Author of Historical Fiction and Mysteries
Ariel Lawhon's historical novel Flight of Dreams imagines the lives of the Hindenburg passengers in the final days before the epic disaster that destroyed the airship. The history is well-known: in the 1930s, the world's aviation industry was rapidly changing and expanding into intercontinental passenger travel, and nothing was a greater symbol of those ambitions that the... Continue Reading →
In the summer of 1545, Caterina Konarska undertakes the long journey from Bari to Kraków in search of a cure for her ailing son Giulio. In Poland, she finds a court far different from the lively, cultured place she remembers from twenty-five years ago. The old king lies on his deathbed, and the once-charming Queen... Continue Reading →
Chapter 1 St. Nicholas Monastery, Nyonoksa, Russia August 24, 1553 by P.K. Adams and C.P. Lesley So close to the Arctic, dawn flushed the skies with pink despite the early hour. A blessed silence descended as the monks finished yet another round of prayers, chanted in Slavonic to the accompaniment of bells, and returned to... Continue Reading →
Guest post by Desiree Villena It’s been half a year since the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency following the appearance of a novel coronavirus. Since then, COVID-19 has profoundly changed how we live and how we work — and the publishing industry is no exception. The book trade might be stereotyped as sluggish and... Continue Reading →
Kristin Hannah's novel The Nightingale traces the fate of two French sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, whose complicated relationship is further tested when the Nazis invade their country in the spring of 1940. The story starts when Vianne's husband, Antoine, joins the army to fight the enemy, and Vianne settles into a life that's increasingly full of... Continue Reading →
Excerpt from Midnight Fire, Jagiellon Mystery #2 Increasingly bored, I was about to turn to Maria, when the volume of conversations suddenly abated and heads turned toward one corner of the hall. A sense of anticipation filled the air, as if the gathering awaited the beginning of a performance by a troupe of players, lowering... Continue Reading →
I've been on a dual-timeline narrative bender lately (see my review of The Lake House), so I picked up a copy of A Witch in Time at Barnes&Noble on a weekend trip just before the coronavirus pandemic hit. The protagonist is Helen Lambert, a high-powered DC publisher, who is reeling from a recent divorce and... Continue Reading →
Holly Tucker's non-fiction book City of Light, City of Poison documents a lesser-known period of French history. A hundred years before the French Revolution, Louis XIV presided over another turbulent era and made efforts to establish the first system of law enforcement in the country. In the second half of the 17th century, Paris was a place... Continue Reading →
As a new Vermonter, I'm fascinated by local folktales. None are more popular here than those telling of the possible existence of Bigfoot, a hairy, ape-like creature that is said to dwell in the wilderness. J.P. Choquette's Silence In the Woods is the first in the Monsters in the Green Mountains series that centers around... Continue Reading →
I haven't enjoyed a novel like Kate Morton's The Lake House in a long time. What a revelation! A dual time narrative, the novel tells the parallel story of Alice Edavane whose baby brother Theo went missing from the family's Cornish estate in the summer of 1933; and that of Sadie Sparrow, a Met detective... Continue Reading →
