The Historical Novels Review: Editors' Choice Titles for Nov 2009

REBELS AND TRAITORS
Lindsey Davis, Century, 2009, £18.99, hb, 742pp, 9781846056321 / St. Martin's, Jan. 2010, $27.99, hb, 742pp, 9780312595418
    Like many an adolescent, Gideon Jukes is a young man rebelling against family constrictions and looking for his own path in life. He takes an apprenticeship as a printer and so is exposed to the teachings of many great men. But wisdom does not warn him to avoid marriage to the scheming Lady Keevil. Committed to the Parliamentarians, Gideon is prepared to make any sacrifices to aid their cause.
    Meanwhile, Juliana makes a hasty marriage to avoid penury and finds herself allied to a poor man of mercurial character. Orlando Lovell is a schemer extraordinaire and a King’s man. Often left alone, and then pregnant, Juliana has to survive using her wits to secure a home of her own. Gideon and Juliana might be on different sides of the conflict, but their lives will meet and part, cross and cross again. Mutual attraction accompanies their meetings, but there will be much adversity before they can even think of finding a life together.  And when peace comes they may find that even harder to survive than war.
    Rebels and Traitors is a truly epic novel. Vast in scope and depth, it tells the story of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth, from the perspective of the common man and woman. It takes the reader into the heart of civil conflict and never flinches from showing the true scale of horror and atrocity.
    Lindsey Davis casts off her popular detective writer persona and dons the mantle of the serious mainstream historian. Her Falco novels are great escapist literature, but this book takes her writing to a newer, altogether weightier level. Extensive research combined with dynamite storytelling has produced a masterpiece, and this comes highly recommended to all.
-- Sara Wilson

AN ECHO IN THE BONE
Diana Gabaldon, Delacorte, 2009, $30.00, hb, 820pp, 978038534252 / Orion, Jan. 2010, £14.99, hb, 848pp, 9780752898476
    One of the best feelings in opening a sequel is in knowing you are soon to be reunited with very good friends, people you have grown to love. There is a sense of trepidation as well; will the new installment stay true to what’s gone before, or will it veer wildly off course? Thankfully, almost from the moment I began reading, I realized I was indeed in for another great adventure filled with old friends, new enemies, and relationships that transcend time… literally.
    Seventh in the popular Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone finds our heroes, Jamie and Claire, leaving Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina, for Scotland during the early years of the American Revolution. As expected, nothing runs smoothly, and they soon find themselves battling pirates, the British at Ticonderoga and Saratoga, and assorted ruffians. When they reach Lallybroch, old hurts and new losses rear their ugly heads, and they find themselves separated again. As these circumstances play out, the plot moves among the viewpoints of Jamie and Claire; Jamie’s two children, Brianna and William; Jamie’s nephew, Ian Murray; and Lord John Grey.
    An Echo in the Bone builds solidly on A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and its strength lies in the characters’ depth of feeling. Some story arcs wrap up, and new characters promise future problems. Gabaldon throws Brianna and Claire some major surprises, and as long-held secrets come to light, William, John, and Jamie must find peace with what they share.
    Gabaldon takes the long way around to tell her tale, and some will wish more editing had taken place. Not me, however; I love the way Gabaldon evokes the period and her characters, no matter how many pages it takes her to do it. This is a sprawling, delicious novel, and Jamie’s own words can apply to it: “Ye’re no verra peaceful, Sassenach, but I like ye fine.” -- Tamela McCann

THE NINTH DAUGHTER
Barbara Hamilton, Berkley, 2009, $14, pb, 368pp, 9780425230770
    This first novel of a new mystery series begins with Boston housewife Abigail Adams visiting Rebecca Malvern, only to discover some unknown woman’s bloody, brutalized corpse—and no sign of her friend. Abigail faces three significant problems: locating the missing Rebecca before the killer can, resolving the murder’s apparent connection to the Sons of Liberty, and not implicating her lawyer husband John, a prime suspect.
    Boston is a town under curfew, occupied by British soldiers. A parallel to the colonists’ drive for independence is the lack of freedom experienced by the women in the novel, wife or servant, respectable or not. Conspiracies abound and suspicion is rife.
    Abigail’s intelligence, devotion to family, and humor make her eminently sympathetic. Relying on the legal knowledge and deductive skills gained from John she seeks Rebecca, dodges danger, and comes ever closer to identifying the killer—at significant risk to her loved ones. Hamilton provides those rich and telling details that convey personality and locale and has a gift for dramatic pacing. A singularly successful example of re-imagining a historical figure as a sleuth and a brilliant beginning to a series deserving of a sizeable readership.
-- Margaret Barr

ENDURING
Donald Harington, Toby, 2009, $24.95/C$29.95/£14.99, hb, 500pp, 9781592642564
    The novel encompasses the breadth of the 20th century as it follows the life of Latha Bourne, a resident of Stay More, a small fictional hamlet in the Arkansas Ozarks. Essentially, the narrative is the 106-year-old Latha’s life story. She grew up in poverty and was a vibrant and curious child who always asked questions. As she matures into adolescence, she attends the local school and begins to explore her awaking sexuality. At one point, she becomes pregnant and goes to stay with her sister in Little Rock. After the baby is born, her sister has Latha declared incompetent as a mother and has her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she remains for several years. Finally she escapes and wanders the roads until she meets a wealthy woman, Mildred Cardwell, who gives her a job as a servant. She stays for seven years and reads voraciously from Mrs. Cardwell’s extensive library. Finally, she returns home and settles down. Eventually she is reunited with her daughter and, over time, becomes the respected sage of Stay More. When the novel ends, she has withdrawn from the mere ghost of a town to become a hermit.
    Harington has written another exceptional work about the mythical town of Stay More in which the protagonist of this novel is a central figure. He brings to life the numerous characters that inhabit Latha’s world. He portrays Stay More as a poor but vibrant community where the simple life is really not simple or easy; it is place where someone can find contentment, happiness, and experience a full and interesting life. This is an outstanding work of American fiction not to be missed. -- Gerald T. Burke

THE FOREIGN FIELD
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Sphere/Trafalgar Square, 2009 (c2008), $34.95/£19.99, hb, 513pp, 9781847440938
    This is the 31st installment in Harrod-Eagles’ Morland Dynasty series, which traces 500 years of British history from the point of view of the fictional Morland family. The series starts in 1434 with the War of the Roses and will finish with WWII. The Foreign Field covers the third year of World War I, 1917.
    Members of the Morland family are in various places during the war, providing different perspectives on the war’s course and its impact on people’s lives. Some of the Morlands are at home at Morland Place in Yorkshire, where the patriarch, Teddy, has turned most of his land over to growing vegetables and hosting the local battalion. Other family members are in London; some are fighting in France; one is serving in the Royal Flying Corps and another in the Royal Army Medical Corps; one is nursing in London and then France; and one is stationed in Russia as a military attaché. All these different vantage points make for a complete picture of the war and times.
    Harrod-Eagles captures the mood of the period and incorporates events that were happening at the same time as the war, including the women’s suffrage movement. I don’t usually understand or enjoy military strategy and battle descriptions, but she does a masterful job with them, writing with both clarity and conciseness. Remarkably, with all this history, the book is also an absorbing family drama with well-drawn characters.
    Harrod-Eagles is a skillful writer, and this is a highly readable, fabulously entertaining way to absorb British history. Do not miss this series. It will keep even the most voracious reader entertained for a long time! -- Jane Kessler

A SEPARATE COUNTRY
Robert Hicks, Grand Central, 2009, $25.99/C$31.99/£18.99, hb, 422pp, 9780446581646
    The bestselling author of The Widow of the South has penned another atmospheric masterpiece, this time a moving portrait of the post-Civil War life of Confederate general John Bell Hood.
    New Orleans is in the grip of yellow fever, and General Hood is dying. He summons to his deathbed a young man whose family had been destroyed during one of Hood's many campaigns—a young man who'd once tried to murder him. Into this man's care, General Hood deposits a most precious book. It is not Hood's war memoirs, detailing how he lost his leg at Chickamauga, or the use of his arm at Gettysburg—that book he orders to be burned. This book concerns his life after the war, more specifically, his marriage to Anna Marie Hennen, the flower of Creole aristocracy. Through her, Hood came to know the true New Orleans—of a dwarf who rules a powerful underworld; of a burly priest who tends to yellow fever's colored victims; and of a piano player lynched trying to pass as white. This story, combined with Anna Marie's own memoirs and the young man's commentary, details the deeply emotional journey of a soldier who seeks forgiveness not just through the love of his family, not just through acts of charity that destroy him socially and financially, but also through the grace of those very men whose lives he destroyed.
    Robert Hicks has penned a powerful story of redemption set in a swampy, insular, and color-conscious New Orleans. The novel is filled with psychologically complex characters whose true natures remain a mystery until the peeling of the final layer. A Separate Country is a fabulous novel, and well worth the wait. -- Lisa Ann Verge

CLAUDIUS
Douglas Jackson, Bantam, 2009, £12.99, hb, 327pp, 9780593060629
    Emperor Claudius needs to secure his tenuous position in Rome and sets his sights on victory in Britain as a sure-fire winner. In far-off Britain, King Caractacus and his rival tribal leaders unite to face a vicious and unforgiving enemy, certain in the knowledge that they can win a great victory – and therefore lasting peace – for themselves.
    Into this maelstrom is cast the slave Rufus, an animal trainer with a unique position – that of elephant keeper to the emperor himself. He and his pachyderm charge, Bersheba, are in Britain for uncertain reasons. Their emperor has commanded and they have obeyed.
    Then, when a Roman victory seems a bloody certainty the truth dawns – they are there to put fear of the gods into the Britons. To embody the very might and power of the Roman Empire and to prove the potency of Claudius himself. All of which makes them an obvious target for the wrath of the Britons.
    This is top quality storytelling with an almost filmic quality, and it is obvious that Douglas Jackson has really hit his stride with this second novel featuring Rufus the animal trainer. He seems completely comfortable with his Roman history whilst producing plot, character and dialogue of the highest order.
    Visceral, yet undeniably gripping, Claudius might not be a book for the squeamish (like Caligula before it), but it is not to be missed by those who like their history to be thrilling and action-packed from start to finish.
-- Sara Wilson

THE SILVER EAGLE
Ben Kane, Preface, 2009, 402pp, hb, £12.99, 9781848090118 / St Martin’s Press, Mar. 2010, $25.99, hb, 480pp, 9780312536725
    The Silver Eagle, the second in a trilogy, picks up from where the earlier book, The Forgotten Legion, left off. Ten thousand legionaries are now captives of the Parthians, of whom Romulus, Tarquinius the soothsayer and Brennus the ex-gladiator are three of the survivors. Back in Rome, Fabiola, Romulus’ twin sister who was sold into a brothel aged just thirteen, and who subsequently became the lover of Brutus (now in Gaul with Julius Caesar), finds that she, too, must leave Rome and travel to Gaul to find him.
    Based around events which finally led to the downfall of the Roman empire and around many of the people who actually lived, worked and fought in the 1st century BC, this book is one of the best I have read on this period. It is full of action with just enough explanation, description, to inform the reader without falling into the trap of producing long, boring tracts. The characters live and breathe – the noise, smell, desperation, moments of joy are all there, and the pages turn themselves.
    I simply could not put this book down and feel compelled to read the first one. I also look forward in great anticipation to reading the third. Highly recommended. -- Marilyn Sherlock

THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF EASTERN JEWEL
Maureen Lindley, Bloomsbury USA, 2009, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 288pp, 9781596917033 / Bloomsbury, 2009, £7.99, pb, 304pp, 9780747596264
    “In 1914, at the age of eight years, I was caught spying on my father Prince Su as he made love to a fourteen-year-old girl.” This is the opening sentence of a remarkable novel: the fictionalized account of a real-life Chinese princess who became a Japanese spy in the 1930s and 40s and finally died by the sword in a Chinese prison camp.
    Banished to Japan for her childish indiscretion, she finds herself trapped in the loveless household of Baron Kawashima, a powerful and ruthless man who rapes her repeatedly. Her response to this is not the expected one. She enjoys the rough sex and, far from seeing herself as a victim, she learns to use her beauty as a weapon. Throughout her life, sex will be a tool of her trade as well as an anodyne for the depressions and nightmares that haunt her. She also develops an early taste for opium, alcohol, and male dress—not wanting to be a man but to enjoy a man’s freedom and power. The ruling passion of her life, however, is Japan. She admires Japanese strength while she despises Chinese weakness. And her youthful predilection for spying will now be employed in Japan’s interest. The requirements of her masters will send her to Mongolia, Manchuria, Shanghai, and Peking—always living the high life and leaving behind a string of lovers. But her own heart is broken too, and her depressions become deeper. Her motto had always been: “We are all animals and to survive well should be each individual’s aim.” But when Japan is defeated and her own life is in ruins, one supremely selfless act redeems her.
    It is Eastern Jewel’s self-knowledge and complete honesty that rescue her story from sordid tragedy. Lindley’s writing is subtle and sensitive, and every page shines a light into some dark corner of human nature. -- Bruce Macbain

THE ENTOMOLOGICAL TALES OF AUGUSTUS T. PERCIVAL: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone
Dene Low, Houghton Mifflin, 2009, $16.00, hb, 196pp, 9780547152509
Dene Low, the pen name for author Laura Card, has created a wonderful tale of Victorian fantasy in this first novel. The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone is the delightful and funny story of 16-year-old Petronella. The book opens with her coming-out party, an important affair for any fashionable Victorian girl, but readers quickly find that it will prove to be a most unusual event. Her guardian, Uncle Augustus Percival has developed a compulsion for eating bugs. Yes, that’s right—bugs! If that isn’t strange and disturbing enough, party guests begin disappearing. Kidnapping notes appear, complete with bug clues. Can Petronella keep Uncle Augustus from eating them? Low/Card has given us a spunky heroine that doesn’t disappoint.
A wonderfully crafted middle-grade mystery, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone made me want to dig out my copy of Fabre’s Book of Insects in lieu of the imagined Insectile Creatures to examine those old entomological drawings! Seemingly first in a series of adventure/mysteries, I can’t wait to read the next. -- Nancy Castaldo

THE WIDOW’S WAR
Mary Mackey, Berkley, 2009, $15/C$18.50, pb, 368pp, 9780425227916
    Carolyn Vinton and Dr. William Saylor, both abolitionists, were about to get married when he suddenly disappears. The family assumes he is dead, and Carrie is left grieving, pregnant and alone. When Deacon Presgrove, William’s stepbrother, offers to give the baby a name, Carrie accepts his offer to wed.
    It is 1853. In the years heating up to the Civil War, the Kansas Territory is a battleground between pro-slavery and abolitionist factions. Carrie soon learns that her father-in-law, a famous senator, is in favor of slavery. Feeling betrayed by Deacon, and then learning that William is alive, Carrie decides to break free to find William.
    This is a novel to read again and again. Mackey creates magic when she brings together the star-crossed pair of Carolyn Vinton and Dr. William Saylor. This is one of those “non-stop, can’t put down” books. Carrie is dynamic and strong, a woman of presence and grace, and the sparks fly between her and William; their connection is sensational.
    The story is peppered with intricate deception and edgy climactic tension that builds until the conclusion. Mackey has created a well-researched romantic historical novel. The depictions of John Brown, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, “Bloody Kansas,” and other events are credible, real and memorable. This would be an excellent companion novel when studying the American Civil War in high school or beyond. No doubt The Widow’s War will be one of the best of 2009. -- Wisteria Leigh

HEART’S BLOOD
Juliet Marillier, Roc, 2009, $24.95/C$31, hb, 416pp, 9780451462930 / Tor UK, 2009, £17.99, hb, 560pp, 9780230017917
    When a narrative is potent enough to absorb my thoughts long after I turn the final page, I know I’ve got a winner in my hands. And so it is with Heart’s Blood, a gothic romantic fantasy set in 14th-century Ireland.
    Whistling Tor is a place of secrets, a mysterious wooded hill housing the crumbling fortress of a chieftain whose name is spoken throughout the district in tones of revulsion and bitterness. A curse lies over Anluan’s family and his people; the woods hold a perilous force whose every whisper threatens doom. And yet the derelict fortress is a safe haven for Caitrin, the troubled young scribe who is fleeing her own demons. Despite Anluan’s tempers and the mysterious secrets housed in the dark corridors, this long-feared place provides the refuge she so desperately needs. As time passes, Caitrin learns there is more to the broken young man and his unusual household than she realized. It may be only through her love and determination that the curse can be lifted and Anluan and his people set free...
    Marillier continues to deftly blend elements of the fantastical and spiritual with the corporeal and earthly in Heart’s Blood, shifting the focus from humans' interactions with mythical, ethereal beings to those of unquiet spirits. Although darker in tone than many of her previous books, the novel’s rendering of strong characterizations and complex emotions shines brightly. This novel tackles strong themes, such as abuse and faith, with subtlety and finesse, while engaging readers’ senses with striking descriptions of place and time. An enchanting, touching read—highly recommended. -- Andrea Connell

TRANSGRESSION: A Novel of Love and War
James W. Nichol, Harper, 2009, $13.99, pb, 352pp, 9780061782312
    In 1941, in German-occupied France, 16-year-old Adele Georges meets Manfred Halder. Halder, a 19-year-old German working as a clerk, offers to help Adele find information about her missing father, a doctor who served in the French medical corps. The attraction between the two is palpable. They fall in love and begin a desperate affair that causes joy and grief to both.
    In 1946, in Canada, a young girl finds a finger in the woods. The police chief suspects there is a entire body to be found as well, and begins an investigation for the corpse and the murder that created it.
    The murder investigation progresses slowly, hour by hour, alternating with the story of Adele and Manfred and the war in Europe. When the war ends and Adele moves to Canada, the plots merge. The ending is fast-paced and gripping. Which character is the corpse and which is the murderer?
    This is a brilliantly constructed novel of good people trying to do good things, surrounded by war, hatred and bigotry. Nichol perfectly captures the sense of hope and hopelessness of those in the midst of war, as well as the pain and terror that continue after the war has ended. It is a heart-wrenching, haunting, beautiful book. -- Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

VELVA JEAN LEARNS TO DRIVE
Jennifer Niven, Plume, 2009, $15/C$18.50, pb, 404pp, 9780452289451
    In 1933, when she is ten years old, Velva Jean Hart is saved for the first time. And she is “saved” with the full sense of the theatrical implied in that word, at a revival meeting in her home of Sleepy Gap, North Carolina. Her subsequent salvations are less dramatic but more profound.
    Spanning just eight years, Velva Jean’s story takes the reader from the death of her mother when she was ten to her marriage at age fifteen to a moonshiner’s son to her discovery of freedom at eighteen. When I finally lifted my head from this book, I couldn’t believe all that had happened in that short period of time; I was completely immersed in the insular world of Fair Mountain where the construction of a road to lead out of the community is viewed with deep suspicion (and some sabotage) by the locals. Velva Jean is different, though, and her mother’s dying request for her to “live out there” resonates within her as she sings, writes songs, and dreams of Nashville.
    This is a beautifully realized world filled with recognizable but not clichéd characters. The reader knows that Velva Jean’s marriage to Harley Bright will derail her plans for Nashville, but like her, I was seduced by his attentions and saw, just as she did, that his transformation into a revival preacher would have consequences for their future together. Her true soul mate is her brother Johnny Clay, who gives her a bright yellow truck, inspiring a song.
    Niven is the author of two non-fiction books and a forthcoming memoir, but this is her first novel. Not a misstep is taken. I was thrilled to learn she plans a sequel; Velva Jean’s story has me that captivated. -- Ellen Keith

THE CAVALIER IN THE YELLOW DOUBLET (US) / THE MAN IN THE YELLOW DOUBLET (UK)
Arturo Pérez-Reverte (trans. Margaret Jull Costa), Putnam, 2009, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 384pp, 9780399156038 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009, £12.99, hb, 288pp, 9780297852483
In this fifth book in the adventures of Captain Alatriste, the captain and his page, soldier in training Íñigo Balboa, experience a respite in Madrid from fighting in Flanders. Madrid in 1626 is enchanted with the theater and with the actors, playwrights and poets of the day. When Captain Alatriste and amorous Spanish monarch Philip IV receive favors from the same beautiful actress, the captain’s enemies use the rivalry in their own cause. Captain Alatriste’s friends, the high and the low, gather round him when he is accused of plotting regicide; poet, playwright and wit don Francisco de Quevado, King Philip IV’s favorite the Count of Guadalmedina, and 16-year-old old Íñigo Balboa. Yet the captain’s most loyal companion, Íñigo, may prove a dangerous connection with his love for Angélica, a “poisonous young woman,” and niece of the sinister royal secretary Luis de Alquézar.
Akin to the preceding novels, The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet is a superior adventure story wherein swordfights, gallantry, and intrigue are never lacking. But the deeper enjoyment in all five adventures of Captain Alatriste is in Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s prose. In the guise of narrator Íñigo Balboa, a mature soldier looking back on 17th-century Spain, Pérez-Reverte ponders the Spanish hunger for luxury and the “moral infirmity that destroyed the Spanish empire, that empire of two worlds – the legacy of hard, arrogant, brave men who had emerged out of eight centuries spent cutting Moorish throats.” Even a heretic can recognize that The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet is a gem. -- Eva Ulett

FLINT
Margaret Redfern, Honno, 2009, £6.99, pb, 195pp, 9781906784041
    Young Will and his brother Ned are called away from their home in East Anglia to King Edward’s Welsh wars to dig the foundations for his new castle at Flint, intended as part of his campaign to bring Prince Llewellyn to heel once and for all. Will is the younger of the brothers but takes responsibility for Ned, who is strange and otherworldly. Ned is a mute, a musician, an herbalist and healer, who has been taught his arts by an accomplished Welsh bard, Ieuan ap y Gof – but what is a Welsh bard doing in the heart of the East Anglian fens? As the boys travel into the heart of Wales, they find their answer, but there is danger on all sides and nothing is as it seems.
    Flint is a book that sits well in both the young adult and adult markets. Its particular strength is the poetry of the language and the way it draws the reader into a stark, beautiful, dangerous mediaeval world, so rounded out and tactile that I believed I was there. It’s a wonderful, miniature gem of a novel. The reader will need to concentrate as the novel does flick about in time, but once absorbed into the rhythm, it’s a highly rewarding, skilled piece of writing. One for my keeper shelf. -- Susan Hicks

THE BRIDE’S FAREWELL
Meg Rosoff, Viking, 2009, $24.95, 214pp, 9780670020997 / Puffin, 2009, £10.99, hb, 192pp, 9780141383934
    Pell Ridley has seen the ravages of marriage, and she has firmly decided against it. Her mother’s health and well-being have been compromised by frequent childbirth, spousal abuse, and a hardscrabble life in a town with a very apt name: Nomansland. Though her childhood friend Birdie would make a fine husband, marriage isn’t for Pell, so she escapes her home on the morning of her wedding, accompanied by her adoptive brother Bean, a mute who was abandoned by his mother, and her beloved horse Jack. Pell has a way with horses, so she travels to Salisbury Fair in an attempt to find work. But work is difficult to come by for a young woman traveling on her own, and Pell quickly finds herself facing challenges she did not expect. While there are many along her path who are willing to come to her aid, there are others who wish her harm, and her journey toward independence from her family and a better life becomes a struggle to survive.
    Set in the 1850s, The Bride’s Farewell is spare, uncompromising, and difficult to put down. Pell could have easily become little more than a tragic runaway in less capable hands. Rosoff shows the reader brief glimpses of the forces that shaped Pell Ridley: the loss of several of her siblings to disease; her drunken zealot father’s abuse; her relationship with Birdie Finch and his family; and her knowledge and love of horses. Most of the relationships that Pell has witnessed in her brief life are dysfunctional in some way, and one of Pell’s greatest struggles throughout the book is reconciling her need for connection with others with her fear of dependence. This novel is strikingly original, refreshingly unsentimental, and a pleasure to read.
-- Nanette Donohue

NEW YORK: The Novel
Edward Rutherfurd, Doubleday, 2009, $30.00, hb, 880pp, 9780385521383 / Century, 2009, £18.99, hb, 1040pp, 9781846051951
    Edward Rutherfurd says that “New York's magnificent gift to the storyteller is a four-century history as exciting as that of any place on earth.” Well, New York: The Novel is Edward Rutherfurd’s gift to historical fiction readers. He is at the top of his game with this book, which tells the story of New York from 1664, when it was New Amsterdam and a Dutch settlement, to the terrible events of September 11.
    As in all his books, the story follows the lives of a few fictional families through time, with historical events interwoven, including the rise of New York as the financial capital of the U.S., the construction of major city landmarks, Tammany Hall politics, and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The families represent a cross-section of New York. The Dutch and English settlers are represented by the Van Dycks and Masters, united through marriage, who become wealthy early on and are part of the group of New Yorkers with “old money.” Their story is contrasted with that of a black slave, Quash, and his descendants. Then there are the O’Donnells and the Carusos, Irish and Italian working class families pursuing the American dream in their own way.
    While it’s clear that Rutherfurd has done a prodigious amount of research, he never gets boring or pedantic. He obviously knows the city well and has great affection for it. Don’t be put off by the book’s length – it is a quick read despite its 800+ pages. When I finished, I thought about how wonderful it is that there are writers like Edward Rutherfurd who make vast amounts of history so incredibly entertaining. Highly recommended.
-- Jane Kessler

SECRET LAMENT
Roz Southey, Crème de la Crime, 2009, £7.99, pb, 305pp, 9780955707865
    An exciting page-turner set in Newcastle in the 18th century. This is the third book by Roz Southey with Charles Patterson as the central character. Charles, who once only wanted to play and compose, cannot remember the last time he put pen to paper. These days he cannot resist helping to solve mysteries. This time, however, he also finds himself suspected of the crime. English ruffians are after his blood, and there is an attempted burglary at the house of Esther, his girlfriend.
    The novel is set in a world of time slippage, at an intersection of two worlds. Charles has the ability to slip out of one world into the other and, when a murder is discovered in one world, Charles unexpectedly discovers that there is something completely different happening in the other world.
    Gossiping spirits who are not always that helpful, a psalm teacher who keeps vigil over a house, music rehearsals with the new band director, Italian actors, and French spies are all included along with actresses, mistresses, flirtations and seductions – together they combine to create a vivid picture of the time. You can see and smell the city, feel the mystery and tensions, and become drawn into the pursuit as the pace quickens. It remains absorbing to the end.
    The story is very readable, keeping the reader guessing and eager to know more. Its characters are very well drawn and it is crammed with historical facts. Roz Southey creates something completely different with this series. It is a must-read for those who love historical fiction. There is also crime, mystery, romance, and a bit of science fiction thrown in. -- Barbara Goldie

A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN
Kate Walbert, Scribner, 2009, $24.00, hb, 9781416594987
    “‘What can be done?’ asks Man.‘What cannot be done?’ answers Woman.” This apt quote signifies the thrust of five generations of women spanning the time between the late 1800s and 2007.
    It all begins with the suffragette, Evelyn Charlotte Townsend, who starves herself to death for the cause of women’s freedom, an act that haunts the next five generations of her family in England, Argentina and the United States. Culturally, these women are far ahead of their time, wanting to learn more than the niceties allowed in order for them to care for the “doers,” the men in their lives. They aren’t afraid to learn about Darwin, to quote the most liberal and visionary poets, and to soak up relevant knowledge of the most current thinkers like Havelock Ellis. Dorothy’s granddaughter, Evelyn Charlotte Townsend, takes up the cause against World War I that would hide the returning caskets of fallen soldiers, a mission that gets her socially labeled as a troublemaker like her grandmother. So it goes through these generations all the way to the last Evelyn, who markedly protests the Iraq War.
    The plot sounds mundane, but this novel is written in such a literate, solid style that it pulls the reader into scenes that invite participation, if only one could dredge up such feisty nerve. To say more would be a spoiler, but this reviewer so highly recommends this literate account of unique women who live in a cocoon of haunting, surrealistic rebellion with such realistic goals that are ironically deemed as insane by those who follow the norm. Such is the stuff of heroic living. A Short History of Women is must reading and should be part of any decent literature, anthropology or social science curriculum. It’s bound to become a classic. -- Viviane Crystal

THE LITTLE STRANGER
Sarah Waters, Virago, 2009, hb, £16.99, 501pp, 9781844086016 / Riverhead, 2009, $26.95, hb, 480pp, 9781594488801
There is a fundamental enigma at the heart of this excellent novel set in England in the austere and grim years after the Second World War: is Hundreds Hall, the elegant but crumbling house belonging to the Ayres family, haunted, or are the weird phenomena merely the perceptions of the rather disturbed inhabitants? Dr Faraday, an unmarried general practitioner in his late thirties, whilst on a visit to attend to a servant in the house gradually gets to know the Ayres family – the middle–aged widow Mrs Ayres and her two grown-up children, Roderick and Caroline. Faraday comes from a working class background and has had to work hard to achieve and maintain his professional position, and the clash between his social class and that of the gentrified Ayres is a main thread in the story. Childhood memories of a visit to the Hall, where Faraday’s own mother, who died young, was a nursery maid just after World War One, provide the impetus for his intense interest and obsession with the house and its occupants. Faraday is the rationalist who explains away the seemingly paranormal, but is helpless as tragedy afflicts both the Ayres and then Faraday himself.
Sarah Waters has quickly gained a well-deserved reputation for her fiction, and this book is excellently narrated in the first person by Dr Faraday, with whom the reader develops an ambiguous relationship, for at times he seems obtuse and selfish, while at others, the readers empathises with the perplexities he is faced with. The decline of landed gentry and the rise of new wealth in England still struggling to recover from the War is very much the leitmotif, as the telling historical context is accurate and credible. -- Doug Kemp

THE BOOK OF THE ALCHEMIST
Adam Williams, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009, £18.99, hb, 438pp, 9780340899137
    Imagine the Arabian Nights transposed to the Spanish Civil War, or rather the narrator transposed to Andalusia in 1938, for like Scheherazade the narrator of The Book of the Alchemist is telling stories of long ago. Also, like Scheherazade, the narrator is a prisoner telling the stories in a bid to survive.
    This then is a story within a story, each with its own narrator, switching alternately from the 20th and the 11th century. The 20th-century framework concerns a Republican politician held hostage by a band of Communist guerrillas besieged in a cathedral by the Francoist army. He discovers an Arab manuscript in the crypt which narrates the adventures of three men, a Moslem, a Christian and a Jew, in Mediaeval Andalusia and in reading the stories to his fellow prisoners he finds the means to escape.
    This is also a moral tale, contrasting the enlightened tolerance of Arab Spain with the murderous bigotry of the 1930s. Both the Arab story and the Civil War story in which it is embedded are ultimately tragedies, although in both tales enough of the protagonists survive to keep the flame of hope alive.
    The Arab story takes up the larger part of the book, told from the viewpoint of a small Moorish principality assailed by both Christian crusaders and Berber fanatics. It has all the feel of court, military and harem life that pervades the Arabian Nights, and as with Scheherazade we have to stretch our credulity at times. If you enjoyed the Arabian Nights you should enjoy this.
-- Edward James

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