The Quality of Mercy is Unsworth’s long-awaited sequel to his 1992 Booker prizewinner Sacred Hunger, a game-changer of a historical novel which concluded with several major character arcs left unresolved. Picking up just months after the earlier book left off, The Quality of Mercy offers a cast of British miners, bankers, abolitionists and landowners struggling to define their ideas of property, wealth and personal responsibility in a changing world.

Sacred Hunger followed the passage of the Liverpool Merchant, an 18th-century slave ship that disappeared off the coast of Florida, and the obsessive attempts of Erasmus Kemp, the son of the ship’s owner and himself a well-established banker, to determine what happened to slaves and crew. When Kemp travels to Florida and discovers that the survivors had formed a makeshift community—black and white together—he sends the slaves to the Carolinas be sold, bringing the remainder of the crew back to England to be charged with mutiny and destruction of property.

The Quality of Mercy opens after Kemp’s return to England, where he is pursuing the trial with a singularity of purpose, but no more peace of mind than he had before his trip. One of the jailed crew members, Sullivan, slips out of jail and heads north for a mining village in County Durham. He has pledged to find the family of his old shipmate Billy Blair, who died in the course of Kemp’s attack, and to inform Blair’s sister of the death of her brother. Kemp wants to find Sullivan but is distracted by a burgeoning relationship with Jane Ashton, the sister of a prominent abolitionist, whose philosophy forces to re-examine his own desire for revenge. Another chance relationship interests him in mining opportunities in County Durham and he also begins to make his way north.

That Kemp and Sullivan will eventually meet and confront one another is no surprise. It is in the telling and not the plotting that the book is strongest. The dramas in and around the mining village and the trials in London offer Unsworth a chance to explore once more the complicated relationship between those who work the land and those who own it. Though slavery plays a smaller part than in Sacred Hunger, the moral limits of ownership are never far from Unsworth’s mind.

The Quality of Mercy is historical fiction at its best. The ideas are thoughtful, but the writing flows easily and the research, which must have been plentiful, is integrated seamlessly into the storytelling. Though you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with Sacred Hunger to enjoy The Quality of Mercy, reading both novels would be the perfect way to kick off a new year of reading.

Being a princess—especially being a Russian princess—isn't everything Disney would have you believe. In this adroit third novel (following her prize-winning debut, Necessary Lies, and the historical Garden of Venus), Eva Stachniak has produced a strikingly readable, even mesmerizing, story of the politics of personal power in the 18th century, and the influence of individuals in the political affairs of Russia, one of the most cryptic nations in the world then—and yet today.

Following Robert K. Massie's authoritative biography (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman) by a couple of months, The Winter Palace uses a fictional narrator, Varvara (or Barbara), to give readers a spy's-eye view of the Russian Court during the last years of the Empress Elizabeth. Catherine, whose rise to prominence was somewhat Cinderella-like—she was born a minor German princess of the small municipality of Anhalt-Zerbst—is married to the putative heir, Grand Duke Peter, and cagily waiting in the wings as the novel opens.

Taking it all in, as a spy, or “tongue,” is Barbara, who manages to get close to several centers of power in the Russian court—including the young Grand Duchess, on whose activities she has been hired to report. Barbara is Polish (like Stachniak), but close enough to the center of Russian royalty to supply details of the day-to-day court customs, intrigues and imperial hubris that surround Russian power. Many of these are weird and fascinating: For example, the Empress Elizabeth has a “Mad Room,” where she goes to watch the “amusing” antics of the insane.

Adjusting rather too easily to a court in which “life is a game and every player is cheating,” Barbara soon allies herself with Catherine. The problem is that Catherine possesses overweening ambition herself, which Barbara, in these early days, only gets disturbing glimpses of from time to time.

Stachniak has produced a novel for which readers will turn off the television. (I did.) Better yet, they will want to continue Catherine’s journey in the implied second installment. Here’s hoping the sequel will be a worthy successor to this shrewd novel of historical human folly and extravagance.

“Scintillating” and “titillating” are two words that barely begin to describe Ellis Avery’s beautifully written, erotically charged second novel, The Last Nude. Avery—previously acclaimed for her historical novel set in late 19th-century Japan, The Teahouse Fire—now successfully takes her readers to Paris in the roaring ’20s. There, she fictionalizes the true story of sensational Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and her rapport with 17-year-old model Rafaela, the inspiration behind one of the century’s most famous nude paintings, Beautiful Rafaela.

The Last Nude opens as Rafaela—an Italian Jewish immigrant from New York City—prowls the infamous Bois de Bologne neighborhood, in search of “financial aid.” We learn that Rafaela has escaped her strict Italian family with mere pennies in her pocket; she has been resorting to prostitution in order to make ends meet. Instead of a man, though, she encounters the extravagant Lempicka, a deposed Saint Petersburg countess who is currently raising her young daughter in France. Lempicka convinces Rafaela to model nude for her, and it is there in her salon that Lempicka’s best work is produced, along with the burgeoning of a passionate—and somewhat hidden—love affair.

Avery weaves historical fact with electrically charged narrative, creating scenarios in which Lempicka and Rafaela cavort with Sylvia Beach (owner of Shakespeare & Company, Paris’ famous English bookstore), Beach’s partner Adrienne Monnier (co-publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses), and boxer-turned-Nazi-collaborator Violette Morris (to name a few). As Lempicka’s paintings generate buzz in the art world, Rafaela finds herself falling deeper for the unobtainable, recently divorced painter who is hiding a few secrets of her own.

Though the book’s final section (told from Lempicka’s point of view) feels like something of an afterthought, it is fascinating to observe the once-powerful painter, now in her 90s and obsessed with memories of Rafaela. Filled with fabulous literary anecdotes and characters that seem to leap off the page, The Last Nude is a novel perfect for lovers of the 1920s, of Paris or simply of love stories.

It took Luis Alberto Urrea 20 years to write his mystical bestseller, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, which was released in 2005. Lucky for readers, it did not take him nearly as long to return to his beloved heroine Teresita in this captivating sequel, Queen of America. With deft humor and a poetic lyricism that seamlessly folds one scene into another, Urrea unfolds the story of his real-life great-aunt Teresita, a teenage saint who was known for healing miracles.

This book picks up where The Hummingbird’s Daughter left off, at the turn of the 20th century. Following the catastrophic Tomochic rebellion, mystic Teresita (“The Saint of Cobora”) is banned from returning to Mexico. Together with her lush of a father, she traipses from one state to the next, hiding out from deadly assassins. But it’s not only the Mexican government that is after her. Many are desperate to find Teresita, whether they are attempting to kill her, exploit her as the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution, or simply be physically cured by her.

While Teresita’s bawdy father attempts to drown his loneliness in liquor, Teresita encounters and befriends two dashing brothers, a surrogate mother, some medical charlatans and a sociopathic singer who holds both lust and murder in his heart. Torn by her familial bonds and her allegiance to her lover, Teresita must figure out how she can handle both saving the crowd and indulging her romantic whims.

Each scene in Queen of America unfurls gracefully like delicate wisps of smoke. Whether Teresita is being held captive in Northern California by a band of profiteering medical professionals, or being feted like a queen in New York’s social circles, this epic novel paints a portrait of America—and its inhabitants—with grace and style. It will spark fire in readers’ hearts.

Fact and imagination waltz arm in arm through N.M. Kelby’s genre-bending novel White Truffles in Winter. Measure by measure, the personal history of the renowned, real-life chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) spins whimsically into fictive memories—intricate scenes of passion and taste. When the music finally stops, readers are left dizzied but alert to a tantalizing swirl of the senses.

The Escoffier of this story is a man torn between two loves: his wife, the poet Delphine Daffis, and his lover and longtime friend, the actress and international sensation Sarah Bernhardt. The novel is set in the last year of Escoffier’s life, in Monte Carlo, where he has retired and reunited with his wife after decades apart. Time has eroded his fame, fortune and health, and Delphine withers on her death bed. When an insolent Sabine arrives as their caretaker and cook, looking like a young Sarah (her father, who arranged the situation, is hoping to win Escoffier’s favor), memories are aroused in both Monsieur and Madame. Bottle by bottle, dish by dish, the story of their marriage surfaces: its perfect moments, its epic failures. And Delphine has a final wish: to be immortalized as her husband has immortalized so many others. After a lifetime of want, she would like to have the great Chef Escoffier create a dish in her honor.

Much of the book is spent reveling in the alchemy of flavor for which Escoffier was so known—the essences, the combinations, the transformational power of food as nourishment for body and soul. Cutting along the grain, not against, Kelby reveals her characters slowly, wrapping her readers in sensuous prose that, ultimately, seems as concerned with recreating the experience of a glorious meal as it does with narrative.

Foodies will no doubt enjoy the lush epicurean treatment as well as the historical elements of the novel, which explore the origins of today’s commercial kitchens and a host of culinary techniques. But ultimately this is a classic romance, the story of a transcontinental marriage doomed from the beginning, yet held together by the complexities of love.

No, it’s not a sequel to The Help. “The Maid” in question in Kimberly Cutter’s debut novel is Jehanne, Joan of Arc, and this beautifully conceptualized story of her few years of glory puts flesh and blood on the long-stereotyped image, giving readers an unexpected shiver of connection with a mostly forgotten icon.

In the 15th century, when the only way a woman could make a difference in public life was through religious exceptionalism, Jehanne’s guiding spirits—Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret and Michael the Archangel—empowered this 17-year-old peasant who was “unschooled, simple as a thumb,” instructing her in what God expected her to do. But sainthood is not an easy road, and the terms are never quite clear.

Cutter limns the development of a saint about as well as a person who presumably isn’t one can: the beyond-life experiences, the beyond-death dreams, the beyond-endurance reality. “She could feel the Godhead growing inside her now . . . like a secret plant. . . . Feeding her and feeding off of her . . . she knew that the winds were with her and the stars in the night sky . . . that holy waters were coursing through her veins and ancient caves of knowledge were yawning open inside her skull, and she loved God then in a way she never would again, for her love was the naïve, untested love of a new bride—perfumed and dreamlike. Blind as a mole.” Somehow that last dry phrase seems to capture the ultimate riddle of sainthood in a way that more idealistic comments might not, although Cutter does not attempt to solve it, only imagine it.

Eventually, Jehanne, trying to take back the town of Margny with precious little (that is, no) help from her God-designated hero, King Charles VII, is captured by the Burgundians, turned over to the English and meets her famous fate in Rouen.

“More books have been written about Joan of Arc than any other woman in history,” admits Cutter (a writer for Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, among other publications), but the quality of The Maid justifies the author’s decision to add yet another to the list. Multiplying the dimensions of understanding of what it must be like to be subjected to theophany, Cutter has produced an exaltedly down-to-earth account of the kind of experience most readers will never have—and afterward maybe, deep down, they’ll be grateful about that.

After Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, his coffin was placed on a train and transported from New York, where his funeral was held, to Washington, D.C., where he was to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Thousands of ordinary people stood for hours in the unseasonable heat just to get a glimpse of the train passing. David Rowell’s insightful, gently humorous and compassionate debut tells the stories of a handful of these people. For those who were alive and remember the traumatic spring of 1968—Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated only weeks before Bobby Kennedy—the book might bring back memories both disturbing and strangely innocent. Along with the Vietnam War, riots and assassinations, there were only a few channels on TV, Walter Cronkite told everyone the news and everyone believed him, and the Beatles had not yet begun their slow and terrible four-way divorce. For those who weren’t around, The Train of Small Mercies is a snapshot of a time when all certainties about race, gender, parenthood and America’s place in the world were undergoing upheaval.

The stories of Rowell’s characters are largely ones of disappointment and dislocation. They include the family of a veteran who has lost a leg in Vietnam; when he returns, they struggle to reintegrate him into their lives. A Kennedy-worshiping mother is obsessed with her daughter to the exclusion of her husband and sons, and tragedy ensues. A young Pullman porter is following in his father’s footsteps. His first job? He’s serving on the funeral train, and while he’s excited, proud and a little scared, his mind is largely on what’s going to happen between him and his pregnant girlfriend. Later, he gets into a brawl that threatens his job. An Irish immigrant learns the job she was about to start has fallen through; she was supposed to be the nanny to one of the late senator’s many children. A little boy tries to come to terms with the fact that the nice time he’d spent with his father in a cabin in the woods wasn’t what it seemed.

The funeral train takes all of these people momentarily out of their lives and gives them something else on which to focus their grief. These are the small mercies of the title, and at such a fraught time in American history, small mercies are everything.

Stella Tillyard is a seasoned and respected historian with a number of acclaimed nonfiction works under her belt, so it makes sense that she would pour her expertise and historical passions into her debut novel. Tides of War, a sweeping story of aristocrats and soldiers, artists and scientists, generals and lovers, is rich with historical details of Regency England and the final years of the Napoleonic Wars. But it’s much more than a catalog of famous faces. In her first fiction effort, Tillyard has crafted an epic tale that rides the line between romance and adventure, filled with gripping characters and gorgeous descriptions.

Tillyard takes the classic scenario of the young man leaving his wife to go to war as her novel’s starting point, but Tides of War goes on to defy all predictability. Tillyard builds her plot in slow layers, introducing a massive cast of characters—among them the Duke of Wellington and the legendary Spanish painter Goya—in chapters that traverse the parlors of London and the battlefields of Spain. Her focus is on James and Harriet Raven, newlyweds who part ways in London when he goes off to battle. The two spend the rest of the novel fighting the temptations of the modern world and the passions—the tides, as it were—of war. While Harriet is swept up in the heady discoveries and wealth of the home front, James is enchanted by Spain. This is only one of the contrasts Tillyard explores throughout the novel: war and love, practicality and reckless emotion, reason and impulse.

The result is a book meant to be savored; Tides of War is a work of often staggering richness that begs its reader to be patient and dig deep. Fans of novelists like Cecelia Holland and Philippa Gregory will delight in the romance and immersive language of Tillyard’s work. Tides of War is a rewarding, engrossing debut from a bright new force in historical fiction.

Sharon Kay Penman transcends beloved-author status: among lovers of historical fiction, she is cherished. Her latest offering sets out to capture the larger-than-life Richard I—crusader, king of England and member of the colorful Angevin family—and she does not disappoint.

The stage for Richard’s story is the Third Crusade, a quest to retake Jerusalem from the hands of the sultan of Egypt, Salah al-Din, called Saladin by the Westerners. As Richard embarks on this all-consuming quest in concert with the rest of Christendom, he rescues his sister, Joanna, from a precarious political position after the death of her husband and marries Berengaria, daughter of the king of Navarre. And so the two women join Richard in the Holy Land, bearing witness as the plot clambers over the highs and lows of history—scandalous political intrigue, battles won and lost and the thrills and heartaches of maintaining a life in the midst of war.

Richard’s profile in history is that of a bold, boisterous warrior-king, a character that seems almost too exaggerated to be real. Penman reaches beyond the hero, not to imbue him with flaws, but to find the man behind the legend. Penman’s Richard I is hot-blooded with incredible military prowess, but capable of being humbled and moved. His commitment to act with honor is not outsized, but real.

Richard’s spotlight, however, is very nearly stolen by his tough-minded sister and quiet, yet strong new wife, two women who become compelling characters in their own right in Penman’s hands.

Penman is often commended for writing about the medieval world without passing judgment on its characters and the value system that makes them so different from modern readers, and she does that again in Lionheart. She also succeeds at depicting the odd nature of holy war. Both Richard and Saladin, a shrewd commander famous for both might and mercy, believe they are serving God with each clash of swords, and yet each respects the other’s military skill and strategy.

The author is also known for her meticulous research; it’s as if she sees herself more as a historiographer than a novelist. Lionheart is no departure from this reputation, and the richly imagined dialogue and story are intercut with snippets from primary sources. The truth of the events makes the novel all the more fascinating and worthy of several reads.

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Meet the Author interview with Sharon Kay Penman

Herbs and potions, love charms and secrets, the complex intimacies between mothers and daughters: It’s clear from the outset of The Dovekeepers that we are firmly in Alice Hoffman territory. But instead of the safe suburbs of New England, we have been transported back to the first century at Masada, the mountain fortress south of Jerusalem where 900 Jews held out against the Romans before committing mass suicide rather than submit to foreign rule. For The Dovekeepers, Hoffman was inspired by a trip to Masada and research into the classical world, including the work of Josephus, the Roman-Jewish historian who recorded that the only survivors of this tragedy were two women and five children.

Hoffman retells this ancient story through the voices of four unique women, each of whom arrived at Masada and worked in the dovecotes—caring for the birds, collecting eggs and gathering fertilizer. Red-haired Yael, the daughter of a master assassin, becomes pregnant with the child of her father’s colleague. Revka, the baker’s wife, lost her husband and daughter at the hands of Roman soldiers and is now determined to protect her motherless grandsons. Young Aziza was raised as a warrior; she wants nothing more than to fight alongside the men in this last stand against the Romans. Finally there’s Shirah, Aziza’s mother, who grew up as the beloved daughter of a consort to the high priests and is the lover of Masada’s charismatic leader. Initially suspicious of one another, the women gradually grow close, sharing their secrets and developing a fierce loyalty to one another.

An ambitious novel, dense with vivid description of daily life in ancient times, The Dovekeepers combines archaeology and research with Hoffman’s own interest in the often untold lives of women and her passion for stories of magic and the natural world. Even though the tale’s outcome is well known, the story­telling is bound to satisfy any reader.