New Releases in Historical Fiction, July 30, 2009

The following are announcements and reminders of new releases in historical Fiction available from medieval-novels.com .

Newly released after being out of print for years!

Here Was a Man: A Novel of Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I
Norah Lofts

Raleigh's wit, ambition, and adventurous spirit endear him to all, including the queen herself, but Elizabeth's favor proves as much hindrance as help, as Raleigh still has but one goal in mind -- to take to the seas and secure his place as one of the great explorers of the age. The queen will not allow her young knight to be taken from her side, repeatedly refusing his requests for expeditions, until she at last reluctantly grants him permission to conquer in her name. Meanwhile, between journeys, his passion is stirred, not by the queen but by her lady-in-waiting Lisbeth. His loyalties are split between the boundless opportunities the queen can bestow and the pull of his own heart.

Available later this year from Strider Nolan Media.

The Swords of Faith
Richard Warren Field

THE SWORDS OF FAITH tells the story of the confrontation between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin during what history calls "the Third Crusade." Both of these larger-than-life leaders believe they are destined by God to lead their holy armies to complete victory. For Saladin, victory means the defeat and expulsion of the western European Christians who have taken over lands in the eastern Mediterranean. For Richard, victory means the reconquest of Jerusalem, the city that Saladin had taken back from Christians a few years before. The resolution of their irreconcilable goals offers fascinating entertainment, as well as insights that reverberate into the present day. THE SWORDS OF FAITH is told from the viewpoints of Richard and Saladin, as well as through the eyes of two fictional characters, a Christian knight, Pierre of Botron, and an Arab trader, Rashid of Yenbo. Rashid and Pierre cross paths, and their relationship, complicated by their interaction with a beautiful and mysterious young girl, offers the possibility that common people of good will can prosper in the midst of such a polarizing conflict. Events build, culminating with all four characters together as part of a dramatic confrontation at one of the most well-known battles of the Crusades, the Battle of Jaffa. And to a significant extent, the fates of all of the characters, including Richard and Saladin, depend on the choices they make between the compassionate and fanatic aspects of their faiths.

Coming out September 8. Preorder now.

The White Queen
Philippa Gregory

New series - The Cousins. The White Queen tells the story of a common woman who ascends to royalty by virtue of her beauty, a woman who rises to the demands of her position and fights tenaciously for the success of her family, a woman whose two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower whose fate remains unknown to this day. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores the most famous unsolved mystery, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills.

Release date September 1, 2009

The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots
Carolly Erickson

Fictional first person account of the Scottish Queen's life.

Coming in September 09. Preorder now

Serpent Among the Thorns: A Medieval Noir
Jeri Westerson

The Crown of Thorns is brought to England as a peace offering...or is it a French assassination plot against King Richard II? Ex-knight turned detective Crispin Guest must discover the true culprit before he falls prey to the king's justice.

NEW! Preorder for release in October 2009

The Burning Land
Bernard Cornwell

The fourth in the Uhtred series. I always order mine from England to get the extra few months before the American edition comes out. More details as i get them. Will also be released on audio CD.

For more information on these and other novels, visit medieval-novels.com.

To be released in 2010!

The Boleyn Wife
Brandy Purdy

Originally published as Vengeance Is Mine, this controversial novel with enhanced content deals with George Boleyn's wife, Jane, and the havoc she wrought for two of Henry VIII's six wives.

Summer of the Danes, by Ellis Peters - Brother Cadfael Mysteries

Summer of the Danes
By Ellis Peters

Brother Cadfael Mysteries

I have now officially read every single Brother Cadfael mystery novel. It took me quite a time to find this one in a format I can access readily. I found it at last on Audible.com and downloaded it to my Kindle2.

This is just barely a mystery. There is a murder. There is a call to track down the killer. The killer is, in fact, revealed. Brother Cadfael does supply the forensics, meager though they be. But that is simply not all that relevant to the story. This is an adventure and love story unlike any Brother Cadfael you have read.

Brother mark, now a deacon in the Bishop of Lichfield's service, arrives at the Abbey of St. peter and St. Paul as he makes his way on a special mission. He is to travel to the two bishops in Wales to present gifts from his own bishop. One is Gilbert, a new bishop, a Norman who speaks no Welsh, and the other is a thoroughly Welsh and well-beloved bishop. The mission is to remind each of the importance of sticking together. Mark asks for and receives Brother Cadfael as companion and translator on his traversals. On the way they meet a young woman, Helleth (sorry, I can't find the spelling online), who is the daughter of a canon who wants her out of the way. The same night as a liegeman of Prince Owine's rebellious brother Cadwallader bisits the prince's court and is thereafter murdered, Helleth disapears and a horse with her.

Jump to main plot. Mark, Cadfael and Helleth all wind up prisoners of the Dublin Danes that Cadwallader has hired to convince Owine to give him back his lands lost after one of his rebellions. Their captors treat them splendidly, and something seems to start up between the tall, robust, sexy Danish captain of the longship that captured Helleth and Cadfael and Helleth herself. As the struggle between Danes, Owine's Welsh and Cadwallader's Welsh goes through a series of broken oaths, sneakiness, ill-considered loyalties, and efforts by Mark at diplomacy, Helleth and the Dane are ever in the background making googoo eyes ever-so-subtly at each other. Meanwhile the man who was supposed to marry Helleth is creeping about. I know, you are rooting for the Dane. Me too. Cadfael gets a few weeks off from sleuthing and just watches it all transpire.

It may be that Cadfael fans will be disappointed, and perhaps this is why the novel was so hard for me to locate. I liked Helleth a lot, she was a refreshing female role. I also liked her Danish sweetie. It's a nice story of a woman who wants to choose her own mate. I suppose Peters made it a Brother Cadfael mystery so his fans would buy the book. After all, that's why I read it, though I liked her other novels I've read that were published under the name Edith Pargeter. I would say the adventure part of the novel is something Sharon Kay Penman could have done more with, but it's fine as a backdrop for the love story.

This novel is available in hardback, paperback, large print, audio cassettes and audio download.

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen

One Second After
By William R. Forstchen

A middle-aged widowed ex-Army college professor, his two daughters, two dogs and mother-in-law must face a devastating nuclear attack. But nothing is blown up, no one dies of fallout poisoning, and no one is killed in the first seconds. The nuclear warheads exploded in the upper atmosphere, its electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) knocking out all electronics and as a result all the electricity in North America. In their small mountain home in Western North Carolina, the impact will be felt almost immediately. But it will come home with savage force as the weeks and months go by.

John Matherson and his family learn quickly when, during his twelve year old diabetic daughter's birthday party everything shuts off. What do you lose when there is no electricity and no one to come to your aid for.. a year? Communications go out. Cars stop running. Medical equipment, like blood glucose monitors, won't work. Refrigerators stop retrograding. And that's just the immediate impact. Unable to function in a new and unknown world, one known well by our ancestors, people eat spoiled meat and die. They run out of medications and die. They get hurt and without antibiotics they die. They start to run out of food and they die. Despair and suicide come next and they die. Maarauders from the urban areas start to show up with guns and many die. They, weakened by hunger, catch diseases from the marauders and die. People have to mobilize to fight off small armies of more ruthless marauders and are killed in the wars.

That's basically the story of this novel. John Matherson, who really is a college history professor in Black Mountain, NC, based his character and town on his real life. With military history as his expertise he is uniquely equipped to understand what is going on. He knows no quick fix will come. It will take weeks, months, maybe longer for the parts of the world still functioning to get aid to the U.S. First, though, everything will run out. Hard choices will have to be made: do we let pets live and consume food we could use or eat them? Do we ration food until people can barely survive on the few hundred calories. Do we execute criminals , and if so, who pulls the trigger?

The ultimate question is: will anyone ever come to save us or is this the end?

The strength of this book is its methodical examination of what we would lose, step by step. It does not shy away from much. The relationships, though clearly from a strictly male point of view and a father's at that, are affecting.

The book has two major flaws, however, ones that are almost unavoidable in apocalyptic fiction. The first is the simple overlooking of simple realities. I know an author can't think of everything, and Forstehen did a good job thinking of things that perhaps other authors would not have, but there are a few glaring omissions. One is radio. In One Second After's world, even where they have old radios not affected by the EMP they hear nothing on the mediumwave (AM) band until the Voice of America comes back on. The truth is that with all electrical interference eliminated you could hear all sorts of stations from quite great distances (DX). Even if a location was just too far from these foreign broadcasters, somebody, a ham radio operator, is going to have an old tube radio. Then shortwave broadcasters and operators would come in strong from Europe, Africa, South America, and anywhere else not hit by the additional nukes. Further these people could transmit like never before, with no interference from lights, appliances, cell phone and microwave towers, computers, you name it. Forstehen wanted to create isolation, but he can't just overlook something that important.

The other flaw is one that we have found in just about every end-of-the-world novel we have read. It's what my husband Jim calls "macho doomer war porn". An effete intellectual male turns into a warrior and the world crumbles into battling fiefs. It's always in order to allow the author, I suspect, to play big butch army guy. Even our favorite doomer novel, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon! is infested with this theme. How refreshing something like The Day After and Testament are.

Other problems include a character mentioned at the beginning, the neighbor who lives without electricity in the pre-EMP world, who never gets mentioned again; thee Edsel ex machina; the lecture at the beginning and end of the book. One thing John says that made us both shake our heads, that we should prepare the way people always are ready for hurricane outages... they are?! Since when? And a warning: the introduction is written by Newt Gingrich, clearly angling for the Presidency.

By the way, Forstehen really is an ex-Army college history professor at the real Presbyterian college in the real town of Black Mountain, NC. I wonder if Asheville has closed its city limits to him, with the hatchet job he did on their rep.

Falls the Shadow: A Novel, by Sharon Kay Penman

Falls the Sadow: A Novel
By Sharon Kay Penman

The title should be Falls the Shadow: A Helluba Novel...

It's the sequel to Here Be Dragons, also reviewed here. And here I was so glad to find no heartbreaking death and bereavement scene between Llewllyn and Joanna in that novel, only to discover it towards the behinning of this one, with plenty of other distraught widows and widowers to keep my tear ducts in practice. Oh well.

Penman informs us in her author's note that she had originally meant this novel to be about two men, Llewllyn ap Griffith and Simon de Montfort, but that she realized that each needed his own. This is Simon's and starts with his audacious request to the Earl of Chester to give him his father's hereditary lands back. And the guy did. With scenes touching on Llywellyn's death, the troubled accession of his son Davyth, and the grandson Llwelyn's accession after his uncle's untimely death, and finally the strife between this younger Llewlyn and his brothers, the book sticks to Simon and his family faithfully.

Simon de Montfort is a daring, arrogant, outspoken and astonishing man, an early champion of something resembling a constitutional monarchy. He is a brilliant battle commander, pious, charismatic, but the Simon you see here is also a devoted husband and father. His wife is Elenor, the younger sister of Henry III. She is a force of nature all in her own right. Their five sons and a daughter are unique individuals with a power all their own. The story of Simon's struggles for the Oxford Provisions, a sort of Son of Magna Carta draws to him a scorecard of some of the great men of his time, each of them the father or ghrandfather of other men and women historical novelists will recognize.

This book is full of exquisite scenes. Sadly my memory is not aural so the fact that I listen to books means I can't give many examples, but for instance the refusal of the revels to turn over Kenilwoort Castle to Prince Edward is sweet. Some of Simon's speeches, some of the encounters between him and henry III are likewise delightful.

I would say, having read a few of her historical historical novels, as oppopsed to the mysteries, that Penman's gifts lie not only in her evocative yet readable prose, but even more in her drawing of believable characters from the little wwe really know about them, and most of all her ability to write novels that few others could pull off. They are long and involved and have lots of characters, but somehow Penman makes it all work, makes it feel as if not one page is too many.

I have not noticed this following habit in any of her other novels, so I don't quite know what to make of it. There are a dozen or more scenes that start with a conversation between two or more people, then three or four sentences in get interrupted by some piece of desperate or surprising news. I can't count how many times a sentence ended with "but he was never to know because just then..." or the like. perhaps listening rather than reading with one's eyes made it more noticeable. Nevertheless, it was a curiosity, nothing more, and in no way took away from the pleasure of reading the book.

You could track what I am reading by with whom I am presently in love. I was just getting over Llewllyn the Great -- what a guy. Now it's the younger Llewllyn. I am about to read a novel about Cuchullain, the Irish legendary hero, so Llewellyn ap Griffith may find his days in my heart numbered. It would take someone that stupendous.

The sequel to Falls the Shadow is The Reckoning and this exemplifies one big problem with historical fiction about real people... you already know what's going to happen.. then why does it still hurt so much?

Want a Free eBook of "An Involuntary King"?

In celebration of the first anniversary of the publishing of my novel, An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England on September 3 I am giving away free etext copies of the 638 page novel of love, loyalty, betrayal, war and grief set in 8th century England.

All you have to do to get a copy by email of the novel is promise you will read it and let me ask you a few simple questions about your reaction to the book.

Just send me an email with the subject line "I want to read your novel!" and include in the body of the email that you plan to read the novel as soon as possible and to answer my questions.

Send the email to me at hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com .

The book is also available in paperback and on Kindle through Amazon. I myself sell it for a deeply discounted price as a bookseller on Amazon.

Nan Hawthorne

This offer is good through September 3, 2009.

The Pict, by Jack Dixon

The Pict
By Jack Dixon

The Pict is the story of Callach, a great leader of the tribes that successfully repelled the Roman Empire when no others could. Including the Caledonii, the Picts were highlanders in the part of Britain that would come to be called Scotland. Callach and his loose confederation of Pictish warriors, which included both men and women, were so fierce and unconquerable that the Romans gave up and built Hadrian's Wall to keep them hemmed in, rather than, as they did with all other people, to assimilate them.

Dixon succeeded in appealing to my own love for realistic but suggestively magical interpretations of legendary heroes, like Morgan Llywelyyn's Red Branch and Finn MacCool. He frames the Pictish hero's life in terms of his reincarnation from the ancient hero of the Picts who led them from the Steppes and across the water to their new home. Just as the ancient hero anguished that he hasd not achieved true nobility, so does Callach. Leading the tribes to resist the rampaging Roman army, he is overtaken by a need for revenge for the death of his warrior wife and his outrage at the betrayal of a former ally. Noble or not, Callach succeeds to drive the Romans away through a combination of his clever strategies and absolute commitment to the freedom he and his countrymen so value.

Dixon's prose is compelling while being at the same time solid and unromantic. He advises the reader in his Author's Note that little is known of the real Callach, the only references to him being by Tacitus, the son-in-law of the Roman general he so thoroughly ruined. Dixon has taken a time and a legend and blended them so well that it is hard to imagine the world of the Picts being anything other than he illustrates.

Simply having covered so rarely touched on an era makes this book valuable, but the sensitivity and insight and the sheer skill of bringing it to life, makes this novel a must read.

I read this book on my Kindle 2. It is also available in paperback.

1916: A Novel of Irish Rebellion, by Morgan Llywelyn (The Irish Century)

1916: A Novel of Irish Rebellion
By Morgan Llywelyn

The Irish Century

In her series "The Irish Century" Morgan Llywelyn extends her recreation of Celtic legend and history into the 20th century struggle for independence from colonial British rule. Any of you who know me knows I am a passionate supporter of Irish unification and particularly drawn the the Easter Rising of April 24, 1916. You can imagine then that learning of this novel by this particular author was a thrill. I assigned it for the Let's Read Historical Novels online discussion group so I could share with others what I learned.

This is the story of Edward "Ned" Halloran, a young man from County Clare who, after surviving the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 goes to study at St. Enda's School near Dublin. St. Enda's is the famous Gaelic revival school run by poet Padraig and his brother William Pearce. Ned idolizes Padraig Pearce, and it is easy to understand why. Pearce is an idealist who lives his ideals. It is hearing of the trauma of Ned's experience on the Titanic that firms Pearce's resolve that he will no longer dream and teach of Irish freedom but will dedicate his life, figuratively and literally, t seeing it made fact. Ned's is a fairly typical coming of age story, recounting his development into a young man, learning the difference between surface values and real heart. He drops his unsatisfying courtship of a very material girl to become the friend, champion and finally love of a prostitute whose passion for the rebellion matches his own. He survives another deadly April as a courier for Pearce at the General Post Office, Pearce's and socialist James Connolly's command in the Easter Rising. He is one of the few who did.

I am grateful to this work for offering me an insight, however fictional, into the minds of these men and women I have come to know of due to my interest in the Rising. The hardest for me has always been Padraig Pearce. How could this poet, dreamer, idealist have any idea what he was doing? The answer in this novel is that he did not and he knows that in the end. Other men and women who were just as devoted to the ideal but more worldly wise fought because they had to, it just mattered too much to them not to try and, failing, to die.

The book is careful with its themes. The otherwise seemingly outlandish insertion of the Titanic disaster is there not only to spark Pearce into action, but to show Ned's struggle with the class nature within Irish society, his strength to face horror, and to symbolize how something that seemed infallible can come to ruin. Ned's relationships with Sheila, his fiancee and the orphaned child Precious parallel how the Easter Rising was a movement that cut across walks of life. The novel ably shows the conditions in Ireland in the first part of the century through the experiences of the many characters, the perfect "show, don't tell", and strikes the exact note when demonstrating how the British, in cracking down so brutally, actually achieved for Pearce and his fellow revolutionaries what they sought in the first place.

"The Irish Century' continues with three more novels with titles being the critical years of the century, 1921, the Irish Free State and Civil War, 1945 and the establishment of the Republic, and 1999 and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I will have to make a point of reading all three before my dreamed of trip to Dublin in 2016.

Other books I recommend that cover the Easter Rising are Roddy Doyle's gritty A Star Called Henry and Edward Rutherfurd's The Rebels of Ireland. The Liam Niessen film Michael Collins begins with the surrender of the rebels at the GPO. The following is that scene on YouTube.

Dragon's Lair, by Sharon Kay Penman (A Justin de Quincy Mystery)

Dragon's Lair
By Sharon Kay Penman

A Justin De Quincy Mystery

For some reason I read Prince of Darkness, the fourth of these four Justin De Quincy mysteries, first. It may be a testament to how much I enjoy this third one, Dragon's Lair, that I now want to reread it. I think I said in my review of that novel that I felt like I had dropped into the middle of a party, a stranger to all there. Throughout the reading of Lair I kept remembering little details and sequences of Darkness and now I fell I want the resolution I know it Will bring. The library for the blind will ask me, "Are you sure? You had this book already?" Fortunately one of the radio buttons says "Send it anyway."

At the beginning of this novel our favorite villain, Prince John, has just received the legendary note from King Phillip of France, "The Devil is loose!" signalling the imminent release of his royal but deeply resented brother. Queen Eleanor sends her man, De Quincy, to verify John's departure from Southampton, then upon learning that a major part of her favored son's ransom has gone missing, sends him to Wales to find out what the heck happened. Justin goes on to Chester after leaving his pregnant paramour, Claudine, in a convent to await the birth of their child. Justin meets Prince Dafyd who promptly points his finger at his nephew Llewelyn, yes, that Llewelyn, wanting Justin to run home and come back with English troops to crush the adorable man, still years from his marriage to Joanna. It does not take Justin long to see through the claim. He meets and likes Llewelyn instantly, who wouldn't? and starts to suspect an affable Norman-English knight, Sir Thomas De Caldecott. When Thomas is discovered mysteriously killed he has two mysteries on his hands.

One of the pleasures of this novel is meeting Justin's childhood friends, Molly and Bennet, two wonderful low lifes who help him out with his investigation. Relationships are, in fact, the central theme of this novel. Every character is framed in his or her relationship to another person: Eleanor and her naughty youngest son, Justin first to the shallow Claudine and then to the warm and lusty Molly, Dafyd to his nephew who clearly is his better in every way, and Dafyd to his enigmatic wife, Emma, and not the least important, Thomas to his trusting devoted mistress, Angharad. And let's not forget Justin and his dad, the Bishop of Chester. You can see those two slowly filing away at the rough edges of their relationship, with Molly helping to hold the file as she points out how much of what the bishop has done for Justin points to paternal feeling however covert.

I was delighted with Penman's author's note. She talks about the attention she pays to historical accuracy, a level to which she strives highly and effectively. But she also mentions her relief when trying to get Princess Emma right but let her be evil too, she learns that the Emma historians talk about may have been two different women. Penman says, and I paraphrase, "I was relieved to be able to write Emma as realistically as any fictional character can be". How refreshing!

And what a treat to run into Llewelyn again! Or as I refer to him now when talking about him to my husband, "the beloved Llewelyn".

This is a terrific mystery, though I solved some of it more easily than I would have liked. My only complaint is unrelated to the book itself. I read the National Library Service version, and the narrator is the same one who though having a perfectly good female voice herself, can't resist making the women characters sound like bubble heads. Emma is breathy and childlike, and not in a good way. It made me cringe.

I have a feeling that though I have not found all of these mysteries to be up to Penman's excellence with her historicals, when I look back at these four and perhaps any more we may be fortunate to see come our way, I will remember them most fondly. Sadly some of my readers have interpreted past comments about Penman as meaning I do not like her work. Quite the contrary. Nobody hits a home run all the time.. but Penman's batting average is still way above the league average, a hall of famer without any doubt.

Sharpe's Prey, by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Prey: Richard Sharpe & the Expedition to Denmark, 1807
By Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Prey is the fifth and final of the catch-up novels Bernard Cornwell wrote to fill in Richard Sharpe's life up until he becomes the officer in charge of the elite Chosen Men, a skirmish party of the 95th Rifles. Three of the chronological if not editorially first novels took place in India, another on Sharpe's trip by sea back to England, and finally this one, starting in London and ending in of all places, Denmark.

Sharpe has lost his beloved Grace and their son, both in childbirth. We learn that their relationship, though outside the bonds of the acceptable in society, was a happy one that should have ended in marriage. After her death, however, her late husband's family succeeds in taking everything away from Sharpe including those things he brought to their home. He is alone, treated shabbily by the other officers in the Rifles, desperately trying to sell his commission, and deeply depressed and hopeless. He recklessly decides to settle an old score, locates and murders Jemmy Hawkins, the orphanage in Brewhouse Lane he lived and was abused in a child. He is likely to be caught and hanged, but a deus ex machina in the form of General David Baird gets him a gig taking £43,000 with which to bribe the Crown Prince of Denmark to let the British have their sizable Navy. Sharpe's job is to babysit a certain Lt. Lavisser, the man responsible for all that gold.

In short order we learn that Lavisser is a rogue of the highest caliber. He has his henchman Barker knock Sharpe over the head as soon as they get ashore in Denmark. Our hero escapes, of course, and proceeds to look for, and fall in love with the daughter of, the British agent in Copenhagen. Sharpe finds himself mixed up in all sorts of hi jinks including the infamous, if not that well remembered, bombardment and devastation of the quaint old city of Copenhagen. Why? So Denmark's merchant navy does not fall into Boney's hands.

We meet the Chosen Men in this novel, though Sharpe himself does not. Harper, Jenkins and Harris and maybe a couple more of them show up under someone else's command.

While this is a different enough Sharpe novel to be downright entertaining, it ends very oddly, as if Conrwell ran out of paper. After deciding to stay in Denmark and marry Astrid, the agent's daughter, said Astrid up and decides she can't go against Papa's wishes and Sharpe decides he is too rough and tumble for pious Denmark. It's all over, nothing more to see. Huh? Better to have had Astrid decide, with the man literally holding her captive having his head blown off over her shoulder by Sharpe to have decided she just could not be a good little Dane and marry such an evil British brute. Well, she'll get her come-uppance.. but it's a good thing Sharpe never knows.

We are looking forward to starting on the original first Sharpe novel soon. Thanks to reading the latest ones written we know things about Sharpe even Cornwell did not at the time. Hopefully it won't be awkward.

I actually wrote to Bernard Cornwell to suggest a novel specifically about Patrick Harper being involved in the 1798 Uprising in Ireland. He replied, bless him, saying he had no plans for a novel about Harper, but "never say never".

I have two more novels to review, Morgan Llywelyn's 1916 and Sharon Kay Penman's The Dragon's Lair. I just started reading Jack Dixon's novel of the Caledonian resistance to the Roman Empire, The Pict and am enjoying it immensely.. looking forward to sharing it with you.