New Books in Historical Fiction

In the Shadow of Dora: A Novel of the Holocaust and the Apollo Program (Stephen F. Austin UP, 2020) spans two very different decades from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida in the late 1960s; the book tells the story of the real life intersections between the horror of the Third Reich's V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of the Apollo missions. Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets. When he is finally freed from this secret underground concentration camp, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by NASA to help build the largest rocket ever to rise above a launch pad: the Saturn V. To his shock, though, he will be under the command of former Nazi scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, both of who were at Dora. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with memories he thought were safely buried. This is a novel that asks questions about memory, morality, technology, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us?

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It takes a certain gall to update one of William Shakespeare’s most enduring and most beloved tragedies. Anyone who has survived an English literature class at a US high school or college knows that neither Romeo nor Juliet lives to old age; and those few who have not read the play, for pleasure or under duress, have probably seen one of the screen versions.

All the more kudos, then, to Christina Dodd for pulling off this updated and reimagined version of that classic play. This first book in a new series called Daughter of Montague features Rosaline, nicknamed Rosie—the eldest daughter of Verona’s most famous and still passionate couple. Rosie has at best a jaundiced eye toward love and marriage, having spent her entire life observing life on an emotional seesaw. Yet this is fifteenth-century Europe, and “wife” is the only acceptable destiny for a woman. When her famous parents finally make a match for her, Rosie’s fate seems to be sealed. Then things go wrong in ways even Rosie could not have anticipated.

The story is fun, the mystery satisfying, the author’s obvious delight in manipulating Shakespeare’s famous tale infectious, but what really grabs the reader is Rosie’s voice. At once irreverent and responsible, she sounds more like a modern teenager than anyone from the fifteenth century, but that’s exactly why she draws us into her world.

Christina Dodd has written more than sixty novels ranging from historical romance to contemporary suspense. A Daughter of Fair Verona (John Scognamiglio, 2024) is her most recent work.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Steadfast, is due in 2025.

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When evil stalks the land, who can you trust? Autumn 1314. In the aftermath of the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, the villagers of Warcop wait desperately for the return of loved ones. When brothers Wat and Rob Dickinson bring news of the death of their companion, Adam Fothergill, as they fled home, there is no one to mourn him. But when a monstrous figure is seen in the hills nearby, it seems Adam has returned from the dead to wreak revenge. But for what?

Three miles away, young Fran Hilton is mourning the death of his father and wrestling with the responsibilities of becoming lord of the manor. When he catches sight of the Revenant, he is terrified, but the mystery of Adam’s death fascinates him. With a motley band of Hilton’s young people, Fran sets out to confront Adam. As terror turns to murder, Fran realises the truth has been buried deep within a pack of lies – and he, too, harbours a secret of his own, the revelation of which could mean losing everything and everyone he loves most.

Lies of the Flesh (Polygon, 2024) by FJ Watson is a gripping exploration of what happens when identities – gender, social position or nationality – are challenged within the crucible of war.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June 1941, his wife and daughter left behind in China.

Seven months later, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Hong Kong, and made Reeves the last remaining British diplomat for hundreds of miles, responsible for refugees streaming in from China.

Peter Rose uses Reeves as a jumping off point for his newest work of historical fiction, The Good War of Consul Reeves (Blacksmith Books, 2024). Using Reeves’ own unpublished memoir and research in the national archives, Peter tells a tale of how Reeves—a largely unremarkable man—managed to hold things together in the Portuguese colony until Japan’s defeat in 1945.

Peter Rose is a graduate of the George Washington University and the Yale Law School. He first practiced law in Washington DC. It was during a posting in Hong Kong with Goldman Sachs as its Asian Head of Public Affairs that he started to visit Macau and became fascinated with the story of this incongruous piece of Portugal on the edge of China.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Good War of Consul Reeves. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

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The Booklover's Library (Hanover Square Press, 2024) has one of the most dramatic openings I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of novels. It’s 1931 in Nottingham, England, and seventeen-year-old Emma, ensconced in her father’s bookshop, is engrossed in her favorite novel, Jane Austen’s Emma, when she realizes the building around her has caught fire. With her father’s help, she stumbles into the street, only to watch him collapse and die as the bookstore implodes. In just a few pages, Emma has lost her sole family member, her home, and her source of income.

By the time we meet her again, eight years later, she has married, too young and unhappily, lost her husband to a car crash, and struggles to support herself and their seven-year-old daughter, Olivia, on her widow’s pension. In 1930s Britain, companies were legally barred from hiring married women or widows with children, so although Emma has barely passed twenty-five and would gladly work, she can’t apply for a job because of the marriage ban. But nor can she pay the rent, no matter how hard she squeezes every shilling. When a chance encounter leads to an opportunity for work at a lending library, Emma takes the plunge and identifies herself as Miss Taylor. Fortunately for her, the person hiring is also a woman, so even when the truth comes out during that first interview, the manager agrees to cover for her.

End of story, one might think, but readers who’ve done the math will already have realized that Emma’s problems have just begun. Three weeks after she starts her training, Hitler invades Poland, and Britain declares war. Nottingham, although not London, has enough factories to make it a likely target, and the city puts pressure on all parents to evacuate their children to the countryside. It’s Emma’s struggles to balance her own need to earn money to support her daughter while ensuring the survival of both her child and herself that make this novel memorable.

Madeline Martin is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance. The Booklover’s Library is her latest novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Steadfast, is due early in 2025.

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Jake Lamar's novel Viper's Dream (Crooked Lane Books, 2023) is a gritty, daring look at the vibrant jazz scene of mid-century Harlem, and one man’s dreams of making it big and finding love in a world that wants to keep him down.

Harlem, 1936. Clyde “The Viper” Morton boards a train from Alabama to Harlem to chase his dreams of being a jazz musician. When his talent fails him, he becomes caught up in the dangerous underbelly of Harlem’s drug trade. In this heartbreaking novel, one man must decide what he is willing to give up and what he wants to fight for.

Viper's Dream is a fast-paced story that is charged with suspense. A snappy, provocative voice and a stark look at Viper’s Black American experience weave with endless plot twists to offer readers a stunningly original, achingly beautiful read.

Jake Lamar was born in 1961 and grew up in the Bronx, New York. After graduating from Harvard University, he spent six years writing for Time magazine. He has lived in Paris since 1993 and teaches creative writing at one of France's top universities, Sciences Po.

Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

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Today I talked to Heather Redmond about her new novel Death and the Visitors (Kensington, 2024).

In this second Regency-era mystery featuring Mary Godwin Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, the sixteen-year-old heroine (still Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin at this point in her life) and her stepsister and close lifetime companion, Jane Clairmont, are facing even greater penury and discomfort than in the first book, Death and the Sisters (2023), as a result of their parents’ profligacy and the absence of Mary’s older half-sister, banished to Wales because of her excessive attachment to the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and thus unable to help Jane and Mary with their chores.

The girls live in a run-down house in a disreputable London neighborhood not far from Newgate Prison and the Smithfield meat market, where they spend their days watching their parents’ bookshop. Their father, an illustrious political thinker and writer, doesn’t earn enough to support five children and a wife. As a result, he has fallen into the grip of moneylenders, and creditors show up on his doorstep with some regularity, embarrassing him and his family.

When a group of rich Russians arrives, determined to meet the daughter of the renowned Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary’s father persuades one of them to support the Godwin publishing enterprise with a gift of diamonds. But the day after their scheduled meeting, a body identified as the Russian donor is pulled out of the Thames River. Mary sets out with her sister and Shelley to solve the mystery of the Russian’s murder, hoping to retrieve the diamonds and buy herself and her family some time.

This is the Regency as we have come to know it from the novels of C.S. Harris and Andrea Penrose, among others: opulent on the surface but full of grit and poverty behind the glittering façade. How closely Shelley, Jane, and Mary resemble their historical selves is uncertain, but it’s a rollicking good tale and deserves to be enjoyed on its own terms.

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In this episode of Radio ReOrient we return to the literary theme of this season, to explore the work of Laury Silvers. Laury is the author of many successful book series set in the past and present of the Islamicate, including her Sufi Mysteries Quartet set in 10th Century Baghdad. In this interview she tells Saeed Khan and Salman Sayyid about her work, about the way that orientalism structures so many representations of Muslims and Muslim societies, and about how important it is for Muslims to be empowered to imagine themselves on their own terms.

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Daughters of Shandong (Berkley Books, 2024), the author’s first and based on the life of her grandmother, follows the fortunes of a mother and three daughters abandoned by their wealthy family in soon-to-be Communist China. It is 1948, and Chairman Mao’s forces have moved into Shandong Province, driving the Nationalist Army into retreat. Although the town of Zhucheng is small and rural, the Ang family owns a palatial estate, built by generations of government officials and scholars.

Even before the war turns against them, the family has little use for its eldest daughter-in-law, Chiang-Yue, who has produced three daughters but no sons. The family lives by the ancient Chinese proverb “Value men and belittle women,” so even though its second son does have a male heir, that child’s existence cannot redeem Chiang-Yue in her in-laws’ eyes.

When the Communists approach, the other family members, including the girls’ father, flee. The narrator, Li-Hai, stays behind with her mother and sisters—ostensibly to keep either the People’s Army or impoverished local farmers from confiscating the Angs’ palatial home. Of course, this doesn’t work. Soldiers take over the estate the first day. They haul Li-Hai, only thirteen, before an impromptu tribunal as a stand-in for her missing male relatives. She barely escapes with her life. Only Chiang-Yue’s history of treating the villagers kindly saves her and her daughters—first from execution, then from starvation.

Despite the family’s cruel treatment, Chiang-Yue insists that duty requires her to rejoin her husband. Thus begins their trek across China, from Zhucheng to the local hub of Qingdao, then south to Guangzhou (Hong Kong), and eventually across the strait to Taiwan. Hiding in the bushes, scrounging homeless in the streets, surviving a refugee camp—the Ang women and girls are, in their own stubborn way, relentless. And I swear, you will root for them every step of the way.

Eve J. Chung is a Taiwanese American lawyer and women’s human rights specialist. She has worked on a range of issues, including torture, sexual violence, contemporary forms of slavery, and discriminatory legislation. Her writing is inspired by social justice movements and the continued struggle for equality and fundamental freedoms worldwide. She currently lives in New York with her husband, two children, and two dogs. Daughters of Shandong is her debut novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including The Merchant’s Tale, cowritten with P.K. Adams. Her next novel, Song of the Steadfast, is due early in 2025.

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1893. Henry Nettleblack has to act fast or she’ll be married off by her elder sister. But leaving the safety of her wealthy life isn’t as simple as she thought. Ambushed, robbed, and then saved by a mysterious organisation – part detective agency, part neighbourhood watch – a desperate Henry disguises herself and enlists. Sent out to investigate a string of crimes, she soon realises that she is living in a small rural town with surprisingly big problems.

When the net starts to close around Henry, and sinister forces threaten to expose her as the missing Nettleblack sister, the new people in her life seem to offer her a way out, and a way forward. Is the world she’s lost in also a place she can find herself?

Told through journal entries and letters, Nettleblack (Cipher Press, 2022) by Dr. Nat Reeve is a subversive and playful ride through the perils and joys of finding your place in the world, challenging myths about queerness – particularly transness – as a modern phenomenon, while exploring the practicalities of articulating queer perspectives when you’re struggling for words.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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