Author of Historical Fiction and Mysteries
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 →
The Borgia dynasty of Renaissance Rome continues to fascinate 500 years later. Much has been written about them - fiction and non-fiction alike - but The Borgia Confessions offers a rare perspective - that of a servant to the famous papal family. Maddalena Moretti is a young widow from the rural Romagna region who arrives in Rome in... Continue Reading →
An absorbing and fast-paced western, Whiskey When We're Dry begins in the spring 1885 when seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney leaves her homestead and sets out across the mountains in search of her outlaw brother Noah. Alone after her father's death, Jessilyn decides that the only way to keep starvation and rapacious neighbors at bay is to... Continue Reading →
The Power to Deny introduces the reader to one of the forgotten figures of the late colonial and revolutionary America. Elizabeth Graeme was a Philadelphia socialite and a poet in her own right who was friends with, and admired by, many in her day, including some of the men who went on to sign the Declaration... Continue Reading →
Guest post by Wendy Long Stanley Eleven years ago, I moved from Canada to the United States with my husband and our two daughters. That first year, as I was exploring the Philadelphia area, I visited Graeme Park, a local historic site that once belonged to Pennsylvania colonial governor William Keith. Today, Graeme Park features... Continue Reading →
