Episodes

  • Lucy Pick, "The Queen’s Companion" (Cuidono Press, 2025)

    Lucy Pick, "The Queen’s Companion" (Cuidono Press, 2025)
    Sep 11 2025
    Eleanor of Aquitaine is best known as the wife of England’s Henry II, the mother of his numerous children—including two kings, Richard the Lionheart and his infamous brother John, of Magna Carta fame—and perhaps for her long incarceration at Henry’s insistence after their burning romance turned to ashes. What is often forgotten is that Eleanor, before she ever met Henry, ruled as queen of France for fifteen years. About a decade into her marriage, Eleanor accompanied her husband, King Louis VII, on the Second Crusade to re-establish Christian control over Jerusalem. In The Queen’s Companion (Cuidono Press, 2025), this is where her story intersects with that of Lucy Pick’s narrator, Lady Aude, who has her own reasons for traveling from Europe to the Holy Land. Interspersed with the events of the Second Crusade, told from the point of view of the crusaders and witnessed by Aude as Eleanor’s lady-in-waiting, is Aude’s own history, which she presents in the form of stories to Eleanor and her women. Aude is ruthlessly honest in revealing her own flaws and errors as well as her triumphs, and through her voice Lucy Pick creates a character—at times unlikable, but always indomitable and even admirable, much like Eleanor herself—who shines a spotlight onto medieval life in all its complexity. Lucy Pick, a historian of the thought and culture of medieval Spain, taught for over twenty years at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. The Queen’s Companion is her second novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Steadfast, appeared in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    34 mins
  • Meghana V. Nayak, "Tilt: A Novel on Intergenerational Trauma" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

    Meghana V. Nayak, "Tilt: A Novel on Intergenerational Trauma" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
    Sep 5 2025
    Kavya is an Indian-American professor and single mother struggling with debilitating panic attacks. Bombarded by flashbacks of cruelty and violence that disrupt her everyday life, she is left with no choice but to confront the intergenerational trauma tormenting her. At first, Kavya finds some relief in piecing together the legacies of her family's experiences with colonialism, colorism, and casteism. But just as she starts to recover, explosive confessions threaten to bring her world crashing down. Tilt: A Novel on Intergenerational Trauma (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) is an unflinching feminist novel about the devastating histories that haunt us and the unexpected beauty of facing our pasts. Meghana V. Nayak is Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University-NYC. Pamela Fuentes historian and editor of New Books Network en español Communications officer- Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    41 mins
  • Catherine Merridale, "Moscow Underground" (HarperColins, 2025)

    Catherine Merridale, "Moscow Underground" (HarperColins, 2025)
    Sep 1 2025
    Moscow Underground (HarperCollins, 2025) by Dr. Catherine Merridale is a sweeping novel of life, death and politics in the quicksand world of Stalin's tyranny. Moscow's glittering new subway is under construction at last. The first line will run through the centre of the city, cutting deep through Moscow soil. But futures cannot be created without digging up the past. Though Russia's leaders want to build a glorious Soviet capital, what holds them in a fatal grip is history: old mud and bones. Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials. He is also someone who needs to keep his head down. His artist father was once the darling of the revolutionary avant-garde, a painter whose work could inspire devotion and great sacrifice. But now his dreams are out of place, too loud and red in Stalin's world of sterile rules and rubber stamps. Anton is dragged into a murder case. A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Though Anton doesn't want the job, his former lover, Vika, who is now a powerful member of the secret police, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site with her. Against his better judgement he is drawn to follow though, embarking on investigations that will almost certainly get him killed. Deep underground, he finds a priceless secret that could genuinely unlock the future but links him to a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. In the process, he is forced to reconsider the history he shares with Vika and the bonds that bind them both. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    34 mins
  • Kathleen Kaufman, "The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey" (Kensington Books, 2025)

    Kathleen Kaufman, "The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey" (Kensington Books, 2025)
    Aug 13 2025
    This fascinating novel—dual-time historical with a fantastical overlay, based in part on the life of the author’s great-grandfather, a nineteenth-century charlatan—follows the career of a young Scotswoman named Nairna Liath. When we meet her in 1900, Nora, sixteen years old, travels the Scottish countryside at the insistence of her father, Tavish, who supports himself and his daughter by hawking her supposed skills as a medium—expressed through his own mangled Gaelic mixed with a series of parlor tricks that Nairna has mastered. But we soon find out that the joke’s on Tavish: Nairna really does have psychic talents, especially in reading Tarot cards. Her ability attracts attention from the Society for Psychical Research, setting Nairna on her path to become the spiritualist Nora Grey. Her tale is intertwined with (in fact, propelled by) that of Nairna’s grandmother, Lottie Liath, in the 1860s. Lottie has just lost her husband in a coal mining accident, and when she protests the lack of financial support provided by the uncaring mine administration, the manager has her arrested and thrown in jail. From there, the pregnant Lottie ends up in an asylum. And it’s the asylum, where she is subjected to psychic experiments, that brings her increasingly into conversation with Nora. The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey (Kensington Books, 2025) is rich in drama—both tragedy and comedy—as well as rapid switches of identity accompanied by pseudo news reports from various types of sources that illuminate Nora’s and Lottie’s stories in various ways. It’s tremendous fun and heartbreaking at the same time, and it’s best just to suspend disbelief and go with the flow. If you do, I guarantee you will love every minute of this story. Kathleen Kaufman, a native Coloradan and long-time resident of Los Angeles, California, is the author of six previous books. A University of Southern California alum, she teaches high school English and is a writing and composition adjunct professor at Santa Monica College. The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey is her latest novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Steadfast, appeared in June 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    34 mins
  • Sarah Landenwich, "The Fire Concerto" (Union Square Publishing, 2025)

    Sarah Landenwich, "The Fire Concerto" (Union Square Publishing, 2025)
    Jul 17 2025
    This compelling debut novel explores the interconnected lives of three acclaimed female concert pianists: Clara Bishop; her teacher, Zofia Mikorska; and their nineteenth-century predecessor, Constantia Pleyel—best known for her arrest and subsequent incarceration for the murder of her own piano teacher, a composer named Aleksander Starza. Exactly how these three women are connected becomes clear only late in the book, but two of the elements that link them are Starza’s best-known composition, known as the “Fire Concerto,” and the metronome used to kill him—once thought to have been destroyed after his death. Clara is the center of The Fire Concerto (Union Square Publishing, 2025). Once a brilliant performer, she suffered career-ending injuries during a performance of the Fire Concerto and, when we meet her, is tending bar in Austin, Texas. An unexpected summons to her teacher’s “final concert” turns macabre when she discovers that it is actually a reading of Zofia Mikorska’s will. Other beneficiaries receive instruments or documents; Clara inherits an antique metronome with the assurance that she will know what to do with it. She does not. In fact, she has no idea how valuable it is until a visit to an antiques dealer reveals the connection to Aleksander Starza. With some help from another former student, with whom she once alternated between competition and attraction, Clara is gradually drawn into a search for the truth of Starza’s murder, Pleyel’s part in it, and the connections between them and her brilliant but difficult teacher. In the process, Clara must also confront her own past and come to terms with the career she has lost. Sarah Landenwich—writer, writing educator, and classically trained pianist—is the author of The Fire Concerto, her debut novel.  C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Steadfast, came out in June 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    36 mins
  • Dennard Dayle, "How to Dodge a Cannonball: A Novel" (Henry Holt, 2025)

    Dennard Dayle, "How to Dodge a Cannonball: A Novel" (Henry Holt, 2025)
    Jul 6 2025
    How to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America.How to Dodge a Cannonball (Henry Holt, 2025) is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future―as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus.Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler―until he’s captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate―until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. While visibly white, he claims to be an octoroon, and they claim to believe him. Only then does his life get truly strange.His new brothers are even stranger, including a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. Dennard Dayle’s satire spares no one as doomed charges, draft riots, gleeful arms dealers, and native suppression campaigns test everyone’s definition of loyalty.Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball asks if America is worth fighting for. And then answers loudly. Read it while it’s still legal. You can find author Dennard Dayle at his newsletter. And I am your host, Sullivan Summer. You can find me online, on Instagram, and on Substack, where she and Dennard went to talk about Cannonball spoilers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    1 hr
  • Jack Wang, "The Riveter" (HarperVia, 2025)

    Jack Wang, "The Riveter" (HarperVia, 2025)
    Jun 9 2025
    NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Jack Wang about his novel, The Riveter (HarperVia, 2025). In the vein of All the Light We Cannot See, a cross-cultural love story set against the dramatic backdrop of the Allied invasion of Europe during WWII. Vancouver, 1942. Josiah Chang arrives in the bustling city ready to make a new life for himself. The Second World War is in full swing, and Josiah, like so many Canadians, wants to prove his loyalty by serving his country. But Chinese Canadians are barred from joining the army out of fear they might expect citizenship in return. So, Josiah heads to the shipyard where he finds work as a riveter, fastening together the ribs and steel plates of Victory ships. One night, Josiah spots Poppy singing at a navy club. Despite their different backgrounds, they fall for each other instantly, and soon Josiah is spending his nights at Poppy’s small wartime house. Their starry-eyed romance lasts until Poppy’s father comes to visit and the harsh reality of their situation is made clear. Determined to prove himself to Poppy, her parents, and the world, Josiah travels to Toronto where he’s finally given the chance to enlist. Josiah rises to the occasion, but is the world changing as fast as his dreams… From the critically acclaimed author of We Two Alone, Jack Wang’s gorgeous debut novel explores what one man must sacrifice to belong in the only home he has ever truly known. About Jack Wang: JACK WANG is the author of the story collection WE TWO ALONE (House of Anansi Press, 2020; HarperVia, 2021), shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award from the Writers’ Union of Canada for best debut collection in English. His fiction has appeared in Brick, PRISM international, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, and Joyland and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Journey Prize. In 2014–15, he held the David T. K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and in 2020, he was awarded a residency at Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver. He holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and a PhD from Florida State University, and he is an associate professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. Originally from Vancouver, he lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, novelist Angelina Mirabella, and their two daughters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    51 mins
  • Karen Swan, "The Midnight Secret" (Macmillan, 2025)

    Karen Swan, "The Midnight Secret" (Macmillan, 2025)
    Jun 5 2025
    Keeping details straight while writing a chronologically organized series is difficult enough. Focusing four full-length novels on the events of a single group experience in a single year, with back stories and future developments for a small group of heroines, each of whom has a chance to tell her own story of the central event and its consequences, requires even greater skill. Yet Karen Swan pulls off this mammoth enterprise in her Wild Isle series, which concludes with The Midnight Secret (Macmillan, 2025). The Last Summer, the first book in the series, opens in June 1930 with three friends sitting on a rock plucking fulmars, a kind of seabird. Effie, Mhairi (the Gaelic form of Mary, pronounced VAH-ree), and Flora already know that they will have to evacuate their island home in the Outermost Scottish Hebrides within a few months. Flora greets the change with enthusiasm, Effie with cautious pragmatism, and Mhairi with despair. From this first book and the two that follow, The Stolen Hours and The Lost Lover, we discover what drives each young woman’s response. We also delve ever deeper into the circumstances leading up to a mysterious death, highly unusual in the history of this isolated island with its tightly intertwined population of thirty-six individuals. The Midnight Secret begins in 1926 with the perspective of Jayne Ferguson, the slightly older wife of a handsome but, she soon learns, abusive man. It then jumps forward to 1930. From her mother, Jayne has inherited a particular form of second sight that shows her the faces of people in her vicinity who are destined to die soon. The visions haunt her until the death occurs, but they do not come with useful information about what will cause it or how to prevent it. Sometimes even the “who” remains murky at first. The combination of this rather disturbing gift and what Jayne sees as the necessity to conceal her husband’s abuse erect a barrier between her and those around her, especially after the transition to the unfamiliar landscape of the Scottish mainland. At the same time, Effie, Mhairi, and Flora are wrestling with the consequences of their own prior choices as well as the difficulties of adapting to a completely unfamiliar world. And as things heat up, with various characters accused of involvement in the mysterious death, Jayne’s extrasensory ability becomes ever more important to the survival of her community even as it undermines her already rocky relationship with her spouse.  Karen Swan is the bestselling author of twenty-eight novels to date, most recently The Midnight Secret and All I Want for Christmas.  C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her Song of the Steadfast (Songs of Steppe & Forest 6) appeared in June 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction
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    48 mins