Lord Lorenzo Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence, has summoned ship captain Niccolo Corsini to his estate. A mysterious fleet of ships flying a white flag with a black cross is decimating cities on Italy’s coast with Florence in its sights. This fleet doesn’t...

Gin Crow by Jason Hill follows Willy Knight, a widowed father living with his daughter Christy in 2005 San Antonio. Willy has spent years studying the death of Helen Ruth after recognizing parallels between her disappearance from public memory and his own wife’s death after...

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...

A Tale of Paris and Paris by Edmond Thornfield is set in fifteenth-century Cortona, where Lorenzo di Ranieri returns from Florence to a city under ecclesiastical scrutiny. Quiet warnings reach him that the Inquisition is preparing accusations meant to divide households and strip the town...

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...