Whether you prefer reading historical fiction or non-fiction (or both, why not?), we hope you’ll find something to surprise, delight or intrigue you in this round-up of books featured in Historia during 2019. So if you’re looking for a Christmas present for a history lover or a good read for the long winter nights, have a browse though our books of the year for 2019.
This is a mix of features, interviews, and reviews of books which have been covered in Historia during the past year, so to make things simple the books are listed by the date they cover or are mainly set in. For a quick look at new books published by HWA members in 2019, check out the Latest releases section.
Ancient world (including Romans)
Lancelot by Giles Kristian, shortlisted for the 2019 Gold Crown Award, is a masterful retelling of the Arthurian legends. “Here was a chance to subvert the received mythology, to reinvent it for our time, to tell the story of Arthur’s greatest knight and to really get under his skin. And to try to understand that most famous love triangle in western literature,” he says. (Interview)
Rubicon is a collection of short stories and interviews by writers who set their work during the ancient Roman period. The stories range from the gleeful comedy of The Wedding and Alter Ego to chilling cruelty in Exiles, as well as treachery, war and alternative history, and reanimate the lives of ordinary – and extraordinary – Romans, such as Ovid, Marcus Agrippa and a young Julius Caesar. Rubicon is an HWA and Sharpe Books collaboration.
Anglo-Saxon Britain
Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething. “The bones were silent. That’s the problem: they usually are. They are the skeletons of a life but, without historical records, that’s all they are: dry old bones that tell nothing of the story they enacted.” This is a book about the discoveries the authors made when they found a skeleton which did, at last, give up its secrets. (Feature)
Storm of Steel by Matthew Harffy is a “stunning new instalment” in his Bernicia Chronicles series, writes Jemahl Evans. “Put quite simply, Matthew Harffy writes a damn good historical adventure story, with a fantastic protagonist and well-rounded and believable characters. Storm of Steel is the best episode yet in the series.” (Review)
Wolf of Wessex is a new departure for Matthew Harffy. Still set in Anglo-Saxon England, but now in the 9th century, his latest novel “features many fictional characters… placed within the tapestry of real events, places and people. One such real person is a king I had never heard of before researching the book: Ecgberht, King of Wessex.” He writes about the background to his book and the importance of this largely-forgotten king. (F)
Medieval
Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior by Catherine Hanley is a comprehensive biography of a remarkable woman, daughter of Henry I of England, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor, mother of Henry II – but never crowned queen in her own right. Matilda could have been one of England’s greatest monarchs, the author writes. So what, and who, stopped her? (F)
The Bone Fire by SD Sykes, the fourth book in the Oswald de Lacy series, “is at its heart a ‘locked room’ or, in this case, a locked castle mystery,” writes reviewer Catherine Hokin. “SD Sykes proves that she is not only on top of her historical fiction game but is also a mistress of the detective genre. I thoroughly enjoyed it [and] thoroughly recommend it.” (R)
16th century
Destiny’s Tide by JD Davies takes the author to a new setting, Tudor England, where he finds an unexplored area of this much-covered era: naval historical fiction. He delights in the “complications” of writing about a time when “there’s far less source material than there is for later periods, and much less evidence of how things were done aboard ship” in what was essentially “a volunteer navy”, he tells Historia in a feature marking the publication of his first Jack Stannard novel. (F)
The Serpent’s Mark by SW Perry is the second in his Jackdaw series following the adventures of Nicholas Shelby, reluctant spy and maverick physician, and his companion Bianca Merton. “What happens when the search for knowledge takes a dark turn? What happens when a man of medicine (and in Elizabethan England that can be amateur as well as professional) loses his conscience?” (F)
17th century
The Illumination of Ursula Flight by Anna-Marie Crowhurst was one of six novels shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Award. The author tells Historia about the background to her story about a runaway girl who became an actress during the Restoration, “a saucy, bosomy, licentious time in my mind, with filthy poets and raucus playwrights – it seemed to me to be such an exciting period for women in particular – and for the creative arts.” (I)
Blood’s Campaign by Angus Donald is set during the Jacobite/Williamite wars in 1690s Ireland. Researching his latest Holcroft Blood book, he found that “the bloody fight at the River Boyne was not at all the battle I had though it was all those years ago. But it was, nonetheless, a fascinating and moving slice of history to get to grips with as a novelist.” (F)
The Familiars by Stacey Halls, longlisted for the 2019 HWA Debut Crown, takes a new slant on the Pendle witch trials of 1612. Based on the lives of real people, it follows a young noblewoman, anxious to provide an heir for her husband, who meets a midwife caught up in the accusations of witchcraft sweeping Lancashire. Stacey Halls writes for Historia about the lives of the women she researched. (F)
The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea, shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Debut Crown, is set in Iceland in the 1680s and is “a story about a woman who, after marrying a man and moving to a remote setting, finds herself terrified by the strange, secretive nature of her husband, while also being isolated in her new environment.” (I)
Entertaining Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift continues her series of novels based on the lives of the women in Samuel Pepys’s Diary. This one focuses on Elizabeth ‘Bird’ Knepp, singer, actress and reluctant wife, but gives a broader view of the lives of women in 1660s London. Reviewers found it “a rich and satisfying read”, “a gripping and convincing tale of the Restoration”. (R)
The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor picks misfits James Marwood and Cat Lovett out of the ashes of the Great Fire and throws them straight into murder, intrigue and hidden danger. “It’s a pleasure to watch these two characters fill out and develop,” writes our reviewer. “This is a tightly-plotted book, not afraid to vary the pace and let readers pause to orient themselves in the filth- and rubble-strewn, dangerous streets. Taylor knows his 17th-century London, and guides us vividly through it.” (R)
The King’s Evil by Andrew Taylor, the third in his Marwood-Lovett series, is named after “the disease of scrofula… where orthodox medicine collided with a form of magic, and where political expedience ran side by side with religious belief.” He tells Historia about the research behind his latest historical crime novel, set in London in 1667. (F)
18th century
The Almanack by Martine Bailey is a murder mystery which, appropriately, revolves around time; especially when, in 1752, England adopted the Gregorian calendar and ‘lost’ 11 days in September. Our reviewer finds it “a beautifully-constructed, deeply-satisfying read that plays with the reader, demanding that you keep your eyes on the shadows as much as on the main stage.” Martine Bailey also writes about her year of living by ‘almanack time’ in a Historia feature. (R, F)
The Anarchy – The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple charts “the story of the conquest of India,” spanning the centuries from the founding of the EIC in 1599 to its successor, the empire known as the British Raj (1858-1947). “Exposes the public to new material that radically shifts thinking about the EIC as being solely monolithic.” (I, R)
Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, winner of the 2019 HWA Debut Crown, is both a highly-regarded crime novel and a powerful attack on slavery. She spoke to Historia about her book, set in London and Deptford in the 18th century, and has also written a feature for us about the background to the novel. (I, F)
Blackberry and Wild Rose by Sonia Velton is a richly-textured story set among the silk weavers of 18th-century Spitalfields and was longlisted for the 2019 HWA Debut Crown. She writes about the background to her story of love, betrayal and loss, particularly the now forgotten work of Anna Maria Garthwaite, an “exceptional” woman who, despite her sex, became one of the greatest silk designers of the age. (F)
19th century
The Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby, a gothic tale set in Birmingham in 1885, was longlisted for the 2019 HWA Debut Crown and touches on the sale of young girls into prostitution. “Searching for an appropriate time-frame for my fictional narrative as well as a crucial plot point,” she writes, “I realised that I had found one of those historical jigsaw pieces that make the novelist’s inter-weaving of fact and fiction so satisfying.” (F)
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal “is like Dickens in overdrive, but overlaid with a very modern sense of the darkness beneath and a taste for the macabre and twisted that brings to life the true horrors of Victorian London,” reviewer Clive Edwards writes. “Macneal moves surefootedly from poignant yearning to humour to a truly compelling sense of menace.” Her interview with Historia looks deeper into the ideas behind the novel. (R, I)
The Darker Arts by Oscar de Muriel is the latest in his Frey and McGray series of spooky Scottish whodunits. His research for the novel covered the entire range of Victorian cures, from quack cure-alls and doctors prescribing laudanum, opiates, arsenic or mercury – as well as leeches – to clairvoyants. But it takes new forensic techniques for his detectives to solve a murder case. (F)
Mrs Whistler by Matthew Plampin, shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Gold Crown, is a novel about Maud Franklin, model, muse and madame of James McNeill Whistler and would-be artist in her own right. “At its heart,” the author tells Historia, “the story concerns a woman living in the shadow of a man, her own ambitions and wishes subjugated entirely to his, with everything about her seen as secondary.” (I)
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, shortlisted for the HWA Non-fiction Crown Award, is a much-needed and widely-acclaimed reexamination of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. The author tells Historia about her motivation for writing the book: “You ask people, ‘what’s the one thing you can tell me about Jack the Ripper?’ and they reply that he killed prostitutes. But this is fundamentally inaccurate. These were not sex crimes but gender crimes – crimes against women.” (I)
20th century
When the Germans Came by Duncan Barrett investigates the occupation of the British Channel Islands from June 1940 to May 1945, using oral histories and contemporary accounts, both published and unpublished. “The result,” writes reviewer Mary Chamberlain, “is an eminently readable, enjoyable and informative social history of the time, a fascinating and nuanced account of five years of occupation, rich in detail and insights into survival and accommodation.” (R)
The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan. This “complex, both haunting and haunted novel”, set in Prague in 1986 and Paris in the present day, weaves together love, loss, politics and betrayal. Of all the Cold War books that are likely to come out over the next 12 months, reviewer Catherine Hokin writes, ” I think it will be a hard task to better this one and it will linger long after you read it.” (R)
The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain moves between the Second World War in the Channel Islands and 1980s England. “In evocative and precise prose, Chamberlain conjures the grim world of Jersey under German rule, drawing sensitively on the work of historians to pepper the narrative with telling real-world details,” writes reviewer Duncan Barrett. “Illicit relationships of one kind or another are what tie the novel’s various strands together, as well as lending it an intense, and ultimately tragic, propulsive force.” (R)
A Ration Book Childhood by Jean Fullerton is the latest in her Ration Book series about the Brogan family in London’s East End. Set during the Blitz, when external dangers intensify private conflicts, it’s “a very enjoyable read. Jean Fullerton’s meticulous research and background knowledge enable her to create a wholly convincing and engaging wartime novel.” (R)
Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee, his third Wyndham & Banerjee novel, was shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award. It’s “definitely the paciest, most thriller-like novel in the series so far. It’s 1921 and Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force,” the author says. “Wyndham is convinced that there’s a deranged killer on the loose… and what he doesn’t realise is that there are bigger games afoot.” (I)
The Woman Who Saved the Children : A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb by Clare Mulley is an unconventional biography of a radical woman who once remarked that she “didn’t care for children”, yet defied social expectation and crossed not only deep-rooted class divides in Britain, but also the unstable national borders of a European conflict zone, before breaking the law to bring relief to the starving children of Britain’s former enemies at the end of the First World War. (I)
Some of these books were first published earlier than 2019 in hardcover but came out in paperback in 2019.
Image:
Woman reading book: via pxfuel
