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Reading the Past
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History

Reading the Past - History

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Reading the Past

25.03.2025

Reading the Past: N. J. Mastro explores the tumultuous life of Mary Wollstonecraft in Solitary Walker

Mary Wollstonecraft is perhaps best known for two accomplishments: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a treatise that caused her ...

Reading the Past

20.03.2025

Reading the Past: The Long and Winding Road, an essay by Lorraine Norwood, author of The Solitary Sparrow

Continuing with the Small Press Month focus, I'm pleased to welcome Lorraine Norwood to Reading the Past with an essay about her long journ...

Reading the Past

14.03.2025

Reading the Past: The need for speed: Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express imagines the lead-up to a historic train disaster

On the morning of October 22, 1895, the Paris Express leaves the town of Granville in Normandy for its seven-hour, ten-minute trip to the ca...

Reading the Past

11.03.2025

Reading the Past: Our multicultural family history, a guest post by Alix Christie, author of “The Shining Mountains”

I'm very happy to have Alix Christie here on the blog with her essay about the family history behind her latest book, a family saga set in t...

Reading the Past

07.03.2025

Reading the Past: Lauren Willig's The Girl from Greenwich Street looks behind the history of America's first recorded murder trial

On the evening of December 22, 1799, Elma Sands, a young woman of illegitimate birth, donned her best calico gown and left her cousin Caty’s...

Reading the Past

04.03.2025

Reading the Past: Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment

Thanks to author Stephanie Carpenter for contributing a post about crafting characters within the setting for her debut novel. Her essay ma...

Reading the Past

26.02.2025

Reading the Past: Which promotional blurbs matter the most to historical fiction readers?

The literary world has been having a long-overdue conversation about the practice of blurbing, that is, writers providing promotional endors...

Reading the Past

25.02.2025

Reading the Past: Competition and sisterhood in Elyse Durham's Maya & Natasha, set in the world of ballet in Cold War Russia

What do people owe a repressive government that originally nurtured them? Durham offers an attention-grabbing debut about the closeness and ...

Reading the Past

19.02.2025

Reading the Past: A tangled web of mysteries in Candace Robb's medieval-set A Snake in the Barley

Tom Merchet, brewer of some of the finest ale in York in 1377, has failed to return home for days, and his beloved wife, Bess, can’t hide he...

Reading the Past

19.02.2025

Reading the Past: The Great Depression on the Farm, a guest post by Charlotte Whitney, author of A Tiny Piece of Blue

Today I'm welcoming author Charlotte Whitney, who has a guest essay about the historical background to her new novel, A Tiny Piece of Blue ....

Reading the Past

08.02.2025

Reading the Past: Takeaways from Day 1 of The History Quill's 2025 convention, covering the state of historical fiction today

I spent yesterday at The History Quill’s 2025 virtual convention , which I first heard about on Instagram. It’s a writers’ conference for hi...

Reading the Past

08.02.2025

Reading the Past: Sisterhood, ghosts, and the meaning of freedom in Erin Crosby Eckstine's Junie, set in 1860s Alabama

The narrative voice in Junie sounds so assured that you wouldn’t realize it was a debut. The title character, just sixteen in 1860, has liv...

Reading the Past

01.02.2025

Reading the Past: Historical fiction winners from the 2025 American Library Association Book and Media Awards

The American Library Association and its RUSA division recently announced the winners in their annual Book and Media Awards. I always like ...

Reading the Past

27.01.2025

Reading the Past: The Diamond and the Duke, a Napoleonic-era romance with a Beauty-and-the-Beast subplot

Lady Eleanor “Ellie” Balfour has loved Wesley Audley, illegitimate son of the Duke of Bentley, ever since he saw her practicing swordplay on...

Reading the Past

19.01.2025

Reading the Past: The past echoes through the present in Charmaine Wilkerson's multi-period Good Dirt

Ranging across time and distance, Charmaine Wilkerson’s second novel (after the highly acclaimed Black Cake ) stitches together a meaningful...

Reading the Past

15.01.2025

Reading the Past: Review of Darry Fraser's The Night on the Darling River, set in late 19th-century Australia

On an evening in late August 1894, a mob of union sheepshearers boarded the paddle-steamer Rodney at its mooring along the Darling River in...

Reading the Past

07.01.2025

Reading the Past: Haunting family secrets across three generations in Ireland and America in Catherine Airey's Confessions

Airey’s intoxicating debut is much more than a saga following young women of Irish heritage across three generations. Sixteen-year-old Cora ...

Reading the Past

02.01.2025

Reading the Past: Short reviews of four historical novels about uncommon women

Happy New Year! This is my 1900th blog post, with brief reviews of four recommended historical novels I've read over the past month or so. ...

Reading the Past

27.12.2024

Reading the Past: The Instrumentalist reinterprets the life of an orphaned girl turned master violinist in 18th-century Venice

In 1696, a Venetian sex worker deposits her newborn in a small hole in the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage where nuns shelter...

Reading the Past

21.12.2024

Reading the Past: Michelle Cameron's Babylon illuminates life during the Jewish exile in ancient Babylon

Babylon is engrossing from start to finish. Michelle Cameron’s novels illustrate the lives of the Jewish people (especially women) at times...

Reading the Past

14.12.2024

Reading the Past: Ten more recent indie-published historical novels to check out

Here are ten more indie-published historical novels worth investigating. It was great to see so much interest in my initial list of ten titl...

Reading the Past

10.12.2024

Reading the Past: Jennifer S. Brown's The Whisper Sister is a fabulous tale of Prohibition-era NYC

In flapper-speak, a “whisper sister” was a female barkeep during Prohibition, a daring woman who kept booze flowing for eager customers in u...

Reading the Past

05.12.2024

Reading the Past: Signe Pike's The Shadowed Land delves into the possible Scottish roots of Arthurian legend

Personal transformations echo throughout Pike’s intensely felt third novel (following The Forgotten Kingdom , 2020) in an ongoing series abo...

Reading the Past

01.12.2024

Reading the Past: Critics pick their favorite historical novels of 2024

It's not even December, and media outlets have been proclaiming their Best Books recommendations for 2024. I feel a bit sorry for those nove...

Reading the Past

25.11.2024

Reading the Past: Ten recent indie-published historical novels to check out

If you aren't paying attention to indie-published historical fiction, you don't have a full picture of what the genre has to offer to reader...

Reading the Past

18.11.2024

Reading the Past: The opening round is up for the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction

Voting for the opening round in the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards is open for the next week, through November 24th. On the ballot for histori...

Reading the Past

13.11.2024

Reading the Past: Rachel Blackmore's Costanza reveals the real woman behind a groundbreaking 17th-century sculpture

She has gazed out at viewers for nearly four centuries: eyes wide, lips parted, hair unkempt, expression determined and sensual. The marble ...

Reading the Past

03.11.2024

Reading the Past: Eleanore of Avignon depicts a young woman's courageous path in medieval France

The Provençal city of Avignon in 1347-48 is rife with tension and drama, with the Catholic popes in residence, Queen Joanna of Naples seekin...

Reading the Past

24.10.2024

Reading the Past: For their next books, three prominent historical novelists are sticking with their genre roots

Several well-known historical novelists have announced their next books in recent weeks, and I found it especially interesting to see they'r...

Reading the Past

18.10.2024

Reading the Past: Julia Park Tracey's Silence examines women's agency in Puritan-era Massachusetts

Steeped in the language and mores of an earlier time, Julia Park Tracey’s meditative and defiantly life-affirming novel Silence follows a y...

Reading the Past

17.10.2024

Reading the Past: Kimberly Brock's The Fabled Earth unfolds a multilayered mystery surrounding Georgia's Cumberland Island

In her third novel, Brock ( The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare , 2022) proves marvelously adept at intertwining mythic stories with contemporary...

Reading the Past

05.10.2024

Reading the Past: Victoria Thompson's Murder in Rose Hill delves into Gilded Age medical cures and family dynamics

Anyone conducting research in Gilded Age news archives will note the proliferation of ads for patent medicines: concoctions promoted as cure...

Reading the Past

28.09.2024

Reading the Past: Historical novels are acclaimed via a number of recent literary awards

Over the past few weeks, many literary prize announcements have come to my attention via industry news sources or social media. And histori...

Reading the Past

24.09.2024

Reading the Past: The View from Behind the Camera: My Family and Old Hollywood, an essay by Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Longtime readers of this blog will know I'm drawn to historical novels inspired by family history, and along these lines, Ginny Kubitz Moyer...

Reading the Past

20.09.2024

Reading the Past: Marianne K. Miller's cinematic novel evokes a young Hemingway's pivotal time in Toronto

In her leanly written debut, Miller dramatizes the pivotal months Ernest Hemingway spent in Canada as a reporter for the Toronto Star , imag...

Reading the Past

15.09.2024

Reading the Past: A cornucopia of historical fiction reads for fall 2024, all set before the 19th century

For those seeking to spend the next few months immersed in earlier corners of the past, here are fourteen new and upcoming reads, from publi...

Reading the Past

06.09.2024

Reading the Past: Galina Vromen's Hill of Secrets shows the human story within Los Alamos, New Mexico, during WWII

What happens when varied people, all with their own personal troubles, converge in an unfamiliar location for a hidden purpose, especially w...

Reading the Past

02.09.2024

Reading the Past: Daphne du Maurier's The Glass-Blowers showcases new facets of the French Revolution

Daphne du Maurier’s The Glass-Blowers is one of her lesser-known historical novels. Having greatly enjoyed Rebecca , Mary Anne , The House ...

Reading the Past

27.08.2024

Reading the Past: Circumnavigating Svalbard: My Love Affair with the Arctic, an essay by Cynthia Reeves

Thanks to Cynthia Reeves, author of The Last Whaler (Regal House, Sept. 3), for contributing the following essay about her research. I hope...

Reading the Past

25.08.2024

Reading the Past: All the World Beside explores queer history in 1700s Massachusetts

Conley’s debut novel brings us to a small Massachusetts town—the symbolically-named Cana—while dramatizing an affair between two married Pur...

home›Reading the Past›History

Reading the Past - History

Reading the Past: N. J. Mastro explores the tumultuous life of Mary Wollstonecraft in Solitary Walker

Reading the Past: The Long and Winding Road, an essay by Lorraine Norwood, author of The Solitary Sparrow

Reading the Past: The need for speed: Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express imagines the lead-up to a historic train disaster

Reading the Past: Our multicultural family history, a guest post by Alix Christie, author of “The Shining Mountains”

Reading the Past: Lauren Willig's The Girl from Greenwich Street looks behind the history of America's first recorded murder trial

Reading the Past: Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment

Reading the Past: Which promotional blurbs matter the most to historical fiction readers?

Reading the Past: Competition and sisterhood in Elyse Durham's Maya & Natasha, set in the world of ballet in Cold War Russia

Reading the Past: A tangled web of mysteries in Candace Robb's medieval-set A Snake in the Barley

Reading the Past: The Great Depression on the Farm, a guest post by Charlotte Whitney, author of A Tiny Piece of Blue

Reading the Past: Takeaways from Day 1 of The History Quill's 2025 convention, covering the state of historical fiction today

Reading the Past: Sisterhood, ghosts, and the meaning of freedom in Erin Crosby Eckstine's Junie, set in 1860s Alabama

Reading the Past: Historical fiction winners from the 2025 American Library Association Book and Media Awards

Reading the Past: The Diamond and the Duke, a Napoleonic-era romance with a Beauty-and-the-Beast subplot

Reading the Past: The past echoes through the present in Charmaine Wilkerson's multi-period Good Dirt

Reading the Past: Review of Darry Fraser's The Night on the Darling River, set in late 19th-century Australia

Reading the Past: Haunting family secrets across three generations in Ireland and America in Catherine Airey's Confessions

Reading the Past: Short reviews of four historical novels about uncommon women

Reading the Past: The Instrumentalist reinterprets the life of an orphaned girl turned master violinist in 18th-century Venice

Reading the Past: Michelle Cameron's Babylon illuminates life during the Jewish exile in ancient Babylon

Reading the Past: Ten more recent indie-published historical novels to check out

Reading the Past: Jennifer S. Brown's The Whisper Sister is a fabulous tale of Prohibition-era NYC

Reading the Past: Signe Pike's The Shadowed Land delves into the possible Scottish roots of Arthurian legend

Reading the Past: Critics pick their favorite historical novels of 2024

Reading the Past: Ten recent indie-published historical novels to check out

Reading the Past: The opening round is up for the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction

Reading the Past: Rachel Blackmore's Costanza reveals the real woman behind a groundbreaking 17th-century sculpture

Reading the Past: Eleanore of Avignon depicts a young woman's courageous path in medieval France

Reading the Past: For their next books, three prominent historical novelists are sticking with their genre roots

Reading the Past: Julia Park Tracey's Silence examines women's agency in Puritan-era Massachusetts

Reading the Past: Kimberly Brock's The Fabled Earth unfolds a multilayered mystery surrounding Georgia's Cumberland Island

Reading the Past: Victoria Thompson's Murder in Rose Hill delves into Gilded Age medical cures and family dynamics

Reading the Past: Historical novels are acclaimed via a number of recent literary awards

Reading the Past: The View from Behind the Camera: My Family and Old Hollywood, an essay by Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Reading the Past: Marianne K. Miller's cinematic novel evokes a young Hemingway's pivotal time in Toronto

Reading the Past: A cornucopia of historical fiction reads for fall 2024, all set before the 19th century

Reading the Past: Galina Vromen's Hill of Secrets shows the human story within Los Alamos, New Mexico, during WWII

Reading the Past: Daphne du Maurier's The Glass-Blowers showcases new facets of the French Revolution

Reading the Past: Circumnavigating Svalbard: My Love Affair with the Arctic, an essay by Cynthia Reeves

Reading the Past: All the World Beside explores queer history in 1700s Massachusetts

home
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Reading the Past
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History