Category: Past Tense

This historical fiction novel from the author of The Handmaid’s Tale imagines all the what-ifs surrounding a famous criminal case in Canada in the mid-1800s. Grace Marks has been convicted of the vicious murder of her employer and his housekeeper / mistress. She claims to have no memory of the incident. Some think her innocent. Some think her evil or insane. An expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness believes he can help determine the truth as a group of reformers seek a pardon for Grace. But what exactly is the truth? The truth as Grace remembers it? The truth of what she says? Or is what everyone wants to believe enough? By the end, you might not even be sure yourself.

The final days of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman put to death in Iceland in 1829, are spent on an isolated farm as she awaits execution for the murder of two men. Horrified to be housing a murderer, the family avoids Agnes at all costs. All but the priest, whom Agnes has chosen as her spiritual advisor, have no interest in understanding this woman, accused of a brutal double homicide. But as the date of her execution approaches, the farmer’s wife and daughter begin to see another side to Agnes, one that may paint the crime in an entirely different light.

If the other criminal cases featured in these historical fiction novels have been unfamiliar, this one certainly won’t be. Lizzie Borden famously murdered her father and step-mother with an axe–or, that’s what everyone usually assumes, anyway. The brutal murder of the respected Bordens shocked the town. But for Lizzie and her sister Emma, the loss of their volatile father and spiteful step-mother might have taken on a different cast. What really happened? Does Lizzie’s shifting memory and accounts of what happened simply speak to a shocked and traumatized girl? A cold-hearted killer? Or perhaps a desperate young woman?

December 3, 1976. Seven armed gunmen raided the house of Bob Marley, nearly killing him, his wife, his manager, and several others. Little was ever released about the attack or the unnamed would-be assassins. Who were these men? And perhaps even more importantly, why would anyone want to kill Bob Marley? Marlon James deftly paints a picture of a turbulent time in Jamaican history, rife with journalists, drug dealers, and assassins.

Based on the incredible true story of a Cold War double agent, A Most Clever Girl explores the life of Elizabeth Bentley, recruited to spy on fascists for the American Communist Party during WWII and eventually building the largest Soviet spy network in the U.S. alongside the handler she falls in love with.

Release date: September 14, 2021

In the ancient city of Smyrna, 1905, the Ottoman Empire does not yet seem on the edge of dissolution. But a spy for the British Empire has just arrived on its shores. The Silence of Scheherazade follows the lives and fates of four intertwining families in the early twentieth century as a once flourishing empire is used as a bargaining chip and set to flames on the cusp of WWI.

Release date: September 19, 2021

It’s hard to imagine a better beachy summer read than one about a big end-of-summer blowout part hosted by a family of surfer siblings living in their famous father’s shadow. Before the night is over, Nina’s glorious cliffside house will burn to the ground. But before that, she’ll throw a party people will talk about for years to come, a party with celebrities and fighting, a surprise new sibling, and maybe even an appearance from their estranged movie star father.

In classic Taylor Jenkins Reid style, you’ll be drawn into the lives of the rich and famous. Close your eyes, and before you know it you’ll find yourself right there among them, sitting on the sands of a Malibu beach.

1930s Key West might seem like paradise, but for the three women at the heart of this novel, it is also a place of escape. It is a place to escape to or be escaped from. As one woman struggles to finally break the ties that hold her to this town and two others find themselves passing through, their paths cross during the course of one holiday weekend. From arranged political marriages to long-lost brothers and mafia intrigue, the women’s complicated struggles become increasingly entangled even as a deadly storm approaches.

Based on true historical events, including the Labor Day Hurricane in 1935 that devastated the Florida Keys, The Last Train to Key West is a historical thriller of disastrous proportions.

Trigger warnings for domestic abuse, assault, and murder.

Based on the incredible life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who became one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the Caribbean, Island Queen follows Doll from the moment she buys her own freedom from her Irish father to the building of her entrepreneurial empire throughout the West Indies. It’s a sweeping epic following a remarkable women, determined to not only survive but thrive in a time full of people deadest against seeing her succeed.

Trigger warnings for racism and sexual assault.

Every year during the Lenten Ball, the patients of Salpetriere Asylum are dressed up and paraded out for all wealthiest of Parisian society to gawk at. It may provide them one glittering moment of hope, but the Madwomen’s Ball is a manifestation of the dehumanization the patients face on a daily basis. Dive deep into the horrifying history of nineteenth century asylums with this book in translation.

Release date: September 7, 2021 by The Overlook Press

Journey to an impoverished tenth century English abbey with a woman cast out of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s royal court in this book about bold women and religious fervor by the author of Fates and Furies.

Release date: September 7, 2021 by Riverhead Books

Colson Whitehead is back with a historical thriller that sounds like an Ocean’s Eleven style heist story set in 1960s Harlem.

Whitehead has such tremendous range, can’t wait to see what he does with this latest.

Release date: September 14, 2021 by Doubleday