New Books in Historical Fiction

Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown by Annie Dawid, (Inkspot Publishing 2023), opens long after 917 people died by drinking cyanide or by lethal injection on November 18, 1978. It’s 2008, and one of the survivors, who made it out earlier that day, is speaking to a reporter on the 30th anniversary of the “Jonestown Massacre.” When Jim Jones and his wife Marceline found Peoples Temple in the 1950s, they wanted to give hope to the poor and disenfranchised of all colors. They wanted to live honest lives earning their bread from the earth. They dreamt of their followers coming together as equals, loving each other as sisters and brothers, and building a commune in the British Guyana jungle. As the years passed, Jim Jones became more autocratic, he bedded his followers and sired children, and although Marceline hated what their marriage had become, she still loved him. Even unto death.

Annie Dawid writes and teaches online in very rural Colorado, where she also makes rugs and assemblages as well as plays tennis and Scrabble. For the last 7 years, she’s taught in the master’s creative writing program for University College, University of Denver. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Denver’s English Dept. in Creative Writing. For 15 years, she was professor of English and Creative Writing director at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Her last book, Put Off My Sackcloth: Essays, came out from The Humble Essayist Press in 2021. Her first book, York Ferry: A Novel, Cane Hill Press, 1993, second printing, was positively reviewed in The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times. It won the 2016 International Rubery Award in Fiction. Her second book was Lily in the Desert: Stories, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2001, followed by And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories of a Family, Litchfield Review Press, 2009, winner of their inaugural short story collection prize. In 2017, Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Anatomie of the World: Poems. Along the way, her 10-minute drama, Gun Play, won the New Rocky Mountain Voices Contest and was performed in Westcliffe, Colorado. But most of the last 19 years have been devoted to researching, writing, revising, and searching for a publisher for her Jonestown novel, rewarded, at last, by Inkspot Publishing of the UK and published on the 45th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre.

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Today I talked to Kim Taylor Blakemore about her new book The Good Time Girls Get Famous (Sycamore Creek Press, 2023).

Get ready for the latest rip-roaring "Good Time Girls" adventure with Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn, two accidental outlaws now on the run for too many crimes to count.

As the silent film industry booms and Westerns steal the spotlight, a movie producer sees potential gold in Ruby and Pip's outlaw story. With their misdeeds now legendary, the duo is offered a chance to play themselves on the big screen. It's an opportunity for fame, fortune, and a safe getaway to Mexico once the film wraps.

However, the world of filmmaking proves to be a turbulent ride, even for these seasoned outlaws. The law is hot on their heels, pursuing them from Kansas across the plains to the Rockies, determined to bring them to justice. The newspapers tell half-truths and tall tales of their exploits. To make matters worse, a feared foe from their past has resurfaced, putting the film troupe and Ruby's sister in grave danger.

Can the women outsmart the law, rescue Ruby's sister, and secure their freedom? With a little help from their friends, they just might pull it off. "The Good Time Girls Get Famous" is a heartwarming and uproarious novel that celebrates fierce female friendships and the audacious spirit of two unforgettable women in a world that's anything but ordinary.

Kim Taylor Blakemore is an author, developmental editor and founder of the Novelitics Writers Collective. She writes historical novels that feature fierce, audacious, and often dangerous women. She writes about the thieves and servants, murderesses and mediums, grifters and frauds - the women with darker stories, tangled lies and hidden motives.

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Robert Stillman, an eighteen-year-old Londoner, has few expectations when he travels to Nottingham to study with the Reverend George Langstaff. Life has not treated Robbie well recently: his mother’s death has left him in the custody of an uncle who has neither the patience to deal with nor the ability to appreciate a young man whose greatest pleasure in life is to draw.

The Reverend Langstaff, however, turns out to be exactly the kind of mentor Robbie needs: a wise and tolerant country parson on the brink of retirement, well able to foster his newest pupil’s strengths. When Robbie meets and falls madly in love with their neighbor, Anton Harrington, it would seem that his life is complete.

But this is Edwardian England, and men who love men live at risk of arrest and imprisonment under the harshest conditions. Anton, who is older by more than a decade, knows this all too well. Although he loves Robbie in return, Anton has spent years covering up both his dangerous romantic inclinations and his socialist political views. The emotional cost of concealing his self and his past inhibit Anton’s ability to sustain any intimate relationship.

Cowell explores the ways in which Robbie and Anton negotiate their way past these emotional and societal pitfalls with warmth, understanding, and respect. And although she surprises us with her conclusion, her ending feels exactly right.

Stephanie Cowell is the author of Marrying Mozart, Claude and Camille, and other works of historical fiction. The Boy in the Rain (Regal House Publishing, 2023) is her latest novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023.

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Today I talked to Sherif Meleka about his novel Suleiman’s Ring (Hoopoe, 2023)

An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political history

Can one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation.

Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Daoud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Daoud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Daoud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Daoud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When Hassanein is arrested, however, destiny draws Daoud into a complex web of sexual intrigue and betrayal that threatens to upend his already precarious existence.

Set against the backdrop of the simmering political tensions of mid-twentieth-century Egypt and the Arab–Israeli wars, Sherif Meleka’s story of fate and fortune transports us to another time and place while peeling back the curtain on events that still haunt the country to this day.

Sherif Meleka was born in 1958 into a Coptic Christian family in Alexandria, Egypt. A trained medical doctor, he emigrated to the United States in 1984. He is the author of numerous novels, poetry and short story collections in Arabic. Suleiman’s Ring is his English-language debut. He currently lives in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

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After a tumultuous journey across the Atlantic (detailed in last year’s Miss Aldridge Regrets), Lena Aldridge has reached New York City only to discover that the Broadway show that lured her away from London will not run. While waiting to board a ship home, she accepts an invitation to stay with the Linfields, longtime friends of Will Goodman, the musician Lena came to trust on the passage over. She hopes to learn more about Will and explore the possibilities of a warmer relationship—although his job on the Queen Mary means, Lena assumes, that they can never be together as a couple. She also seeks to find out more about her own father, who died less than a year before this novel opens in 1936 but originally hailed from New York—or so he told Lena.

As this main narrative unfolds, it is interspersed with two others. One involves a woman who falls from a third-story window in Harlem eight days after Lena’s arrival. The second, set in 1908–1909, gradually reveals the events that convinced Lena’s father, Alfred, to leave the United States without looking back.

The rapid shifts in time require a nimble reader, but each story is compelling in its own terms. And by the time we reach the end, all the loose threads have been tied up, and we eagerly wait to find out what will happen next.

Louise Hare, a London-based writer, is the author of This Lovely City, Miss Aldridge Regrets, and Harlem After Midnight (Berkley Books, 2023).

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023.

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Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities. 

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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The Murder of Andrew Johnson (Forge, 2023) is the third in Burt Solomon’s John Hay Mystery trilogy. Our conversation explores the art and craft of writing historical fiction. What licenses are taken? Solomon invented the murder of Johnson, who assumed the presidency on Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, became America’s first impeached president and died in 1875 from an apparent stroke. But there are no invented characters: Protagonist John Hay, Solomon’s alter ego, truly was Lincoln’s private secretary, a diplomat and a journalist. As in this tale, historical fiction rewards when it reveals the lineaments of an era—the seamy Gilded Age presents bountiful possibilities for a research-driven writer like Solomon—and captivates with a tight plot. Our conversation wraps up on a salubrious note, with Solomon’s riff on the scene in which the vice president of the United States is taking his bath in the marble tubs in the crypt-like basement of the U.S. Capitol building. Did those bathtubs truly exist? You bet they did.

Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January.

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Daniel Renfrew is a typical American sixteen-year-old. His main gripe when the story opens is that his dad insists on home schooling even though Daniel would much prefer attending the local high school with his friends. When we meet him, Daniel is at the local shopping mall, where a local cop is hassling him as a potential truant. After side-stepping that threat, Daniel returns home to find his dad under assault from a sword-carrying stranger. Dad tosses Daniel a strange device and orders him to say “the bedtime rhyme.”

Against his better judgment, Daniel complies. Next thing he knows, he’s in a pine forest he doesn’t recognize and has no idea what to do next. He screams for assistance, which brings out a very grumpy helper who self-identifies as Sam. Only then does Daniel learn that he comes from a family of time-jumpers, and he’s landed in 1066. He’s stuck in the past, not knowing whether his dad is dead or alive. And although his eccentric education has included all kinds of “weird” skills like sword play and fire building, Daniel is far from prepared for life in the eleventh century.

Daniel and Sam’s second adventure, The Celtic Deception, takes them to late Roman Britain, ca. 60 AD. The provincial governor has decided to make a stand against the Celts, especially the Druids—perceived as powerful sources of popular rebellion by the Roman army. The island now called Anglesey, off the coast of modern-day Wales, has become a sanctuary for Celts fleeing the invaders, so that becomes the governor’s target. Daniel and Sam must scramble to discover their mission, never mind fix it—all while trying to protect the people who have taken them in.

Andrew Varga is the author of The Last Saxon King and The Celtic Deception, books 1 and 2 of the seven-part Jump in Time series, aimed at the Young Adult market.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023.

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Ravage & Son (Bellevue Literary Press, 2023) by Jerome Charyn is a novel set in the Lower East Side of New York City in the early years of the twentieth century when it was America’s most crime-ridden and decadent neighborhood. Featuring an alluring cast of heroes, misfits, and monsters, Ravage & Son is part Jekyll and Hyde, part crime noir, part mystery novel, and ultimately an instant classic – a cinematic kaleidoscope that captures both the intense beauty and utter debauchery of humanity in this bygone era.

At the heart of the novel is the menacing Lionel Ravage, a heartbroken powerbroker hell bent on making the world pay for the loss of his soul mate, and his illegitimate son Ben, a poor boy educated at Harvard who becomes a downtown detective for the Kehilla, a quasi-police force slapped with the responsibility of cleaning up the Lower East Side’s layers of dirt and crime. The younger Ravage fights to protect, while his father yearns to burn it all to the ground. They share a deep wound and savage love that chains them together but is too agonizing to relive.

Jerome Charyn’s brilliance is in capturing the violence festering behind closed doors and in the streets as forces large and small work in unity to suck the marrow out of the Jewish neighborhood and its inhabitants. The author’s magnificent sentence-by-sentence style is marked both by an intensity and sensitivity that makes the dark tale more human and humane. It is as if Charyn is at war with the past, fully committed to its darkness, but delivering a source of light through his unmatched voice, the essential narrative delivered in what he calls his “music.” With touches of magical realism and an aura of mysticism, Charyn turns the Lower East Side into a portal for looking at that era and our own.

The author of more than 50 novels, biographies, histories, graphic novels, and collections, Charyn once proclaimed that his ultimate goal in writing novels has been “to make the reader cry...to break the reader’s heart.” With its stunning, unforgettable portrayal of the forces of light and darkness, Ravage & Son delivers on the author’s aim, presenting humanity in its fully formed depravity, but also capturing life’s poignancy.

The interview focuses on Ravage & Son, but Charyn and I discuss other aspects of his renowned career, including discussion of writing style, research, literary influences, and more. Charyn is arguably the most famous writer most readers have never heard of, a bestseller in France and other parts of Europe, and a true “writer’s writer” who continues to publish acclaimed books while being lauded by major authors including Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Chabon, Don DeLillo, and a long list of others. He is a distinctive voice in American literary history.

Bob Batchelor is an award-winning cultural historian and biographer. His latest books are Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties and Stan Lee: A Life. Visit him on the web at www.bobbatchelor.com or email at [email protected]

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Any novel set in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533–1584) is an instant draw for me; that is, after all, the setting for most of my own fiction. Throw in Baba Yaga, the wicked witch of Russian folklore, and give her a makeover, and I am hooked.

Throw out the warts and the cackle, the flying mortar and pestle, the human skulls lighted from within, and even the appellation “Baba” (“granny,” but also “hag” or “crone”). These attributes, according to Gilmore, are part of a vicious plot to discredit her heroine, Yaga—the half-mortal, extremely long-lived daughter of the Earth goddess Mokosh. Born in the tenth century, before the introduction of Christianity cast the old Slavic deities into the shade, Yaga has become a noted healer who doesn’t appear a day over thirty in 1560, when the story begins. Over the centuries, she has acquired a frenemy, Koshey (Koshchei) the Deathless, who for reasons that become clear during the novel has chosen to break his prior deal with Yaga and interfere once more in human affairs, pushing Tsar Ivan the Terrible along his path of suspicion and terror. The first victim is Tsaritsa Anastasia, a friend of Yaga’s before Anastasia’s selection as Ivan’s first royal bride. It’s that connection that draws Yaga into the fight. But the forces opposing her are immortal as well as mortal, complicating her efforts.

It’s all very well done, although the impact of Ivan’s atrocities and of Koshey’s insistence on violence as necessary to the survival of Russia is only heightened by Putin’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, which the author could not have anticipated when her book was accepted for publication. The history is mostly sound (allowing for the supernatural element) and the Russian correct, as one would expect of a native speaker. And there is the fun, for those in the know, of watching the author play with familiar (Little Hen, the hut on chicken feet) and new (Yaga’s immortal helpers, the wolf Dyen and the owl Noch, named for Day and Night, respectively) tropes from this set of ancient myths. If you like fantastical takes on history or reexaminations of literary villainesses, this novel is for you.

Olesya Salnikova Gilmore was born in Moscow, Russia, and raised in the United States. She writes historical fiction and fantasy inspired by Eastern European folklore. The Witch and the Tsar (Ace Books, 2022) is her debut novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023.

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