New Books in Historical Fiction Podcast
1) Janice Hadlow, "Rules of the Heart" (Henry Holt and Company, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Janice Hadlow about her fascinating novel, Rules of the Heart (Henry Holt & Company, 2026). A beautifully evocative historical novel about the per...Show More
2) Meg Merriet Wahlberg, "Chivalry in the Shadows" (Parkwood Manor Press, 2024)
Medieval Brittany, with all its contradictions and complexities, comes alive in Meg Wahlberg’s Chivalry in the Shadows (Parkwood Manor Press, 2024). The author has studied and taught medieval literatu...Show More
3) Christine Estima, "Letters to Kafka" (House of Anansi, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Christine Estima about her novel, Letters to Kafka (House of Anansi, 2025). A sweeping, tragic romance and feminist adventure about translator an...Show More
4) Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman, "The Thread Collectors" (Harper Collins, 2022)
The Thread Collectors (Harper Collins, 2022) by Shaunna J Edwards and Alyson Richman takes readers to 1863, where, in a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella...Show More
5) Sandra Freels, "Anneke Jans in the New World (She Writes Press, 2026)
With the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America fast approaching, a small flood of novels set in the early days of colonization and statehood seems likely. Anneke Jans in th...Show More
6) Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—living beside each other, struggling against their circumstances, trying to bend destiny. As the seventeenth century burns to a close in Tidewater, Virginia,...Show More
7) Lesley Chamberlain, "The Mozhaisk Road" (Austin Macauley, 2025)
In The Mozhaisk Road (Austin Macauley, 2025) the time is 1978 and Moscow is still the capital of a Communist country. The political police continues to suppress the protests of dissident leader Al...Show More
8) Linda Wilgus, "The Sea Child" (Ballantine, 2026)
Cornwall, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was best known for its smuggling. The combination of an insular and impoverished countryside, a rugged coastline characterized by numerous inlets ...Show More
9) 162 Carlo Rotella's Books in Dark Times (JP)
For our Pandemic-era Books in Dark Times series, RTB spoke in 2020 with Carlo Rotella of Boston College. Rotella is the author of such gems as Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Charac...Show More
10) S.J. Bennett, "The Queen Who Came in from the Cold" (Crooked Lane Books, 2025)
Amateur detectives come in many forms. Owning a bookstore or a bakery, running a charming country inn, working in a library—even owning a cat or a dog—puts a character into the category of potential s...Show More
S.J. Bennett, "The Queen Who Came in from the Cold" (Crooked Lane Books, 2025)
42:10 | Dec 12th, 2025