Forthcoming Historical Fiction for 2010

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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Archive: Historical Novels from 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2003

January 2010

Kader Abdolah, The House of the Mosque, Canongate (the fall of the Shah and the Iranian Revolution through the eyes of one family)

Omair Ahmad, The Storyteller’s Tale, Viking (a tale-telling duel set in Delhi at the twilight of the Mughal empire)

Benita Brown, Starlight and Dreams, Headline (period story of girl longing for film stardom)

Monica Burns, Kismet, Berkley Sensation (historical romance set in 19th-century Morocco)

Christian Cameron, Tyrant: Funeral Games, Orion (latest in Alexander the Great series)

Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures, Dutton (novel of 19th c fossil hunter Mary Anning)

Maryse Condé, Victoire, My Mother’s Mother, Atria International (biographical novel about the author’s mestizo grandmother, who worked for a family of white Creoles in the French Antilles)

Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land, Harper (rousing saga of Anglo-Saxon England)

David Dickinson, Death of a Wine Merchant, Constable & Robinson (latest in Lord Francis Powerscourt Edwardian crime series)

Sam Eastland, The Eye of the Red Tsar, Faber (thriller set during Stalin’s Great Terror)

Kate Emerson, Secrets of the Tudor Court: Between Two Queens, Pocket (Anne Bassett and her life as lady in waiting to two of Henry VIII’s queens)

June Francis, Sunshine and Showers, Allison & Busby (romantic saga set in 1920s)

Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone, Orion (latest in Outlander series, c18th)

Chris Greenhalgh, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, Riverhead (romantic tale of Coco Chanel's illicit affair with Igor Stravinsky, set in 1913 France)

Barbara Hambly, Dead and Buried, Severn House (new Benjamin January mystery set in 1836 New Orleans)

Karen Harper, The Queen's Governess, Putnam (told in the voice of Queen Elizabeth I's governess, Katherine Ashley)

Panis Karnezis, The Spirit World, Jonathan Cape (serenity of a 16^th-c Spanish convent is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious box)

Eugenia Kim, The Calligrapher’s Daughter, Bloomsbury (young woman fighting for her future in Japanese-occupied Korea, early c20)

Bernard Knight, Where Death Delights, Severn House (first in new series about a forensic pathologist in 1955 England)

Johanna Moran, The Wives of Henry Oades, HarperPress (1900s, man marries in San Francisco not knowing that his first wife, kidnapped by Maoris, has escaped and is trying to find him)

Richard Rayner, A Bright and Guilty Place, Constable & Robinson (crime noir set in 1920s Los Angeles)

Rosemary Rowe, Requiem for a Slave, Severn House (11^th in the Libertus series of mysteries of Roman Britain)

Laura Joh Rowland, The Cloud Pavilion, Constable & Robinson (latest in crime series set in 17^th-c Japan)

M C Scott, Rome: The Emperor’s Spy, Bantam (thriller set in Nero’s Rome, with a spy pursuing St Paul as the prime suspect for the Fire of Rome)

Kate Sedley, Wheel of Fate, Severn House (historical mystery; in 15^th-c London, the child-king is not the only one under threat)

Rebecca Stott, The Coral Thief, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (scientists and thieves in 19^th-c Paris)

Diane A.S. Stuckart, A Bolt from the Blue, Berkley Prime Crime (a Leonardo da Vinci mystery; the iron-fisted Duke of Milan calls upon Master da Vinci to invent the deadliest weapon ever—a flying machine.)

Frank Tallis, Deadly Communion, Century (detective story set in Imperial Vienna)

Jackson Taylor, The Blue Orchard, Touchstone (based on the life of the author’s grandmother, a child of Irish immigrants arrested for assisting a black doctor in “illegal surgeries” in 1955)

Charles Todd, The Red Door, Morrow (mystery of post-WWI England)

Kaki Warner, Pieces of Sky, Berkley Sensation (a romance of the Old West)

John Wilcox, The Shangani Patrol, Headline (latest in Simon Fonthill series: 1893 S Africa, conflict between Rhodes and the Matabeles)

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February 2010

Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin, Bloomsbury (generational story of Palestinian family forced from their home into a refugee camp in 1948)

Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother, Quercus (boy in Madagascar in WWII befriends a European Jew in a prison camp and helps him escape)

Sam Barone, Conflict of Empires, Century (beginnings of Sumerian empire)

Sarah Blake, The Postmistress, Putnam (sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women—and of two countries torn apart by war)

Jane Borodale, The Book of Fires, Pamela Dorman/Viking (fireworks, fortune,and a young woman’s redemption, set in 1752 London)

Katharine Beutner, Alcestis, Soho (a re-imagining of Mycenaean Greece, a world peopled by capricious gods)

Cathy Marie Buchanan, The Day The Falls Stood Still, Hutchinson (love story of society girl and riverman set against the harnessing of the power of Niagara Falls in 1915)

Peter Carey, Parrot & Olivier in America, Faber (improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, 18^th-c)

Amelia Carr, A Song at Sunset, Headline Review (woman investigates WWII rift between her mother and grandmother)

Clare Clark, Savage Lands, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (in 1704, a Frenchwoman travels to colonial Louisiana to marry one of the struggling settlers)

David Donachie, The Admirals’ Game, Allison & Busby (Late 18^th-c naval adventure set against the Siege of Toulon)

Patricia Falvey, The Yellow House, Center Street (delves into the passion and politics of Northern Ireland at the beginning of the 20^th century)

Ben Farmer, Evangeline, Overlook (novel inspired by Longfellow’s eponymously titled epic poem)

Margaret Forster, Isa and May, Harvill Secker (writing a thesis on grandmothers in history, Isamay uncovers family secrets involving her own grandmothers)

Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, Coming of the Storm, Pocket (first book in new series about Native American and European first contact)

Kathleen Grissom, The Kitchen House, Touchstone (novel in which a white indentured servant girl lives and works with black slaves)

Pedro Juan Gutierrez, Our GG in Havana, Faber (a man who may or may not be Graham Green arrives in Havana in 1955)

Dana Hand, Deep Creek, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (historical thriller inspired by the 1887 massacre of Chinese miners in Hells Canyon, the middle-aged judge who went after their slayers, and the sham race-murder trial that followed)

Robert Harris, Conspirata, Simon & Schuster US (part 2 of Roman trilogy, about Cicero, in which the future of democracy is decided, and revenge is the coin of the realm; titled Lustrum in the UK)

Alon Hilu, The House of Dajani, Harvill Secker (love, honour and betrayal in 19^th-c Palestine)

Ellen Horan, 31 Bond Street, Harper (fictionalized account of the greatest tabloid scandal in 19th-century American history)

Garry Douglas Kilworth, Scarlet Sash, Severn House (a novel of the Zulu Wars, historical adventure)

M K Hume, King Arthur: The Bloody Cup, Headline Review (last in new Arthurian trilogy)

Angela Huth, Once a Land Girl, Constable Robinson (sequel to Land Girls, set in the Women’s Land Army during WWII)

Susanna Kearsley, Season of Storms, Allison & Busby (grandson of 1920s Italian playwright finds the past intrudes when he stages his grandfather’s masterpiece)

Mark Keating, The Pirate Devlin, Hodder & Stoughton (adventure in the golden age of piracy)

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Matthew's Story, Putnam (novel about the most unlikely of apostles, third book in Jesus Chronicles)

Andrea Levy, The Long Song, Headline Review (Jamaica during the last years of slavery)

Katharine McMahon, The Crimson Rooms, Putnam (a dramatic mystery about love, secrets, and discovery in post–World War I London)

Robin Maxwell, O, Juliet, NAL (new take on the mesmerizing young woman and poetess who inspired Shakespeare’s most famous female character)

Maria McCann, The Wilding, Faber (family secrets and passions in the years after the English Civil War)

Donna Milner, The Promise of Rain, Quercus (Canadian girl helps her father come to terms with WWII experiences in the Far East involving a terrible secret)

Andrew Pepper, The Detective Branch, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Inspector Pyke joins the newly-formed detective section of the Metropolitan Police in c19th London)

Brandy Purdy, The Boleyn Wife, Kensington (Lady Jane Rochford, the woman who betrayed two of Henry VIII's queens--Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard; previously self-published as Vengeance Is Mine)

Manuel Rivas, Books Burn Badly, Harvill Secker (panorama of 20^th-c Spain seen through the eyes of a group of friends)

Mary Rourke, The Prophetess, Crown (about the Hebrew prophet Isaiah and his formidable wife, Jael)

Eli Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love, Viking (two parallel narratives— one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz)

Dan Simmons, Black Hills, Reagan Arthur (weaves together the stories of Paha Sapa, Custer, and the American West)

Jill Eileen Smith, Abigail, Revell (2^nd in series about King David’s wives)

Ciji Ware, Island of the Swans, Sourcebooks Landmark (biographical epic about Jane Maxwell, 4th Duchess of Gordon, rival of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire)

Lauren Willig, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, Dutton (6th in Pink Carnation Napoleonic-era spy series, in which Miss Penelope Deveraux travels to India)

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March 2010

Lyn Andrews, A Secret in the Family, Headline (mid 20^th-c saga set in Liverpool and Ireland)

Maggie Bennett, The Carpenter’s Children, Allison & Busby (WWI romantic saga)

Vanora Bennett, The Queen's Lover, Morrow (novel of Catherine de Valois, widow of Henry V, and Owen Tudor; titled Blood Royal in the UK)

Rhys Bowen, The Last Illusion, Minotaur (Molly Murphy is hired to protect Harry Houdini after the on-stage death of his assistant)

Clare Clark, Savage Lands, Harvill Secker (French colonists in 18^th-c Louisiana)

Barbara Cleverly, A Darker God, Bantam (latest Laetitia Talbot mystery, set in the world of archaeology in the 1920s)

Barbara Cleverly, Strange Images of Death, Constable Robinson (1920s crime series with Joe Sandilands)

Beatrice Colin, The Songwriter, John Murray (1916: the lives and loves of a songwriter, dancer and political exile from Russia as America joins the war)

Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, Putnam (set in the 16th-c Spanish court, based on the life story of Sofonisba Anguissola, the first renowned female portraitist of the Renaissance)

Clive Cussler with Jack DuBrul, The Silent Sea, Putnam (the sixth adventure of the Oregon and its crew, set in 1941)

Anna Dean, A Gentleman of Fortune, Allison & Busby (Regency romance)

David Dickinson, Death of a Wine Merchant, Soho Constable (Lord Francis Powerscourt investigation)

Anne Doughty, Shadow on the Land, Severn House (WWII-era saga set in the Ulster mills of Northern Ireland)

Pamela Evans, Harvest Nights, Headline (family secrets in 1920s London and Kent)

David Gibbins, The Mask of Troy, Headline (adventure set in 1871 Greece, 1945 Germany and present day)

Almudena Grandes, The Frozen Heart, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (secrets of a political dynasty and love story set in and after the Spanish Civil War)

Bruno Hare, The Lost Kings, Simon & Schuster (adventure on 19^th-c India/Afghanistan border)

Susan Higginbotham, The Stolen Crown, Sourcebooks (Katherine Woodville's life changes when her sister Elizabeth makes a secret marriage to King Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses)

Carsten Jensen, We The Drowned, Harvill Secker (four generations of seafaring Danes spanning 1840s to 1940s)

Thomas E Kennedy, In the Company of Angels, Bloomsbury (victim of Pinochet’s regime in 1970s Chile seeks healing in Copenhagen)

Joseph Kanon, Stardust, Simon & Schuster (mystery and politics in 1945 Hollywood)

Philip Kerr, If the Dead Rise Not, Putnam (latest in the Bernie Gunther series of post-WWII thrillers, set in 1954 Havana)

Bernard Knight, A Plague of Heretics, Simon & Schuster (latest in Crowner John medieval crime series)

Jacqueline Lepore, Descent Into Dust, Avon A (Victorian woman discovers she's a vampire hunter; historical gothic)

Freda Lightfoot, Hostage Queen, Severn House (biographical novel of Marguerite de Valois)

Carol McCleary, The Alchemy of Murder, Forge (intrepid reporter Nellie Bly as detective at the 1889 Paris World's Fair)

Shona MacLean, A Game of Sorrows, Quercus (second in historical thriller series set in c17th-Scotland, Alexander Seaton goes to Ireland where his mother’s family are under a curse)

Beryl Matthews, The Uncertain Years, Severn House (four London friends face hardship, drama and tragedy during WWII)

Maaza Mengiste, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, Jonathan Cape (a family trying to survive in the Ethiopian revolution of the 1970s)

Anchee Min, Pearl of China, Bloomsbury USA (powerful story of the friendship of a lifetime, based on the life of Pearl S. Buck)

Howard Frank Mosher, Walking to Gatlinburg, Shaye Areheart (novel of love, war, and the racial divide, taking place Vermont to the Great Smoky Mountains in 1864)

Christopher Nicole, Dawn of a Legend, Severn House (romantic adventures of Jane Digby, one of 19^th-century England’s most notorious women)

Jill Pitkeathley, Dearest Cousin Jane, Harper (novel of Jane Austen’s cousin Eliza de Feuillide)

Jim Powell, The Breaking of Eggs, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (life-changing journey of a man from Paris to WWII Poland, Midwest America and the Berlin Wall)

Deanna Raybourn, The Dead Travel Fast, Mira (Gothic fiction, the adventures of a British woman in 1850s Transylvania)

Sean Thomas Russell, A Battle Won, Michael Joseph (second in maritime adventure series set in 1793)

Julia Stoneham, Girl at the Farmhouse Gate, Allison & Busby (Women’s Land Army girls in Devon during WWII)

D J Taylor, Chime of a City Clock, Constable Robinson (1920s comedy noir)

Jenny White, The Winter Thief, Norton (Kamil Pasha mystery set in 1888 Istanbul)

Janet Woods, Straw in the Wind, Severn House (romantic saga set in 1835 England)

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April 2010

Ace Atkins, Infamous, Putnam (crime novel about George "Machine Gun" Kelly, set during the first days of the modern FBI)

Ann Baker, [untitled], Headline (RAF widow finds new romance in WWII saga)

A L Berridge, Honour and the Sword, Michael Joseph (military adventure set in  Thirty Years’ War)

Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings The Hangman’s Bag, Orion (second in murder mystery series set in 1950s English village)

Kenneth Cameron, The Second Woman, Orion (latest in Edwardian crime series)

Elizabeth Chadwick, To Defy a King, Sphere (story of Mahelt Marshal and Hugh Bigod; baronial revolt in 13^th-c England)

Barbara Cleverly, Strange Images of Death, Soho Constable (in a Provence chateau, 1926, a murder and a missing child echo centuries-old crimes)

Stephanie Cowell, Claude and Camille: A Novel of Monet, Crown (the tragic love story of the young, unknown Claude Monet and his great love and muse Camille Doncieux)

William Dietrich, The Barbary Pirates, Harper (Ethan Gage historical adventure novel)

Paul Doherty, The Mysterium, Headline (latest 14^th-c Hugh Corbett mystery)

R S Downie, Ruso and the Root of All Evils, Michael Joseph (3^rd in Roman detective series: Ruso is called home to Gaul from Britain by family problem)

Roddy Doyle, The Dead Republic, Jonathan Cape UK / Viking US (last in a trilogy about Henry Smart, an Irish Republican whose life spans 20^th-c Irish history)

Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal, Fig Tree (Leningrad, 1952: a doctor and his family are compromised when he treats the child of a secret policeman)

Jeremy Duns, Free Country, Simon & Schuster (spy thriller set in Cold War 1960s)

Sam Eastland, Eye of the Red Tsar, Bantam (secret agent brought back from the edge of civilization to solve the mystery of the Romanov family's murder)

Christy English, The Queen's Pawn, NAL (a novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her rival, Princess Alais of France)

Ariana Franklin, A Murderous Procession, Putnam (4th in Adelia Aguilar series, in which she travels to Palermo with Henry II's daughter Joanna)

Juliet Gael, Romancing Miss Bronte, Ballantine (how love unexpectedly found Charlotte Bronte)

Daisy Goodwin, The Last Duchess, Headline Review (19^th-c wealthy American heiress marries impoverished English duke)

Graham Hancock, Entangled, Century (two women, one Stone Age, one modern, tackle forces of evil)

Liz Curtis Higgs, Here Burns My Candle, WaterBrook (novel of the age of Robert Burns)

Sarah A. Hoyt, No Will But His, Berkley (novel of Catherine Howard)

Laurie R. King, The God of the Hive, Bantam (sequel to The Language of Bees; novel of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes)

Sandra Kring, How High the Moon, Delta (an unlikely friendship in 1955 Wisconsin)

Maureen Lee, Martha’s Journey, Orion (mother’s quest for justice for her soldier son in WWII)

Christy Lefteri, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, Quercus (tale of love lost and found set during Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974)

Michelle Lovric, The Book of Human Skin, Bloomsbury (murder, love and bibliomania in 18^th-c Peru and Venice)

Carol McCleary, The Illusion of Murder, Hodder & Stoughton (murder, round-the-world chase and international intrigue in 1889)

Kelly O'Connor McNees, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Putnam (imagines a love affair that would threaten Louisa's writing career; set in New Hampshire in 1855)

Connie Monk, Beyond the Shore, Severn House (romance set in 1937 England)

Jude Morgan, A Little Folly, Headline Review (aristocrat’s restricted offspring find new freedom in ?18^th/19^th-c London)

Charles O’Brien, False Patriots, Severn House (latest in Anne Cartier French Revolution mystery series)

Anne Perry, The Sheen on the Silk, Ballantine US / Headline UK (1272: woman in Byzantium investigating the exile of her brother is caught up in the religious conflict and the crusades)

Elizabeth Peters, A River in the Sky, Morrow / Constable Robinson (Amelia Peabody Edwardian murder mystery set in the Middle East)

Philip Pullman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Canongate (retelling of the life of Christ)

Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome, Berkley US / Headline Review UK (Jewish slave girl and gladiator defy evil emperor Domitian in 1^st-c Rome)

Anthony Riches, Arrows of Fury, Hodder & Stoughton (second in military adventure series set on Hadrian’s Wall in the 180s AD)

Robert Ryan, The Great Train Robbery, Headline Review (how the police tracked down the gang who held up a mail train in 1963 – based on a true story)

Vanitha Sankaran, Watermark, Avon A (a mute young woman in 1320 Narbonne, France, discovers her literary voice)

Simon Scarrow, The Fields of Death, Headline Review (last in quartet about Wellington and Napoleon)

Mary Sharratt, Daughters of the Witching Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (the true story of Bess Southerns, the most notorious of the Pendle Witches, and her granddaughter Alizon Device, set in Lancaster, England, circa 1612)

Dan Simmons, Black Hills, Quercus (Sioux shaman takes on ghost of Gen Custer after Battle of Little Bighorn and later tries to blow up the Mount Rushmore carvings)

Tatjana Soli, The Lotus Eaters, St. Martin's (sweeping debut novel of an American female combat photographer in the Vietnam War, as she captures the wrenching chaos and finds herself torn between the love of two men)

Natasha Solomons, Mr Rosenblum’s List, Sceptre (Arriving in England in 1937 Jewish Mr R attempts to transform himself into an Englishman)

Thomas Steinbeck, In the Shadow of the Cypress, Gallery (disappearance of ancient jade artifacts in early 1900s Monterey)

Grant Sutherland, The Cobras of Calcutta, Macmillan (first in Decipherers' Chronicles series, historical adventure of code-breakers during the Napoleonic Wars)

Marilyn Todd, Still Waters, Severn House (High Priestess Iliona mystery set in ancient Greece)

Paul Waters, The Philosopher Prince, Macmillan (two young Romans ally themselves with imperial prince Julian in a struggle against the tyranny of the 4^th-c Roman empire)

Alison Weir, The Captive Queen, Hutchinson (story of Eleanor of Aquitaine)

Michael White, Beautiful Assassin, Morrow (WWII-era thriller about a female Red Army sniper)

Jacqueline Winspear, The Mapping of Love and Death, Harper (7th in Maisie Dobbs mystery series, about the murder of a WWI-era American cartographer)

Sally Zigmond, Hope Against Hope, Myrmidon (historical romance set 1837 in Leeds, Harrogate and Paris, telling of the trials and triumphs of two young sisters)

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May 2010

Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea, Harper (a slave and concubine determines to claim her destiny; sweeps from the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to New Orleans at the turn of the 19th c)

Sarah Blake, The Postmistress, Viking (the fates of three American women are linked by a letter one of them receives during WWII)

Harold Carlton, Heaven, Hell and Chanel, Orion (models and designers in 1960s Paris haute couture)

Gloria Cook, Leaving Shades, Severn House (romantic saga set in 20^th c England)

Marlena de Blasi, Amandine, Ballantine (story of faith and perseverance set in WWII-era France)

Tishani Doshi, The Pleasure Seekers, Bloomsbury (Welsh-Indian family from 1960s)

David Downing, Stettin Station, Soho (with American entry into WWII looming, Anglo-American John Russell searches for a way out of Germany.  Historical thriller)

Beverley Eikli, Lady Farquhar's Butterfly, Hale (a widow's love for her son's guardian is threatened by the secret of the boy's origins)

Kate Furnivall, The Jewel of St. Petersburg, Berkley (sweeping novel of love and intrigue in Tsarist Russia)

Dolores Gordon-Smith, A Hundred Thousand Dragons, Severn House (latest Jack Haldean mystery, set in the Roaring Twenties)

Ann Granger, A Better Quality of Murder, Headline (crime novel set in Victorian London)

Lesley Kagen, Tomorrow River, Dutton (literary thriller set in 1968 Virginia)

Mitchell Kaplan, By Fire, By Water, Other Press (novel of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Inquisition in 15th-c Spain)

Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven, Roc (historical fantasy evoking the Tang Dynasty of 8th-c China in a story of honor and power)

Yasmina Khadra, What The Day Owes The Night, William Heinemann (families in colonial Algeria 1936-1962)

Ross Laidlaw, Theodoric, Polygon (story of Theoderic the Goth, a man who rose to the equal of emperors and raised his people to a pinnacle of power and wealth from the ruins of the Roman Empire)

Emery Lee, The Highest Stakes, Sourcebooks (love story set in 18th century England and colonial Virginia, when fortunes were won and lost at the races)

Louise Levene, Vision of Loveliness, Bloomsbury (black comedy set in 1960s London)

Rani Manicka, The Japanese Lover, Hodder & Stoughton (Ceylonese woman in Malaya falls in love with a Japanese captor in WWII)

Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Jonathan Cape (forty re-imaginings of passages from the Odyssey)

Pat McIntosh, A Pig of Cold Poison, Constable Robinson/Soho Constable (crime series set in medieval Scotland)

Shirley McKay, Hue and Cry, Polygon (1579, St Andrews. An open and shut case becomes a Pandora’s Box of passions denied, lies, betrayal and corruption making for a cold homecoming for young lawyer, Hew Cullan)

Anchee Min, Pearl of China, Bloomsbury (novel about Pearl S. Buck, early 20^th-c China)

David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Sceptre (Clerk newly-arrived in the 1799 Dutch East Indies finds himself caught between Eastern and Western cultures)

Margaret Muir, Floating Gold, Hale Books (Age-of-sail nautical adventure set in 1802)

Robin Oliveira, My Name Is Mary Sutter, Viking (a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War)

Robert B. Parker, Blue-Eyed Devil, Putnam (historical western in Cole & Hitch series)

Imogen Robertson, The Anatomy of Murder, Headline Review (murder and espionage in London in 1781) 

Jenny Rooney, The Opposite of Falling, Chatto & Windus (set in the early days of flight, a young flying machine designer invites an Englishwoman and her companion on a balloon trip over Niagara Falls)

Laura Joh Rowland, Bedlam, Overlook (the further secret adventures of Charlotte Bronte)

Anthony Sattin, Winter on the Nile, Hutchinson (Florence Nightingale’s life-changing journey down the Nile in 1849)

Nicholas Shakespeare, Inheritance, Harvill Secker (wealth, betrayal and lost opportunities from early 20^th-c Turkey to modern London)

Jane Smiley, Private Life, Knopf (sweeping saga that spans the life of an American woman, from the 1880s to World War II)

Peter Smalley, The Pursuit, Century (latest in c18th naval adventure series)

Linda Sole, All My Sins, Severn House (saga set in 1920 London)

Glenn Taylor, The Marrowbone Marble Company, Ecco (three decades in the life of a West Virginia orphan, beginning in WWII)

Pip Vaughan-Hughes, The Fools’ Crusade, Orion (Petroc of Auneford joins the King of France’s crusade to Egypt)

Joseph Wallace, Diamond Ruby, Touchstone (novel set in the Roaring 20's about a girl who can out-pitch any major league baseball player)

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June 2010

Richard Blake, Blood of Alexandria, Hodder & Stoughton (last in trilogy set in the dying days of the Roman Empire)

Ann Brashares, My Name is Memory, Riverhead (novel of reincarnation and true love through time)

Rebecca Chace, Leaving Rock Harbor, Scribner (set in a New England mill town in the early 1900s, inspired by Chace's family history)

Jeanine Cummins, The Outside Boy, NAL (debut novel about an Irish gypsy boy's childhood in the 1950s)

Clive Cussler & Justin Scott, The Spy, Putnam (action & intrigue set in 1908)

Lindsey Davis, Nemesis, Century (latest in Falco Roman detective series)

Lindsey Davis, Falco: The Official Companion, Century (the one we’ve all been waiting for)

Diann Ducharme, The Outer Banks House, Crown (one summer in the post-Civil War Outer Banks of North Carolina will change Abigail Sinclair’s life)

Suzannah Dunn, The Confession of Katherine Howard, HarperPress (Condemned to the Tower, Katherine, fifth queen of Henry VIII, gives an account of her past which her close friend knows to be a lie. If the friend tells all, Katherine will die)

Alan Furst, The Spies of the Balkans, Random House/Weidenfeld & Nicolson (espionage in the 1941 British coup in the Balkans)

Julia Gregson, Band of Angels, Touchstone (sweeping historical love story about a young woman who joins Florence Nightingale's "band of angels" during the Crimean War)

Sally Gunning, The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, Morrow (family drama in the years leading up to the American Revolution on Cape Cod)

Catherine Hall, Days of Grace, Viking (suspenseful novel of repressed passion and WWII tragedy, set in London over a 50-year period)

James Holland, Blood of Honour, Bantam (third in Jack Tanner series, finds soldier Jack in Crete in May 1941)

Michelle Hoover, The Quickening, Other Press (family feud between two farm wives in the upper Midwest during the Great Depression)

Michael Jecks, The Oath, Simon & Schuster (Templar mystery set in reign of Edward II and Isabella)

Katie Hickman, The Pindar Diamond, Bloomsbury (Venice 1604: a jewel, an ex-lover and sinister forces)

Elizabeth Lord, All That We Are, Severn House (WWI-era saga set in London’s East End)

Sharyn McCrumb, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, St. Martin's (part of the Ballad novels, centering on a murder trial in Appalachia during the Depression)

Mark McGinty, The Cigar Maker, Seventh Avenue (story of a Cuban cigar maker who battles labor strife and vigilante violence in Tampa, Florida in the early 1900s)

Shirley McKay, Fate and Fortune, Polygon (1581, Edinburgh. Following his father’s death, Hew escapes to Edinburgh where love, the law and deadly words from the past bring abduction and murder to his door)

David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Random House (in 1799, clerk must spend five years in Dejima, Japan, to marry his fiancee)

Margaret Muir, The Condor's Feather, Ulverscroft (equestrian adventure set on the pampas of Patagonia in 1885)

Deborah Noyes, Captivity, Unbridled (centers on the true tale of the Fox sisters, supposed clairvoyants in 19th-century upstate New York, and the promise they offer up to a reclusive young woman)

Joseph O’Connor, Ghost Light, Harvill Secker (doomed courtship of an early 20^th-c Irish playwright and an Irish actress, and its aftermath)

Patricia O'Reilly, A Type of Beauty, The Story of Kathleen Newton (1854-1882), Cape Press, Ireland (mistress and muse to French artist, Jacques Tissot)

Kamran Pasha, Shadow of the Swords, Atria (the epic story of the Crusades told through the eyes of Muslim sultan Saladin)

Brenda Reid, The House of Dust and Dreams, Orion (love and friendship in 1930s Crete)

Alex Rutherford, Brothers at War, Headline Review (second in series set in 1530 during the Moghul empire in India)

Arliss Ryan, The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare, NAL (the woman who dared to be the equal of the Bard of Avon)

Julian Stockwin, Victory, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in naval adventure series set in the Napoleonic Wars)

Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles, OUP (reissue in one volume of three classic novels set in Roman Britain, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers)

Deborah Swift, The Lady’s Slipper, Macmillan New Writing (1660 Westmorland: characters come into conflict over the beauty and magic of the lady’s slipper orchid)

Brian Thompson, The Player’s Curse, Chatto & Windus (Victorian crime series: Belle Wallis, a crime writer with a male pen name investigates her fiancé’s secrets)

Victoria Thompson, Murder on Lexington Avenue, Berkley Prime Crime (Gaslight Mystery set at a school for the deaf in New York City)

Kate Tremayne, The Loveday Vendetta, Headline (latest in family saga set in Cornwall in 18/19C)

Kaki Warner, Open Country, Berkley (romantic historical set on the American frontier, 2nd in Blood Rose trilogy)

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July 2010

Simon Beaufort, The Bloodstained Throne, Severn House (new Sir Geoffrey Mappestone medieval mystery, featuring a former Crusader knight)

Maggie Bennett, Strangers and Pilgrims, Severn House (historical saga about the enduring spirit of love, set in 1340 England)

Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess, Constable (second in mystery series set between the wars)

Michael Byers, Unfixed Stars, Picador (novel inspired by the story of a farmboy who discovered the 9^th planet in 1928, coinciding with the end of the Jazz Age)

Emma Campion, The King’s Mistress, Crown (biographical novel of Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III)

Meira Chand, A Different Sky, Harvill Secker (three families caught up in Singapore’s struggle for independence 1920s-1950s)

Saul David, Hart of Empire, Hodder & Stoughton (2^nd in Victorian military series finds Hart sent to Afghanistan on a secret mission)

Frank DeFord, Bliss Remembered, Overlook (two love stories, centered on the 1936 Berlin Olympics)

Catherine Delors, For the King, Dutton (historical thriller set in Napoleonic France in the aftermath of the Revolution)

Ivan Doig, Work Song, Riverhead (Morrie Morgan, itinerant teacher, arrives in Butte, Montana, in 1919)

Angus Donald, Holy Warrior, Sphere (second in Robin Hood series)

Barbara Erskine, Time’s Legacy, HarperCollins (Anglican priest has visions of Roman family involving dark forces and mystical powers)

Mackenzie Ford, The Clouds Beneath the Sun, Talese (history, romance, and intrigue centering on a female archaeologist in 1961 Kenya)

Linda Grant, The Cast Iron Shore, Virago (during the Liverpool Blitz Sybil uncovers a secret that leads her to America and a choice)

Lucretia Grindle, The Villa Triste, Mantle (mystery set in Italy in 1943)

Darci Hannah, The Exile of Sara Stevenson, Ballantine (historical adventure flavoured with romance, suspense, and time travel, set in Scotland of 1814)

Rosie Harris, Whispers of Love, Arrow (Liverpool saga set in 1914: young woman’s becomes a war nurse after her fiancé is drowned)

Seth Hunter, The Price of Glory, Headline Review (third in naval adventure series set in Napoleonic Wars)

Douglas Jackson, Hero of Rome, Bantam (first of trilogy: our hero commands the Roman veterans defending Colchester against Boudica in 1^st-century Britain)

Syrie James, Dracula, My Love, Avon (the secret journals of Mina Harker, and her accounts of her love affair with Dracula)

Beverly Jensen, The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, Viking (a tale of two sisters over seventy years, from New Brunswick to New England)

Lee Langley, Butterfly’s Shadow, Chatto & Windus (continuing the story of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly on into 20^th-c America and Japan)

Pat McIntosh, A Pig of Cold Poison, Soho Constable (7th in the Gil Cunningham series set in medieval Glasgow)

Adrienne MacDonnell, The Doctor and the Diva, Viking (set in 1903, story of romantic obsession, longing, and one woman's choice between motherhood and opera)

James McGee, Rebellion, HarperCollins (Bow Street Runner Hawkwood is seconded to the Secret Service in 1812)

The Medieval Murderers, The Sacred Stone, Simon & Schuster (five interlinked mysteries beginning in 1067)

Fiona Mountain, Lady of the Butterflies, Putnam (story of scientist Eleanor Glanville, whose unconventional passions scandalized 17th-c Puritan society)

Jojo Moyes, The Last Letter from Your Lover, Hodder & Stoughton (present-day journalist finds 1960 letter from a man asking his lover to leave her husband)

Bruce Murkoff, Red Rain, Knopf (literary US Civil War novel set in the Hudson River Valley)

William Napier, [untitled], Orion (characters caught up in clash of East and West in the 1565 Siege of Malta)

Howard Norman, What Is Left the Daughter, HMH (wartime love triangle)

Naomi Novik, Tongues of Serpents, Del Rey (new fantasy adventure in the Napoleonic-era Temeraire series)

Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge, Viking (love, violence and heartache in WWII Paris and Hungary)

I.J. Parker, The Masuda Affair, Severn House (latest Sugawara Akitada mystery set in 11^th-c Japan)

Arturo Perez-Reverte, Pirates of the Levant, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Capt Alatriste meets the pirates in his latest adventure on the high seas)

David Roberts, Sweet Sorrow, Robinson (last in mystery series set in 1939)

Andrew Rosenheim, Fear Itself, Hutchinson (German-American FBI man investigates Nazi extremists trying to keep USA out of WWII and uncovers a sinister plot)

S. Thomas Russell, A Battle Won, Putnam (naval adventure set as the Reign of Terror rips through Revolutionary France)

Ellen Clymer Schwab, Promise Bridge, NAL (friendship between a plantation mistress and a slave girl, set in the segregated pre-Civil War South)

Nicholas Shakespeare, Inheritance, Harvill Secker (a tale of love and missed opportunities spanning early 20^th-c Turkey and modern London)

Harry Sidebottom, Warrior of Rome III: Lion of the Sun, Michael Joseph (Mesopotamia AD260 - latest in Roman military adventure series)

Sherri Smith, The Children of Witches, Pocket (a boy is suspected of witchcraft in 17thC Germany)

Sally Spencer, Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street, Severn House (Inspector Sam Blackstone mystery set in 1900 NYC)

Nicola Upson, Two for Sorrow, Faber (the crimes of two London women hanged for killing babies resurface when Josephine Tey plans a novel about them in the 1930s)

Carey Wallace, The Blind Contessa's New Machine, Viking (love, blindness, and the invention of the typewriter, set in early 1800s Italy)

Catherine Webb, The Dream Thief, Atom (something sinister is happening to children of London’s East End in 1865)

Katherine Webb, The Legacy, Orion (the heartbreaking legacy of betrayal in the multigenerational story of a family)

Alison Weir, Captive Queen, Ballantine (novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry II)

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August 2010

Maria Angels Anglada, The Auschwitz Violin, Bantam (tale of a Jewish violin maker held at Auschwitz during the Holocaust)

M C Beaton, Snobbery with Violence, Robinson (first in Edwardian mystery series)

M C Beaton, Hasty Death, Robinson (second in Edwardian mystery series)

Ned Beauman, Boxer, Beetle, Sceptre (story of a fascist scientist and a Jewish boxer, set in 1934)

Christian Cameron, Killers of Men, Orion (first in a series tracing the wars of the ancient Greeks and Persians)

Amelia Carr, Song at Sunset, Headline (Lovers are torn apart in World War Two and a mother and daughter separated by guilt and shame)

Maile Chapman, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto, Jonathan Cape (1927: woman arrives at remote Finnish hospital whose patients have mystery illnesses)

Alys Clare, Music of the Distant Stars, Severn House (historical mystery set in the Fenlands in 11^th-c England)

Dilly Court, The Ragged Heiress, Arrow (saga set in 1900s London: sick girl claimed by mysterious strangers)

Anne Douglas, The Melody Girls, Severn House (a young woman is taken on as a saxophonist in a postwar Glasgow dance band)

Jeremy Duns, Free Country, Simon & Schuster (cold war thriller set in Rome, Sardinia and Istanbul in 1969)

Karen Essex, Dracula in Love: The Private Diary of Mina Harker, Doubleday (gothic fiction, the intimate details of what really transpired between Mina Murray and Count Dracula)

Nigel Farndale, The Blasphemer, Shaye Areheart (thriller about love, loyalty, and faith during WWI and in contemporary London)

Katie Flynn, A Mistletoe Kiss, Arrow (Liverpool saga set in 1939 when Hettie joins the war effort)

Giles Foden, Turbulence, Knopf (literary fiction surrounding the race to D-Day)

James Forrester, Sacred Treason, Headline Review (1563: Catholic plots against the young Queen Elizabeth are springing up all over the country)

Anne Fortier, Juliet, Ballantine (multi-period historical thriller set in Siena; a woman discovers she may be descended from the real-life Romeo and Juliet)

Elizabeth Gill, Snow Hall, Severn House (historical tale of sacrifice, folly, and passion set in 1907 County Durham)

Susan Gregg Gilmore, The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, Shaye Areheart (A young woman searches for love in the most unlikely of places while fighting against the injustice of the Civil Rights Era South)

Michael Gregorio, Unholy Awakening, Faber (gruesome murders in Prussia investigated by a criminologist in Napoleon’s army and a local magistrate)

Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen, Simon & Schuster UK & US (2^nd in Wars of the Roses series traces the life of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII)

Ruth Hamilton, Sugar and Spice, Severn House (saga about the strength of family ties, set in 1940 England)

Cora Harrison, Eye of the Law, Severn House (latest Mara the Brehon mystery set in 16^th c Ireland)

Lilian Harry, An Heir for Burracombe, Orion (the latest Devon village saga sees two strangers arriving in 1953, bringing revelations and intrigue)

Cecelia Holland, The Secret Eleanor, Berkley (novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France, and the lead-up to her marriage to Henry d'Anjou)

Glen Iliffe, The Armour of Achilles, Macmillan (The third book in the Adventures of Odysseus series with the siege of Troy now in its ninth year)

Ben Kane, The Road to Rome, Preface (last in “Forgotten Legion” trilogy finds the heroes in Rome with Julius Caesar)

Gabrielle Kimm, His Last Duchess, Sphere (story of forbidden love set in 16th-c Italy, following 16-year-old Lucrezia de Medici as she marries the fifth Duke of Ferrara)

Ross Laidlaw, Justinian: The Sleepless One, Polygon (the rise from poverty and obscurity of the Emperor who would oversee the expansion of Rome’s Eastern Empire, the embracing of Christianity and the blossoming of Byzantine art and architecture)

Andrei Makine, The Life of an Unknown Man, Sceptre (St Petersburg from WWII to the present)

Tom McCarthy, C, Jonathan Cape and Knopf (short, intense life of a man born into the electrical modernity of the early 20^th century)

Bernie McGill, The Butterfly Cabinet, Headline Review (inspired by an extraordinary true story of the death of the daughter of an aristocratic Irish family in 1892, and of its powerful impact on the community of the time)

Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti, Secretum, Polygon (Rome, 1700. Both Kaiser Leopold of Austria and King Louis XIV have laid claim to the throne of the ailing Spanish King. A forged will have far-reaching consequences for practically every country in Europe)

Malla Nunn, Let the Dead Lie, Mantle (detective story set in South Africa in 1953)

Arturo Perez-Reverte, Pirates of the Levant, Putnam (swashbuckling adventure set in 17th-c Spain)

José Saramago, The Elephant’s Journey, Harvill Secker (16^th-c King of Portugal sends an elephant from Lisbon to Vienna as a wedding present for Archduke Maximilian)

Steven Saylor, Empire, Corsair (sequel to Roma continuing the story of members of a single bloodline from Augustus to Hadrian)

Brian Thompson, The Player’s Curse, Chatto & Windus (latest Bella Wallis Victorian mystery)

Kate Tremayne, The Loveday Vendetta, Headline (latest in Loveday series set in the late 18^th/early 19^th c)

Peter Tremayne, Chalice of Blood, Headline Review (latest Sister Fidelma mystery set in 7^th-c Ireland)

Ann Weisgarber, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, Viking (the little-known story of African-American pioneers in the early 20th-c Badlands, seen through the eyes of a singular heroine)

Jeane Westin, His Last Letter, NAL (novel of the enduring relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester)

Jenny Wingfield, Sweet By and By, Random House (story of love and sacrifice set in small-town Arkansas in 1956)

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September 2010

Boris Akunin, He Lover of Death, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (latest in detective series set in 19^th-c Moscow)

Susan Wittig Albert, The Tale of Oat Cake Crag, Berkley Prime Crime (latest Beatrix Potter mystery set in the early 20th-c Lake District)

Richard Argent, Winter’s Knight, Atom (crusader rides for honour, haunted by demons and a vision of his fate)

Suzanne Arruda, The Crocodile's Last Embrace, NAL (historical mystery featuring Jade del Cameron in 1920s Kenya, 6th in series)

Michael Asher, Death or Glory: The Flaming Sword, Penguin (latest in WWII adventure series)

David Ashton, A Trick of the Light, Polygon (the Third Inspector McLevy Mystery; a beautiful American medium causes uproar in genteel Victorian Edinburgh with her séances)

Toby Ball, The Vaults, St. Martin's (dystopian period thriller in which a chilling series of events leads three different men to join in exposing the legacy of a radical program for punishing murderers; set in the 1930s)

Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, Bantam (Jane Austen digs to the bottom of an upper-crust crime involving Lord Byron)

Rick Bass, Nashville Chrome, HMH (novel about the Brown siblings, 1950s-era country music artists)

M C Beaton, Sick of Shadows, Robinson (third in Edwardian mystery series)

M C Beaton, Our Lady of Pain, Robinson (fourth in Edwardian mystery series)

James Benn, Rag and Bone, Soho (Billy Boyle historical mystery set in WWII-era London, 5th in series)

Rhys Bowen, Royal Blood, Berkley Prime Crime (4th in mystery series in which Lady Georgiana, distantly in line for the British throne in the 1930s, travels to Romania)

Bo Caldwell, City of Tranquil Light, Holt (a Midwesterner travels to northern China in the early 1900s and lives through its civil war; based on her grandparents' memoirs)

Bernard Cornwell, The Fort, HarperCollins (standalone Revolutionary War adventure novel, centered on the Penobscot Expedition of 1779)

Lindsey Davis, Nemesis, Minotaur (in 1st-c Rome, Falco investigates a serial killer)

Manuel de Lope, The Wrong Blood, Other Press/Harvill Secker (three lives are upended by the Spanish Civil War)

Carola Dunn, Styx and Stones, Robinson (7^th Daisy Dalrymple mystery set in 1920s)

Carola Dunn, Rattle His Bones, Robinson (8^th Daisy Dalrymple mystery set in 1920s)

Carola Dunn, To Davy Jones Below, Robinson (9^th Daisy Dalrymple mystery set in 1920s)

Anna Elliott, Dark Moon of Avalon, Touchstone (a novel of Trystan and Isolde, set in a brutal 6^th-century Britain; 2^nd in trilogy)

Ken Follett, The Fall of Giants, Macmillan (this novel follows five linked families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the struggle for votes for women)

Kerry Greenwood, Dead Man's Chest, Poisoned Pen (latest Phryne Fisher mystery, about a flapper in 1920s Australia)

Diana Gabaldon, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, Delacorte (retells the original story from Jamie Fraser’s point of view)

Bruno Hare, The Lost Kings, Simon & Schuster (1890s adventure on the borders of India and Afghanistan)

Richard Harvell, The Bells, Shaye Areheart (in 18^th-c Switzerland, a boy with the voice of an angel finds his exquisite sense of hearing becomes a tragic curse and his greatest blessing)

M K Hume, Merlin: Demon’s Gift, Headline Review (first in series about Merlin by author of King Arthur series)

Conn Iggulden, Empire of Silver, HarperCollins (latest in Genghis Khan series)

Claude Izner, The Montmartre Investigation, Minotaur (third title in the Victor Legris mystery series, set in Paris in 1891)

Kathryn Johnson, The Gentleman Poet, Avon A (a novel of love, danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest, set in 17th-c Bermuda)

Melissa Jones, Emily Hudson, Pamela Dorman/Viking (Whartonesque novel set in Newport, England, and Rome just after the US Civil War)

Daphne Kalotay, Russian Winter, Harper (an aged dancer from the Bolshoi ballet remembers the dark secrets from her life, half a century before)

Kate Kerrigan, Ellis Island, Pan (Ellie arrives in New York in the 1920s to earn money for her husband’s operation on an injury sustained during the fight for Irish independence)

Annabel Lyon, The Golden Mean, Knopf (literary novel about Aristotle and Alexander the Great)

Henning Mankell, Daniel, Harvill Secker (19^th-c entomologist brings African boy back to Sweden with tragic results)

Tom McCarthy, C, Knopf (epochal saga of the early years of the 20^th c, ranging from western England to North Africa)

Susan Meissner, Lady in Waiting, WaterBrook (parallel stories of a modern woman with a broken marriage and Lady Jane Grey, the 16-year-old English queen)

Rose Melikan, The Mistaken Wife, Touchstone (18th-century heroine Mary Finch posts as the wife of a mysterious and handsome American artist in Paris)

Jed Rubenfeld, The Death Instinct, Headline Review (Sequel to The Interpretation of Murder, this is an adventure in the aftermath of a terrorist attack set in New York and Europe, involving Freud)

William Ryan, The Holy Thief, Minotaur (as Stalin's Great Terror begins, a killer strikes)

C J Sansom, Heartstone, Mantle (latest Matthew Shardlake mystery set in 1545)

Jose Saramago, The Elephant's Journey, HMH (an elephant, his keeper, and their journey through 17th-c Europe)

Steven Saylor, Empire, St. Martin's (the sequel to Roma, a historical epic spanning five generations, from the reign of Augustus to the height of Rome's empire)

Bernhard Schlink, The Gordian Knot, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (cold war spy novel set in Europe and New York, from the author of The Reader)

Susan Holloway Scott, The Countess and the King, NAL (novel of Katherine Sedley, mistress of James II)

Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, Some Sing, Some Cry, St. Martin's (novel following one family's journey through emancipation to the present day)

Alastair Sim, The Unbelievers, Minotaur (brooding Victorian murder mystery set in the Scottish Highlands)

Sylvia Dickey Smith, A War of Her Own, Crickhollow Books (WWII-era novel, set in Orange, Texas, in 1943)

Danielle Steel, Legacy, Delacorte (interweaves the lives of a modern academic and an 18^th-c Sioux Indian)

Andrew Taylor, The Anatomy of Ghosts, Michael Joseph (Gothic ghost story set in a fictional Cambridge college in 1786)

Charles Todd, An Impartial Witness, Morrow (2nd historical mystery about Bess Crawford, WWI nurse)

Jack Todd, Come Again No More, Touchstone (sequel to Sun Going Down; continues the story of the Paint family during the Dust Bowl years and Great Depression)

Pip Vaughan-Hughes, The Fools’ Crusade, Orion (Petroc of Auneforde joins the Seventh Crusade)

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October 2010

Maureen Ash, Shroud of Dishonour, Berkley Prime Crime (5th in medieval mystery series featuring Templar Bascot de Marins)

Lily Baxter, Poppy’s War, Arrow (Poppy Brown is evacuated to Dorset in 1939)

Benjamin Black, Elegy for April, Mantle (mystery set in 1950s Ireland)

Gary Corby, The Pericles Commission, Minotaur (debut mystery, in which Nicolaos, son of a minor sculptor, becomes embroiled in murder and political intrigue in classical Athens)

Laurel Corona, Penelope's Daughter, Berkley (retells the Odyssey from the viewpoint of Odysseus and Penelope's daughter Xanthe)

J.D. Davies, Gentleman Captain, HMH (nautical adventure set in Restoration England)

Carolly Erickson, Rival to the Queen, St. Martin's (Lettice Knollys, cousin and rival to Queen Elizabeth I)

Sherry Lynn Ferguson, Major Lord David, Thomas Bouregy & Co/Avalon (a romance of Waterloo, featuring the battle of Hougoumont)

Ken Follett, Fall of Giants, Dutton (first in his Century trilogy, saga of five families whose lives are disrupted by WWI)

Posie Graeme-Evans, The Dressmaker, Atria (in Victorian times, a dress designer to London's Great Six Hundred uses her beauty and talent to succeed against all odds)

Michael Gregorio, Unholy Awakening, Griffin (intellectual thriller set in late 19th-c Prussia, a time when people truly believed in vampires)

Barbara Hamilton, A Marked Man, Berkley Prime Crime (2nd in Abigail Adams mystery series)

Rebecca Hunt, Mr Chartwell, Fig Tree (Winston Churchill and a young woman in Battersea are brought together by the mysterious Mr Chartwell in 1964)

Arnaldur Indriðason, Operation Napoleon, Harvill Secker (mystery set in modern Iceland and in WWII USA and Germany)

Christian Jacq, Son of Light, Simon & Schuster (2^nd in thriller series involving freemasons, Mozart and the Count of Thebes)

Rebecca Johns, The Countess, Crown (the tale of history’s first female serial killer, Countess Erzsebet Bathory, a 17^th-century Hungarian noblewoman)

Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy, Small Beer Press (from a wartime brothel to the intricate high society of 1870s Brussels, novel of childhood friends, a love triangle, puppetmasters, and reluctant spies)

Brian Leung, Take Me Home, Harper (powerful novel about friendship and love set against the stunning backdrop of 1880s Wyoming)

Bruce Machart, The Wake of Forgiveness, HMH (debut about high-stakes horse races, moral journeys, and the bonds of family in the early 20th c)

Patrick McCabe, The Stray Sod Country, Bloomsbury (life in an Irish village in 1958)

Kate Morton, The Distant Hours, Mantle (woman unravels her mother’s WWII past)

William Napier, Attila: The Judgment, Griffin (conclusion to trilogy about one of history's greatest warrior)

Michelle Paver, Dark Matter, Orion (ghost story set on an arctic expedition in the 1930s)

Anne Perry, A Christmas Odyssey, Ballantine (holiday novel set in Victorian England)

Judith Rock, The Rhetoric of Death, Berkley (historical mystery set in 17th-c Paris, featuring dance teacher Charles de Luc)

Philip Roth, Nemesis, HMH/Jonathan Cape (the polio epidemic hits Newark, New Jersey, in the summer of 1944)

Jane Rule, Desert of the Heart, Virago (in the 1950s a woman in Reno for a divorce falls in love with another woman)

Bernhard Schlink, The Weekend, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (country house reunion brings back the Baader-Meinhof era in Germany)

Harry Sidebottom, King of Kings, Overlook (2nd in historical adventure series set in the ancient world)

Jeri Westerson, The Demon's Parchment, Minotaur (in 14th-c London, tracker Crispin Guest investigates the disappearance of stolen parchments)

Connie Willis, All Clear, Spectra (time-traveling WWII novel, sequel to Blackout)

Qiu Xiaolong, Years of Red Dust, St. Martin's (collection of linked short stories tracing the changes in modern China over a 50-year period)

Robyn Young, Insurrection, Hodder & Stoughton (first in series about Robert the Bruce and Edward I)

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November 2010

Tasha Alexander, Dangerous to Know, Minotaur (latest in Emily Hargreaves Victorian mystery series, set in the countryside of Normandy)

Suzanne Arruda, Mark of the Lion, Piatkus (after driving ambulances in WWI, Jade finds adventure in colonial Africa)

William Peter Blatty, Crazy, Forge (nostalgic tale of memory, mystery, and miracles set in 1941 NYC)

A S Byatt, [Untitled]: the Myth of Ragnarok, Canongate (retelling of Norse myth)

Joanna Challis, Peril at Somner House, Minotaur (Daphne du Maurier investigates a murder on a remote island off the Cornwall coast)

Lynn D'Urso, Heartbroke Bay, Berkley (Hannah Nelson, a young Englishwoman, arrives in Alaska in 1898)

Charles Finch, A Stranger in Mayfair, Minotaur (Victorian-era mystery, Charles Lenox tries to focus on his new career in Parliament as he finds himself pulled back into his old life)

Jean Fullerton, Perhaps Tomorrow, Orion (Victorian saga set in London’s East End)

Kate Furnivall, The Jewel of St Petersburg, Sphere (in 1910 a talented pianist falls for a Danish engineer but her parents force her into a loveless engagement with a Russian count)

Newt Gingrich and William Fortschen, Valley Forge, St. Martin's (alternate history of the American Revolution, sequel to To Try Men's Souls)

Rosie Harris, Ambitious Love, Arrow (WWII saga set in Cardiff: family turned out of their home when father is killed in mining accident)

Kathleen Kent, The Wolves of Andover, Little Brown (story of love and intrigue set in 17th-c England and Massachusetts, prequel to The Heretic's Daughter)

Juliet Marillier, Seer of Sevenwaters, Roc (mystical historical fantasy set in an alternate Celtic world)

Eoin McNamee. Orchid Blue, Faber (detective returns to N Ireland in 1961 to investigate a murder and suspects the accused won’t get a fair hearing)

Denise Meredith, Devoured, Minotaur (historical mystery set in 1856 London, surrounding the specimen-collecting craze)

Kate Morton, The Distant Hours, Atria (history and mystery in a gothic tale leading back to WWII)

Anne O'Brien, The Virgin Widow, NAL (novel of Anne Neville, queen of Richard III during the Wars of the Roses)

Jay Parini, The Passages of H.M., Doubleday (novel about the adventurous life and tragic literary career of Herman Melville)

Anne Rice, Of Love and Evil, Chatto & Windus (UK), The Dybbuk (US title) (latest in Songs of Seraphim series set in Renaissance Italy and the present day)

Carol Rivers, East End Angel, Simon & Schuster (WWII saga set in London)

Sheldon Russell, The Insane Train, Minotaur (second installment in Russell’s 1940s mystery series featuring yard dog Hook Runyon)

Simon Scarrow, [untitled], Headline Review (latest in Roman army series featuring Cato and Macro)

Adrienne Sharp, The True Memoirs of Little K, FSG (novel about Matilde Kschessinska, the greatest ballerina of her age, and her affair with the last tsar, Nicholas II)

Antonio Tabucchi, Pereira Maintains, Canongate (translator in 1938 Portugal is reluctantly drawn into Spanish Civil War)

Peter Tremayne, The Dove of Death, Minotaur (latest in Fidelma mystery series set in 7th c Ireland, in which an Irish merchant ship is attacked by a pirate vessel)

Lauren Willig, The Mischief of the Mistletoe, Dutton (Regency Christmas caper, part of Pink Carnation series)

Andrew Winer, The Marriage Artist, Holt (literary novel set today and in pre-WWII Vienna, about a young ketubah artist)

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December 2010

Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (faith, loss and reconciliation in 1950s Sudan)

Robin Adair, The Angel of Death, Berkley Prime Crime (historical thriller set in 1828 Sydney)

Susanne Alleyn, Palace of Justice, Minotaur (in the pre-Revolutionary atmosphere of distrust and anxiety, police agent Aristide Ravel must stop a ruthless killer who is terrorizing the city)

Suzanne Arruda, Stalking Ivory, Piatkus (in post WWI Africa, Jade investigates a conspiracy involving Abyssinian ivoey poachers)

Lorenzo Borghese, The Princess of Nowhere, Avon A (novel of Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon)

Martyn Davies, 1919, Hodder & Stoughton (old friends meet again at a country house party after WWI. One finds love, whilst the mystery of a girl’s drowning during his absence pervades)

Christie Dickason, The King's Daughter, Harper (novel of Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I of England)

P.C. Doherty, The Waxman Murders, Minotaur (medieval detective Hugh Corbett looks into the mysterious reappearance of a collection of invaluable, highly desirable maps and sea charts)

Kate Emerson, By Royal Decree, Gallery (based on the life of Tudor-era lady in waiting Bess Brooke)

Margaret Frazer, A Play of Piety, Berkley Prime Crime (6th in Joliffe the Player medieval mystery series)

Matthew Gallaway, The Metropolis Case, Crown (from the music halls of 1860s Paris to 21^st-century NYC, a sweeping tale of an unlikely quartet bound together by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde)

Susan Fraser King, Queen Hereafter, Crown (chronicles the life of Margaret of Scotland, an 11^th-century Saxon princess and a woman destined for sainthood)

Catriona McPherson, Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder, Hodder & Stoughton (latest in mystery series set in 1920s Scotland)

Graham Moore, The Sherlockian, Twelve (about the connection between the death of a contemporary Sherlock Holmes scholar and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s search for a serial killer in 1890s London)

William Napier, The Great Siege: Clash of Empires, Orion (adventure set during the Siege of Malta by the Ottoman Turks in 1565)

Scott Oden, The Lion of Cairo, St. Martin's (historical adventure set in medieval Cairo)

Stephanie Pintoff, In the Shadow of Gotham, Penguin (serial killer thriller set in New York in 1905)

Kate Pullinger, The Mistress of Nothing, Touchstone (life of a ladies' maid on her journey from the confines of Victorian England to the uncharted reaches of Egypt’s Nile Valley)

Jessica Stirling, The Paradise Waltz, Hodder & Stoughton (romance for a young country schoolteacher in 1930s Scotland)

Richard S Wheeler, The Owl Hunt, Forge (latest in Skye's West series, Old West saga set on Wyoming's Wind River reservation)

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January 2011

Christian Cameron, Tyrant: King of the Bosphorus, Orion (latest in epic ancient historical series)

Robb Foreman Dew, Being Polite to Hitler, Little Brown (in the summer of 1953, a middle-aged woman decides to establish an identity apart from her job and family)

Adrian Goldsworthy, True Soldier Gentleman, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (military adventure in the Peninsular War, by a well-known historian)

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February 2011

Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned, HMH (thrilling tale about men who go to sea and the women they leave behind, from the mid-19th c to WWII)

Tom Rob Smith, A New World, Grand Central (epic historical thriller, spanning 1950s Moscow to 1960s America to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s)

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March 2011

Jesse Bullington, The Enterprise of Death, Orbit (in Renaissance Europe, a young African slave becomes the unwilling apprentice of an ancient necromancer; historical fantasy)

Dorothy Garlock, Keep a Little Secret, Grand Central (Americana period romance, sequel to her Stay a Little Longer)

Sarita Mandanna, Tiger Hills, Grand Central (sweeping, romantic debut novel set on a coffee plantation in southern India at the turn of the 20th century)

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