Adrien Bosc (trans. Frank Wynne), Outrageous Horizon, Serpent’s Tail (March 1941. tells an evocative story of migration, cultural crisis and the intellectual cost of the rise of fascism)

Rhys Bowen, The Venice Sketchbook, Lake Union (love and secrets collide in Venice during WWII)

Graham Brack, The Vanishing Children, Sapere (Master Mercurius, book 5 set in 1680 Leiden)

Will Brandon, The Wolf Hunt: A Tale of the Texas Badlands, Five Star (reimagines Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s thrilling tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles, with a Texas twist)

Gerald Brennan, Infinite Blues, Tortoise Books (imagines a militarized Space Race in a Cold War that never was, with America trying to find its way back to normalcy after the MacArthur presidency, and watching as Beria’s Soviet Union builds ballistic missiles)

Kayt Burgess, Connection at Newcombe, Latitude 46 (a campaign against time and government to guarantee the survival of a small community in post-WWI Northern Ontario)

Laura Carlin, Requiem for a Knave, Hodder (a saga of passion, romance and secrets set in 14th-c rural Derbyshire)

Michaela Carter, Leonora in the Morning Light, Avid Reader Press/S&S (a story of love, art, and destiny that restores a twentieth-century heroine to her rightful place in our collective imagination)

Mary Casanova, Waterfall, Univ. of Minnesota Press (inspired by the burgeoning growth of women’s rights in early 20th-c, a story of an inspired, ambitious, and soulful young woman’s fight to find her way)

Clare Chambers, Small Pleasures, W & N (period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion)

Elzbieta Cherezinska (trans. Maya Zakrzewska-Pim), The Widow Queen, Forge (story of a Polish queen whose life and name are all but forgotten)

Catherine Chidgey, Remote Sympathy, Europa (polyphonic novel of domestic drama and human connection set in and around a concentration camp in Germany during the second world war and its aftermath)

Alan Robert Clark, The Prince of Mirrors, Fairlight Books (a novel of the heir presumptive to the British throne – Prince Albert Victor)

Stuart Condie, The Uganda Sails Wednesday, RedDoor Press (a woman, pregnant with her lover’s child, makes a voyage to Kenya in hopes of convincing her tea plantation owner husband that he is the father)

Ellen Crosby, The French Paradox, Severn House (Lucie Montgomery’s discovery of her grandfather’s Parisian romance unlocks a series of shocking secrets)

Jasmin Darznik, The Bohemians, Ballantine (tells of one of America’s most celebrated photographers, Dorothea Lange, exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring)

Lindsey Davis, A Comedy of Terrors, Hodder & Stoughton (Flavia’s husband becomes a target of a bloody gang war in Rome 89AD)

Donna Douglas, A Sister’s Wish, Trapeze (family saga set in spring 1941)

Robert Fabbri, The Three Paradises, Corvus (as wars on land and sea are lost and won, long-buried secrets come to light in the quest for the true circumstances surrounding Alexander’s death)

Jim Fergus, Strongheart, SMG (the One Thousand White Women trilogy, mixes the struggle of women and Native Americans in the face of oppression, from the end of the 19th century ‘til today)

Patry Francis, All the Children Are Home, Harper Perennial (saga set in late 1950s to 1960s following a foster family through almost a decade of triumph and heartbreak)

Mariah Fredericks, Death of a Showman, Minotaur (fourth in series set in Gilded Age New York- lady’s maid Jane Prescott is thrust into the world of show business, where a killer is stalking Broadway)

Craig Gallant, Rise of the Alchemist, Zmok Books (steampunk alternative history set in the US, 100 years after the failed revolution)

Charles E. Gannon, Robert Waters, 1636: Calabar’s War, Baen (Ring of Fire alternative history series)

Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt, Flatiron / Picador (debut about a daughter’s fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born)

Alex Gerlis, End of Spies, Canelo (last in Richard Price thriller series)

Nikki Gemmell, The Ripping Tree, 4th Estate AU (examines the darkness at the heart of early colonisation)

Lynne Golding, The Mending, Blue Moon (3rd in series – set between 1918 and 1931, Jessie comes of age on the heels of the Spanish flu epidemic, in a time where skirt hems rose and marriageable men were in short supply)

Genevieve Graham, Letters Across the Sea, S&S (inspired by a little-known chapter of World War II history, a young Protestant girl and her Jewish neighbour are caught up in the terrible wave of hate sweeping the globe)

Molly Greeley, The Heiress, Hodder & Stoughton (combines the knowing eye of Jane Austen with Gothic intrigue to reimagine the life of the mysterious Anne de Bourgh)

Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie, Serpent’s Tail/HarperCollins (inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States, this new novel resonates in our times)

Michelle Grierson, Becoming Leidah, S&S (love story set in 19th-century Norway, about a woman rescued from the sea, the fisherman who marries her, and their tiny and unusually gifted daughter)

Charlie Douglas Gutsell, In a Valley of Kings, Vanguard Press (a young Egyptian fisherman is obsessed with avenging the deaths of his parents, both of whom were murdered in cold blood, for spreading Egypt’s traditional means of faith)

Carolyn Han, Girl Fighters, Cune Press (novel based on a true account of two girls who passed as men and fought in Yemen’s 1960’s civil war)

C. S. Harris, What the Devil Knows, Berkley (historical mystery series set in Regency England, featuring Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin)

Pamela Hart, The Charleston Scandal, Piatkus (story of a young Australian actress caught up in the excesses, royal intrigues and class divide of Jazz Age London)

David Hewson, The Garden of Angels, Severn House (at his beloved Nonno Paolo’s deathbed, fifteen-year-old Nico receives a gift that will change his life forever)

Scott Hibbard, Beyond the Rio Gila, Five Star (in 1846, the Mexican-American War casts together Latter-day Saints fleeing persecution and the U.S. Army on a desperate mission to capture California)

Anthony Hill, The Last Convict, Penguin Books Australia (recreation of the life and times of the last known convict to be sent to Australia; a study of old age and loneliness, as one social outcast finds meaning in his impoverished life)

Alan Hlad, Churchill’s Secret Messenger, John Scognamiglio (recruited from Churchill’s typing pool to become an undercover spy, a young woman bravely endures daring missions, and harrowing imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp)

Lucy Holland, Sistersong, PanMacmillan (535 AD. In the ancient kingdom of Dumnonia, King Cador’s children inherit a fragmented land abandoned by the Romans)

Karla F. C. Holloway, Gone Missing in Harlem, Triquarterly (mystery set in the Harlem Renaissance probes the precarious interactions between Harlem residents and Manhattan’s white families)

Christophe Huang, Cat’s Paw, Inkshares (when Sir Lawrence Linwood is murdered, his children find that his will contains a strange provision)

Anna Lee Huber, A Wicked Conceit, Berkley (a Lady Darby mystery, book 9)

Damion Hunter, The Border Wolves, Canelo (a novel of Ancient Rome)

Kristi Ann Hunter, Winning the Gentleman, Bethany House (a talented heroine and a guarded hero come together in the Regency horse-racing world)

Kathleen Marple Kalb, A Fatal First Night, Kensington (new historical mystery series starring opera singer Ella Shane, an Irish-Jewish orphan who finds fame and fortune singing male “trouser roles.”)

Ben Kane, Crusader, Orion (1189, Richard the Lionheart is crowned king and heads to the Holy Land to confront Salah al-Din, the Saracen leader responsible for the loss of Jerusalem)

Georgia Kaufman, The Dressmaker of Paris, Quercus (WWII saga)

Rowena Kinread, The Missionary, Vanguard Press (a young man of Britannia is taken from his home and family when Gaelic pirates attack his village & sold as a slave in Ireland to the cruel underking of the Dalriada tribe)

Carolyn Kirby, When We Fall, No Exit Press (based on the WWII war atrocity that became known as the Katyn Massacre)

Natalie Kleinman, The Reluctant Bride, Sapere (Regency romance)

Viliam Klimácek (trans. Peter Petro), The Hot Summer of 1968, Mandel Vilar Press (a hymn to tolerance, acceptance of others, and the need to support and help the weakest or poorest)

Michael Kurland, Whatever the Cost, Severn House (counter-intelligence agent Jacob Welker is on a special mission to find a group of scientists who could change the course of World War II)

Gregory J. Lalire, Man from Montana, Five Star (in 1913 Woodrow Russell Hart relates how at age fifteen in 1863 he came with older brother Rufus from Washington, D.C., to the violent goldfields of what would become Montana Territory)

Eimear Lawlor, Dublin’s Girl, Aria (1917; a farm girl from Cavan finds her loyalties severely tested)

Caroline Lea, The Metal Heart, Michael Joseph (Second World War love story about courage, brutality, freedom and beauty and the essence of what makes us human during the darkest of times)

Elizabeth Lee, Cunning Women, Windmill Books (a tale of young love and a story of the intolerance that reigned during the long shadow of the Pendle Witch Trials)

Gilles Legardinier, The Paris Labyrinth, Flammarion (ingenious illusionist Vincent embarks on an adventure in early 20th– century France to unlock the mysteries of the past in a quest for lost treasure)

Siegfried Lenz (trans. Ernst Kaiser, Eithne Wilkins), The German Lesson, New Directions (novel about the rise of fascism)

Deborah Lincoln, An Irish Wife, Blank Slate Press (1880s Pennsylvania – Harry Robinson, the hope of his family for the next generation, falls in love with an Irish immigrant woman who is married to a coal miner)

Posy Lovell, The Kew Gardens Girls, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (inspired by real life events, about the brave women during WWI who worked in the historic grounds of London’s Kew Gardens)

K. J. Maitland, The Drowned City, Headline Review (a year to the day that men were executed for conspiring to blow up Parliament, a towering wave devastates the Bristol Channel)

C. D. Major, The Thin Place, AmazonUK (when journalist Ava Brent decides to investigate the dark mystery of Overtoun Estate she has no idea how dangerous the story will be for her)

Edward Marston, Tragedy on the Branch Line, Allison & Busby (a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College is killed on the railway)

Madeline Martin, The Last Bookshop in London, Hanover Square (inspired by the true World War II history of the only bookshop to survive the Blitz)

Maggie Mason, The Halfpenny Girls, Sphere (family saga about overcoming hardship and the value of friendship – set in 1937)

Carol McGrath, The Damask Rose, Headline Accent (story of Eleanor of Castile, the love of Edward I’s life)

Clara McKenna, Murder at Blackwater Bend, Kensington (a wild-hearted Kentuckian “Dollar Princess” is shipped off to England for an aristocratic marriage)

Rachel McMillan, The Mozart Code, Thomas Nelson (romance taking place in post-World War II Europe)

Eva Meijer (trans. Antoinette Fawcett), Bird Cottage, Pushkin Press (based on the true story of a remarkable woman, her lifelong relationship with birds and the joy she drew from it)

Carolyn Miller, Dusk’s Darkest Shores, Kregel (inspirational Regency romance)

Kelly Mustian, The Girls in the Stilt House, Sourcebooks Landmark (set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves the story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership)

Danial Neil, Dominion of Mercy, NeWest Press (Edinburgh, 1917: headstrong Highland lass Mary Stewart is a vibrant woman forced into the world’s oldest profession in order to provide for her ailing father and younger sister)

Wayne Ng, Letters from Johnny, Guernica Editions (set in Toronto 1970, just as the FLQ crisis emerges, 11-yr-old Johnny Wong uncovers an underbelly to his tight, downtown neighbourhood)

Amélie Nothom (trans. Alison Anderson), Thirst, Europa (narrates Jesus’s final days, from his trial to his crucifixion to the resurrection)

Leonardo Padura (trans. Anna Kushner), The Transparency of Time, FSG (Detective Conde is engaged to track down a stolen statue, which sets him on a quest that spans 21st-century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades)

Alan Parks, Bobby March Will Live Forever, World Noir (third Harry McCoy thriller set in Glasgow, 1973)

Anne Perry, A Darker Reality, Headline (Elena Standish spy thriller series set in 1930s, book 3)

Sylvia Petter, All the Beautiful Liars, Lightning Books (set between the new world and the old, novel is a tale about making peace with the past and finding closure for the future)

Oliver Pötzsch (trans. Lisa Reinhardt), The Devil’s Pawn, Amazon Crossing (a showman’s fate is in the hands of the devil in this novel inspired by the Faust legend)

Kelly Rimmer, The Warsaw Orphan, Hachette AU (WWII saga and love story, based on the real-life efforts of two young people taking extraordinary risks to save their countrymen)

Sharon Robart-Johnson, Jude and Diana, Fernwood Publishing (story of two black sisters taken in by a slave-owning family who were then accused of Jude’s murder in Nova Scotia 1801 and acquitted)

Margaret Rodenberg, Finding Napoleon, She Writes (the defeated emperor and his little-known last love—Albine de Montholon—plot to escape exile and free his young son)

Renée Rosen, The Social Graces, Berkley (one of the most remarkable feuds in history: Alva Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor’s notorious battle for control of New York society during the Gilded Age)

Rena Rossner, The Light of the Midnight Stars, Redhook (combination of fantasy, history, and Jewish folklore in a fairytale-inspired novel)

Dianna Rostad, You Belong Here Now, Wm Morrow (1925 – three orphans journey westward from New York City to the Big Sky Country of Montana, hoping for a better life)

Craig Russell, Hyde, Constable (reimagining of the Jekyll and Hyde story introducing Captain Edward Hyde, chief detective of Victorian Edinburgh)

Randi Samuelson-Brown, Market Street Madam, TwoDot (story of Annie Ryan, a woman who is running a second-rate brothel in 1890s Denver)

Helen Scarlett, The Deception of Harriet Fleet, Quercus (dark, atmospheric Victorian chiller set in brooding County Durham in 1871)

Sofía Segovia (trans. Simon Bruni), Tears of Amber, Amazon Crossing (two families uprooted by war and united by the bonds of love and courage)

Mary Sharratt, Revelations, HMH (illuminates the intersecting lives of two 15th-c female mystics who changed history—Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich)

Wilbur Smith, Legacy of War, Zaffre (the sequel to Courtney’s War)

David Stafford, Skelton’s Guide to Domestic Poisons, Allison & Busby (Arthur Skelton, a celebrated barrister, agrees to defend Mary Dutton, dubbed ‘The Collingford Poisoner’ by the press)

John Spurling, A Mirror for Monkeys, Duckworth (beneath the floorboards of a ruined house, an 18th-century memoir is discovered revealing the life story of William Congreve, the acclaimed English playwright)

David Stafford, Skelton’s Guide to Suitcase Murders, Allison & Busby (Skelton finds himself embroiled in an investigation not only concerning this world but the one beyond)

Camilla Sten (trans. Alexandra Fleming), The Lost Village, Minotaur (story of the vanishing residents of an old mining town in 1959)

Andrew Taylor, The Royal Secret, HarperCollins (next installment of the James Marwood series set during the reign of King Charles II)

Will Thomas, Dance With Death, Minotaur (Tsar Nicholas is in England for a royal wedding and is the target of conspiracies and an assassin)

E. S. Thompson, Nightshade, Constable (murder mystery set in London 1851)

Victoria Thompson, Murder on Wall Street, Berkley (in Victorian-era New York, the Malloys may be new to high society life, but they’re no strangers to solving mysteries)

Liz Trenow, The Secrets of the Lake, Pan (a post-war dual timeline mystery set in a small English village where gossip and secrets abound)

Curtis Urness, Stars and Crosses, Kasva Press (Chic Lucas—born Czesław Łukaszczyk—journeys to Poland, where his grandfather died in Auschwitz and his father came out scarred for life)

V. L. Valentine, The Plague Letters, Viper (a serial killer stalks London during the Great Plague of 1665)

Betty Walker, Wartime with the Cornish Girls, Avon UK (saga set in Cornwall during the 1941 Blitz)

Aimee Wall, We, Jane, Book*hug Press (debut about intergenerational female relationships and explores the precarity of rural existence and the essential nature of abortion)

S. Kirk Walsh, The Elephant of Belfast (US) / The Zookeeper of Belfast (UK), Counterpoint (story of a young woman zookeeper and the elephant she’s compelled to protect through the German blitz of Belfast during WWll)

Eva Weaver, The Puppet Boy of Warsaw, W & N (story of a Jewish boy who finds a way to survive in the Warsaw ghetto)

Karen White, The Last Night in London, Berkley (story moves between war-torn London during the Blitz and the present day)

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words, Ballantine (as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the “objectionable” words they omit)

Iona Wishaw, A Lethal Lesson, Touchwood Editions (a Lane Winslow mystery)

Camron Wright, In Times of Rain and War, Shadow Mountain (during World War II, an American soldier encounters a German woman living a secret life in bomb-blighted London)

Jin Yong (trans. Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant), A Heart Divided, St. Martin’s Griffin (fourth in Legends of the Condor Heroes series)

May 2021

Kaouther Adimi (trans. Chris Andrews), A Bookshop in Algiers, Serpent’s Tail (charts the changing fortunes of Charlot’s bookshop through the political drama of Algeria’s turbulent 20th century of war, revolution and independence)

Rebecca Anderson, Isabelle and Alexander, Shadow Mountain (though arranged marriages have fallen out of fashion, Isabelle’s has been settled for some time to combine upper-middle-class wealth)

K. M. Ashman, Sword of Liberty, Canelo Adventure (Welsh historical adventure set in 1294 AD)

Also: Ring of Steel

Martine Bailey, The Prophet, Severn House (destiny, prophecy and murder weave an intricate web in this historical mystery set in 1753)

Gail Benick, Memory’s Shadow, Inanna Fiction (story of a family that survived the Holocaust and their ongoing engagement with that legacy long after World War II has ended)

Audrey Blake, The Girl in his Shadow, Sourcebooks Landmark (at a time when women are expected to live in the shadows of great men, one woman chooses to step into the light)

Robin Blake, Secret Mischief, Canongate (discovery of a body in a pigsty leads Coroner Titus Cragg and Dr. Luke Fidelis into a complex and baffling murder investigation)

Bill Brooks, The Pistoleros, Five Star (three stories of different men, all pistoleros who live by the gun)

Paul Bryers, Sea of Silence, Mcbooks (Nathan Peake series of nautical historical fiction set during the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France)

Ashley Clark, Paint & Nectar, Bethany House (dual-narrative set in 1929 and present day. Christian romance)

P. Djèlí Clark, A Master of Djinn, Tordotcom (in 1912 Cairo, humans brush elbows with djinn in crowded tramcars and airships sail the skies – historical fantasy)

Chanel Cleeton, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, Berkley (at the end of the nineteenth century, three revolutionary women fight for freedom. Novel inspired by true events)

Ajay Close, What We Did in the Dark, Sandstone Press (inspired by the 20th century Scottish writer Catherine Carswell and her disastrous first marriage to a man who tried to strangle her)

Bridget Collins, The Betrayals, Wm Morrow (as an elite Academy ‘Midsummer Game’ approaches, long -buried secrets rise to the surface and centuries-old traditions are overturned)

Lorna Cook, The Girl from the Island, Avon (dual-narrative set on Guernsey in 1940 and 2016)

Poppy Cooper, The Post Office Girls, Hodder (1915. Beth and her new friends Nora and Milly have joined the post office to do their bit for Britain’s war effort)

Connilyn Cossette, Between the Wild Branches, Bethany House (explores complex Biblical questions and provides fresh perspective on the Old Testament)

Dilly Court, The Reluctant Heiress, HarperCollins (saga set in East-End London, 1858)

Paul Cox, Black Sun, Five Star (Monte Segundo helps a fugitive, who is being pursued by Mexican rurales, to flee to a Yaqui village near Tucson)

Kjell Ola Dahl (trans. Don Bartlett), The Assistant, Orenda Books (Oslo, 1938 – an investigation into marital infidelity leads a PI and his ex-con assistant on a murderous trail)

Celeste De Blasis, America’s Wife, Bookouture (second part of the trilogy about enduring love and heartbreaking secrets amidst the birth of America)

Victor del Árbol (trans. Lisa Dillman), Above the Rain, Other Press (past, present, and future intertwine on a journey from Tangier in 1955 to Malmö in 2014)

Marjorie DeLuca, The Savage Instinct, Inkshares (chilling story of one woman’s struggle for her sanity, set against the backdrop of the arrest and trial of Mary Ann Cotton, England’s first female serial killer)

Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney, Masters of Rome, Head of Zeus (second instalment of the Rise of Emperors trilogy, set in the 3rd century AD)

Carol Drinkwater, An Act of Love, Penguin UK (France, 1943; Forced to flee war ravaged Poland, Sara and her parents are offered refuge in a dilapidated house in the French alps)

Ashraf El-Ashmawi (trans. Peter Daniel), The Lady of Zamalek, Hoopoe (rags-to-riches tale that spans twentieth-century Egyptian history)

Anjali Enjeti, The Parted Earth, Hub City Press (portrait of the long shadow the Partition of India played on the lives of three generations of women)

Lissa Evans, V For Victory, Harper (the life of lies a small time scammer and her adopted son have constructed in London becomes endangered during the tumultuous final months of World War II)

Richard Falkirk, The Chill Factor, Collins Crime Club (thriller set in Iceland in 1971 at the height of the Cold War)

David Field, A Far Distant Land, Sapere (first in The Australian Saga Series: a set of books chronicling the early years of British settlement in the 18th and 19th centuries)

Linda Finlay, The Girl with the Silver Bangle, HQ (turn-of-the-century saga set in Devon)

Mark Frutkin, The Artist and the Assassin, Porcupine’s Quill (narrative based on the life of the seventeenth-century painter known as Caravaggio)

Jean Fullerton, A Ration Book Daughter, Corvus (family saga set in London during the Blitz)

J. H. Gelernter, Hold Fast, W. W. Norton (1803, and the British Secret Service is contending with a belligerent France under Napoleon)

Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things, Sandstone Press (1920: Clementine, who nursed at the front meets Vincent, an opportunistic veteran and together they enter a deadly relationship that careers towards a dark and haunting resolution)

Philip Gray, Two Storm Wood, Harvill Secker (thriller set on the battlefields of the Somme after the end of World War I)

Molly Green, A Sister’s War, Avon (conclusion of the Victory Sisters saga)

Jack Grimwood, Island Reich, Michael Joseph (suspense, daring espionage and political intrigue, set in the depths of Britain’s Darkest Hour)

Flora Harding, Before the Crown, One More Chapter (Windsor Castle, 1943 — as war rages across the world, Princess Elizabeth comes face to face with the dashing naval officer she first met in London nine years before)

Elodie Harper, The Wolf Den, Head of Zeus (the streets of Pompeii have become Amara’s home. Day after day she walks them, looking for business to bring back to the Wolf Den, Pompeii’s infamous brothel)

J. J. A. Harwood, The Shadow in the Glass, HarperVoyager (gothic story of wishes and curses—a new dark fairy tale set against a Victorian backdrop full of lace and smoke)

Veronica Henry, Bacchanal, 47North (set in the Depression-era South, about a young woman who must learn to control her latent, Orisha-infused magical abilities in order to defeat an ancient evil)

Nydia Hetherington, A Girl Made of Air, Quercus (brings the circus to life with magical realism)

Sam Hill, The Jack of Justice, Five Star (a Wild West correspondent is sent to get the story of the killer known as the Jack of Justice, but the story he finds is not what he expected)

Suzanne Hillier, My Best Friend Was Angela Bennett, Inanna Fiction (two high school friends take very different paths during WWII)

David Hirshberg, Jacobo’s Rainbow, Fig Tree Books LLC (literary novel set primarily in the 1960s during the convulsive period of the student protest movements and the Vietnam War)

Catherine Hokin, The Secretary, Bookouture (novel about bravery, loss and redemption during the Second World War)

Kevin Holowack, Light on a Part of the Field, NeWest Press (set in B.C. and Alberta in the 1960s and 1970s – a novel of vignettes offering a refracted look at art and family in the Canadian West)

Angela Hunt, A Woman of Words, Bethany House (disciple Matthew, a former tax collector, is invited to work with Peter, James, and John in Jerusalem. Jerusalem Road series #3 of 4)

Seth Hunter, The Sea of Silence, McBooks (seventh novel in the Nathan Peake series of nautical historical fiction set during the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France)

Stephen Hunter, Basil’s War, Mysterious Press (a swashbuckling British agent goes behind enemy lines to search for a religious text that might hold the key to ending WWII)

Glen Huser, Burning the Night, NeWest Press (spans generations and distance, from Vancouver to Halifax, as it bears down on the history of Canadian painting and Curtis’s awakening as a gay man)

Conn Iggulden, Protector, Michael Joseph (second book in the Athenian series)

Anna Jacobs, A Valley Dream, Hodder & Stoughton (Book 1 in the new Backshaw Moss series)

Pam Jenoff, The Woman with the Blue Star, Park Row (a tale of unfathomable sacrifice and unlikely friendship during World War II)

Miljenko Jergovic (trans. Russell Scott Valentino), Kin, Archipelago (in a narrative which spans the entire 20th century, author peers into the dusty corners of his family’s past)

Mary Karras, The Making of Mrs Petrakis, Two Roads (against a backdrop of war and violence, Cyprus’ inhabitants make the best they can of their lives in the run up to the civil war of the 1970s)

Peter Keating, Belisarius: Military Master of the West, Vanguard Press (Constantinople, 533. Emperor Justinian charges General Belisarius with a mission, to bring Vandal held North Africa back into the imperial fold)

Mick Kitson, Featherweight, Canongate (story of overcoming all the odds, and a woman centuries ahead of her time: set on the canals of 19th-century England)

Alanna Knight, Murder at the World’s Edge, Allison & Busby (1587- when Tam Eildor arrives on a Scottish island after his time machine develops a fault, he finds himself embroiled in the lives of locals who are trying to escape the tyranny of Earl Robert Stewart)

Jeri Laber, The Russian Key, Arcade (spy novel written in the form of a memoir, set at the height of the Cold War in 1964)

Soraya M. Lane, The Secrets We Left Behind, Amazon UK (France, 1940 – Nurse Cate is left behind at a field hospital in Dunkirk, but when the Nazis arrive, she flees, taking one patient with her to a safe house run by two sisters risking their lives for others)

Joy Lanzendorfer, Right Back Where We Started From, Blackstone (multigenerational novel that explores the lust for ambition that entered the American consciousness during the Gold Rush and how it affected our nation’s ideas of success, failure, and the pursuit of happiness)

Ulla Lenze (trans. Marshall Yarbrough), The Radio Operator, HarperVia (based on a true story, a novel about a German immigrant who becomes embroiled in a Nazi spy ring operating in NYC in the early days of WWII)

Posy Lovell, The Kew Gardens Girls at War, Trapeze (wartime saga that highlights the role of women at Kew Gardens)

Elizabeth Macneal, Circus of Wonders, Picador (a novel with a vivid cast of characters and the Victorian obsession with spectacle)

Beryl Matthews, Together Under the Stars, Allison & Busby (October 1843 – WWII historical romance)

Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square, Hutchinson (a veteran of the Spanish Civil War is tormented by guilt about a brief, terrible act of betrayal from that time and he’s started seeing his old nemesis in his bedroom)

Kathleen McGurl, The Secret of the Chateau, HQ Digital (dual-narrative set during the French Revolution in 1789 and the present day)

Michelle McLean, Hitched to the Gunslinger, Amara (new humorous western romance series)

Louise Michalos, Marilla Before Anne, Vagrant Press (takes readers back to Green Gables where Marilla Cuthbert lived, loved, and learned, long before Anne)

Nadifa Mohamed, The Fortune Men, Viking (1952, Cardiff – Mahmood Mattan finds himself on trial for his life and facing conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state)

Caroline Montague, Shadows Over the Spanish Sun, Orion (novel of love, betrayal and redemption, set against the turmoil and tragedy of the Spanish Civil War)

Elizabeth Morton, Angel of Liverpool, Macmillan (historical saga set in the aftermath of WWII)

Matt Nable, Still, Hachette AU (thriller set in Darwin, Australia – summer 1963)

Sheila Newberry, The Canal Boat Girl, Zaffre (family saga set in Wales, 1883)

Stephen O’Rourke, The Crown Agent, Sandstone Press (murder mystery thriller set in late 1800s)

Glynis Peters, The Forgotten Orphan, One More Chapter (a World War II story of love and fate)

Rafe Posey, The Stars We Share, Pamela Dorman Books (WWII novel about the secrets we keep from the ones we love, and a couple tested again and again by distance)

Amanda Quick, The Lady Has a Past, Berkley (an investigative apprentice and a mild-mannered antiquarian book dealer team up to find a missing socialite. 1930s California)

Paul W. Richardson, Jack Swan, Vanguard Press (transported for a crime he did not commit, Jack Swan finds himself beaten, tormented and hunted until news of his mother’s imminent death spurs him into action)

Vanessa Riley, The Earl, a Girl, and a Toddler, Zebra (a shipwrecked woman searches for her memories after being imprisoned in Bedlam)

Edward Rutherfurd, China, Hodder & Stoughton / Doubleday (a tale of 19th-century China)

Sunjeev Sahota, China Room, Harvill Secker (1929 & 1999; novel about two people seeking to free themselves—one from the expectations placed on women in early 20th-c Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora)

Jennifer Saint, Ariadne, Flatiron/Wildfire (feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur)

Polly Samson, A Theater for Dreamers, Algonquin (novel about the beauty between naïveté and cruelty, chaos and utopia, artist and muse – set in 1960 on the Greek island of Hydra)

Goliarda Sapienza (trans. Brian Robert Moore), Meeting in Positano, Other Press (novel set against the Amalfi Coast of the 1950s ― two women form an intense and lasting friendship embodying the paradoxes of Italian society)

Sergio Schmucler (trans. Jessica Mendez Sayer), The Guardian of Amsterdam Street, Anansi International (portrait of the 20th century, witnessed by one boy from his self-imposed refuge in Mexico City)

Seth, Clyde Fans, Drawn & Quarterly (peels back the optimism of mid-20th century capitalism, showing the rituals, hopes, and delusions of a vanished middleclass)

Liz MacRae Shaw, Had We Never Loved So Blindly, Top Hat Books (1937 – a chance meeting during a London air raid leads to a tentative romance, which becomes long distance when John joins the Navy and Felicity takes a job at Bletchley Park)

Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle, Knopf (the story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost)

Samantha Silva, Love and Fury, Flatiron (an ode to the dazzling life of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the world’s most influential thinkers)

Rebecca Smith, The Ash Museum, Legend Press (dual-narrative intergenerational story of loss, migration and the search for somewhere to feel at home)

Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual, Scribner (traces the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London)

Loren Stephens, All Sorrows Can Be Borne, Rare Bird (set in Hiroshima, Osaka, and the badlands of eastern Montana, 1939 to 1982 – told primarily in the voice of Noriko, a feisty aspiring actress who fails her audition to enter the Takarazuka Theater Academy)

Maggie Sullivan, The Postmistress, One More Chapter (new WWII saga series)

Mark Sullivan, The Last Green Valley, Lake Union (inspired by one family’s story of daring, survival, and triumph)

David Swinson, City on the Edge, Mulholland (follows a son’s journey to uncover his father’s secret past in the city of Beirut, in 1972)

John Talton, City of Dark Corners, PPP (Phoenix, AZ 1933: a private investigator looks into the death of a dismembered young woman)

Jake Tapper, The Devil May Dance, Little, Brown (husband-and-wife heroes of The Hellfire Club head to Hollywood to investigate Frank Sinatra — and become mired in a world of blackmail, the mob, and Hollywood scandal)

Penny Thorpe, The Mothers of Quality Street, HarperCollins (the chocolate factory is anticipating a visit from King and Queen and two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret)

Liz Tolsma, The Silver Shadow, Barbour (fiction based on strange but true history. Set in Denver, 1900)

Liz Trenow, The Secret of the Lake, Pan (dual narrative set just after WWII and present day)

Ashley Weaver, A Peculiar Combination, Minotaur (new Electra McDonnell series set in England during WW II ― a mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and wit)

Amanda Weinberg, The Tears of Monterini, RedDoor Press (inspired by true events, debut will appeal to readers interested in Italy, romance, family dynamics, and conflict)

Roseanna M. White, The Nature of a Lady, Bethany House (1906, Lady Elizabeth “Libby” Sinclair flees to the Isles of Scilly where she stumbles into dangerous secrets. Inspirational fiction)

Clare Whitfield, People of Abandoned Character, Head of Zeus (London 1888―dark historical crime novel with a hook: what would you do if you thought your husband was Jack the Ripper?)

K.R. Wilson, Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Milennia, Guernica Editions (an exploration of what it is to outlive everyone you love)

Jeroen Windmeijer, The Pilgrim Conspiracy, One More Chapter (an old manuscript is discovered in which an anonymous author tells the hidden history of the Pilgrims – the Founding Fathers of the United States)

Mary Wood, Secrets of the Jam Factory Girls, Pan (2nd installment)

James C. Work, Ranger McIntyre: The Stones of Peril, Five Star (1920s – in the new Rocky Mountain National Park, two cloaked figures have been adding white rocks to Flattop Mountain’s ancient stone medicine circle)

June 2021

Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls, Berkley (new historical mystery series set in 1920s Harlem featuring Louise Lloyd, a young black woman caught up in a series of murders way too close to home)

Rose Alexander, Out of the Mountain’s Shadow, Canelo (a secret from the past has the power to change one woman’s future in this dual time-line novel set in 1939 & present)

Tessa Arlen, In Royal Service to the Queen, Berkley (story of Queen Elizabeth II’s governess, who spent sixteen years in loyal service to the royal family and was later shunned by those she has loved and served)

Jenny Ashcroft, Under the Golden Sun, Sphere (Rose Hamilton escorts a young orphaned child to a new home in Australia. Historical romance)

Camille Aubray, The Godmothers, Wm Morrow (suspenseful novel about four women in a prosperous Italian family who must take charge of the family’s business when their husbands are forced to leave them to go to war)

Elizabeth Bailey, His Auction Prize, Sapere (romantic adventure set in Regency England)

Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island, Myriad Editions (coming-of-age debut about a young Jamaican girl faced with the trauma of immigration, estrangement from her family, and the emotional upheaval of moving to London in the 1960s)

Mary Balogh, Someone to Cherish, Berkley/Piatkus (Book 8 in Westcott series)

Russell Banks, Forgone, Oldcastle (fictionalised story of an American leftist documentary filmmaker, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam)

Julie Bates, Cry of the Innocent, Historia (murder mystery set in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1774)

Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian, Berkley (little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept)

Cecily Blench, The Long Journey Home, Zaffre (Burma, 1941 – novel of love, secrets and redemption in a country torn apart by war)

Justine Bothwick, In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced, Agora (dual timeline set in Agra, 1938 and Portsmouth, 1953 – a story of a woman’s journey back to herself)

Verity Bright, Murder at the Fair, Bookouture (Lady Eleanor Swift mystery set in summer of 1921)

Emma Brodie, Songs in Ursa Major, Knopf/HarperCollins UK (a love story set in 1969, alive with music, sex, and the trappings of fame)

Alex Brown, A Postcard From Paris, HarperCollins (dual-narrative involving a set of diaries from 1916 France)

Elizabeth Buchan, Two Women in Rome, Corvus (in exploring a woman’s past, archivist Hettie unravels a tragic love story beset by the political turmoil of post-war Italy)

C. J. Carey, Widowland, Quercus (alternative history with a strong feminist twist set in 1953)

Christy Cooper-Burnett, Finding Home, Black Rose (Malcolm Aldred is starting over in 1868, Oklahoma. There’s just one problem—he’s an exiled prisoner from 2070. Historical romance sci-fi fantasy)

Christina Courtenay, Whispers of the Runes, Headline (jewellery designer Sara Mattsson is propelled back to the 9th century, after cutting herself on a Viking knife she uncovers at an archaeological dig)

Beth Cowan-Erskine, Loch Down Abbey, Hodder (an upstairs downstairs humorous mystery set in 1930s)

Lisa Deangelis, Angels Unaware, Regal House (family story set in a 1930s coal mining town in Pennsylvania)

Jim Eldridge, Murder at Madame Tussaud’s, Allison & Busby (London, 1896. Madame Tussauds opens to find one of its nightwatchmen decapitated and his colleague nowhere to be found)

Mario Escobar, The Librarian of Saint-Malo, Thomas Nelson (through letters with a famous author, one French librarian tells her love story and describes the brutal Nazi occupation of her small coastal village)

Nigel Farndale, The Dictator’s Muse, Doubleday (Leni Riefenstahl is the pioneering film-maker of the Third Reich, chosen by Hitler to capture the Olympics on celluloid)

Suzanne Feldman, The Sisters’ War, Mira (in 1914, two American sisters travel to Europe to volunteer as a nurse and an ambulance driver during WWI)

Nick Fonda, Murder on the Orford Mountain Railway, Baraka Books (on an August evening in 1905, a 12-year-old boy is shot and killed near the Orford Mountain Railway construction site in rural Quebec)

Rachel Fordham, A Lady in Attendance, Revell (tale of a soft-spoken man, a hardened woman, and the friends that stand by them as they work toward a common purpose. Inspirational romance)

Suzanne Fortin, The Forgotten Life of Arthur Pettinger, Aria (a family history is uncovered dating back to WWII and a mysterious woman named Maryse)

William Francis, The Wyvern Ring, Vanguard (thriller set 1360 in a lawless England, rife with paganism and ritual murder)

Ann H. Gabhart, Along a Storied Trail, Revell (novel about a Kentucky pack-horse librarian during the Great Depression. Inspirational romance)

Marius Gabriel, The Girls in the Attic, Amazon UK (a committed soldier of the Reich returns home wounded, only to discover that his mother is sheltering two young Jewish women in their home)

Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, FSG (1618. Plague is spreading, the Thirty Years’ War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air when Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch)

Craig Gallant, Jamaica, Zmok Books (first in a new series of historical fiction)

Galia Gichon, The Accidental Suffragist, Wyatt-MacKenzie (a New York factory worker in 1912 is thrown into the women’s rights movement)

Leonard Goldberg, The Abduction of Pretty Penny, Minotaur (a Daughter of Sherlock Holmes mystery)

Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fort, Head of Zeus (adventure set on Rome’s Danubian frontier. AD 105)

Philip Gray, Two Storm Wood, W. W. Norton (thriller set on the battlefields of the Somme after the end of World War I, where a woman investigates the disappearance of her fiancé)

Kerry Greenwood, Death in Daylesford, PPP (new Phryne Fisher mystery, post WWI)

Kate Grenville, A Room Made of Leaves, Text Publishing (alternative history imagining that Elizabeth, wife to John Macarthur, wool baron, has written a candid secret memoir)

Sally Cabot Gunning, Painting the Light, Wm Morrow (novel of love, loss, and reinvention, set on Martha’s Vineyard at the turn of the nineteenth century)

Stacey Halls, Mrs England, Bonnier Zaffre (a young governess must navigate the challenging dynamics of family life underneath the polished surface in this powerful examination of an Edwardian marriage, truth and deception)

Barbara Hambly, Scandal in Babylon, Severn House (first in a new series of female-fronted historical mysteries set in the roaring twenties)

Cora Harrison, Murder in an Orchard Cemetery, Severn House UK (1920s Cork – the peaceful atmosphere of the Reverend Mother’s annual retreat is shattered by sudden, violent death)

Jody Hedlund, Come Back to Me, Revell (novel set in 1300s Canterbury, a volatile era of superstition, peasant revolts, and chivalry. Inspirational fiction)

Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace, Riverhead (set against the beaches of Cape Cod, story unfolds over twenty-four hours and across fifty years, with decades of family legacy, love, lies, & secrets)

M. J. Hollows, The German Nurse, HQ Digital (WWII historical set on Guernsey 1940)

India Holton, The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels, Berkley (romance debut about a proper young Victorian lady’s quest to save her kidnapped aunt while navigating magical hijinks)

Paul Howarth, Dust off the Bones, Harper (raises timeless issues of injustice, honor, morality, endemic racism, and violence. Sequel to Only Killers and Thieves)

Virginia Hume, Haven Point, SMP (multi-timeline set in Maine, 1944, 1970 and present day)

Marion Husband, Shadows of the Evening, Accent (new addition to The Boy I love series)

Katie Hutton, The Gypsy’s Daughter, Zaffre (saga set in post-war Kent, England)

Nick Jones, The Shadows of London, Blackstone (Joseph Bridgeman book 2 – time-travel mystery taking place in 1960s London)

Alka Joshi, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, Mira (sequel to The Henna Artist)

Beth Kanell, This Ardent Flame, Five Star (1852, Vermont – three young women race into a righteous battle; assist neighbors at risk? Rescue a horse? Capture an arsonist? They’re on it!)

Laurie R. King, Castle Shade, Bantam/Allison & Busby (mystery suspense novel with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes)

Mick Kitson, Featherweight, Canongate (story of overcoming all the odds, and a woman centuries ahead of her time, set on the canals of nineteenth-century England)

Natalie Kleinman, The Girl with Flaming Hair, Sapere (Regency romance adventure)

Caroline Lea, The Metal Heart, Harper Perennial (in the dark days of World War II, an unlike