Best Historical Fiction

    A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship This story brings true figures of Eliza Acton, poet and pioneering cookery writer, and Ann Kirby, her assistant. They both worked on a cookery book which is known as “the greatest British cookbook of all time.” It was an international bestseller and her books had a profound influence on later cookery writers. England, 1837. Eliza, at thirty-six, dreams to publish her poems with an international publisher, but she is asked to write a cookery book instead, more fit for women. A bit appalled by this suggestion, she returns home humiliated, only to find out that her father has just become a bankrupt. But then, when seeing badly written recipes and sounding unappetizing, after all writing a cookery book might not be a bad idea. And for that she needs a scullery maid. Ann, at seventeen, cares for her parents and dreams about being a cook. A vicar suggests to Ann a position of underhousemaid that might be available with a new family tak...

  Brigid of Kildare is she just a legend or historical figure? Nonetheless, this novel brings a fascinating figure of Saint Brigid who was presumably Ireland’s first and only female priest and bishop. Gael, Ireland, A.D. 456. Brigid, daughter of Dubtach – king of the Fothairt people of southern Gael, at young age questions the lack of prominent women in Jesus’s earthly world. She questions women as passive vessels for the doings of men. She questions a world without women leaders. It is during a time when the infiltration of Roman Church reaches the Gaelic people. Dubtach refuses to be baptized or to force his people to do it. Nevertheless, he allows his daughter to be baptized in secret. Brigid is of age that she must choose a life path. She chooses a Christian path with singular devotion. Thus, rejecting marriage against her father’s choosing. To appease her parents, she is guided to blend Gaels customs with Christianity. She doesn’t preach. With patience and by listening, she gu...

  Inspired by the true story of Ann Trow Lohman, also known as Madame Restell, this is a brilliant depiction of a woman who rises from grim beginnings to the splendor of New York City as a “female physician” for roughly forty years and becoming one of the most controversial women of her time. NYC, 1860. Axie Muldoon comes from an impoverished Irish family, after being separated from her family, she is provided a roof over her head in exchange for doing household chores. It is a house belonging to the doctor and his wife. She quickly advances from household chores to assisting in the clinic set at the house, arranging the vials, following formulas, using the pill press and the scales. She is told that a specific dosage brings relief, but a bit more might turn fatal. The library at the house serves as her schoolroom where she learns details of anatomy, of afflictions and the procedures to cure them. Soon after, at fourteen, she is apprenticed as assistant to midwife. Once married, he...

 Beryl Markham (1902-1986) was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1936. She was the first female horse trainer in the world, producing one of the greatest victories in the history of racing. She was a free-spirited character. She may not be someone you identify with, but she was full of passion and worth of attention. “A woman who lived by her own code instead of society’s.” Beryl is brought to Kenya as a child. But the rough kind of life isn’t meant for her mother and brother, who go back to England. Beryl stays with her father, who falls in love with the wild side of Africa. At sixteen, she is forced to start making decisions for herself as her father is moving south to Cape Town. Against her better judgement, she marries Jock, a landowner, who isn’t “afraid to dirty his hands” as her father puts it. As she suffers “an illness of the spirit,” she lifts herself up by becoming a horse trainer. Something that comes naturally to her. She also experiences more than o...

 The Collector's Daughter brings a fascinating story of Lady Evelyn Herbert, who took the very first steps into the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.  London, 1972. Eve is in her early seventies, and after another stroke she is working to regain her speech at a rehabilitation center. It’s here that she receives a visitor from Egypt - Dr. Ana Mansor. Mansor has been engaged in a research project and has found some anomalies in archives around the finds of the Tutankhamun’s tomb. The memory of the discovery gives Eve a spark and motivation for improving her speech, but there is something she doesn’t want to reveal. Luxor, 1919. Eve comes from a privileged family, a daughter of Lord Carnarvon, who funds the exploration of the Tutankhamun’s tomb. While her mother plans to marry her well, meaning to a man of certain social standing, Eve dreams of an equal partnership, a man who will share a passion for travel and who will accept her being a lady archeologist. She has been coming to Egyp...

    Klytemnestra and Helen are daughters of Lord Tyndareos, King of Sparta. Klytemnestra as the oldest daughter is the heiress, and so is supposed to be the Queen of Sparta and stay with her family. But her father betroths her to Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, which means she needs to live in his kingdom. All this results in a feeling of betrayal, and fear she will likely never see her family again, since a married woman does not travel, and is the steward of her husbands’ household. Helen, legendary for her beauty, gets betrothed to Menelaos, who is Agamemnon’s brother. As much as she appreciates her husband’s gentleness, she is frustrated with him not expressing his feelings. Without much conversation between them, she feels as she hardly knows her husband, but now that she is pregnant, he shows a lot of tenderness and she hopes it’s a new beginning for them. When Menelaos welcomes friendship between two kingdoms, his and the one of Troy, it changes everything. Helen is enc...

 London, 1670. Two young girls, Maria and Hannah, plot a murder by witchcraft. Once, “allies of a sort, united in their hatred of Abbott and his tyrannies.” Later, as Abbott is only a memory, one blackmails another. Cat Hakesby carries on her late husband’s business as an architect and surveyor. She is commissioned to build a new poultry house for the king’s sister, which requires her to travel to France where the king’s sister resides. James Marwood works at Scotland Yard when Richard Abbott, one of Lord Arlington’s clerks, dies. Marwood is set on an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Abbott’s death, and relates his findings to Lord Arlington, Undersecretary of State. Meanwhile, Marwood and Cat meet once or twice a month to listen to music or go to a play or go for a walk in finer weather. It is an alliance of mutual assistance rather than affection as she prefers to keep her independence. After the end of last outing, they don’t make plans for the next time, as they u...