FanFare

A wild and hallucinatory reimagining of Elizabethan London, with its bird worshippers, famed child actors, and the Queen herself; a dazzling historical novel about theatre, magic, and the dangers of all-consuming love. [more inside]
posted by rednikki on Nov 9, 2023 - 2 comments

"From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson." With these words, Ray Carney--furniture salesman and semi-retired jewel fence--is back in Colson Whitehead's newest book, Crook Manifesto, the sequel to his 2021 crime novel, Harlem Shuffle. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes on Aug 9, 2023 - 5 comments

The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.
posted by cendawanita on Jul 20, 2023 - 81 comments

Now a detective-for-hire, Enola Holmes takes on her first official case to find a missing girl as the sparks of a dangerous conspiracy ignite a mystery that requires the help of friends - and Sherlock himself - to unravel. Now on Netflix.
posted by cendawanita on Nov 8, 2022 - 4 comments

An aspiring filmmaker in Hyderabad, Vasu, finds himself in the centre of a plagiarism scandal. But how is it possible he had access to the works of a long-dead leftist who made his mark in 1970s Kolkata? [more inside]
posted by cendawanita on Sep 26, 2022 - 3 comments

Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force. Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.
posted by DirtyOldTown on Feb 15, 2022 - 1 comment

Starring Hailee Steinfeld as the poet Emily Dickinson, along with beautiful sets and costumes. The show explores society, gender, sexuality, and politics by taking a modern spin on coming of age in Amherst in the 1850s. Guest staring just about everyone.
posted by autopilot on Feb 14, 2022 - 6 comments

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other. [more inside]
posted by DowBits on Jul 22, 2021 - 5 comments

“If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?” With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a... [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Mar 10, 2020 - 66 comments

It is the year 1000 and Red Orm, a native of Scania, goes a-viking. This book of historical fiction follows Orm's adventures through the life of Europe in the later Viking Age, from Andalusia to Denmark to Ireland to England, all against the backdrop of pragmatic Norse paganism's encounters with Islam and creeping Christianisation.

In my career as a reader I have encountered only three people who knew The Long Ships, and all of them, like me, loved it immediately. Four for four: from this tiny but irrefutable sample I dare to extrapolate that this novel, first published in Sweden during the Second World War, stands ready, given the chance, to bring lasting pleasure to every single human being on the face of the earth. -- from the Introduction by Michael Chabon

posted by fleacircus on May 6, 2019 - 7 comments

American Harry Houdini is in England, where he and Arthur Conan Doyle team up with the first lady on the local police force, Constable Stratton Adelaide. In their first adventure together, they investigate the murder of a nun from one of the notorious Magdalene Laundries. A witness claims that the murderer was a young woman tormented by the nun - but she's been dead for 6 months.
posted by filthy light thief on May 3, 2016 - 8 comments

"Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. ... [W]hile what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. " -Amazon.com [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Mar 31, 2016 - 1 comment

"[Elizabeth] Gilbert, the author of the phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love (2006), returns to fiction with her first novel in 13 years, and what a novel it is! Taking her sweet time and digressing at will into areas ranging from botany to spiritualism to illustration, she tells the rich, highly satisfying story of scholar Alma Whittaker. Born to Henry Whittaker, “the richest man in Philadelphia,” who rose from his station as the son of a lowly gardener to an import tycoon, Alma has the benefit of wealth and books, spending hours learning Latin and Greek and studying the natural world. But her plain appearance and erudition seem to foretell a lonely life until she meets gifted artist Ambrose Pike. Their intense intellectual connection results in marriage, but Ambrose’s deep but unorthodox spiritual beliefs prevent them from truly connecting. Alma, who has never traveled out of Philadelphia, embarks on an odyssey that takes her from Tahiti to Holland, during which she learns much about the ways of the world and her own complicated nature. Gilbert, in supreme command of her material, effortlessly invokes the questing spirit of the nineteenth century, when amateur explorers, naturalists, and enthusiasts were making major contributions to progress. Beautifully written and imbued with a reverence for science and for learning, this is a must-read." - Booklist [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Mar 1, 2016 - 6 comments

In 1066, the world ended.

"when i woc in the mergen all was blaec though the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time. a great wind had cum in the night and all was blown then and broc. none had thought a wind lic this colde cum for all was blithe lifan as they always had and who will hiere the gleoman when the tales he tells is blaec who locs at the heofon if it brings him regn who locs in the mere when there seems no end to its deopness."

[more inside] posted by Eyebrows McGee on Feb 1, 2016 - 25 comments

"England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage." -- Amazon summary [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Jan 2, 2016 - 25 comments

"Hill presents a detailed annotated version of Wilder's autobiography, written between 1929 and 1930, which served as the basis for the ever-popular and successful "Little House" books. A successful columnist and editor, Wilder chronicled 16 years of the Ingalls family's moves through Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakota Territory in the late 19th century, offering vivid descriptions of the land and people as well as the ups and downs of frontier life. Though daughter Rose Wilder Lane heavily edited the manuscript, it was never accepted for publication. Wilder eventually fictionalized many of the incidents described here for her "Little House" series and strove to portray the spirit of the time and to illustrate the courage and adaptability of the people who settled the frontier. Using census data, newspapers, and other primary documents, this volume is heavily annotated and puts into perspective the original autobiography and how that manuscript evolved into the fictional stories. ... "Little House" devotees will appreciate Hill's thorough examination of Wilder's life and times." -- School Library Journal [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Dec 1, 2015 - 8 comments

Welcome to Historical Fiction book club! I've chosen nine months of books, touching on a variety of historical periods, tending towards the more literary end of the historical fiction spectrum but trying to include a variety of styles. We will discuss each book over the course of a month; on the first day of the month spoilers are permitted, be forewarned. The major selection criterion for the initial set of books is that I've read them in the last calendar year and so remember enough about them to discuss them, and I think they'll appeal to MeFites. (If I left out your recent favorite, I probably just haven't read it yet, and I'm happy to do so!) Within, find out our upcoming books! [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee on Oct 21, 2015 - 7 comments