This faerie-centric reimagining of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities offered a compelling story of redemption and self-sacrifice with a significant fantasy undercurrent that is key to the plot. I felt bogged down by the explanations of the workings of the faerie system, its punishments, and its policies. I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse. H. G. Parry's novel A Far Better Thing is a twist on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities , and Parr

Smith was inspired by the real-life Victorian England case of a cockney impostor attempting to wrest an inheritance from the nobility,...

The Briar Club employs nine points of view to tell the story of life in a female-only boarding house in 1950s, McCarthy-era Washington,...

Patrick Ryan's literary fiction traces decades of the messy, poignant lives of two families shaped by uncompromising societal...

Allision Epstein shapes Charles Dickens's greedy criminal mastermind Jacob Fagin into a character with a rich backstory, showing him to...

Just a Few of My Many Historical Fiction Favorites These were just a few of my favorite historical fiction reads during Bossy Bookworm's...

This story-within-a-story-within-a-story reveals a clever woman working within the 1920s confines of her sex to outsmart Wall Street...

I'm a huge Amy Bloom fan, and while I appreciated the strong main female character here and the World War II-era crises, for me, the...

This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and...

I love an astronaut story, and while Reid spent far more page time on relationships than on the astronaut or space aspects, there was...

While Veronica and Stoker stay close to home while entering into danger and solving the mysteries in book six of this series, Raybourn...

The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique...

Galland offers a detailed peek into the London of Shakespeare's company and the life of starring "boy player" Alexander Cooke, his best...

Davies's slim, luminous, heartbreaking novel sets a story of isolation and human connection against the brutal removal of impoverished...

Favorite Bossy Historical Fiction Reads of the Year I loved reading so many historical fiction books last year, this is my fourth list of...

All the Broken Places is a novel that is linked to Boyne's novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . The exploration of gray areas between...

Stephen Graham Jones offers an intriguing premise--an Indigenous man with supernatural abilities enacts brutal justice--but I found the...

The deep bond that builds between an injured Union soldier and the Virginia woman who secretly takes him in is touching and complicated,...

Six More Great Bossy Historical Fiction Reads I love to spend Fridays obsessing over my favorite reads, and I loved reading so many...

In Hall's Broken Country , characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively,...