Historical Fiction
April 2026

Recent Releases
Autobiography of Cotton
by Cristina Rivera Garza

Mexico, 1934: A husband and wife journey from mining towns to cotton fields for work. At the same time a real-life, 20-year-old activist and writer José Revueltas also travels to Tamaulipas to support the cotton workers’ strike in Estación Camarón.

Along the border: The story of this couples life (based on the author's grandparents), as it intersects with Revueltas’s life is a vivid and evocative history of cotton cultivation along the Mexico-US border, revealing a rich social history of agricultural colonization, labor activism, environmental degradation, and cross-border migration.
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing
by Alice Evelyn Yang

New York City, 2017: Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. Then she gets a call—there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he’s asking for her. This man isn’t the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.

Stories from the past: While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories - from his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother’s youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions—fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.
Book of Forbidden Words
by Louise Fein

England, 1552: The print­ing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas. 

New York, 1952: Milly Bennett is a lonely housewife struggling to find her way in her new neighborhood amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. She finds her life taking an unexpected turn when a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, pulling her into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.
Daughter of Egypt
by Marie Benedict

England, 1919: A young woman, Lady Evelyn Herbert is fascinated by the story of Hatshepsut, a woman living in Egypt in the 1400s, who had to assume the guise of a man in order to rule Egypt. Although Hatshepsut brought peace and prosperity, her male successors at the time, ruthlessly and thoroughly erased her name from history.

Discovery: Lady Evelyn defies societal expectations and accompanies her father, Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle, and famed archeologist Howard Carter on digs in Egypt, where she seeks the tomb of Hatshepsut. The tomb is discovered by the team, but what no one knows is that without the pioneering spirit of Lady Evelyn, it might never have been found - but once again recognition is not to be for a woman.
A Far-Flung Life
by M.L. Stedman

Western Australia, 1958: A truck rumbles along a lonely outback road. A moment’s inattention, and in a few muddled seconds the lives of the MacBride family are shattered. Left behind are injured teenager Matt, his older sister Rose, and his grief-stricken mom Lorna, who are eventually joined by a bright young boy.

What follows: Set in the expanse of a vast and flat landscape, where the weather is a capricious god and a million-acre sheep station is barely a dot on the map the survivors struggle. Instead of leaving them to heal, fate comes back for them in a twist of consequences.
Mule Boy
by Andrew Krivak

Pennsylvania, 1929: On New Year’s Day, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface.

Collapse: After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room in which the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed. From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. Years later, when the miners’ loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.
The Sea Child
by Linda Wilgus

England, early 1800s: Destitute and forced to leave her home in London, Isabel, a young widow of the Napoleonic Wars, returns to the village on the rugged Cornish coast where she was found as a small child, dripping wet and alone. She is shocked to find herself at the center of a local legend claiming she’s the daughter of a sea spirit. As Isabel adjusts to living on her own for the first time in her rented cottage, the village appears a refuge, but the coast is rife with smugglers and the Revenue Officers who hunt them.

One evening: A group of dangerous raiders arrive at her door, carrying their wounded captain, Jack. Isabel decides to care for Jack and soon senses a powerful connection between them. Unable to forget him and their growing attraction once Jack recovers and leaves, Isabel decides to become involved with the smugglers. Isabel struggles to understand her kinship with the ocean while she seeks answers about her past. 
White River Crossing
by Ian McGuire

Canada, 1766: A ragged fur peddler arrives at a remote outpost of the Hudson Bay Company in the winter of 1766 with a lump of gold, claiming that there is plenty more like it further north at a place called Ox Lake. The outpost’s chief factor, Magnus Norton, dreams of instant riches and launches a secret and perilous expedition to find the treasure and bring it back.

The expedition: Led by two Native couples, the party of three prospectors includes the manager's loathsome deputy, John Shaw; Thomas Hearn, the intellectual first mate from the company's whaling sloop; and the manager's naive 19-year-old nephew. But an act of sexual violence will make a dangerous trip even more so. 
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