Emily Maguire’s Rapture is an entrancing vision of a woman who unexpectedly rises to the height of influence in an exclusively male realm: the Roman Catholic church in the early Middle Ages. This new reinterpretation of the legend of Pope Joan explores the meanings of its title – spiritual, intellectual, and physical fulfillment – in…
Nicola Cornick writes dual-period novels about unjustly forgotten women where both narrative strands compel equally, which doesn’t happen often. Fans of Mary Stewart (Touch Not the Cat in particular), Anya Seton’s Devil Water, and Susanna Kearsley’s 18th-century epics will relish her latest, which tells the parallel stories of purported Jacobite heroine Dorothy Forster and a…
Nell Joslin, author of the Civil War-era novel Measure of Devotion (Regal House, May 2025). contributes a short essay about how validation for one’s writing choices can arrive in unexpected ways.  ~ A Leg to Stand On Nell Joslin In the fall of 2015, I had been working on Measure of Devotion off and on for…
Do you believe in curses? Might you be convinced of their reality if terrible things befell you and your family after an unheeded warning? In Rachel Louise Driscoll’s elaborately woven debut, Clementine Attridge, daughter of an Egyptologist, was already inclined to accept the power of curses’ dark magic. Introverted yet strong-willed, Clemmie grew up immersed…
The 19th-century Booth family had once been known by the American public for something other than their second youngest son’s heinous act. To give us back the historical context that’s been eclipsed by his notoriety, Karen Joy Fowler purposefully avoids making John Wilkes, the assassin of President Lincoln, the center of attention in her profusely…
In the early 20th century, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to numerous Black-owned businesses and a thriving African American community. Then came the devastation beginning on the night of May 31, 1921, when white supremacist mobs – including local law enforcement – rampaged and burned the entire neighborhood and killed dozens of…
Has everyone come around to the realization that novels written now and set in the ’60s are considered historical fiction? Even more, this tumultuous era is the hottest thing in the genre, with themes zeroing in on civil rights, the counterculture movement, women’s empowerment in the workplace and at home, and the Vietnam War. One…
Tudormania has come and gone, but the era remains popular, and many individuals’ stories remain obscure. Such is the case with Lady Margaret Clifford, a noblewoman in the line of succession to Henry VIII’s throne; she was his grandniece, and first cousin to the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey. At the outset of this lively account…
Terri Lewis  Two sentences in a book bought at Windsor Castle introduced me to Isabelle d’Angoulême, abducted from her fiancé by King John, married, taken to England, and crowned queen. For weeks I pondered her story—what she left behind, what she faced— until it took over my imagination, and I decided to write a biographical…
A few months ago, another historical fiction reader and I were exchanging thoughts via email about prologues. Such as: why do so many books have them? Are they that helpful in hooking readers into a story? A special case is when (gasp) the prologue reveals the ending. The novel she’d just read was A Poisoner’s…
