

Review of Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
ICYMI: Morton masterfully weaves together timelines, threads of family history, and long-held secrets now revealed, while her main...
Nov 1, 2023


Review of The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young
June struggles with the complicated implications of her family's curse of hallucinations and mental illness...until she realizes that the...
Oct 26, 2023


Review of October in the Earth by Olivia Hawker
Hawker's newest historical fiction gives a wonderfully evocative peek into a gritty period, as her main protagonist escapes a bad...
Oct 18, 2023


Review of The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton
ICYMI: Morton offers a strong historical fiction mystery, with assumed identities, dual timelines, twists and turns, and a richly wrought...
Oct 17, 2023


Review of Homecoming by Kate Morton
Morton's newest historical fiction involves two timelines, a decades-old tragedy, and a modern-day descendant's discovery of her family's...
Oct 5, 2023


Review of The Caretaker by Ron Rash
Ron Rash's newest Appalachian-set novel explores a small town shaken by upended expectations, the Korean War, and selfish rigidity that...
Oct 4, 2023


Review of A Murderous Relation (Veronica Speedwell #5) by Deanna Raybourn
The fifth book in the Veronica Speedwell series offers more of Raybourn's magic: witty dialogue, an unorthodox partnership,...
Sep 28, 2023


Review of Chenneville: A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance by Paulette Jiles
Jiles's newest stark, beautiful, heartbreaking historical fiction tracks former Union soldier John Chenneville as he travels the country...
Sep 21, 2023


Review of A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4) by Deanna Raybourn
In this installment of Veronica and Stoker's Victorian England mystery-solving, they enter a sinister, gothic scene--and despite spending...
Sep 19, 2023


Review of Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Donoghue's captivating historical fiction centers around two real-life young women in an early 1800s British boarding school who fall...
Sep 14, 2023


Review of Only Pretty Damned by Niall Howard
Niall Howard's debut is a noir story about the underbelly of life in a post-World-War-II circus, with a disgruntled clown, formerly a...
Sep 6, 2023


Review of The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman
I was taken with the first half of this book--a rural cult, a teen mother, a strong female protagonist in an impossible situation,...
Aug 30, 2023


Review of This House Is Not a Home by Katlia
Katlia's story is based on actual events, detailing the displacement of Indigenous people and the devastating consequences of greed, the...
Aug 24, 2023


Review of A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas
Book two of Thomas's Lady Sherlock series offers a robust dual mystery, clever female characters, priceless gems of insight from...
Aug 17, 2023


Review of A Treacherous Curse (Veronica Speedwell #3) by Deanna Raybourn
In the third book in the irresistible Veronica Speedwell series, we learn more about Stoker's past, secrets, heartbreak, and motivations;...
Aug 9, 2023


Review of A Perilous Undertaking by Deanna Raybourn
This second book in Raybourn's historical fiction mystery series, set in Victorian London, hooked me even more fully into Veronica and...
Aug 2, 2023


Review of Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine
Julia Fine's Maddalena and the Dark is a gothic story set in 1700s Venice in which two young women's lives and destinies become...
Jul 6, 2023


Review of Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens
Claudia Cravens's story of a young brothel worker in late nineteenth-century Dodge City, Kansas, offers up a tough young heroine who...
Jun 29, 2023


Review of Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash
Beyond That, the Sea is a lovely character-driven historical fiction story about complicated relationships, found family, growing up, and...
Jun 28, 2023


Review of The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry
The premise and setting of The Secret Book of Flora Lea are captivating. I was distracted by what felt like overly dramatic dialogue and...
May 9, 2023