Catherine Mathis’s Leonor is set in 14th-century Portugal, where Leonor Teles de Meneses lives far from power under the control of her husband, Lord Pombeiro, after marriage takes away the freedom she once enjoyed in her mother’s household. Everything changes when she enters the court...

In Dust to Dust by John Hudson, Dr. Patrick Alexander leads BioGen, a private research company in Virginia that discovers a way to restore dead organisms to life through regeneration from skeletal remains. After scientists successfully revive a circus chimpanzee buried since 1926, Alexander gets...

In Is That DiMaggio? by Nick Brigeman, New York middle school student Dave spends his afternoons collecting baseball memorabilia at Triple Crown Trinkets, a neighborhood shop run by former Montreal Expos player Lenny Johnson. After purchasing a rare 1941 Joe DiMaggio baseball card, Dave becomes...

Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn deliver a mesmerizing time-travel thriller in Forward to Camelot and re-imagine the events surrounding the murder of JFK. Cady Cuyler is a thirty-six-year-old soap opera actress in 2000, who is abruptly fired from her long-running role. She is enlisted by...

To the ancient Romans, Vestal virgins represented the very personification of feminine purity. But when one of their number is accused of sex with a man, scandal erupts. In a city dealing with the aftermath of a crushing defeat against Hannibal's army, this shocking revelation...

Dual Convergence: Witness to History by Angel Giacomo is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. The author has brought to life the history of the Roosevelt family in a very down-to-earth way – warts and all. Internal family...

Anna Belfrage’s Queen of Shadows is set in fourteenth-century Castile, where Alma’s future changes when she is taken into the household of Doña Leonor de Guzmán, the king’s companion whose position draws both favor and hostility. What begins as service becomes responsibility as Alma learns...

Gershwin’s Bess by Lisa K. Winkler follows the ascent of Anne Wiggins Brown, a gifted soprano moving from Baltimore to the intense, competitive music world of New York. Starting with her childhood performances for WWI soldiers, the narrative tracks her through the 1920s as she...

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,...

The Inhabited Arc by Joe Trabocco is a collection of three short stories, all standalones and each enveloped in the singular consciousness of its narrator. In Epiphany, Lydia is in a coastal house where daily life by the shore slowly awakens an inner awareness, leading...