Therein Lies the Pearl by Catherine Hughes is one of those historical novels that I devour with great pleasure. Set in Normandy and England in the eleventh century, in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest in 1066, it focuses not so much on...

Ballot by Dan Mulvagh is a powerful anti-war novel that follows the exploits of four Australian servicemen (Diggers) called up to serve in the Vietnam War. Mitch Masters' career in motorcycle speedway racing is derailed by a call-up in the 1969 Australian draft ballot. Three...

When Lieutenant Colonel William W. Harris, a World War II veteran, is assigned to the 65th Infantry Regiment in Puerto Rico in 1949 as commander, he sees it as a demotion and the end of his promising military career. Composed almost entirely of Puerto Rican...

Iysh by Greg Price begins with Leo Butlion, a medical student in 1940s Koblenz, when the German state turns its full attention to Jewish families. After a narrow escape from deportation, he survives by passing as a non-combatant inside the German military, using medical training...

In A Conversation with a Deadman by John M Langley, Lee Butler enters a bar where a stranger speaks of a Texas town erased from maps, yet is still standing. The account leads Lee west toward Coleman. Empty streets point him toward people caught in...

The Last Saboteur by Martin Roy Hill is a World War II spy thriller that offers readers a daring Nazi plot to sabotage the Manhattan Project by assassinating its director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The story follows Carrick, an Irishman turned German spy, who infiltrates the...

Under Two Flags by Janis Robinson Daly is a historical novel set during World War I, inspired by the real experiences of Josephine Therese Marzynski, a young American woman drawn to music and possibility. In 1916, Josephine leaves Boston for Berlin to study opera at...

Sailing Against the Tide by Cindy Burkart Maynard follows Jeanne Baret from rural Burgundy in the 1740s into the expanding world of French science and exploration during the 1760s. After her father’s death forces her off the land, Jeanne relies on her botanical knowledge to...

Boudicca’s Knife by Steven James Foreman is a fascinating fantasy. The narrative follows the “life” of a Celtic dagger for a thousand years, its blade variously a knife, a family heirloom, and a ceremonial sword, but always the harbinger of death. A great deal of...

Lonely World by Megan Hale begins in nineteenth-century London. A school outing ends in disaster when a carriage is deliberately wrecked, leaving a young girl named Cristal blind and quietly reclassified by the Crown. Removed from her family, she is absorbed into a state system...