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Tenacity: The New Detective | Novelhistorian
Review: The New Detective, by Peter Steiner Severn, 2023. 181 pp. $32 Munich in 1913 is a corrupt place, much in need of the policing it never seems to get, for no cop in his right mind will offend the men in power. Nineteen-year-old Willi Geismeier doesn’t see law enforcement that way, however, and when…
Men, Women, and Animals: The Dolphin House | Novelhistorian
Review: The Dolphin House, by Audrey Schulman Europa, 2022. 307 pp. $15 In summer 1965, Cora quits her job as a waitress at a men’s club in Tampa, Florida, and buys a one-way ticket to St. Thomas. At twenty-one, she doesn’t know what to do with her life. As a deaf person, she feels at…
Murder in Little Tokyo: Evergreen | Novelhistorian
Review: Evergreen, by Naomi Hirahara Soho, 2023. 280 pp. $28 It’s 1946, and Aki Nakasone and her family have finally been permitted to return to Los Angeles after their imprisonment at Manzanar internment camp and forced relocation to Chicago. But nothing’s the same in LA. Like other Japanese Americans, they’ve lost jobs, property, and their…
The Eye of the Storm: A True Account | Novelhistorian
Review: A True Account, by Katherine Howe Holt, 2023. 268 pp. $29 One blistering Boston day in June 1726, Hannah Masury attends a hanging of three pirates, whose sendoff is ministered to by no less a personage than Cotton Mather. Having played hooky from a wharfside inn where she toils for pennies, that night she…
Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary | Novelhistorian
Review: Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, by Laura Stanfill Lanternfish, 2022. 334 pp. $19 The nineteenth-century French village of Mireville has a peculiar destiny and makeup. Not only does the sun never shine, which makes growing anything edible a pointless chore; the key industry, so to speak, is fabricating elaborate music boxes called serinettes.…
Celebrity Murder: The Golden Gate | Novelhistorian
Review: The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua Minotaur, 2023. 362 pp. $28 It’s March 1944, and Walter Wilkinson, a frequent guest at the fancy Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, is found murdered—shot at twice, surviving the first confrontation but not the second. However, Wilkinson is more than just a prominent out-of-towner; he ran for president…
Nobody’s Noble: Essex Dogs | Novelhistorian
Review: Essex Dogs, by Dan Jones Viking, 2022. 450 pp. $30 In July 1346, King Edward III of England invades France, claiming that the throne of that country belongs to him, igniting what would later be called the Hundred Years’ War. Among the invading host landing on the Norman coast is a band of men…
War and the Mind: Sergeant Salinger | Novelhistorian
Review: Sergeant Salinger, by Jerome Charyn Bellevue, 2021. 286 pp. $29 When we first meet Sonny Salinger, he’s twenty-three, it’s April 1942, and he’s not liable for military service because of a heart murmur. He has the luxury, therefore, to visit the Stork Club, the famous Manhattan night spot, to see his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, the…
Island Hypocrisy: The Marriage of Opposites | Novelhistorian
Review: The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman S&S, 2015. 362 pp. $28 The second line of this novel reads, “I rarely did as I was told.” No kidding. Rachel Pomié, growing up in St. Thomas in the early nineteenth century, has a hard road ahead. Born to a family of Marranos, Portuguese Jews who…
Man of Mystery: City of Ink | Novelhistorian
Review: City of Ink, by Elsa Hart Minotaur, 2018. 338 pp. $26 The year 1711 sees Li Du in Beijing, the place from which he was exiled, and to which he has returned, hiding the past two years in a modest clerkship at the North Borough Office. But when a double murder occurs at a…
Survival Stories: Once We Were Home | Novelhistorian
Review: Once We Were Home, by Jennifer Rosner Flatiron, 2023. 267 pp. $28 Marseille, 1946. Roger, a young Jewish boy who lives in the convent that protected him during the war, hears that he’ll be saved. Since the war’s over, this seems odd, because he thinks he already is saved—and then, a monk spirits him…
Fragments of a Famous Life: The General and Julia | Novelhistorian
Review: The General and Julia, by Jon Clinch Atria, 2023. 256 pp. $27 It’s 1885 in upstate New York, and time is running out. Former President Ulysses S. Grant is struggling to finish writing his memoirs, knowing he has weeks to live. He cares little for posterity. Rather, he wishes to secure his loved ones’…
The Stink of the Ancien Régime: Pure | Novelhistorian
Review: Pure, by Andrew Miller Europa, 2011. 331 pp. $17 When we first meet Jean-Baptiste Baratte, the young engineer is trying to negotiate the labyrinth that’s the palace of Versailles. He witnesses many strange sights on his way to see the minister of Something-or-Other, including an untended dog peeing on the fine parquet floor. It’s…
Sex Slavery: The Third Daughter | Novelhistorian
Review: The Third Daughter, by Talia Carner Morrow, 2019. 390 pp. $17 In 1889, Batya’s family flees a pogrom and the Russian village they’ve known all their lives for an uncertain destination. Taking to the road with as much of their meager belongings as they can manage, they find temporary sanctuary in a nearby town.…
Follow Your Heart: The Romantic | Novelhistorian
Review: The Romantic, by William Boyd Knopf, 2023. 451 pp. $30 Cashel Greville Ross, born in county Cork, Ireland, 1799, lives with his beloved aunt, who takes pains to make him a literate, observant person and tells him stories about his deceased parents. In particular, she opens to him the world of emotions, not always…
Moscow Murder: The Holy Thief | Novelhistorian
Review: The Holy Thief, by William Ryan Minotaur, 2010. 341 pp. $25 Alexei Dmitriyevich Korolev has the same problems most Soviet citizens do in 1936. His one good pair of boots is wearing out, and he doesn’t know how to replace them with anything decent. His living quarters are cramped, even by Moscow standards, but…
Finding One’s Voice: An Unofficial Marriage | Novelhistorian
Review: An Unofficial Marriage, by Joie Davidow Arcade, 2021. 278 pp. $26 Saint Petersburg, 1843, the Imperial Theatre. Twenty-five-year-old Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, who’s written dribs and drabs but is better known as an aristocratic man-about-town of intellectual interests, attends the opera. He sits in the cheapest seats, because his wealthy mother, upset at his idleness,…
Making Toys: Loot | Novelhistorian
Review: Loot, by Tania James Knopf, 2023. 289 pp. $28 Please note: after today, Novelhistorian will be taking a vacation, to resume posts on January 8. In the late eighteenth century, Mahmud Abbas lives in Srirangapatna, Mysore, and follows his father’s profession of wood carver. The boy has remarkable skill and dedication to his craft,…
Faith and Purpose: The Road to Grantchester | Novelhistorian
Review: The Road to Grantchester, by James Runcie Bloomsbury, 2019. 306 pp. $11 Sidney Chambers, serious Cambridge scholar and fun-loving prankster, joins a Scots regiment when World War II breaks out because generations of men in his family have served in it, sometimes with distinction. In 1943, the regiment lands in Italy, and a slow,…
Grand Heist: The Housekeepers | Novelhistorian
Review: The Housekeepers, by Alex Hay Graydon, 2023. 357 pp. $30 In June 1905, a young London heiress to a stupendous industrial fortune declares her intention to hold a masked ball at her Park Lane mansion. Miss de Vries’s announcement arouses comment, for her father has died recently, and merriment at such a moment is…
Unofficial Doctor: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women | Novelhistorian
Review: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See Scribner, 2023. 342 pp. $28 When Tan Yunxian is eight years old in 1469, two events shake her life: her mother dies, and her Grandmother Ru, with whom she now lives near the city of Wuxi, sets out to teach the girl all she knows about…
Art, Desire, and a Woman’s Lot: The Lioness of Boston | Novelhistorian
Review: The Lioness of Boston, by Emily Franklin Godine, 2023. 369 pp. $29 Belle Gardner has a problem. She says what she thinks, and social anxiety often prompts her to blurt out opinions that she guesses will strike her listeners the wrong way. In the Boston of 1861, that’s just not done—by a woman, anyway—which…
Murder in Troubled Times: Those Who Go By Night | Novelhistorian
Review: Those Who Go By Night, by Andrew Gaddes Crooked Lane, 2018. 287 pp. $27 It’s 1321, and the bishop of Lincoln has received disturbing news from the village of Bottesford: a man has been murdered and left on a church altar in an apparent grotesque parody of the Crucifixion. Worse, the bishop has heard…
Making the Best of Things: A Dangerous Business | Novelhistorian
Review: A Dangerous Business, by Jane Smiley Knopf, 2022. 208 pp. $28 Monterey, California, is an up-and-coming place in 1851. Though far from the goldfields, the town has nevertheless attracted ranchers and businessmen, some of the latter engaged in trade via its seaport. But a seaport means sailors, and men long aboard ship desiring female…
Teller of Tales: Every Rising Sun | Novelhistorian
Review: Every Rising Sun, by Jamila Ahmed Holt, 2023. 416 pp. $29 During the latter twelfth century in Kirman, a Persian city home to various dynasties, Sharyar, a Seljuk king, rides high. He would appear the most fortunate of men, possessed of great power, dignity, humor, tolerance, and a wife renowned for grace and beauty.…
Nine Innings: Another Blog Birthday | Novelhistorian
This week, Novelhistorian celebrates its ninth year, and as before, today’s post recalls my favorite novels I’ve reviewed in the last twelve months. The East Indian, by Brinda Charry, about an Indian boy, Tony, who becomes an indentured servant in the infant Jamestown colony, does something I’ve never seen before. Tony withstands hardship, physical and…
You Should Live Like Me: Thieving Forest | Novelhistorian
Review: Thieving Forest, by Martha Conway Noontime, 2014. 407 pp. $15 It’s 1806 in the remote Ohio village of Severne, where white colonists like the Quiners live peaceably, trading with Native American tribes like the Potawatami, who don’t bother them. But one morning, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a tree while several Potawatami kidnap…
Escape: Frenchmen’s Creek | Novelhistorian
Review: Frenchmen’s Creek, by Daphne du Maurier Sourcebooks, 2009. [reprint] 280 pp. $15 Sometime during the early eighteenth century—there’s a reference to the first George who ruled England—Lady Dona St. Columb does something extraordinary, even for her. Known for her London escapades, which include drinking bouts in risqué establishments and dressing up as a highwayman,…
God, Beauty, and Commerce: Book of Colours | Novelhistorian
Review: Book of Colours, by Robyn Cadwallader HarperCollins, 2019. 376 pp. $16 The year 1321 witnesses great hardship and political upheaval in England. Winters are wetter and colder than usual; crops won’t grow; livestock dies off; King Edward II’s ruinous wars bring further misery and empty the treasury; and his grasping, power-hungry favorite has roused…
North American Epic: Jamie MacGillivray | Novelhistorian
Review: Jamie MacGillivray, by John Sayles Melville House, 2022. 696 pp. $32 Jamie MacGillivray, like many young Scotsmen in the 1740s who hate their English overlords, supports Bonnie Prince Charlie’s attempt to regain his throne—and, more than that, seize that of Britain too. It’s a desperate, romantic cause that has Jamie swept up, but he’s…
Disappearing Act: Killingly | Novelhistorian
Review: Killingly, by Katharine Beutner Soho, 2023. 337 pp. $28 This much is historical fact: in 1897, Mount Holyoke College student Bertha Mellish disappeared from the South Hadley, Massachusetts, campus, for no apparent reason, leaving no apparent trace. Her case became a sensation, as theories about her fate multiplied. She’d been murdered. She’d committed suicide.…
Transformation: The Wife of Martin Guerre | Novelhistorian
Review: The Wife of Martin Guerre, by Janet Lewis Swallow Press/Ohio University, 2013. 98 pp. $12 In 1539, eleven-year-old Bertrande de Rols marries Martin Guerre, a boy her age, in Artigues, a French village near the Pyrenees. The couple spends the requisite ritual night in the same bed, refusing to touch one another, before the…
Go West, Young Innocent: Butcher’s Crossing | Novelhistorian
Review: Butcher’s Crossing, by John Williams NY Review of Books, 2007. 274 pp. $17 Sometime during the 1870s, twenty-three-year-old Will Andrews leaves Harvard after his junior year and heads west. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, other than experience, but this preacher’s son has read Emerson and believes that his life in Boston has…
Despotism and Chaos: The Dissident | Novelhistorian
Review: The Dissident, by Paul Goldberg FSG, 2023. 401 pp. $28 In January 1976, Oksana Moskvina and Viktor Moroz wish to marry, after six weeks of courtship. If that sounds impulsive, consider that they kissed within a minute of their first meeting, during a Moscow street demonstration protesting Soviet policy toward Jews. As befits their…
Her Own Diaspora: Kantika | Novelhistorian
Review: Kantika, by Elizabeth Graver Metropolitan/Holt, 2023. 304 pp. $28 Constantinople, early 1900s. Rebecca Cohen, vivacious daughter of a well-to-do textile merchant, loves her life, full of song, dance, pastries, and her best friend and schoolmate Rahelika. Their intimate friendship comes partly through shared languages, notably French, which they learn at their select private school,…
Found Wanting: The House Is on Fire | Novelhistorian
Review: The House Is on Fire, by Rachel Beanland S&S, 2023. 364 pp. $28 The night after Christmas, 1811, a packed theater burns in Richmond, Virginia, causing heavy loss of life and untold misery. At fault is a chandelier hoisted on a pulley that’s unreliable and the negligence of the theatrical company, whose members haven’t…
Birth and Rebirth: The East Indian | Novelhistorian
Review: The East Indian, by Brinda Charry Scribner, 2023. 246 pp. $28 Tony, the name given him by an English merchant, grows up a happy child on the Coromandel, the east coast of India, in the early seventeenth century. Doted on by his Tamil mother, grandmother, and uncle, Tony learns compassion, reflection, and to observe…
Romance Versus Reality: Two Wars and a Wedding | Novelhistorian
Review: Two Wars and a Wedding, by Lauren Willig Morrow, 2023. 422 pp. $32 In September 1896, Betsy Hayes is in Athens, trying to break down the door barring women from participating in archeological digs. Fresh from college, where she received a solid education in the classics, Betsy has brains, passion, energy, and daring. But…
Tudors in Virginia: Hang the Moon | Novelhistorian
Review: Hang the Moon, by Jeannette Walls Scribner, 2023. 346 pp. $28 Seventeen-year-old Sallie Kincaid wants two things in life: her father’s love, and to be someone. Whether she’ll get either is an open question. Most people in Claiborne County, Virginia, in 1919 think they know who Sallie is, and it’s not complimentary, though she…
Russian Triangle: Midnight in St. Petersburg | Novelhistorian
Review: Midnight in St. Petersburg, by Vanora Bennett St. Martin’s, 2016 371 pp. $26 In 1911, Inna Feldman flees Kiev for St. Petersburg, a place she has no right to be. Nor does she have the right to travel there, or anywhere. But having stolen identity papers, the young Jewish woman makes a desperate attempt…