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Forthcoming Historical Fiction for 2009


This list of adult historical fiction titles has been compiled from publishers’ catalogs, publisher home pages, Publishers Weekly forecasts, Amazon, and information supplied by authors.  Titles and dates are subject to change.
We list mainstream and small press titles set in the 1950s and earlier. 

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January | February | March | April | May | June
July | August | September | October | November | December | Later Titles

View Archive:
Historical Novels from 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2003


January 2009

Gil Adamson, The Outlander, Bloomsbury (young widow flees pursuers across the Canadian wilderness)

Laurie Albanese and Laura Morowitz, The Miracles of Prato, Morrow (story of the forbidden romance between Fra Filippo Lippi, a painter and Carmelite monk during the Renaissance, and a young nun)

Suzanne Arruda, The Leopard's Prey, Obsidian (in British East Africa during the WWI years, the body of a local merchant is found on a coffee plantation; 4th Jade del Cameron mystery)

William Bernhardt, Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness, Ballantine (chronicles the last case of Eliot Ness, and America's first known serial killer)

Jen Black, Far After Gold, Quaestor 2000 (romantic tale of Vikings and Celts, pagans and Christians set in c10th Scotland)

Paul Block and Robert Vaughan, Armor of God, Forge (modern-day religious thriller combined with the tale of a scholar living through the First Crusade)

Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Orion (mystery set in 1950s sleepy English village)

Rita Bradshaw, Gilding the Lily, Headline (saga of girl whose Titanic trip changes her life)

Christian Cameron, Tyrant: Storm of Arrows, Orion (Athenian cavalry commander takes on Alexander the Great – sequel to Tyrant)

Bernard Cornwell, Agincourt, HarperCollins (re-creates one of the most dramatic battles in English history - October 25, 1415 - through the eyes of a great warrior once imprisoned for marrying a forbidden woman)

M F W Curran, The Hoard of Mhorrer, Macmillan (historical fantasy set in Europe and Egypt in 1820)

Suzannah Dunn, The Queen's Sorrow, Harper (a novel of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, as seen through the eyes of a member of King Philip's entourage)

David Ebershoff, The 19th Wife, Black Swan (polygamous Mormons in c19th America)

Elissa Elliott, Eve: A Novel of the First Woman, Delacorte (reimagines the world's oldest tale, based in biblical tradition and ancient history)

Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Ballantine (a Chinese boy growing up in WWII-era Seattle comes of age alongside Keiko, a Japanese girl)

Alistair Forrest, Libertas, Quaestor 2000 (Spaniard caught up in civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey)

W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, People of the Thunder, Forge (explores the civilization of the prehistoric mound-builders of 14th-century Mississippi; sequel to People of the Weeping Eye)

Cecelia Holland, The High City, Forge (conclusion of Corban Loosestrife saga, this time set in the High City of Constantinople during the reign of Basil II)

Sara Houghteling, Pictures at an Exhibition, Knopf (a son's quest to recover his family's lost masterpieces, looted by the Nazis, set in WWII-era Paris)

J. Sydney Jones, The Empty Mirror, Minotaur (historical thriller featuring Gustav Klimt)

Francesca Kay, An Equal Stillness, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (the tempestuous marriage of two artists in the mid C20th, where one’s success is resented by the other, based on a true story)

Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Ladies' Lending Library, Harper (the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for the end-of-season party in August, 1963)

Jasper Kent, Twelve, Bantam (dark historical fantasy set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia)

Kathleen Kent, The Heretic’s Daughter, Macmillan (daughter of woman hanged during the Salem Witch hysteria tells her story)

Al and Joanna Lacy, Outlaw Marshal, Multnomah (a federal marshal and a former outlaw make a powerful team; western inspirational fiction)

Margaret Lawrence, Roanoke, Delacorte (historical suspense linking two queens and two continents, linked by the unsolved mystery of the Roanoke colony)

Janice Y.K. Lee, The Piano Teacher, Viking (an epic tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong)

Maureen Lindley, The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, Bloomsbury (Chinese princess turned Japanese spy in early C20th)

Paul Malmont, Jack London in Paradise, Simon & Schuster (novel about the legendary Jack London, in the last year of his life)

Simon Mawer, The Glass Room, Little Brown (owners of a modernist house in Czechoslovakia flee the Nazis and the house slips from Nazi to Communist ownership, until the story comes full circle with the collapse of Communism)

Robin Maxwell, Signora da Vinci, NAL (novel about Caterina, mother of Leonardo da Vinci)

Carla Nayland, Paths of Exile, Quaestor2000 (an epic tale of battle, honour, loyalty and betrayal, set in Anglo-Saxon England)

Malla Nunn, A Beautiful Place to Die, Atria (darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa)

Jem Poster, Rifling Paradise, Overlook (thriller set in the wilds of 19th century Australia, as a minor English landowner tries to make his mark as a naturalist)

Anthony Quinn, The Rescue Man, Jonathan Cape (love found and lost in WWII Liverpool)

Christopher Ransom, The Birthing House, Sphere (couple buy a Victorian house and the husband finds a century-old photo of a group of angry women – including his wife)

Linda L. Richards, Death Was in the Picture, Minotaur (hard-boiled private eye novel set in 1930s Hollywood; Kitty Pangborne mystery #2)

Robert Ryan, Death on the Ice, Headline Review (story of Captain Scott’s fatal journey to the South Pole)

Simon Scarrow, Fire and Sword Headline Review (third in series about Wellington and Napoleon)

Danny Scheinmann, Random Acts of Heroic Love, St. Martin's (dramatic portrait of two epic and apparently unconnected love stories, set in 1992 and 1917)

Brian Sellars, The Whispering Bell, Quaestor 2000 (woman’s fight for justice in c7th Anglo-Saxon England)

John Stack, Ship of Rome, HarperCollins (Roman naval adventure)

Diane A.S. Stuckart, Portrait of a Lady, Berkley Prime Crime (Leonardo da Vinci's apprentice, a woman disguised as a man, helps find the murderer of two female servants)

Alain Claude Sulzer, A Perfect Waiter, Bloomsbury (love affair between two waiters that spans 1935 to the 1960s and involves a German writer escaping the Nazis)

Frank Tallis, Darkness Rising, Century (murder mystery in Vienna in 1903)

Andrew Taylor, Bleeding Heart Square, Hyperion (historical mystery set in 1934 London, as aristocratic Lydia Langstone moves to haunted Bleeding Heart Square)

Charles Todd, A Matter of Justice, Morrow (11th installment featuring Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge)

Barry Unsworth, Land of Marvels, Doubleday and Hutchinson (literary thriller set in 1914, as the Western nations are making a grab for political power in the Middle East)

Paul Waters, Of Merchants and Heroes, Overlook (love, loss and redemption set in the classical world of ancient Rome and Greece at the end of the 3rd century BC)

John Wilcox, Siege of Khartoum, Headline (latest adventure of soldier Simon Fonthill, called to the aid of General Gordon)

Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad, Henry Holt (Christmas Eve, 1931: Maisie Dobbs must catch a madman before he commits murder on a massive scale) 

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February 2009

Boris Akunin, The Coronation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (mystery set against the backdrop of the last Tsar’s coronation)

Shalom Aleichem, Wandering Stars, Viking (new translation of a lost classic, a sprawling love story set in the world of Yiddish theater in the late 19th century)

Charlotte Bingham, The Daisy Club, Bantam (group of young women set out to save country house as WWII breaks out)

Jessica Blair, Stay With Me, Piatkus (C19th saga set in Whitby)

Richard Blake, The Terror of Constantinople, Hodder & Stoughton (the Roman Empire under siege)

Dave Boling, Guernica, Picador (story of two families before and during the Spanish Civil War)

T.C. Boyle, The Women, Viking (novel of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the viewpoint of four women in his life)

John Boyne, Mutiny, St. Martin's (a novel of the mutiny on the Bounty, as seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old pickpocket who becomes the captain's assistant)

Tom Bradby, Blood Money, Bantam (thriller ser during the Wall St Crash of 1929)

Cassandra Clark, Hangman Blind, Minotaur (debut in a new mystery series featuring an abbess in 13th century England)

Robert Conroy, 1942, Ballantine (alternate history about WWII)

James Conan, The Coburg Conspiracy, Hutchinson (late c19th intrigue involving anarchists and threats to the royal houses of Europe)

Lindsey Davis, Alexandria, Century (latest in Falco Roman mystery series)

Elaine diRollo, A Proper Education for Girls, Crown (about feisty women, the devotion of sisters, and Victorian obsessions with empire, experiments, and photography, set in London and India in 1857)

Kate Emerson, Secrets of the Tudor Court: The Pleasure Palace, Pocket (biographical novel of Jane Popyncourt, a member of the royal court of Henry VIII and mistress to the Duc de Longueville)

Pamela Evans, The Tideway Girls, Headline (early c20th saga of girls separated by shame)

Ariana Franklin, Grave Goods, Putnam (third title in the Mistress of the Art of Death series, set at Glastonbury Abbey in 1176; are the remains found there really Arthur and Guinevere?)

Kate Grenville, The Lieutenant, Canongate (naval lieutenant arrives in New South Wales in 1787 and meets Aboriginal girl with life-changing results)

Karen Harper, Mistress Shakespeare, Putnam (novel about Anne Whateley, betrothed to William Shakespeare days before he's forced to wed the pregnant Anne Hathaway)

Nicole Helget, The Turtle Catcher, Houghton Mifflin (in a rural Minnesota town of German immigrants in the tumultuous days of World War I, brings together two misfits from warring clans)

Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes, Doubleday (story of c18th African girl brought to America as a slave)

Christian Jacq, Tutankhamun: The Last Secret, Simon & Schuster (descendant of Howard Carter investigates the Egyptian king’s last secret)

Marlon James, The Book of Night Women, Riverhead (literary historical novel of Jamaican slavery)

Mary Pat Kelly, Galway Bay, Grand Central (family saga set against the backdrop of the Great Irish Starvation)

Giles Kristian, Raven: Blood Eye, Bantam (2nd in Viking adventure series)

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Luke's Story, Putnam Praise (follows the Gospel writer Luke as he rises from Greek slave to university-educated physician)

Dewey Lambdin, The Baltic Gambit, St. Martin's (15th in this Napoleonic naval adventure series finds Capt. Alan Lewrie headed towards Russia in Britain's last attempt to prevent war between the nations)

David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk, Bloomsbury (1913 - Cambridge mathematician receives a letter from an Indian clerk that will change their lives and the future of mathematics – true story)

Gregory Maguire, Mirror, Mirror, Headline Review (retelling of Snow White, set in 1502)

David Maidment, The Child Madonna, Melrose (imaginative take on the story of the Virgin Mary)

Robert Masello, Blood and Ice, Bantam (vampire thriller/sweeping love story tracing from the battlefields of the Crimean War to present-day Antarctica)

Donna Russo Morin, The Courtier's Secret, Kensington (about the courtiers at Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV, and one woman who dares to defy the norms)

Malla Nunn, A Beautiful Place to Die, Picador (murder mystery set in 1950s South Africa)

David Park, The Big Snow, Bloomsbury (murder, secrets and desires in Belfast in 1963)

Caro Peacock, A Dangerous Affair, Avon A (2nd installment of Liberty Lane historical mystery series, set in the world of the Victorian theatre)

Sharon Penman, The Devil’s Brood, Michael Joseph (last in trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine)

Frances de Pontes Peebles, The Seamstress, Bloomsbury (lives of two sisters in 1930s Brazil)

David Roberts, No More Dying, Soho Constable (Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne are invited to Cliveden in Buckinghamshire in February 1939; murder stalks the formal gardens)

C.J. Sansom, Revelation, Viking (4th Matthew Shardlake mystery; his search for an old friend's murderer leads him to Bedlam Hospital for the insane and also to Katherine Parr and the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation)

Brian Sellars, The Whispering Bell, Quaestor2000 (the story of a woman's love and of her fight for justice in the male-dominated, heroic society of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon England)

Dan Simmons, Drood, Little Brown (Victorian-era historical thriller narrated by Wilkie Collins: did Charles Dickens lead a secret, double life?)

Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife, Doubleday (First Lady looks back on her 1940s childhood and youth)

Susan Squires, The Burning, Macmillan (Regency vampire romance)

Kathryn Stockett, The Help, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (three women in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, two black and one white, start a civil rights movement of their own)

Dan Vyleta, Pavel and I, Bloomsbury (espionage thriller set in Berlin in 1946)

Paul Waters, Cast Not The Day, Macmillan (Young British Roman caught up in the clash between classical enlightenment and Christianity as the Roman Empire cracks under civil war and external threats)

Jules Watson, The Swan Maiden, Bantam Spectra (mythological historical novel about Deirdre, called the Irish Helen of Troy)

Richard S. Wheeler, North Star, Forge (Barnaby Skye novel; Skye and his wives and son cope with immense change as the wilderness vanishes)

Lauren Willig, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, Dutton (fifth installment of the Pink Carnation romantic Napoleonic-era espionage series, which introduces the most elusive spy of all time)

Sandra Wilson, Lady Jane’s Ribbons, Robert Hale (early c19th romance)

Dirk Wittenborn, Pharmakon, Bloomsbury (dark goings-on amongst mind-scientists in 1950s America)

Xu Xiaobin, Feathered Serpent, Atria International (family saga, satire, and magical realism spanning five generations of Chinese women, beginning in the 1950s)

Robyn Young, The Fall of the Templars, Dutton (novel about the last days of the Knights Templar, final novel in trilogy)

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March 2009

Steve Amick, Nothing but a Smile, Pantheon (love story of a man and woman who find an unconventional way to redefine themselves during the WWII years)

Lyn Andrews, A Daughter’s Journey, Headline (saga set in Ireland and Liverpool in the 1950s and 1960s)

Jeffrey Archer, Paths of Glory, Macmillan / St Martin's (was George Mallory really the first man to conquer Everest?)

Joan Bakewell, All The Nice Girls, Virago (Manchester girls’ school is twinned with a Merchant Navy ship during WWII)

Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect, Piatkus (historical romance in the Georgette Heyer mould)

Rhys Bowen, In a Gilded Cage, Minotaur (Molly Murphy follows the trail of an orphan's rightful inheritance in early 20th-century New York City)

T C Boyle, The Women, Bloomsbury (the wives and mistresses of architect Frank Lloyd Wright)

Alan Brennert, Honolulu, St. Martin's (novel about a "picture bride" who leaves Korea for Honolulu in 1914 in search of a better life)

J. California Cooper, Life Is Short But Wide, Doubleday (literary family saga set in Wideland, Oklahoma, beginning in the early 20th century)

Brian D'Amato, In the Courts of the Sun, Dutton (a novel of the 2012 apocalypse; science-fiction adventure in which a descendant of the Mayans time-travels back to the year 664 AD)

Gordon Dahlquist, The Dark Volume, Bantam (continuation of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, literary suspense set in an alternate Victorian world)

Saul David, Zulu Hart, Hodder & Stoughton (military adventure set in the early wars of Victoria’s reign)

Rebecca Dean, The Palace Circle, Broadway (novel about a Southern girl who marries into the British aristocracy and travels with her husband to Egypt before WWII)

Frank Delaney, Shannon, Random House (a journey through the heart of 1920s Ireland taken by a young American priest shell-shocked by his wartime experiences)

David Dickinson, Death of a Pilgrim, Soho Constable (when a pilgrim is killed in Le Puy en Velay, France, in 1905, Lord Powerscourt must investigate)

Margaret Dickinson, Suffragette Girl, Macmillan (after recovering from hunger strike, girl becomes a nurse in WWI)

P.C. Doherty, A Haunt of Murder, Minotaur (final tale in Chaucer-themed medieval mystery series)

Nick Drake, Tutankhamun, Bantam (latest in mystery series set in Ancient Egypt)

Dave Duncan, The Alchemist's Pursuit, Ace (historical fantasy mystery featuring Nostradamus and his apprentice, Alfeo; who's murdering the courtesans of Venice?)

David Fiddimore, The Hidden War, Macmillan (fourth in Charlie Bassett series, set during the Berlin Blockade in 1948)

James Fleming, Cold Blood, Jonathan Cape (literary thriller set during Russian Revolution)

Tim Gautreaux, The Missing, Knopf (literary suspense in the post-WWI years; the search for a missing child leads Sam Simoneaux to join her musician parents on a search on a Mississippi excursion steamboat)

Jason Goodwin, The Bellini Card, FSG (3rd Yashim mystery set in 1840 Istanbul he investigates the reappearance in Venice of Bellini's portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror)

Jo Graham, Hand of Isis, Orbit (historical fantasy; retelling of the life of Cleopatra, as seen through the eyes of her handmaiden and half-sister, Charmian, an eternal oracle)

Hilary Green, The Final Act, Hodder & Stoughton (4th in a series set during WWII)

Charlotte Hardy, The Road Home, Severn House (young man searches for love and identity in c19th Ireland)

Rachel Heath, The Finest Type of English Womanhood, Hutchinson (fictionalised story of the infamous Porthole Murder case of 1947)

Sherrie Hewson, The Tannery, Macmillan (father returns from WWII to find daughter has been ill-treated by her alcoholic mother)

T.L. Higley, City of the Dead, B&H (2nd in series of inspirational novels about the Seven Wonders of the World)

M K Hume, King Arthur: Dragon’s Child, Headline Review (first in Dark Age Arthurian series)

C C Humphreys, Vlad: The Last Confession, Orion (story of Dracula)

Helen Humphreys, The Frozen Thames, Delacorte (imagines forty stories during historical times when the Thames froze, between 1142 and 1895)

Conn Iggulden, Genghis: Bones of the Hills, Delacorte (third historical adventure novel in Genghis Khan series, as the Mongol warrior faces a challenge from the west)

Ben Kane, The Forgotten Legion, St. Martin's (three men and one woman in the late Roman Republic fight for honor, freedom, and revenge)

Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana, Roc (reissue of fantasy novel in an alternate world based on Renaissance Italy)

Ismail Kadare, The Siege, Canongate (besieged Albanian army awaits the onslaught of the Ottoman Empire in the early c15th)

Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame, Putnam (Bernie Gunther noir mystery set in 1950 Buenos Aires)

Gerald Kolpan, Etta, Ballantine (imagines the life of outlaw Etta Place, known companion of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)

Joyce Lebra, The Scent of Sake, Avon A (about the hidden culture of Japanese sake brewing families in the 19th century)

Jim Lehrer, Oh, Johnny, Random House (coming-of-age novel about a newly-minted Marine, his wartime experiences, and the girl in Kansas City he can't forget)

Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones, Chatto & Windus (fictional memoir of an SS intelligence officer)

Charlotte Lovejoy, Madame Bliss, Signet Eclipse (the erotic adventures of Miss Marianna Wren, an 18th-century wanton)

Robert Low, The White Raven, HarperCollins (latest in Viking adventure series)

Tom Macauley, The Warning Bell, Orion (man investigates father’s WWII secret mission in Brittany)

Karen Maitland, The Owl Killers, Michael Joseph (witchcraft, heresy and Christianity in C14th England)

Andrew Martin, The Last Train to Scarborough, Faber (latest in the Jim Stringer Steam Detective series set in the early c20th)

Robert Masello, Blood and Ice, Harvill Secker (macabre discovery in Antarctica leads back to events in the Crimean War)

Katharine McMahon, The Rose of Sebastopol, Putnam (sweeping historical novel about love, war, betrayal, and discovery on the Crimean battlefield, in 1854)

Rose Melikan, The Counterfeit Guest, Sphere (1796, young woman comes into a fortune and agrees to spy on her best friend during a time of army rebellion when England is under threat)

Tim Murgatroyd, Taming Poison Dragons, Myrmidon (old man in c12th China gains strength from his illustrious past to confront present disasters)

Elle Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief, Doubleday (intrigue in c15th Venice)

Kate Noble, Revealed, Berkley Sensation (historical romance; love and war among the ton in Regency England)

Diana Norman, A Catch of Consequence, Berkley (reissue of 1st in Makepeace Burke series, set in Revolutionary-era Boston and Georgian London)

Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Man in the Yellow Doublet, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (latest in the Captain Alatriste series set in Spain)

Anne Perry, Execution Dock, Ballantine (long-awaited return of police superintendent William Monk; Victorian mystery)

Caroline Rance, Kill-Grief, Picnic Publishing (in the 18th century, a young woman's determination to escape her past leads her into life as a nurse in a world of disease, surgery and rotgut gin)

Laurie Viera Rigler, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Bloomsbury (modern girl slips into early-C19 England and a romance)

Louise Shaffer, Serendipity, Ballantine (the world of 1950s Broadway theater, three generations of an Italian-American family, and secrets between mothers and daughters)

Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows, Bloomsbury (intertwining of personal lives with political background in Japan, India, Pakistan, New York and Afghanistan from 1945 to 9/11)

Dan Simmons, Drood, Quercus (Wilkie Collins is dragged into Charles Dickens’s pursuit of a spectral figure through the underbelly of Victorian London)

Anne Easter Smith, The King's Grace, Touchstone (about Grace, illegimate daughter of Edward IV, and Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be her half-brother, one of the Princes in the Tower)

Jill Eileen Smith, Michal, Revell (#1 in the Wives of King David series of biblical fiction)

Susan Squires, One With The Night, Macmillan (Regency vampire romance)

Rowena Summers, Chasing Rainbows, Severn House (1920s romance)

Manil Suri, The Age of Shiva, Bloomsbury (woman finds her place in post-partition India)

Roberta Taylor, The Reinvention of Ivy Brown, Atlantic (1960s spinster has pinned her marital hopes on a man with a secret)

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April 2009

Ace Atkins, Devil's Garden, Putnam (noir crime novel about one of the most notorious trials in American history: circa 1921, as Pinkerton agent Dashiell Hammett is hired by Fatty Arbuckle's defense team)

Biyi Bandele, The King's Rifle, Amistad (first novel to depict black the experiences of black African soldiers in World War II)

Russell Banks, The Reserve, Bloomsbury (family secrets in America in 1936)

Alex Beecroft, False Colours, Running Press (Age of Sail-Gay)

Gioconda Belli, Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, HarperCollins (what were the lives of Adam and Eve really like, as innocents in paradise?)

Vanora Bennett, Blood Royal, HarperCollins (story of Catherine de Valois)

Vanora Bennett, Figures in Silk, Morrow (the two daughters of silk merchant John Lambert during the Wars of the Roses)

Christine Blevins, The Tory Widow, Berkley (a widow who prints Tory propaganda in Revolutionary War-era NYC is drawn into the patriot cause via a former suitor)

Kenneth Cameron, The Bohemian Girl, Orion (Edwardian mystery featuring American author-sleuth Denton)

Emma Campion, The King's Mistress, Century (novel of Alice Perrers, who became mistress to King Edward III)

Enrique Clio, The Far-Away War, St. Martin's (novel about Henry Reeve, the most respected American hero in Cuban history)

Matthew Condon, The Trout Opera, Doubleday (c20th through Australian eyes)

Sandra Dallas, Prayers for Sale, St. Martin's (novel about the secrets women keep, set in a small Colorado town during the Depression)

Anna Davis, Diamond Sharp, Doubleday (story set in the scandalous world of London in the Roaring Twenties)

Colin E Demet, Iolaire and the Beasts of Holm, Wordcatcher (tragedy befalls servicemen returning from WWI when their boat hits treacherous rocks)

Paul Doherty, The Darkening Glass, Headline (latest in Mathilde of Westminster series set in the reign of Edward II)

Kate Ellis, The Perfect Death, Piatkus (link between modern murder and C13th legend)

Erastes, Transgressions, Running Press (English Civil War novel -Gay)

Loren Estleman, The Branch and the Scaffold, Forge (about the West's legendary "hanging judge," Judge Isaac Parker)

Esther Freud, Summer at Gaglow, Bloomsbury (four generations of a family, beginning in Germany in 1914)

David Fuller, Sweetsmoke, Abacus (slave risks all to avenge the murder of a black freedwoman during the American Civil War)

Iain Gale, Brothers in Arms, HarperCollins (third in early c18th-military adventure series featuring a soldier in the Duke of Marlborough’s army)

DeVa Gantt, Decision and Destiny, Avon A (2nd volume in a saga about the tragedies and triumphs of a 19th-century American family in the West Indies)

Rebecca Gowers, The Twisted Heart, Canongate (modern day literature student investigates mystery surrounding Dickens and  the killing of a prostitute)

Almudena Grandes, The Frozen Heart, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (deceit and betrayal in the Spanish Civil War)

Michael Gregorio, A Visible Darkness, Minotaur (3rd Hanno Stiffeniis mystery set in early 19th century Prussia)

Maeve Haran, The Lady and the Poet, Macmillan (illicit love affair between a spirited girl and John Donne)

Georgina Harding, The Spy Game, Bloomsbury (woman searches for the truth about her mother who disappeared in 1961)

Tony Hays, The Killing Way, Forge (first volume in new, gritty Arthurian-era mystery series featuring Malgwyn ap Cuneglas)

Susan Higginbotham, The Traitor's Wife, Sourcebooks (biographical novel of Eleanor de Clare, favorite niece of King Edward II)

Dara Horn, All Other Nights, Norton (about the great moral struggles of the Civil War, from the viewpoint of a Jewish soldier in the Union army ordered to marry a spy)

Paulette Jiles, Far and Away, Morrow (the life of a free black man on the Texas frontier)

Jane Kirkpatrick,  A Flickering Light, WaterBrook (coming-of-age-tale about a young woman in 1907 Minnesota, centering on the artistry and business of photography)

Martin Langfield, The Secret Fire, Penguin (thriller set in WWII and present day involving a paper by Sir Isaac Newton)

Elizabeth Lord, Julia’s Way, Severn House (young woman forges a new future in 1920s London)

Jack Ludlow, Mercenaries, Allen & Busby (1st in trilogy set during the run up to the Norman Conquest)

Louis Maistros, The Sound of Building Coffins, Toby Press (voodoo, demons and the birth of jazz in 1890s New Orleans)

Patrick Mercer, To Do and Die, HarperCollins (military adventure during the Crimean War)

Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman, St. Martin's (tale of wit and romance in Regency-era society)

Kamran Pasha, Mother of the Believers, Atria (the birth of Islam seen through the eyes of Aisha, the Prophet Muhammad's youngest wife)

Iain Pears, Stone’s Fall, Jonathan Cape (quest. Love story and mystery set against the backdrop of international finance 1867-1909)

Anne Perry, Execution Dock, Headline (latest Inspector Monk mystery, set in 1864)

Christi Phillips, The Devlin Diary, Pocket (novel of intrigue, romance, and murder shifting between present-day Cambridge, England, and Restoration London, as a killer stalks the court of Charles II)

Jean Plaidy, The King's Confidante, Three Rivers (the story of the daughter of Sir Thomas More; reissue)

Jonathan Rabb, Shadow and Light, Sarah Crichton/FSG (historical thriller set in Weimar Berlin)

Shawna Yang Ryan, Locke 1928, Penguin Press (story about a community of Chinese immigrants living in a California town in 1928)

Albert Sánchez Piñol, Pandora in the Jungle, Canongate (1914: English manservant emerges from jungle with an extraordinary tale to tell)

Anna Richards, Little Gods, Picador (woman’s escape from maternal tyranny during and after WWII)

Joanna Catherine Scott, Child of the South, Berkley (literary novel of loyalty, duty, and love in the days after the Civil War, sequel of The Road from Chapel Hill)

Wilbur Smith, Assegai, Macmillan (latest in Courtneys of Africa adventure series, set in 1913)

Janet Tanner, The Years to Come, Severn House (romantic suspense set in the c19th Australian Outback)

D J Taylor, Ask Alice, Chatto & Windus (epic set in England and America from 1904 to the 1920s)

Harry Turtledove, Give Me Back My Legions!, St. Martin's (novel of the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, one of Rome's greatest military disasters)

Russell Whitfield, Gladiatrix, St. Martin's Griffin (about a female gladiator in ancient Rome)

Janet Woods, Hearts of Gold, Severn House (romance set during the late c19th Australian Gold Rush)

Sally Zigmond, Hope Against Hope, Myrmidon (two Yorkshire sisters and the men in their lives in England and France during the mid-c19th of revolution and railways)

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May 2009

Rennie Airth, The Dead of Winter, Macmillan (third in Inspector Madden series, set in London during the Blackout in 1944)

Mike Asher, Death or Glory I: The Last Commando, Michael Joseph (WWII action thriller)

Janet Aylmer, Julia and the Master of Morancourt, Harper (Regency-era novel
about a young woman from rural Derbyshire who tries to achieve a match with
the man she loves)

Philip Baruth, The Brothers Boswell, Soho (history's famous literary duo,
Johnson and Boswell, are stalked by Boswell's mad younger brother; set in
1763 Edinburgh)

Jane Borodale, The Book of Fires, Harper Press (love, fireworks and redemption in rural Sussex)

Marie Brennan, In Ashes Lie, Orbit (historical fantasy set in London in 1666)

John Boyne, The House of Special Purpose, Doubleday (Russian exile revisits scandal and death in his past in early c20th Russia)

Sian Busby, McNaghten: A Novel, Short Books (story of a monomaniacal Scotchman and the diabolical death of Mr Samuel Drummond)

Kenneth Cameron, The Frightened Man, Minotaur (crime novel set in London in 1900)

Rebecca Cantrell, A Trace of Smoke, Forge (first in new mystery series set in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis)

Susan Carroll, Twilight of a Queen, Ballantine (latest in Daughters of the Earth series, romantic fantasy set in Tudor England)

Lindsey Davis, Alexandria, Minotaur (Marcus Didius Falco novel set in Alexandria, Egypt, in AD 77)

Lindsey Davis, The Course of Honour, Griffin (reprint; forbidden love between a man destined to be emperor of Rome and a woman who was a slave)

Michael Dean,  The Crooked Cross, Quaestor2000 (Munich 1933:  Hitler, the German resistance and Expressionist art)  

Philip Depoy, The King James Conspiracy, St. Martin's Press (in 1605, a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Bible is revealed as an unknown killer stalks the scholars working on the English translation for King James)

John Drake, Flint and Silver, Simon & Schuster (prequel to Treasure Island)

Anna Elliott, Twilight of Avalon, Touchstone (different retelling of the Tristan and Isolde legend, with Isolde as daughter of Mordred and granddaughter of Morgan le Fay)

Margaret Elphinstone, The Gathering Night, Canongate (story of Mesolithic tribes at the mercy of tribal conflict and natural disaster)

Dawn Farnham, The Shallow Seas, Monsoon (young Victorian woman flees Singapore  pregnant with her Chinese lover’s child and later returns to confront her past)

Julia Frank, The Blind Side of the Heart, Harvill Secker (family story taking in two World Wars)

C.W. Gortner, The Last Queen, Ballantine (biographical novel of Juana la Loca, the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit the throne)

Susanna Gregory, A Vein of Deceit, Sphere (latest in medieval-cum-sleuth Matthew Bartholomew series)

Jan Guillou, The Road to Jerusalem, Harper (1st in new trilogy about the
Crusades, moving from Scandinavia to the Holy Land in the 12th century)

Cora Harrison, The Sting of Justice, Macmillan (latest in mystery series featuring  featuring c16th  female Irish judge, set in the Burren)

Seth Hunter, The Tide of War, Headline Review (latest in naval adventure series set in the late c18th)

Mick Jackson, The Bears of England, Faber (novel about bears in English history)

Michael Jecks, No Law in the Land, Headline (latest in Baldwin de Furnshill mystery set in reign of Edward II)

Laurie R. King, The Language of Bees, Bantam (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes's search for Holmes's missing son in London and Scotland)

William Klein, The Woman Who Would be Pharaoh, Kunati (biographical novel of Ankhesenamun, the newly widowed wife of the murdered Tutankhamun)

Ursula Le Guin, Lavinia, Gollancz (story of Lavinia and Aeneas, characters from Virgil’s Aeneid)

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate (wide-ranging novel set early in the reign of Henry VIII)

Vestal McIntyre, Lake Overturn, Harper (a year in the life of Eula, Idaho,
during the Cold War)

Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault, Bloomsbury (personal lives intertwine with the removal of the temple at Abu Simbel for the construction of the Aswan Dam in 1964)

Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti, Secretum, Polygon (spying and intrigue in the courts of the crowned heads of Europe in the early c18th)

Jude Morgan, The Taste of Sorrow, Headline Review (story of the Brontës)

Annie Murray, Hopscotch Summer, Macmillan (family saga set in 1930s Birmingham)

David Peace, Occupied City, Faber (search for mass poisoner in post-WWII occupied Japan)

Iain Pears, Stone's Fall, Spiegel & Grau (epic novel that moves backward in time from 1909 London to 1867 Venice as it uncovers the mystery surrounding the death of a wealthy financier)

Pierre Pevel, The Cardinal’s Blades, Gollancz (historical fantasy adventure set during the time of Cardinal Richelieu)

Stefanie Pintoff, In the Shadow of Gotham, Minotaur (turn-of-the-century mystery set in NYC, the first Minotaur Books/MWA Best First Crime Novel winner)

Imogen Robertson, Instruments of Darkness, Headline Review (Gothic mystery set in c18th Sussex)

Manda Scott, The Fire of Rome, Bantam (spy returns from Britannia to find an old friend and a Christian convert plotting terrorism in Nero’s Rome)

Anya Seton, The Turquoise, Chicago Review Press (a young woman's adventures in 1870s Santa Fe, New Mexico, and NYC)

Tim Severin, The Sea Robber, Macmillan (third adventure of Hector Lynch, pirate)

Susan Sellers, Vanessa and Virginia, Houghton Mifflin (imagines the lifelong relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf from Vanessa's point of view)

Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows, Picador (epic narrative of love and betrayal,  beginning on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, and ending in a prison cell in the US in 2002)

Wilbur Smith, Assegai, St. Martin's Press (next novel in the Courtney Saga, set just prior to WWI)

Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn, Scribner (set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early
1950s, a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the American who wins her heart)

Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger, Virago (ghost story set in a Warwickshire manor house in the 1940s)

Laura Wilson, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Orion (murder mystery set in WWII London)

Terri Wiltshire, Carry Me Home, Macmillan New Writing (love and redemption in the Deep South in the early c20th)

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June 2009

Rosie Alison, The Very Thought Of You, Alma (child evacuated to Yorkshire during the Blitz and is drawn into the troubles of her host family)

Rory Clements, Martyr, Bantam (John Shakespeare, elder brother of Will, roots out the Queen's enemies in 1580s England and Scotland; first in new mystery series)

Emma Darwin, A Secret Alchemy, Harper (story of the Princes in the Tower)

Anna Davis, The Jewel Box, Pocket (a jazz-age tale of love set in the world
of London's high society)

John Drake, Pieces of Eight, HarperCollins (pirate adventure involving characters from Treasure Island)

Anne Marie Drosso, In Their Father's Country, Telegram (Two sisters of Syrian descent grow up in 1920s Cairo, a land rocked by violent anti-British demonstrations)

Christine Dwyer, Last Train from Liguria, Atlantic (English governess in 1930s Italy flees the Fascists)

Monica Fairview, The Other Mr Darcy, Robert Hale (Austenesque romantic comedy focusing on Caroline Bingley and other characters from Pride and Prejudice)

Marina Fiorato, The Glassblower of Murano, Griffin (multi-period novel about a woman and her Venetian glassblower ancestor, set in 1680s Venice and today)

Julia Franck, The Blind Side of the Heart, Harvill Secker (German-Jewish Helene and her family caught up in WWI and 2)

Kate Furnivall, The Girl from Junchow, Berkley (Lydia Ivanova from The Russian Concubine learns that her father--thought killed by the Bolsheviks--is imprisoned in Stalin-controlled Russia)

Glen David Gold, Sunnyside, Sceptre (1917: lives of three characters, including Charlie Chaplin, overlap in an age of war, capitalism and emerging Hollywood)

Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic, Constable & Robinson (third book in the Jack Haldean murder mystery series, set in London 1923)

Julia Gregson, East of the Sun, Touchstone (the lives of three young women
on their way to a new life in India in the 1920s)

Kathryn Miller Haines, Winter in June, Harper (3rd Rosie Winter mystery set
in 1943 New York)

Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man, Faber (novel about art and artists from 1960s to present day)

Brooks Hansen, John the Baptizer, Norton (literary novel about John the Baptist, drawing on both ancient and modern sources)

James Holland, Darkest Hour, Bantam (May 1940, British soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Europe)

Katherine Howe, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane / The Lost Book of Salem, Voice (US) and Penguin UK (woman investigates mysterious document relating to the Salem witch trials – and she isn’t the only one keen to unravel the secrets therein)

Jeanne Kalogridis, The Devil's Queen, St. Martin's (novel of Catherine de Medici)

Ben Kane, The Silver Eagle, Preface (second in Roman military adventure series takes place in Parthia and Gaul in the 1st century BC)

Bronia Kita, The Swansong of Wilbur McCrum, Picador (picaresque novel set in American Gold Rush)

Judith Lennox, In the Heart of the Night, Headline Review (passion, betrayal and danger in WWII Britain and Europe)

Katharine McMahon, The Crimson Rooms, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (story of female lawyer in the 1920s)

Wu Ming, Manituana, Verso (the birth of the USA and the destruction of a utopia within it)

Siri Mitchell, Love's Pursuit, Bethany House (a woman in a small Puritan community in colonial Massachusetts finds that her beauty attracts attention from the town's wealthiest bachelor)

Nancy Moser, How Do I Love Thee?, Bethany House (biographical novel of Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Shirley McKay, Hue and Cry, Polygon (Scottish crime tale set in c16th St Andrews)

Glen Peters, Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta, Parthian Books (political thriller set in Calcutta’s Anglo-Indian community in the 1960s)

Margaret Redfern, Flint, Honno (story of two Welshmen used as ditch-diggers for the foundations of Edward I’s castle at Flint)

Alex Rutherford, Moghul, Headline Review (first in a series about the Moghul Empire)

Gill Schierhout, The Shape of Him, Jonathan Cape (woman ahunted by an old lover in South Africa, 1900-1945)

Fiona Shaw, Tell It To The Bees, Tindal Street (friendship between two women breaches social and sexual prejudices of the 1950s)

Brian Thompson, The Captain’s Table, Jonathan Cape (a Bella Walllis mystery, London 1875)

Adam Thorpe, Hodd (a re-imagining of Robin Hood with no merry band, no concern for the needy and no Maid Marian)

Kate Tremayne, The Loveday Conspiracy, Headline Review (latest in Cornish saga in the vein of Poldark)

Mariolina Venezia, Here for a Thousand Years, Harvill Secker (fortunes of an Italian family from the 1860s to the fall of the Berlin Wall)

Kate Walbert, A Short History of Women, Simon & Schuster (chronicles four
generations of women, beginning in England in 1915)

Dee Williams, This Time For Keeps, Headline (saga set in WWII)

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July 2009

Megan Abbott, Bury Me Deep, Simon & Schuster (suspense and intrigue set in
Jazz Age California; portrayal of an accused murderess)

Susanne Alleyn, The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Minotaur (a murdered man is found in a Parisian cemetery in 1786, where struggling writer Aristide Ravel recognizes the strange symbols surrounding the body to be Masonic)

Judith Allnatt, [untitled], Doubleday (the story of c19th poet John Clare, his descent into madness and the woman who loved him)

Ann Barker, Ruined, Robert Hale (period romance)

Rita Bradshaw, Born to Trouble, Headline (period saga set in Sunderland)

DeAnna Cameron, The Belly Dancer, Berkley (a young married woman is charged with ensuring proper conduct at the Egyptian belly dancing exhibition at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago)

Kenneth Cameron, The Bohemian Girl, Orion (Edwardian crime story)

P.C. Doherty, The Magician's Death, Minotaur (Hugh Corbett medieval mystery)

Angus Donald, Outlaw, Sphere (Robin Hood adventure)

Ruth Downie, Persona Non Grata, Bloomsbury USA (next in Ruso series set in Roman Britain)

Barbara Ewing, The Fraud, Sphere (mystery set in the art world of 18th-century London)

Christopher Fowler, Bryant & May on the Loose, Doubleday (latest in 1940s crime series)

Denise Giardina, Emily's Ghost, Norton (novel about Emily Brontë, her family, and her unconsummated romance with William Weightman, an idealistic clergyman who champions poor mill workers' rights)

Philip Gooden, The Durham Disappearance, Soho Constable (Victorian mystery filled withseances, levitations, and murder, set in Durham and London)

Lillian Harry, Springtime in Burracombe, Orion (saga set in Devon village during Coronation Year, 1953)

Judith Koll Healey, The Rebel Princess, Morrow (sequel to The Canterbury
Papers, in which Alais, Princess of France, sneaks into unfamiliar territory
to save her son and prevent a holy war)

Steve Hockensmith, A Crack in the Lens, Minotaur (a Holmes on the Range mystery set in the Texas Hill Country in 1893)

Robert Holdstock, Avilion, Gollancz (historical fantasy set in Dark Age Britain)

Dara Horn, All Other Nights, Old Street (Jewish soldier in American Civil War involved in undercover work)

Douglas Jackson, Claudius, Bantam (the Roman invasion of Britain halts to await the arrival of the Emperor and his elephants)

Anna Jacobs, Freedom Land, Hodder & Stoughton (WWI ex-serviceman wants to settle in Australia but first must find a wife)

Eloisa James, When the Duke Returns, Hodder & Stoughton (18thC romance)

Syrie James, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, Avon A (an inside look
at one of the most beloved writers of all time)

Remi Kapo, Reap the Forgotten Harvest, Quartet (epic tale of slavery beginning in 1617, with English and African characters)

Zoe Klein, Drawing in the Dust, Pocket (an archaeologist in Israel turns up
ancient remains and a set of scrolls documenting a great romance within
history)

Claire Letemendia, The Best of Men, Jonathan Cape (disillusioned soldier becomes a spy in the English Civil War)

Norah Lofts, Here Was a Man, Touchstone (a novel of Sir Walter Raleigh and
Elizabeth I; reprint)

James McCreet, The Incendiary’s Trail, Macmillan (crime in early Victorian London)

Pat McIntosh, The Stolen Voice, Soho (Gil and Alys Cunningham investigation
set in medieval Scotland)

Kirsten McKenzie, The Chapel at the End of the World, John Murray (Italian POW in WWII Orkneys builds a chapel whilst pining for his sweetheart at home)

Michelle Moran, Cleopatra’s Daughter, Quercus (the story of Cleopatra’s daughter Selene by Mark Antony and her life in Rome)

Margaret Muir, The Condor’s Feather, Robert Hale (C19th adventure set in South America)

Janet Mullany, A Most Lamentable Comedy,  Little Black Dress (Regency chick-lit)

Barbara Nadel, Sure and Certain Death, Headline (WWII crime mystery set in London)

Patrick Neate, Jerusalem, Fig Tree (novel about Englishness partly set in the early C20th)

Marina Oliver, Supervising Sally, Robert Hale (period romance)

Janet Paisley, Warrior Daughter, Penguin (novel of Scotland’s Iron Age warrior queens)

Ann Parker, Leaden Skies, Poisoned Pen Press (Inez Stannert historical mystery set in the silver mining boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, in the 1880s)

Matthew Pearl, The Last Dickens, Harvill Secker (literary thriller about the death of Dickens and its aftermath)

Bali Rai, City of Ghosts, Doubleday (young Sikh fighting for the Empire during WWI falls in love with an English girl but later returns to an India rebelling against the British Raj)

Monique Roffey, White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Simon & Schuster (white newlyweds get mixed up in politics of 1950s Trinidad)

Adam Schell, Tomato Rhapsody, Delacorte (passionate, ribald, and virtuosic romance set in 17th-century Tuscany)

Susan Holloway Scott, The French Mistress, NAL (biographical novel of Louise de Keroualle, told in her own voice)

Jacqueline Sheehan, Now & Then, Avon A (when Anna's life begins spinning out
of control, she wakes up one day among her ancestors in Ireland in 1844)

Harry Sidebottom, King of Kings, Michael Joseph (second in Warrior of Rome series set in AD256)

Peter Smalley, The Gathering Storm, Century (latest in C18 naval adventure series)

Shirley Smith, Forgotten as a Dream, Robert Hale (period romance)

Keith Souter, The Fool’s Folly, Robert Hale (crime story set in reign of Richard III)

Sarah Stanley, Midwinter Marriage, Robert Hale (Regency romance)

Mary Jane Staples, The Summer Day Is Done, Bantam (British agent in Russia falls in love with Tsar’s daughter Olga but tragedy ensues as WWI breaks out)

Paul Sussman, The Hidden Oasis, Bantam (archaeological mystery set in ancient Egypt and the c20th/21st

Peter Tremayne, The Dove of Death, Headline (latest in Sr Fidelma mystery series set in C7th Ireland)

Robert Twigger, Dr Ragab’s Universal Language, Picador (adventure in 1920s Mexico and WWII Germany)

Nicola Upson, Angel with Two Faces, Harper (2nd Josephine Tey mystery, set
in Cornwall between the wars)

Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Allison & Busby (researcher stumbles upon the story of an elusive C19th spy)

Laura Wilson, The Innocent Spy, Minotaur (first in new mystery series set in 1940 London)

Laura Wilson, An Empty Death, Orion (WWII crime series)

Pip Vaughan-Hughes, [untitled], Orion (latest in mystery series set in Cathar France)

Fan Wu, Beautiful as Yesterday, Atria (from mid-century China to the new
millennium, three Chinese women try to reconcile the past with the present)

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August 2009

Boris Akunin, Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel, Random House (Sister Pelagia mystery set in rural 19th century Russia)

Annamaria Alfieri, City of Silver, Minotaur (historical mystery set in the silver-rich, Spanish-ruled city of Potosí, Peru, in the 17th century)

Lynn Andrews, Maggie May, Headline (1880s Liverpool saga)

Elizabeth Ashworth, The de Lacy Inheritance, Myrmidon (novel about the inheritance left by Robert de Lacy, and the medieval concepts of the relationships between love, religion, and disease)

Michael Atkinson, Hemingway Deadlights, Minotaur (first in new mystery series starring the tough-talking, hard-drinking, Nobel Prize-winning sleuth, Ernest Hemingway)

Debra Austin, Daughter of Kura, Touchstone (a young female leader comes of
age in prehistoric Africa, circa 500,000 years ago)

Gillian Bradshaw, London in Chains, Severn House (young woman works for publisher of political pamphlets in Civil War London)

Sarah Bryant, The Other Eden, Berkley (literary Southern Gothic about a 19th-century Bostonian woman in Louisiana)

Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures, HarperCollins (Mary Anning and her fossil discoveries in C19th Dorset)

Gloria Cook, Dream Chasers, Severn House (early Victorian romance)

Deborah Crombie, Where Memories Lie, Macmillan (Gemma James & Duncan Kincaid series – refugee from Nazis asks them to investigate her past)

Sarah Dunant, Sacred Hearts, Random House US/Virago UK (in 1570 Ferrara, while counter-reformation forces in the Church push for change, 16-year-old Serafina rages against her forced enclosure in a convent)

Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse's Tale, Putnam  (a plucky lower-class woman in Victorian England becomes a professional wet nurse and discovers her new employer's home harbors sinister secrets)

Diana Evans, The Wonder, Chatto & Windus (young man in London looks back on 1950s Kingston, Jamaica)

Molly Glass, The Hearts of Horses, Macmillan (1917 female horse-whisperer)

Juan Gomez Jurado, Contract with God, Orion (thriller partly set in WWII Vienna)

Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic, Soho (third Jack Haldean murder
mystery set in 1923 England)

Clio Gray, Brotherhood of Five, Headline (mystery set in 1805 Kent)

Christina Green, The Far Land, Robert Hale (romance set in 1880s Devon and beyond)

Glen Iliffe, The Gates of Troy, Macmillan (second in series retelling the Iliad)

Marlon James, The Book of Night Women, Oneworld (secret group of slave women plot revolt in Jamaica)

Matthias Malzieu, The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Chatto & Windus (Pinocchio for the I-Pod generation set in Edinburgh in 1874)

Sam Meekings, Under Fishbone Clouds, Polygon (love story set in China from the Japanese occupation of the 1930s to the Cultural Revolution)

Rose Melikan, The Counterfeit Guest, Touchstone (adventure, romance, and
mystery in Georgian England; sequel to The Blackstone Key)

Shandi Mitchell, Under This Unbroken Sky, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (immigrant family in Canadian Prairies 1938)

Chris Nicholson, The Elephant Keeper, Morrow (the extraordinary love between
and elephant and her keeper over 25 years, set in 18th-century England)

Alexandra O’Connor, The Jeweller’s Niece, Headline (saga set in NW England, mid C20)

Brigid Pasulka, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, Sceptre (a courtship in a Polish village is cut short by WWII)

David Peace, Occupied City, Faber (in 1948 Tokyo 16 people are poisoned and this novel tells the stories of the 12 victims who died)

Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet, Putnam (Captain Alatriste part 5, swashbuckling adventure set in the cosmopolitan world of  17th-century Madrid)

Ron Rash, Serena, Canongate (love, passion and revenge in 1929 North Carolina)

Anthony Riches, Wounds of Honour, Hodder & Stoughton (first in Roman military series set on Hadrian’s Wall)

Meg Rosoff, The Bride's Farewell, Viking (a young woman in 1850s rural England flees her home on horseback on the day she’s to marry her childhood sweetheart and heads for the Salisbury Fair)

Simon Scarrow, The Gladiator, Headline (latest in Roman army series)

Philip Sington, The Einstein Girl, Harvill Secker (a secret at the heart of Einstein’s first marriage that threatens to destroy him)

David Szalay, The Innocent, Jonathan Cape (as the Cold War enters détente, a Stalinist secret serviceman re-examines his past)

Betsy Tobin, Ice Land, Plume (epic adventure of forbidden love, lust, jealousy, faith, and magical wonder set in Iceland in 1000 AD)

Jonathan Tulloch, A Winding Road, Jonathan Cape (novel of madness and creativity from Van Gogh to the Nazis and the present day)

Jeane Westin, The Virgin's Daughters, NAL (story of two ladies-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I... Lady Katherine Grey and Mistress Mary Rogers)

Jack Whyte, Order in Chaos, Putnam (final volume of Templar Trilogy)

Evie Wyld, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, Harvill Secker (Australian son of immigrants looks back on his past in the 1950s and 60s)

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September 2009

Simon Hugh Verdon Acland, The Waste Land, Charlwood (monk turned knight on 1st crusade as recorded in sensational rediscovered manuscript)

Susan Wittig Albert, The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, Berkley Prime Crime (latest in the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter historical mystery series)

Tasha Alexander, Tears of Pearl, Minotaur (latest Lady Emily Ashton mystery set in late 19th c Constantinople)

Maggie Anton, Rashi's Daughters: Book Three, Rachel, Plume (novel of Rachel, the youngest and most beautiful daughter of medieval Jewish scholar Rashi, in 11th-century Troyes)

Roberto Bolaño, Amulet, Picador (Mexico 1968 students take on army)

Faye L Booth, Trades of the Flesh, Macmillan (murders in the underworld of Victorian London)

Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile, Touchstone (the
famous playwright and raconteur encounters murder when he goes on lecture
tour to the US)

Michelle Cameron, The Fruit of Her Hands, Pocket (the story of Shira of
Ashkenaz, wife of Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a renowned Jewish scholar
of medieval Europe)

Elizabeth Chadwick, The Greatest Knight, Sourcebooks (biographical novel of William Marshal, who rose from humble knight to Regent of England)

Lindsey Davis, Rebels and Traitors, Century (historical epic set amid the battles and politics of the English Civil War)

Anita Diamant, Day After Night, Scribner (fictionalizes the post-Holocaust
experience in a story about women in a holding camp for "illegal" immigrants
in 1945 Israel)

Carolly Erickson, The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, St. Martin's Press

Pai-Kit Fai, Red Lotus, Sphere (story set in 1920s China)

Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat, Chatto & Windus (companion volume to Old Filth, from his wife’s point of view – post WWII Hong Kong to 1950s London and later)

Philippa Gregory, The White Queen, Touchstone (first book in a new Wars of
the Roses-set series; this first volume focuses on Elizabeth Woodville,
queen of Edward IV)

Kathleen Cunningham Guler, A Land Beyond Ravens, Bardsong (book 4 of the Macsen's Treasure series, set in 5th-century Britain)

Susan Higginbotham, Hugh and Bess, Sourcebooks Landmark (novel of young love in 14th-century England)

Thomas Keneally, The People’s Train, Sceptre (a protégé of Lenin who had escaped Tsarist Russia for Australia, returns to fight for the Revolution)

Mary Mackey, The Widow's War, Berkley (a sweeping epic set during the early days of the Civil War)

Karen Maitland, The Owl Killers, Delacorte (dark mystery set in 14th-century England in which a house of religious women grants shelter to a young martyr)

Judith Miller, The Carousel Painter, Bethany House (1890s blend of mystery and romance as an Ohio woman is appointed to paint carousel horses)

Michelle Moran, Cleopatra's Daughter, Crown (follows the incredible life of Cleopatra's surviving children with Marc Antony -- twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and a younger son named Ptolemy)

Petru Popescu, Girl Mary, Simon & Schuster (brings to life Mary of Nazareth
as a beautiful, complicated girl in love, seen through the eyes of famous
characters)

Edward Rutherfurd, New York, Century (epic story of New York from an Indian village to the Twin Towers)

Frances Sands, Daughters of Hunger, Clover Press (lives of four women during 150 years of Irish history from the Potato Famine)

Kim Vogel Sawyer, Fields of Grace, Bethany House (Mennonite family immigrates to 1870s America)

Rebecca Stott, The Coral Thief, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (scientists and thieves collide in c19th Paris)

Bahaa Taher, Sunset Oasis, Sceptre (Egyptian governor of Siwa is caught between warring factions in British-ruled Egypt in the 1890s)

Victoria Thompson, Murder on Astor Place, Berkley Prime Crime (first trade pb release, first Gaslight mystery)

William Trevor, Love and Summer, Viking (poignant love affair set in the mid-1950s in the small Irish town of Rathmoye)

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October 2009

Boris Akunin, She-Lover of Death, Orion (C19th Russian crime series)

Tamera Alexander, Within My Heart, Bethany House (historical romance in 1870s Colorado Territory; a widow chooses between two suitors)

Justin Allen, Year of the Horse, Overlook (thrill-ride adventure novel capturing the adventure, mystery, legend, and lore of America)

Suzanne Arruda, Treasure of the Golden Cheetah, Obsidian (Jade del Cameron mystery, set in 1920 Kenya, on safari for a Hollywood film shoot inspired by the ancient legend of King Solomon’s lost treasure)

Lynn Austin, Though Waters Roar, Bethany House (journey towards women's rights, from the 1850s-1920s)

Anne Baker, Through Rose-Coloured Glasses, Headline (mid-C20th saga)

Stephanie Barron, The White Garden, Bantam (a novel of Virginia Woolf)

Maggie Brendan, The Jewel of His Heart, Bethany House (inspirational fiction set in 1890s Montana)

Benita Brown, The Starlet, Headline (celebrity and romance in 1940s London)

Sarah Bryant, Sand Daughter, Berkley (the Crusades of the 12th century, seen from the viewpoint of a Bedouin woman of no obvious importance)

Sheramy Bundrick, Sunflowers, Avon A (love affair between Van Gogh and an Arles prostitute who tries to save him from himself)

Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk, Ciao Bella, Thomas Dunne (romantic historical novel set in the hills of northern Italy after WWII)

Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land, HarperCollins (latest in series set in the time of King Alfred)

James Fleming, Cold Blood, Washington Square Press (Charlie Doig, hero of White Blood, returns to avenge his family as Russia descends into revolution)

Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone, Delacorte (next volume of Outlander series)

Stephen Gaspar, To Know Evil, Pemberley Press (Benedictine monk attempts to solve monastery murders in the Middle Ages while looking for ancient Christian codex)

Newt Gingrich, William R. Fortschen, and Albert S. Hanser, To Try Men's Souls, St. Martin's (a novel of George Washington and the fight for American freedom)

Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey, The Swiss Courier, Revell (suspenseful novel set in Europe during WWII)

Maeve Haran, The Lady and the Poet, St. Martin's (forbidden love between poet John Donne and Ann More)

Robert Harris, Lustrum, Hutchinson (second in series on Cicero and the fall of the Roman Republic)

T.L. Higley, Guardian of the Flame, B&H (inspirational fiction centering on the lighthouse of Alexandria in 48 BC)

Barbara Hamilton, The Ninth Daughter, Berkley Prime Crime (debut of new historical mystery series set in 1773 Massachusetts, featuring First Lady Abigail Adams)

Victoria Hislop, The Return, Harper (followup to The Island, set now and during the Spanish Civil War)

M K Hume, King Arthur: Warrior of the West, Headline Review (second in new Arthurian trilogy)

Christian Jacq, Judgment of the Mummy, Simon & Schuster (scandal surrounding exhibition of Egyptian artefacts in London, 1821)

Joseph Kanon, Stardust, Atria (haunting thriller set in 1945 Hollywood)

Joseph Kertes, Gratitude, Thomas Dunne (tells the story of Hungary's Jews during WWII, through the eyes of the wealthy Beck family)

Mercedes Lackey, Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit, DAW (historical Arthurian fantasy)

Giulio Leoni, The Kingdom of Light, Harvill Secker (intrigue in Dante’s Florence)

Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Ides of March, Macmillan (assassination of Julius Caesar)

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Holt (intricate, literary historical novel about the Tudor court in 1520s England, centering on Thomas Cromwell)

Fenella-Jane Miller, Two Gentlemen from London, Hale (Regency adventure novel)

Kate Mosse, The Winter Ghosts, Orion (shocking secret in 1920s France)

Irène Némirovsky, The Dogs and the Wolves, Chatto & Windus (from the Jewish quarter of a Ukrainian city to 1920s/30s Paris

Naomi Novik, In His Majesty's Service, Del Rey (latest in Temeraire series of Napoleonic-era fantasy novels)

Cornelia Nixon, Jarrettsville, Counterpoint (relationships between newly emancipated slaves and their former masters, set in post-Civil War Maryland)

Laura Joh Rowland, The Cloud Pavilion, Minotaur (historical mystery set in 1701 Japan)

Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, Crown (an interpretation of Jane Austen’s early novella Lady Susan)

Edward Rutherfurd, New York: The Novel, Ballantine (epic saga of the Big Apple, from the 17th century to the present, told through the stories of several intertwining fictional families)

Harry Sidebottom, Warrior of Rome: Fire in the East, Overlook (adventure thriller set in AD 255, during the ‘crisis of the Roman Empire’)

Julian Stockwin, Invasion, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in Napoleonic-era Kydd naval series)

Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, Dracula: The Un-Dead, Dutton (sequel to Dracula written by his great-grandnephew, based on Bram Stoker's notes and characters, begins in 1912)

Sarah Jane Stratford, The Midnight Guardian, St. Martin's (vampires during WWII)

Peter Tremayne, Council of the Cursed, Minotaur (latest Sister Fidelma mystery set in 670 AD Burgundy, France, at the Council of Autun)

Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses, Scribner (fictionalized biography of the author’s grandmother, frontier woman and rancher)

Jeri Westerson, Serpent in the Thorns, Minotaur (2nd Crispin Guest medieval mystery, set in 1384 London)

Suzy Witten, The Afflicted Girls, DreamWand (a novel of the Salem witch trials)

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November 2009

Madison Smartt Bell, Devil's Dream, Pantheon (novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest)

Sandra Brown, Rainwater, Simon & Schuster (romantic novel set in a boardinghouse in Depression-era Texas)

Emily Brightwell, Mrs Jeffries and the Yuletide Weddings, Berkley Prime Crime (latest in Victorian-era cozy mystery series)

Joanna Challis, Murder on the Cliffs, Minotaur (debut mystery starring Daphne du Maurier)

Clive Cussler and Justin Scott, The Wrecker, Putnam (action-packed historical thriller set in 1907)

Paul Doherty, The Templar Magician, Headline (C12th mystery set in the wars of Stephen and Matilda)

India Edghill, Delilah, St. Martin's (biblical fiction; a novel of Delilah and Samson)

Stephen Foreman, Watching Gideon, Simon & Schuster (about an intrepid father and his son as they journey into the American West in the 1950s in search of riches)

Jean Fullerton, Return to Love, Orion (romantic East End historical saga)

Diane Haeger, The Queen’s Mistake, NAL (novel of Catherine Howard)

C.S. Harris, What Remains of Heaven, Obsidian (Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, investigates two corpses found in an ancient crypt; 5th in series)

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Fallen Kings, Sphere (latest in Dynasty series reaches 1918)

Cora Harrison, Sting of Justice, Minotaur (3rd Burren mystery set in 16th c Ireland)

Kate Kingsbury, Decked with Folly, Berkley Prime Crime (latest in WWII-era Pennyfoot Hotel mystery series, set at Christmastime)

David Malouf, Ransom, Chatto & Windus (new take on the Iliad)

Juliet Marillier, Heart's Blood, Roc (historical fantasy set in 14th-c Ireland)

Anne Rice, Angel Time, Chatto & Windus (modern contract killer is carried back to C13th Enland and France by angels who give him the chance to redeem himself)

David L. Robbins, The Broken Jewel, Simon & Schuster (war, love, and survival set against the backdrop of the Los Baños prison raid in WWII)

Jeff Shaara, No Less than Victory, Ballantine (final novel in WWII trilogy)

Nick Stafford, Armistice, Quercus (young woman sets out solve the mystery of her soldier fiancé’s death minutes after the WWI Armistice)

Adam Williams, From Stone and Dream, Hodder & Stoughton (adventure, history and romance in Andalucia from medieval times to the Spanish Civil War)

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December 2009

Maureen Ash, Murder for Christ's Mass, Berkley Prime Crime (4th in Bascot de Marins medieval mystery series, set in 12th c Lincoln at Christmastime)

Elizabeth Chadwick, The Running Vixen, Sphere (young woman torn between love and duty, set in the C12th Welsh Marches)

Bernard Cornwell and Susannah Kells, The Fallen Angels, Harper (suspense novel set during the Reign of Terror)

Matthew Flaming, The Kingdom of Ohio, Amy Einhorn/Putnam (novel of conspiracies, love, and possible time-travel, set in modern-day LA and early 20th-century NYC)

Margaret Frazer, A Play of Treachery, Berkley Prime Crime (Joliffe journeys to France to act as a servant to the widowed duchess Jacquetta of Bedford while training in spycraft)

Norberto Fuentes and Anna Kushner, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro, Norton (audacious “biography” of the ex-president of Cuba told in Castro’s own outrageous, bombastic voice)

Audrey Howard, The Flight of Swallows, Hodder & Stoughton (Victorian saga)

Sheila Kohler, Becoming Jane Eyre, Penguin (story of Charlotte Bronte and how Jane Eyre came to be written)

Julianne Lee, Her Mother's Daughter, Berkley (novel about Queen Mary I)

Norah Lofts, The Lute Player, Touchstone (reprint of novel about Richard the Lionhearted and his lute player, Blondel)

Shira Nayman, The Listener, Scribner (first novel of madness and passion set in a psychiatric hospital after WWII)

Diana L Paxson, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon, Roc (A boy raised in secret after traitors kill his parents returns to Avalon)

Michael Pearce, A Dead Man in Naples, Soho Constable (murder and intrigue in one of Italy's most beautiful cities in the early 20th century)

Jessica Stirling, A Kiss and a Promise, Hodder & Stoughton (love, intrigue and snobbery in the Scotland of Robert Burns)

Christine Trent, The Queen’s Dollmaker, Kensington (story of a London dollmaker falsely accused of smuggling money and jewels to the imprisoned Marie Antoinette inside fashion dolls)

Harry Turtledove, Liberating Atlantis, Roc (alternate history)

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