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All Historical Fiction Coverage

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

Torn between two worlds

Review by Justin Barisich

Set in feudal Japan, Flame in the Mist unveils the dark secrets of notorious families, narrates their bloody battles and follows the journey of one young woman with the power to alter the empire.

Mariko is the only daughter of the noble and prominent Hattori family. And at 17, she’s off to the imperial city to meet her future husband—the emperor’s son—for their arranged marriage. But Mariko’s caravan is attacked in the dark forest by the infamous bandits known as the Black Clan, and they slay everyone except for her—their target. Mariko manages to escape, both with her life and a newfound thirst for revenge. After tracking the Black Clan for days, Mariko disguises herself as a young farm boy and gains their trust. She’s determined to learn why they wanted her dead, find their weaknesses and destroy them from within. But she never expected the Black Clan to value her intellect or offer her the freedom she’s never had. She also didn’t expect to fall in love with a ruthless murderer.

As author Renée Ahdieh did with her debut, The Wrath & the Dawn, Flame in the Mist explores a young woman’s power and strength to effect great change in a patriarchal society. And the realistic stories, fascinating culture and complex relationships of Ahdieh’s fictional characters—explored in actual, historical settings—are completely enrapturing.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set in feudal Japan, Flame in the Mist unveils the dark secrets of notorious families, narrates their bloody battles and follows the journey of one young woman with the power to alter the empire.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

A mother’s courage

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

Twenty-two-year-old Lilli discovers she is pregnant after her lover leaves for Pittsburgh in search of better employment. Though he has promised to send for her, Lilli is fearful of being shunned from her close-knit Quaker community and leaves home, taking refuge in a charity residence for unwed mothers in urban Philadelphia. After her daughter is born, she decides to keep the baby, a highly unusual decision in the late-19th century, when finding acceptance and shelter was nearly impossible for an unmarried mother.

Desperate for employment, Lilli is hired as a wet nurse for a wealthy family, at the financial and emotional expense of boarding her own daughter, with catastrophic results. Again and again, circumstances force Lilli to choose between her moral ideals and harsh social realities.

The novel is styled as a first-person diary, and Lilli’s eloquent self-expression is a product of her Quaker education and training as a teacher. Her clear-eyed view of her situation and her fearless questioning of a repressive system make for exhilarating reading, but even her spirit can’t always compete with the hardships of a culture where even wealthy white women had little economic agency.

It is a testament to Benton as a writer that this novel wears its considerable historical detail so lightly, although the narrative does get bogged down with repetitive descriptions of nursing and a few hard-to-believe deus ex machinas. But in its depiction of a mother’s fierce attachment to her child, Lilli de Jong has real resonance in today’s battles over women’s reproductive health and the rights of working mothers.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Janet Benton for Lilli de Jong.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

FictionHistorical Fiction

The Alice Network

Review by Matthew Jackson

Historical fiction is all about blending the original with the familiar, about those delicate new stitches woven into the tapestry. The best practitioners of this often subtle art can sew those new threads without ever breaking the pattern, until the new and the old, the real and the fictional, are one and the same. With her latest novel, Kate Quinn announces herself as one of the best artists of the genre.

The Alice Network jumps deftly and briskly between two tumultuous periods of European history: 1947, in the wake of the second world war; and 1915, in the heat of the first. After World War II, Charlie St. Clair—a young American woman being shuffled off to Europe by her family due to a surprise pregnancy—is searching for her lost French cousin, and her quest leads her to the London doorstep of a prickly, drunken woman named Eve Gardiner.

In 1915, a much younger Eve is working as a file girl for the war effort when her multilingual skills and ability to go unnoticed (helped by her stammer) earn her the opportunity to work as a spy in German-occupied France. Eve wants to be on the front lines, but she may be unprepared for how far she’ll have to go.

Quinn’s novel links the two women across time, as it becomes clear that something from Eve’s dark past lingers in Charlie’s present. The plotting is seamless, the pace breathtaking, and the prose is both vivid and laced with just the right amount of detail. Charlie is a fiercely entertaining narrator, and Eve is one of the most complex and rewarding characters you’ll find in a new novel this year.

Fans of historical fiction, spy fiction and thrilling drama will love every moment of The Alice Network. It’s a masterful novel that will leave you craving more.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The story of a spy
FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Brontë’s tortured hero

Review by Hope Racine

There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

Mr. Rochester differs from popular Jane Eyre retellings, such as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in that Shoemaker, a retired librarian, succeeds in painting a sympathetic portrait of the man. Edward is revealed to be deeply emotional and achingly lonely. His sole desire in life is a companion—be it lover or friend—and his repeated inability to find one is what drives him to become the man readers know and (sometimes) love. The strength of the novel lies in Shoemaker’s acute attention to detail and historical accuracy, particularly in her treatment of Jamaica, where slavery is king and everything young Edward thought he knew has been turned upside down.

Mr. Rochester is beautifully paced and compelling as it delivers a sweeping narrative and a new perspective to one of literature’s most famous love stories. Many questions and confusions from the original story—such as Bertha’s backstory, why Edward hides his feelings and why he finally decides to propose—have been answered. Though the novel will appeal most to fans of Jane Eyre, Shoemaker has recreated the spirit of the original, which will help those unfamiliar with the text enjoy this retelling.

There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

The making of a legend

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

BookPage Teen Top Pick, May 2017

Before the start of World War II—years before the events of Printz Honor-winning Code Name Verity, which tells the story of Julie Beaufort-Stuart’s capture by the Gestapo in occupied France—Julie was an unsure but privileged 15-year-old girl on break from school. In June of 1938, Julie arrives at her late grandfather’s Scottish estate to help her mother and grandmother pack up the contents of the house in preparation for its sale. But she is inexplicably attacked on a nearby riverbank and left for dead. She is rescued by two Travellers, a brother and sister from a nomadic group native to Scotland, who are treated cruelly by Julie’s own friends and neighbors. Julie remembers little of the attack, but she believes it may have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of the archivist from her grandfather’s estate. Throw in a washed-up body, priceless river pearls and an unexpected romance, and readers will come to understand how Julie became a tenacious and brave British spy years later.

Elizabeth Wein masterfully weaves a story of friendship, love and loss against the backdrop of the breathtaking Scottish Highlands. The descriptions of the Scottish burns, the melodic dialect and the shared culture between the Scottish gentry and Travellers will make readers think they’ve been transported back in time. For readers who haven’t already been introduced to Wein through Code Name Verity, The Pearl Thief is a beautiful starting point.

 

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Elizabeth Wein masterfully weaves a story of friendship, love and loss against the backdrop of the breathtaking Scottish Highlands. The descriptions of the Scottish burns, the melodic dialect and the shared culture between the Scottish gentry and Travellers will make readers think they’ve been transported back in time. For readers who haven’t already been introduced to Wein through Code Name Verity, The Pearl Thief is a beautiful starting point.

FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

A decade trapped in Spain

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Mary Gordon has been writing compelling books about faith, love and family for four decades. In There Your Heart Lies, her eighth novel, she examines the ways political idealism and religious fanaticism shape the choices of a privileged but naive Catholic woman in the mid-20th century.

At 19, Marian Taylor breaks with her wealthy New York family after the death of her beloved younger brother and sails to Spain to join the forces fighting Franco. Assisting in hospitals, she meets a Spanish doctor, gets pregnant, marries him and just as quickly loses him to sepsis. Forced to live with his parents in rural Spain and surrender her baby to her domineering mother-in-law, Marian becomes completely dependent on a family and a culture as rigid as the one she left behind. Only a friendship with Isabel, the village doctor, offers Marian sanctuary, as well as means to a possible escape back to the United States after a decade of misery.

But Marian has long kept this part of her life secret. Now in her 90s and living comfortably in Rhode Island, it is only when she is diagnosed with cancer that she begins to open up about these experiences with her live-in granddaughter, Amelia. The intensity of Marian’s experience prompts Amelia to make a journey to Spain to reconcile her grandmother’s past with her own uncertain prospects.

Gordon’s novels often feature personal dramas set against a backdrop of political or religious change, and here she touches on the violence of soldiers, clerics and citizens on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, as well as the kind of inflexible religious household in which Marian was raised. But There Your Heart Lies also depicts pleasure in the loving bonds between generations and in acts of generosity and selflessness between friends.

Marian is a classic Gordon heroine—sheltered but passionate and loyal to a fault. In contrast, Amelia’s search for self cannot compete with the drama and urgency of Marian’s time in Spain. This is a historically satisfying novel and, when Marian is center stage, an emotionally satisfying one as well.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Mary Gordon for There Your Heart Lies.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mary Gordon has been writing compelling books about faith, love and family for four decades. In There Your Heart Lies, her eighth novel, she examines the ways political idealism and religious fanaticism shape the choices of a privileged but naive Catholic woman in the mid-20th century.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

One foot in front of the other

Review by Norah Piehl

Not since A Monster Calls, the novel Patrick Ness wrote based on a story idea from the late Siobhan Dowd, has a collaboration from two of my favorite authors felt so bittersweet. But Beck, Mal Peet’s posthumously published novel finished by his friend Meg Rosoff, comes close.

Rosoff is perhaps the perfect writer for the job; her sensitivity to language allows her to meld her narrative voice with Peet’s, and her prior work has shown her ease in writing introspective characters like the title character in Beck.

Born in 1908 in Liverpool to a prostitute mother and an unknown Ghanaian father, Beck becomes an orphan at a young age. What follows over his next two decades is violence, abuse, rejection and outright hatred—due in no small part to the color of his skin—interspersed with brief moments of acceptance and joy. Only when he meets an older woman—auspiciously named Grace—during a journey across Canada does Beck dare to hope for something resembling a future infused with love.

“Go on the way you’re facing until you can’t go no further” is the motto that keeps Beck walking in the face of adversity. Luckily for readers, Peet also kept writing in the face of illness and impending death, and his friend Rosoff carries on his legacy.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Not since A Monster Calls, the novel Patrick Ness wrote based on a story idea from the late Siobhan Dowd, has a collaboration from two of my favorite authors felt so bittersweet. But Beck, Mal Peet’s posthumously published novel finished by his friend Meg Rosoff, comes close.

FictionHistorical FictionFamily Saga

Lisa See’s most ambitious novel yet

Review by Deborah Donovan

Lisa See’s enlightening new novel offers her readers multiple storylines, each of which focuses on the engaging character of Li-Yan, a member of the Akha tribe of Yunnan Province, one of China’s ethnic minorities.

When the novel opens in 1988, Li-Yan is 10 and already the star pupil in the Spring Well Village School. Her mother is the village midwife, and she hopes to pass on her skills to Li-Yan one day. But Li-Yan, the smartest and most ambitious of the family, harbors the hope to be the first to advance to secondary school and beyond—and eventually to venture outside her isolated mountain home. But her lessons are cut short when she becomes pregnant at 17. According to tribal custom, Li-Yan’s baby, born out of wedlock, must be killed—but she and her mother conspire to give the baby girl away to an orphanage in a nearby town. Li-Yan leaves her daughter there with a tea cake wrapped in the swaddling blankets.

Li-Yan and her mother are heirs to a secret grove of trees that produce the most sought-after tea leaves in the region. See’s extensively researched story of the tea production in Yunnan Province, especially the rare Pu’er tea unique to Spring Well Village and the mountains nearby, is fascinating, and it becomes the main focus of Li-Yan’s life as she attends a selective tea college and eventually opens her own highly successful tea market.

Interspersed with chapters portraying Li-Yan’s years of struggle and eventual marriage to a wealthy Chinese American are those written in the voice of her daughter, who was adopted by an American couple and grows up in southern California with all the privileges Li-Yan could have hoped for her. From a young age Haley has hoped to someday find her birth mother, the only clue to her identity being the tea cake that came with her to America.

See’s ambitious novel touches on Chinese cultural history, the centuries-old intricacies of the tea business and both the difficulties and joys of Chinese-American adoptions. But ultimately it’s a novel about the strength of mother-daughter ties—peopled, as is each of See’s novels, with strong characters with whom the reader empathizes from the first page to the last.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lisa See’s enlightening new novel offers her readers multiple storylines, each of which focuses on the engaging character of Li-Yan, a member of the Akha tribe of Yunnan Province, one of China’s ethnic minorities.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Secrets in sanctuary

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, April 2017

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

Marianne von Lingenfels is an aristocrat whose husband died due to his involvement in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life. Before he dies, Marianne pledges to take care of the wives and children of other resisters. Making good on that promise, Marianne retrieves Benita, who is being abused by Russian soldiers in Berlin, and locates Benita’s son, who’s being held in a Nazi children’s home.

The group makes its way to the von Lingenfels’ castle, where Marianne’s children also live. Then quiet Ania and her two shell-shocked boys arrive, ostensibly fleeing the Red Army. But there’s more to her story, and Benita’s, and it will take years for Marianne to fully understand the pasts of the women she’s been charged with protecting.

Shattuck, whose novel The Hazards of Good Breeding was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, sheds new light on World War II’s aftermath and the families left behind, and raises poignant questions about blind loyalty: “Could you see a person’s soul in their face? Marianne and Albrecht had often argued about this. Yes, she had insisted. Didn’t you know from the moment you saw Hitler’s photograph that he was bad? Albrecht wasn’t sure. If it was so obvious, he pointed out, how did he fool the rest of Germany?”

The Women in the Castle is haunting, a beautifully written and painfully vivid glimpse into one of the most horrific times in world history.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Drowning in Lovecraftian horror

Review by Michael Alec Rose

Paul La Farge has always drawn the thinnest and most permeable line between biographical fact and historical fiction. Both in his previous novels and in a set of poetic dreams he “translated” from a non-existent French poet of the 19th century, La Farge illuminates over and over again the superior strangeness of “real life” over anything he brilliantly devises as a writer of boundless imagination.

Now the author has surpassed himself. The Night Ocean is the ultimate crossing of the hazy boundary between reality and fantasy. It unflinchingly and comically diagnoses the emotional wonder and chaos unleashed by any troubled writer who fabricates an evil reality all his own. H.P. Lovecraft was such a person, and this novel is a mighty boon to horror geeks like me who misspent a good portion of our youths reading the pulp fiction of Lovecraft and his unholy minions, and surrendering to the cult of “fandom” that grew up around his bizarre personality and cosmically evil inventions. But La Farge’s novel goes further than celebrating the legacy of this especially deranged and popular storyteller. It is told by a psychotherapist, whose husband’s career and sanity have been destroyed by Lovecraft & Co. For this devastated couple, there are dark boxes within Lovecraft’s dark boxes, forcing a delightfully unsteady movement of the novel toward two associated characters: Lovecraft’s friend (and possible lover) Robert Barlow, who is a richly historical figure, and L.C. Spinks, an entirely unreal figure who becomes diabolically “real” to us, as the novel unfolds layer upon layer of Spinks’ truths and untruths, heartbreaking facts and wild fabrications.

Best of all is the way The Night Ocean addresses the real horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s vile hatefulness against African-Americans, Jews and other minorities. As in Matt Ruff’s recent novel Lovecraft Country (which I also recommend), Lovecraft’s demons are nothing more or less than us.

Paul La Farge has always drawn the thinnest and most permeable line between biographical fact and historical fiction. Both in his previous novels and in a set of poetic dreams he “translated” from a non-existent French poet of the 19th century, La Farge illuminates over and over again the superior strangeness of “real life” over anything he brilliantly devises as a writer of boundless imagination.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

Sins of the past

Review by Sarah Welch

In 1921, a rash argument over a pretty girl propels 17-year-old Will Tillman into a hotbed of racial tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As he begins to understand what Jim Crow really means, he faces difficult decisions between what is expected and what is right. Nearly 100 years later, 17-year-old Rowan Chase discovers a skeleton under the floorboards of her family’s backhouse. As she investigates the murder, she learns firsthand that history isn’t entirely in the past.

The author of Scarlett Undercover, Jennifer Latham doesn’t shy away from the hard truth in her new historical novel, Dreamland Burning. The two protagonists take parallel journeys as they unwittingly step outside their lives of relative privilege and open their eyes to the grim realities of their respective societies. And what makes these characters so special is that they’re nothing special. Rowan and Will and their friends, even more richly developed in Will’s chapters than Rowan’s, are honest renderings of young people experiencing and navigating injustice for the first time.

Dreamland Burning is a critical look at race relations today, bringing to light the abuses we often pretend disappeared with Jim Crow, but that we must face head-on if we want to continue moving forward as a society. Latham’s prose will captivate readers from start to finish as she moves seamlessly back and forth between Will’s difficult coming of age and Rowan’s discovery of what history left behind.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1921, a rash argument over a pretty girl propels 17-year-old Will Tillman into a hotbed of racial tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As he begins to understand what Jim Crow really means, he faces difficult decisions between what is expected and what is right. Nearly 100 years later, 17-year-old Rowan Chase discovers a skeleton under the floorboards of her family’s backhouse. As she investigates the murder, she learns firsthand that history isn’t entirely in the past.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

The women left behind

Review by Karen Ann Cullotta

Despite its pastoral title, Jennifer Ryan’s compelling and exquisitely wrought World War II-era novel is far removed from the stereotypical cozy British village story. Rooted in the bucolic countryside of Kent, the novel is told in a series of letters and journal entries penned by an eclectic cast of characters, all of whom are members of their village’s first ladies’ choir—a musical distinction born of necessity rather than choice.

Indeed, with the village’s sons, brothers, husbands and lovers heading off to join the war effort, Chilbury is virtually absent of men. For the women they have left behind, the emotional burdens to be borne include the lonely widow Mrs. Tilling’s fears for the safety of her only son; village beauty Venetia Winthrop’s illicit romance with an enigmatic artist; intrepid musical prodigy Kitty’s ill-fated attempts to gain attention; and the haunted Jewish refugee Silvie’s harboring of a family secret.

While the poignant narratives that unfold in each letter and journal entry are imbued with the struggles of a town reeling from the ravages of yet another war, the bleakness is tempered by romance, mystery and even crime—in particular, a daring act of deception performed by Miss Edwina Paltry, a conniving member of the Winthrops’ household staff. 

Readers will be delighted to hear that the television rights to this splendid novel have already been optioned by Carnival TV—the production company behind “Downton Abbey.” With The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, Ryan has crafted a riveting debut novel that is certain to resonate with readers on both sides of the pond.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Despite its pastoral title, Jennifer Ryan’s compelling and exquisitely wrought World War II-era novel is far removed from the stereotypical cozy British village story. Rooted in the bucolic countryside of Kent, the novel is told in a series of letters and journal entries penned by an eclectic cast of characters, all of whom are members of their village’s first ladies’ choir—a musical distinction born of necessity rather than choice.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Power, politics and conspiracy

Review by Deborah Donovan

Lies, corruption, treachery, lust, infidelity, greed—all the elements present in Sarah Dunant’s bestselling novels set in the tumultuous years of the Italian Renaissance are somehow magnified in her latest, the continuation of her astute dissection of the lives of the Borgia family, which she began with 2014’s Blood and Beauty.

It’s the winter of 1501-1502 when In the Name of the Family opens: Rodrigo Borgia is firmly ensconced in the Vatican as Pope Alexander VI, who openly “uses his illegitimate children as weapons to carve a new dynastic block of power.” Cesare, his eldest son, is systematically directing his army of mercenaries in their march northward as they overtake the small city-states of Tuscany, breaking long-standing alliances and killing at will those he once supported. His sister Lucrezia is traveling north to Ferrara to marry Alfonso d’Este, the son of the Duke of Ferrara—a marriage forged merely to solidify Borgia dominance in Tuscany, where Cesare’s ultimate goal is the acquisition of Florence itself.

Characters surrounding this Borgia triumvirate include Niccolò Machiavelli, who is appointed Undersecretary to Florence’s Council, and serves as envoy to Rome. He’s portrayed by Dunant as a thoughtful observer of the political maneuvers made by Cesare and the pope—observations thought to lead to his signature work, The Prince, completed in 1513 after both of his subjects have died. Machiavelli is witness to many of Cesare’s “thuggish acts,” but also perceives his virtue, “that shimmering slippery work that mixes strength, vitality and skill in equal measures.”

Lucrezia, too, is given sympathetic treatment by Dunant, who focuses on her manipulation by her father and brother, leading to three arranged marriages by the time she turns 22. The pressure on her to bear male heirs is a constant source of worry, complicated by the ever-present threat of disease and the dangers of childbirth.

Dunant’s meticulously researched portrayal of these iconic characters and the violent, conspiracy-filled times in which they lived is a captivating piece of historical fiction. Both entertaining and enlightening, it’s sure to be welcomed by her many readers.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lies, corruption, treachery, lust, infidelity, greed—all the elements present in Sarah Dunant’s bestselling novels set in the tumultuous years of the Italian Renaissance are somehow magnified in her latest, the continuation of her astute dissection of the lives of the Borgia family, which she began with 2014’s Blood and Beauty.

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