Category: Past Tense

A chef kidnapped by a pirate for some five-star cooking on the high seas? Now that’s my kind of historical fiction! In 1819 renowned chef Owen Wedgwood is kidnapped Mad Hannah Mabbot, a ruthless pirate who promises to spare his life in exchange for the most delicious meals ever served. It’s a swashbuckling adventure as Wedgwood tries to create masterful meals for a pirate captain under siege.

Four mothers. Four daughters. Four families. In the late 1940s, four Chinese women, recently immigrated to San Francisco, meet weekly to reminisce over mahjong and food. Their daughters believe their mothers’ stories and advice don’t apply to them and their American lives, but as they grow older, they begin to see how much they’ve inherited from their mothers’ pasts. It’s a tale of the complicated and beautiful relationship between mothers and daughters, but food also plays a central role as a linchpin of love and culture.

In the late 1920s, a Vietnamese cook flees Saigon, answering an ad for a live-in chef at a Parisian household. He soon finds himself employed in the literary salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But when his enigmatic employers decide to return to the U.S., Binh must decide whether to once again relocate, return to Vietnam, or make a new home for himself in Paris.

Food Network and historical fiction fans alike will love this book about a BBC radio program to help with rationing ideas during WWII. Two years into the war, Britain is feels the effects of the Blitz and food shortages as U-boats cut off their supply line. To help the struggling homemakers, a BBC program called The Kitchen Front is putting on a cooking contest, and the grand prize is no small thing: a job as the show’s first ever female co-host. The book follows four women giving their all for a chance at the job of a lifetime.

Described as “Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell” and one of my most anticipated releases from this fall, When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky follows a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan from a wild west show to the Glendale Park Zoo in highly segregated 1920s Nashville.

The Night Watchman is inspired by the real-life experiences of Eldritch’s grandfather as a night watchman who brought the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota to Washington, D.C. Following a cast of characters, from the eponymous night watchman to recent high school grad saving every penny she makes to search for her older sister who went missing in Minneapolis, the story unfolds like oragami, revealing layer after layer of life in the Turtle Mountain Reservation in 1950s North Dakota.

The debut novel from internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer, Tanya Tagaq, is a story as fierce as it is tender. Split Tooth moves effortlessly between fact and fiction, poetry and prose as it tells the story of a girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s, navigating the divide between the harsh realties of life in a small artic town and the electrifying world of wildlife nearby alongside an unexpected pregnancy.

Five residential school survivors struggle to survive in 1960s Vancouver, haunted by the horrors of their past and searching for a way forward to a meaningful future. Some find hope and purpose in activism and motherhood, while others are unable to escape the abuse they experienced in the past. But for all five, it is the bonds of friendship that sustain them.

Saul Indian Horse is pretty sure none of the other residents at this treatment centre for alcoholics will understand him or what brought him to this place, but he grudgingly comes to realize that he can only find peace through telling his story. He journeys back through his life as a northern Ojibway, with all of its joys and sorrows, from being forcibly taken from his parents and put in a residential school the life-saving power of hockey and the racism and displacement he experienced in 1960s Canada.

Banished from court by Eleanor of Aquitaine and sent to become prioress of an English abbey, seventeen-year old Marie de France finds the life of a nun to be a dreadful existence. The same coarseness and determination that caused her to be cast out of court are exactly what it takes to create a stable life for herself and her sisters in the midst of poverty and royal dismissal. But with so much shifting in the world around them, can the bulwark of one woman and her unnerving passion and faith stand up against waves of religious and societal pressure?

In the years leading up to the Great War, the daughter of a lexicographer working on the first Oxford English Dictionary finds a scrap of paper with a wayward word, one the lexicographers no longer seem interested in. That word is the beginning of Esme’s interest in what words the lexicographers ignores–words most often pertaining to women–and her own version of the dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. I can think of few things more comforting to a reader than a book about words.

A nostalgia-filled book about girlhood friendship and the 1970s. Running into an old friend sends August down a mental journey back to her childhood in Brooklyn, where friendship was everything and the streets were their playground. Brooklyn was a place where anything seemed possible, but beneath that veneer of perfection, lie the dark realities of being a young girl in the city.

An aging English butler reflects on his life after three decades in service of “a great gentleman,” though he is beginning to have doubts about just how great that gentleman is. On a motoring trip that turns into a six-day journey into the past, he considers a life lived through two world wars and an unrealized romance between the butler and his housekeeper.

The lives of three women intersect in the lead up to one of the most devastating hurricanes Florida has ever seen: the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. One is searching for a lost brother, possibly stationed in one of the work camps full of WWI vets. One, newly married to a man she doesn’t know, is determined to do what is necessary to protect her family back in Cuba. And one flees a dangerous marriage, trying to find a better life for herself and her unborn child. But none of them realize the storm on the horizon will change the landscape of their lives forever.

Four siblings estranged from their famous father find relief and fame of their own through surfing in 1980s Malibu. But this isn’t just a story about surfing. It’s also a story about family in all its complicated glory and a house party for the ages. Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party is a legend in Malibu. It hosts everyone from her friends to Hollywood elite. There’s only one rule for getting in: if you know where to go, you’re invited. And this year’s part is not to be missed. None of them know it yet, but the night will end in flames, with all of Malibu burning around them.

A bored secretary gets wrapped up in violence and civil unrest after agreeing to watch a neighbor’s cat in this book about political corruption and student protests in 1970s Mexico City. When her neighbor never returns to take care of her cat and pay Maite for her troubles, she decided to track the art student down. Little does she know someone else is looking for her missing neighbor, too. He notices Maite. And being noticed by a criminal like Elvis is never good.

Estranged sisters Hwani and Maewol haven’t seen each other in years, the elder sister taken by her father to live in the capital city while her younger sister stayed behind at their island home. The memory of their father hangs between them as Hwani returns to their childhood home to discover what happened to him after he disappeared on an investigation. But the father Maewol remembers is a different man, a cruel man. And even with all the girls disappearing from the island, she isn’t sure she wants to get involved in solving a mystery about the father who abandoned her and the sister who went along with him and never looked back.

In New York’s Gilded Age, three women come together to use their magic to stand strong in a time when society was hell-bent on keeping them down. When Beatrice Dunn responds to a strange ad–“Respectable Lady Seeks Dependable Shop Girl. Those averse to magic need not apply”–she’s not sure what to expect. What she gets is Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St. Clair, proprietors of a teashop that deals in more than just tea leaves.

Found under a bridge covered in a blanket of bees, Simonopio seems to some the stuff of superstition, cursed by the devil. But Simonopio loves his adopted family, who see him as simply a boy in need of a home, dearly. And he is determined to use his gifts of premonition and his herd of protective bees to keep them safe from anything that threatens them.

In a world reminiscent of Parisian society where manners and reputation are everything, a young woman is swept up in the torrid love affair of a famed showman and her uncle’s unforgiving wife. Nina is dazzled when Hector Auvray arrives in town, hoping to learn more about the telekinetic powers he is known for, powers which she herself possesses. Hector helps Nina hone her gifts, but his affections are secretly withheld, already sworn to another: Nina’s aunt Valerie, his first love. But in spite of her strangeness, in spite of the powers society shuns in a woman, in spite of her love for beetles and the innocence she is soon to lose to an older man toying with her heart, Nina has greater potential that any of them realize.

When Hiram’s mother is sold away, he’s robbed of all his memories of her. But he’s also left with a rare power, one that, years later, saves him from drowning. He’s left with a determination to escape enslavement, traveling from the plantations of Virginia to the dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he becomes involved in the underground moment to free people from slavery, he never forgets his resolve to save the family he left behind.

Though half of this beautiful magical realism novel take place in present day, the other half explores Orquídea Divina’s past as part of a traveling circus in Ecuador, slowly revealing the answers her grandchildren seek in the present. The subtle magic weaved throughout makes this book even more poignant, with the gifts and curses of a family’s past stretching out into the present.

A terrible storm off the coast of Finnmark, Norway in 1617 leaves the Artic community almost entirely without men. But for the survivors, life must go on. A community almost entirely made of women, though, especially women surviving and thriving on their own, is a threat. And for the Scotsman sent in to root out witchcraft, it is surely a sign of the depravity that has taken hold of the village. In the midst of this witch hunt, his young wife and a local villager named Maren find a surprising closeness which could put both of them at risk–even as it brings them comfort in cold and difficult times.

Puritanical values have gripped the English countryside in the 17th century, leaving one small town primed for accusations of witchcraft. And especially for someone like Rebecca West, who lives alone with her mother, both fatherless and husbandless, it is a dangerous time to be different. When a newcomer identifying himself as the Witchfinder General starts asking questions about women on the fringes of society, the future Rebecca had hoped to build for herself becomes altogether uncertain. More likely, she’ll wind up imprisoned or worse with this Witchfinder General sniffing around.

Rue is not a witch. She is her mother’s daughter, raised to be a midwife and healer. And when things go wrong in the village, when a child is born differently or someone suffers, she is often blamed. The truth is, Rue is hiding a dangerous secret. But it’s not the one her neighbors are starting to believe. Rue is no witch, but she is harboring someone who could destroy their way of life forever if she–or the truth–ever came out.

Did you know that the mother of 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler was accused of witchcraft? This was likely done in retribution for his religious beliefs, and though Kepler defended his mother himself, she was arrested for fourteen months before he could secure her release.

But this is not Johannes story; this is Katharina’s. After being accused of witchcraft by a neighbor, the aging widow seeks the help of a literature neighbor to write down her tale. Determined to fight back and tell her side of the story, Katharina recounts the events surround the accusation–which she finds ridiculous–in her clever and irreverent voice. It’s one of the most fun and amusing historical fiction books about witchcraft trials / accusations I’ve ever come across, and that’s all down to the brilliant way in which Galchen depicts Katharina.

Based on true events, The Red of His Shadow takes place following Holy Week in Haitian communities of the Dominican Republic. It is a time when the sugar cane harvesters can lose themselves in the fervor of Voudon. But amidst the festival, a Voudon priestess and a rival Voudon priest begin an affair that ends in what the Dominican police would eventually rule a crime of passion.

In an alternate 16th century England, a young girl is given a life sentence as a sin eater. For the crime of stealing bread, she will forever be shunned by society as a woman who eats ritual foods symbolizing the sins of the dead. Apprenticed to an older sin eater, May must make her way in a cruel world that refuses to acknowledge or speak to her. But when her mentor is tortured and killed, she is drawn into a deadly royal plot and must turn the very role that has been used to subjugated her into her power.

Master of historical horror and gothic literature, Sarah Water’s paints a chilling ghost story in The Little Stranger. A rural doctor is called to look in on a family living in an old Georgian home falling into ruins. They’re certainly haunted by something, but it is merely a dying way of life in postwar England, or something altogether more sinister? Creepy and atmospheric, this novel is a great example of gothic horror.

As an escaped slave, Seethe has found freedom. But she’s never truly free from the past. Haunted by memories of her early years at Sweet Home where she experienced so many horrors, she struggles to stay in the present. The present, though, is filled with its own hauntings, especially that of her baby, dead and nameless, and the teenage girl who shows up claiming to bear the only name on her lost child’s tombstone: Beloved.

This gothic masterpiece set in 1950s Mexico follows a woman venturing out to an isolated town to discover the cause of her cousin’s strange and disturbing letters. What she finds is a family shrouded in mystery, a house full of horrors, and a reality almost too terrible to be believed. It’s a strange and chilling tale that will suck you in a spit you back out again.

This Victorian ghost story tells a chilling tale of a pregnant widow sent to her late husband’s crumbling country estate where she finds herself surrounded by resentful servants and hostile villagers. Her only companion is a painted wooden figurine, one that looks shockingly like Elsie herself. The residents of the estate are terrified off the figure, but she believes that to be nothing more than superstition. That is, until she notices its eyes beginning to follow her around the room.

A historical mystery following a Cherokee horse-diver at the Glendale Park Zoo in 1920s Nashville who must get to the bottom of the mysterious events plaguing the park after a disastrous performance.

Release date: Oct 12, 2021

A man journeys deeper and deeper into the isolation of the Arctic Circle with only a loyal dog to keep him company. But years into his isolation, a surprising visitor sets off a chain of events that bring Sven into a family of misfits and castoffs, just like him.

Release date: Oct 26, 2021

This true story of the 1950s CIA-supported coup that toppled the Guatemalan government explores the lie that forever changed the development of Latin America: that the government of Jacobo Árbenz promoted the spread of Communism throughout the Americas. Harsh Times is the story of how history and truth are manipulated by those seeking power.

Release date: Nov 16, 2021

Following the political upheaval in 1960s postcolonial Ghana, a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl begins to question the double standard between men and women’s sexuality, especially in the wake of her own father’s adultery, which she has been keeping secret.

Release date: Nov 16, 2021

Harriet and Josie Szász are known as “The Sisters Sweet,” in their vaudeville sister act, posing as conjoined twins in a scheme dreamed up by their parents. But when Josie exposes the sisters’ fraud to chase her Hollywood dreams, Harriet is left to pick up the pieces.

Release date: Nov 30, 2021

Juhea Kim’s sweeping historical epic spans half a century, featuring a wide cast of characters, hero and villain, friend and enemy, at the heart of the Korean independence movement. From a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the boreal forests of Manchuria, everyone must choose how to forge their own destiny, even as the fate of their nation is being determined.

Release date: Dec 7, 2021

This historical fiction novel is the first that really got me thinking about the parallels we can find in pandemics of the past, and the sense of relief that comes with that. In a Dublin maternity ward in 1918, the affects of the flu are immediate and devastating, impacting expecting mothers and their unborn children alike. Their lives rest in the hands of one young nurse in an understaffed hospital also dealing with the aftermath of war. It’s a heartbreaking portrayal of sickness and loss but also of courage in the face of hardship and the unknown depths of the human spirit.

TW: death and graphic depictions of childbirth and stillbirth

The 1918 Flu Epidemic may be the one that has drawn the most comparisons with Covid-19, but it’s not the only one to devastate the people affected. Tadjo brings to light the Ebola epidemic in West Africa through snapshots of those affected, from doctors protected from the virus by only the thin layer of a plastic suit to the volunteer gravediggers, overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies. It is especially timely in depicting the question of how we deal with overwhelming fear and prejudice in the face of a devastating health crisis.

In the Louisiana institution known as Carville, people branded as lepers were stripped of their rights and quarantined throughout the 20th century. Mirielle West was living the life of a socialite, married to a silent film star in Hollywood’s Golden Age, when a doctor noticed a pale patch of skin on her hand and sent her hundreds of miles away to Carville Lepers Home. At first, Mirielle holds onto the hope that her stay there will be brief, but life at Carville is more of a life sentence than anything. With no other choice, she’ll have to carve out a life for herself among this disparate group of people with an incurable disease.

1666 is a time of fear, and superstition is almost as rampant as the plague ravaging its way across Europe. When an infected bolt of cloth brings the disease to an isolated English village, the spread of illness leads the villagers to turn on each other in a deadly witch-hunt. One young healer takes it upon herself to save her community from disintegration in this book based on the true story of Eyam and its experiences with the deadly Bubonic Plague.

In 1980s Chicago, the director of an art gallery sees his career flourish even as the AIDS epidemic devastates the world around him, taking out first one friend, then another. Telling both the story of the survivors affects by the aftermath of the AIDS crisis and those living through it, The Great Believers depicts the struggle to find hope amidst devastation and despair.

Seol is living as a damo, an indentured servant of the police, in 1800 Joseon Korea. Her place is not to speak or ask questions but to help the police in arresting women and examining the female bodies they aren’t allowed to touch. Maybe that would be fine if serving tea to the police and helping with their investigations had been her choice. But when she’s brought along to assist after the gruesome murder of a young noblewoman, her curiosity and need to find the truth leads her down a dangerous path, winding closer and closer to the killer–someone willing to kill nobles and scholars, much less an unruly servant, to meet his deadly ends.

The newest historical thriller from the acclaimed author of Mexican Gothic explores a turbulent period in Mexico’s history. Revolutionary students are clashing with the government and young people are being killed. A secretary secretly obsessed with romance comics and an eccentric criminal roughing people up under the moniker of “Elvis” find themselves searching for answers about the same woman after she disappears one night. As Maite begins to realize the dangerous path her idle curiosity has lead her down, Elvis’s loyalties to his boss and to the government are brought into question, even as he rises through the ranks.

In this Victorian thriller, the Grand Exhibition is still being erected in Hyde Park when an aspiring artist named Iris crosses paths with Silas, a taxidermist and curiosity collector interested in all things strange and beautiful. The moment is almost meaningless for Iris, who soon agrees to pose for a portrait by a pre-Raphaelite artist in exchange for art lessons. But for Silas, the obsession is only just beginning.

Sweden, 1793. A former night watchman hoping to give an unidentifiable body a proper burial. A consulting detective hoping to solve one last case before consumption takes him. A young man with dreams of becoming a doctor finds opportunities and terrible misfortunes in the capital that lead him down a dark path. A woman consigned to a work house for upsetting her parish priest hatches a desperate plan for escape. Over the course of one murder investigation, the lives of these four people intertwine, their stories connecting and colliding in shocking ways in this dark, Scandinavian noir.