It is 1941, nine years after the devastating Holodomor in Ukraine. Two years earlier, fifteen-year-old Konstantin “Kostya” Lysenko had missed out on the mass recruitment of the Red Army for boys over the age of eighteen, unlike his older brothers, Petro and Grisha, when World...

It is 1954. Ten years after she left for Stockton to start a new life, Althea Sparrow has just returned to Bear River, California, her hometown, to help her siblings run the family business and care for her aging father. However, she has no idea...

Entertaining and well-researched, A. Piper Burgi’s The Exploress and the Pillars of Eternity is a fine example of historical fiction. Set in the early nineteenth century, at a time when Egypt was just beginning to allow Europeans access to their country and its archaeological treasures,...

Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” Fear is the most prevalent emotion in The Weight of Silence by Alex Baranda, but maybe it’s fear that keeps people alive. Set in 1943, it begins with an elite agent...

Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,” which is a sentiment one character does not consider in The Reckoning by Ann Nolder Heinz. It opens in 1873 with a mysterious man standing outside a quiet residence, wrestling with a...

The Last Heretic by Steve Goldsmith follows Archelaus, a clever and skeptical scribe navigating the dangerous dynamics of early Christianity during the Council of Nicaea. Set in 325 AD, the story moves between political salons, bishops’ chambers, and dimly lit writing rooms, bringing the early...

In Jean Grandbois' Nursing Flagstop, for nearly fifty years, Jerry has measured his life against a single song, “Borderless,” recorded by the elusive musician Flagstop. When a chance discovery reveals that Flagstop, now living under his real name Eugene Books, is in a Detroit care...

In The Lady in the Veil by Allie Cresswell, upon her mother's marriage, Georgina Willow is sent from her isolated existence in the rugged moors of Yorkshire into mid-1830’s London society. Unlike most young women who might be thrilled to spend a season amongst the...

Voyagers: Homeland to Heartland is based on D. L. Norris’s own family history, and rings with authenticity. Opening in nineteenth-century Norway, like so many of their compatriots living in poverty, Kittil and Marte Dyrebu decide to emigrate to America. They have an extended bureaucratic battle...

Pirates and smugglers threaten a summer gathering in the exciting romance novel, Windvale (Regency Love Stories: Book 5) by Karen Thornell. Sir Henry is a spy like his father, and when a mission goes wrong, he quits the world of espionage. Now he is floundering...