We list mainstream and small press titles set in the 1960s and earlier. Details are compiled by Sarah Johnson (US) and Sarah Cuthbertson (UK), and are based on publisher descriptions. This is a work in progress.
January 2017
Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road, Harper (an Eurasian orphan searches for her mother in early 20th-c Shanghai)
Janet Ellis, The Butcher’s Hook, Pegasus (a dark tale set in Georgian London, about a woman determined to chart her own fate regardless of the cost)
Emily Hauser, For the Most Beautiful, Pegasus (retelling of the Trojan War from the women’s viewpoint)
Pam Jenoff, The Orphan’s Tale, MIRA (tale of women’s friendship set amid a traveling circus during WWII)
Josi L. Kilpack, The Lady of the Lakes, Shadow Mountain (a love story featuring Sir Walter Scott)
Judith Kinghorn, The Echo of Twilight, Berkley (unlikely relationship between a woman and her maid on the eve of WWI in England)
Jennifer McVeigh, Leopard at the Door, Putnam (political turmoil and betrayal in colonial Kenya)
Teresa Messineo, The Fire by Night, Morrow (saga of two American nurses in WWII: one in France, the other serving in the Pacific)
Debra Ann Pawlak and Cheryl DuBois, Soldier, Spy, Heroine, Yucca (US Civil War soldier Sarah Emma Edmonds, who fought for the Union as a man)
Brandy Purdy, Two Empresses, Kensington (Rose de Beauharnais and her cousin Aimee, both from Martinique, and their futures in Paris and Turkey)
Deanna Raybourn, A Perilous Undertaking, Berkley (Veronica Speedwell’s new adventure in London of 1887)
Susan Rivers, The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Algonquin (in the South during the Civil War, a young bride is accused of murdering her child when her husband is away at war)
April Smith, Home Sweet Home, Knopf (a family from NY moves to South Dakota and gets caught up in the panic of McCarthyism)
Eva Stachniak, The Chosen Maiden, Doubleday Canada (story of Vaslav Nijinsky’s sister Bronia, a legendary Russian ballerina trying to escape her brother’s shadow)
Simon Tolkien, No Man’s Land, Doubleday (moving from northern England to the Somme, a young man comes of age during WWI)
Beatriz Williams, The Wicked City, Morrow (romantic adventure about a Jazz Age love triangle)
February 2017
Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty, Atria (novel of Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1900 Vienna, her niece Maria, and the creation and disappearance of Gustav Klimt’s paintings)
Laird Hunt, The Evening Road, Little Brown (two remarkable women’s journeys in Jim Crow-era Indiana)
Georgia Hunter, We Were the Lucky Ones, Viking (the experiences of five Polish Jewish siblings who all survived the Holocaust, based on a true story)
Christina Baker Kline, A Place in the World, Morrow (Christina Olson, model for Andrew Wyeth)
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko, Grand Central (follows one Korean family in Japan, beginning in 1900)
Charlie Lovett, The Lost Book of the Grail, Viking (multi-period story about a modern bibliophile determined to uncover a secret about a cathedral’s past)
Anna Mazzola, The Unseeing, Sourcebooks (historical mystery of 1837 London, about a young mother sentenced to hang for murder)
Heather O’Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Riverhead (two gifted orphans and their adventures in circus shows in Depression-era America)
Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, Crown (during WWII, the woman of Chilbury in Kent create an all-female choir)
Ursula Werner, The Good at Heart, Touchstone (an ordinary German family’s lives during WWII, based on family history)
March 2017
Kate Alcott, The Hollywood Daughter, Doubleday (Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini and its effect on her biggest fan in McCarthy-era Hollywood)
Harriet Scott Chessman, The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas, Outpost19 (about the many people who influenced Edgar Degas)
Sally Christie, The Enemies of Versailles, Atria (novel of Jeanne Becu, a woman of humble birth who becomes Louis XV’s mistress the Comtesse du Barry)
Wray Delaney, An Almond for a Parrot, MIRA (a daring woman’s adventurous life story in 18th-c London)
Sarah Dunant, In the Name of the Family, Random House (part 2 of her saga about Lucrezia Borgia and the rise of Niccolo Machiavelli)
Margaret George, The Confessions of Young Nero, Berkley (the unusual coming of age of Nero, artist and emperor, in ancient Rome)
Greer MacAllister, Girl in Disguise, Sourcebooks (the story of 19th-c investigator Kate Warne, who was hired by Allan Pinkerton as a detective)
Susan Meissner, A Bridge Across the Ocean, Berkley (the lives of three women intersect in a novel of postwar intrigue; multi-period)
Marcus Sedgwick, Mister Memory, Pegasus (psychological thriller about a man who murders his wife in late 19th-century Paris)
Catriona Ward, The Girl from Rawblood, Sourcebooks (multi-period horror novel, about a haunted family whose members tend to die mysteriously)
Jacqueline Winspear, In This Grave Hour, Harper (in the pre-WWII years, Maisie Dobbs investigates the deaths of refugees in Britain)
April 2017
James William Brown, My Last Lament, Berkley (a Greek woman, one of the last lamenters for the dead, and her life after WWII)
Richard Grant, Cave Dwellers, Knopf (the attempt to unseat Hitler in 1930s Germany)
Emily Holleman, The Drowning King, Little Brown (novel of Cleopatra and her sister Arsinoe as Rome plots to overtake Egypt)
Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow, Touchstone (set in ancient Rome and featuring an early “foodie,” the man who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook)
Sarah Maine, Beyond the Wild River, Atria (in the 1890s, a Scottish heiress discovers an old childhood friend in America, years after he vanished following a murder back home)
Donna Russo Morin, The Competition, Diversion (book2 of Da Vinci’s Disciples, about a group of women painters in Renaissance Florence)
Alyssa Palombo, The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence, St. Martin’s Griffin (a novel of Simonetta Vespucci, model for Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus)
Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle, Morrow (in a crumbling Bavarian castle after WWII, three women’s lives are intertwined)
Beth Underdown, The Witchfinder’s Sister, Ballantine (historical thriller featuring Alice Hopkins, sister of Matthew Hopkins, England’s Witchfinder General)
May 2017
Janet Benton, Lilli de Jong, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (a young Quaker woman in 1883 Philadelphia decides to keep her illegitimate daughter)
Claire Cameron, The Last Neanderthal, Little Brown (two women separated by 40,000 years: the oldest daughter in a Neanderthal family, and a modern archaeologist)
Stacia Pelletier, The Half Wives, HMH (two women involved with the same man find their worlds colliding in 1897 San Francisco)
Jennifer Robson, Every Time We Say Goodbye, Morrow (in 1940, an American journalist jumps at the chance to move to London and cover the war)
Cecily Ross, The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie, HarperAvenue (novel about Englishwoman Susanna Moodie, an early pioneer in the Canadian wilderness)
Jenni L. Walsh, Becoming Bonnie, Forge ( Bonnelyn Parker’s life in the Roaring ‘20s, before she met Clyde Barrow)
Melodie Winawer, The Scribe of Siena, Touchstone (a modern neurosurgeon goes back in time to 14th-century Siena, just before the plague hits)
June 2017
Dave Boling, The Lost History of Stars, Algonquin (a family of Dutch Afrikaner settlers in turn-of-the-20th-century South Africa)
Hazel Gaynor, The Cottingley Secret, Morrow (in 1917, two Yorkshire girls claim to have photographed fairies in their garden)
Sofia Grant, The Dress in the Window, Morrow (two sisters in the post-WWII fashion world)
Melissa Lenhardt, Badlands, Redhook (post-Civil War unrest, romance, and adventure in this feminist-oriented Western)
Meghan Masterson, The Wardrobe Mistress, St. Martin’s Griffin (a young woman in Marie Antoinette’s household at Versailles is asked to serve as a spy)
Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent, Custom House (rumors of a mythical serpent reappearing in the marshes of Essex in the late 19th century, changing the life of a female naturalist)
Kate Quinn, The Alice Network, Morrow (set in 1915 and 1947 and focusing on a network of secret agents in WWI France)
Harmony Verna, Beneath the Apple Leaves, Kensington (saga about German immigrants in rural Pennsylvania in the early 20th century)
July 2017
Joy Callaway, Secret Sisters, Harper (set in Illinois, 1881, and based on the founding of America’s first sororities)
Lindsey Davis, The Third Nero, Minotaur (latest Flavia Alba mystery set in 1st century Rome)
Gary Corby, Death on Delos, Sourcebooks (historical mystery set in Greece of 545 BC)
Cora Harrison, The Cardinal’s Court, The History Press (first in new series about an Irish Brehon lawyer in Tudor England)
Ashley Hay, The Body in the Clouds, Washington Square (three men in different centuries, transformed by the same magical event – a man falling from the sky and surviving)
Christina Henry, Lost Boy, Berkley (about the origins of Captain James Hook)
Jason Hewitt, Devastation Road, Grand Central (a man struggles to return to England at the end of WWII and forms an alliance with a refugee)
Lorena Hughes, Malena’s Tango, Skyhorse (romance and intrigue in 1960s Ecuador)
Ami McKay, The Witches of New York, HarperPerennial (high society and witchcraft in 1880s New York)
Claire McMillan, The Necklace, Touchstone (multi-period story set in the 1920s and present day about a wealthy society family and a mysterious necklace from India)
Jean E. Pendziwol, The Lightkeeper’s Daughters, Harper
D.M. Quincy, Murder in Mayfair, Crooked Lane (first in new historical mystery series set in England in 1810, about an aristocratic sleuth)
M.J. Rose, The Library of Light and Shadow, Atria (in 1925, an artist flees from NY to Paris after one of her drawings reveals a terrible secret)
Alexandra Silber, After Anatevka, Pegasus (novel inspired by Fiddler on the Roof, picking up where the play left off)
Susan Spann, Betrayal at Iga, Seventh Street (part of the Shinobi Mysteries featuring a master ninja and a Portuguese Jesuit in Iga, Japan, in 1565)
S.D. Sykes, City of Masks, Pegasus (mystery featuring Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, in 14th-c Venice)
Karin Tanabe, The Diplomat’s Daughter, Washington Square (three young people of different heritages are caught up in the tumult of WWII)
Peter Tremayne, Penance of the Damned, Minotaur (mystery featuring Sister Fidelma in 7th-century Ireland, 27th in series)
Andrew Wilson, A Talent for Murder, Atria (mystery about the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie)
August 2017
Kristopher Dukes, The Sworn Virgin, Morrow (in 1910 Albania, a determined woman seizes control of her future)
Linnea Hartsuyker, The Half-Drowned King, Harper (saga of Viking-era Norway)
Katherine Nouri Hughes, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, Delphinium (the story of Cecilia Baffo Veniero, who rose to power in the Ottoman Empire)
Cuyler Overholt, A Promise of Ruin, Sourcebooks (second Genevieve Summerford Mystery set in the early 20th century)
Lucy Ribchester, The Amber Shadows, Pegasus (secrets at Bletchley Park, England, 1942)