Best Historical Fiction

  This story reimagines the young life of Mary Shelley at the time leading to the creation of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein. It alternates between two timelines set apart by four years. 1816: Mary, with others, visits Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. It’s a circle of writers and poets that spend the evenings exchanging ghost stories. One night, Byron suggests that each writes a ghost story. While Mary muses over her tale, it reminds her of another summer, when she was fourteen. 1814: Mary is sent by her family from London to Dundee, Scotland, where she stays at Baxter family. She quickly becomes friends with Isabella Baxter, the younger of two daughters. They spend hours together wandering through the nature and conjuring stories about mythical creatures. Baxter family has tradition of story night every second Friday of the month. There is a regular visitor to those evenings. It’s Mr. Booth, who is Isabella’s brother-in-law. From the first encounter, Mary notices something strange a

  Queen Hereafter brings a classical figure. She was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Gruoch is the daughter of an ousted king. Her betrothal to Duncan is to make her a queen and reclaim the lost lands. She travels to his court and leaves behind her best friend MacBethad, who taught her basics of hand-to-hand combat. But the turn of events puts her on a path where she needs to make a choice of quiet life or climb her own way to the throne. Set against the backdrop of early medieval Scotland, this stunningly imagined story of an iconic character brings court drama and intrigue with suspense. The characters are well-developed. Grouch is complex. She is ambitious and ruthless. It seems as nothing can stop her from achieving her goal.  Release date: March 2, 2023 Source: Harper Perennial