Historical Fiction

Escape into the past with these historical fiction titles, ranging from pivotal writers to accusations of witchcraft to the Civil War!

THE QUEENS OF CRIME by Marie Benedict
9781250280756 | 2/11/25

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

AUSTEN AT SEA by Natalie Jenner
9781250349590 | 5/6/25

Two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, find their lives transformed by a visit to England and Sir Francis Austen, her brother and keeper of her memories and surviving artifacts.

In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and devoted to the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.

In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson—brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers, are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen. Bachelors both, they two are invited to visit Sir Francis in England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.

The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason—wealthy daughter of state senator with her eye on the Nelson brothers, and a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.

THE HOUNDING by Xenobe Purvis
9781250366382 | 8/5/25

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.

HOW TO DODGE A CANNONBALL by Dennard Dayle
9781250345677 | 6/17/25

Razor-sharp and hilarious, How to Dodge a Cannonball tells the story of Anders, a white teenager who volunteers to be a Union Army flag-twirler to escape his abusive mother. In desperate acts of self-preservation, he defects—twice—before joining a Black regiment at Gettysburg, claiming to be an octoroon. In his new and entirely incredulous unit, Anders becomes entangled with questionable military men and an arms dealer working for both sides. But more importantly he bonds with the other soldiers, finding friendship and a family he desperately needs. After deploying to New York City to suppress the draft riots and to Nevada to suppress Native Americans, Anders begins to see the war through the eyes of his newfound brothers.

Dayle’s satire spares no one, whether he’s writing about Anders’s naivete and unexpected love interest, the quirks of Confederate and Union soldiers, those out to make a quick buck off the tragedy of war, or the theater of war itself (literal theater , as the novel includes a one-act play the troop obsesses over while they wait for action).