Bookshelf, Spring 2022

A lot of books on my shelf this quarter, although actually I’ve read most of them—and a few more besides. But they have my interview schedules on both the podcast and the blog jam-packed; they are all good reads; and they are coming out in the next month or two, so this is definitely the time to give them a shout-out. None of these are out yet, although they are all available for pre-order. I’ll supply links when I  post the follow-up interviews.

Anne Louise Bannon, Death of an Heiress (Healcroft House, 2022)
I’ve been waiting for this one after enjoying the first three Old Los Angeles mysteries. There’s something very appealing about the idea of LA as a pueblo small enough to cross on foot, and Maddie Wilcox—the intrepid doctor/winemaker/crusader for justice whose memoirs form the backbone of the series—is a perceptive and clear-eyed observer. Bannon does a good job of conveying the atmosphere of what in the 1870s is still the Wild West, with saloon keepers and brothel owners, prejudice and superstition, and a general attitude among the citizenry that women should mind their place and keep their mouths shut, not go wandering about the pueblo at all hours healing injuries and hunting murderers.

This novel opens in 1872 with an heiress whose legacy is under assault from her brother and the murder of a Native American healer, ruled an accidental death by the prejudiced judge called in to handle the inquest. The threads connecting these two events are long and twisty, but the resolution seems just right. I’ll be talking with the author after the book’s release on June 14, with a New Books in Historical Fiction (NBHF) interview to run in mid-July.

Jade Beer, The Last Dress from Paris (Berkley, 2022)
In 2017, Lucille agrees to fulfill an urgent request from her ninety-year-old grandmother, Sylvie: accept a free ticket to Paris and retrieve a dress made in the 1950s by the noted designer Christian Dior. When Lucille reaches her destination, she discovers that the one dress belongs to a set of eight, all owned by Sylvie, but was sold years ago—as her grandmother has known all along. The hunt is on to find the missing dress and see the entire set conveyed back to London.

This present-day story intertwines with chapters, each named after one of the eight Dior creations and set in the 1950s, that gradually reveal how the dresses came into Sylvie’s possession and the complicated truth that lies behind her request to Lucille. This book releases on June 21, and I’ll be hosting an NBHF interview with the author around that time.

Dianne Freeman, A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder (Kensington, 2022)
The fifth in an absolutely delightful historical mystery series featuring Frances Wynn, the dowager Countess of Harleigh, set in Gilded Age Britain. The daughter of a wealthy American, Frances was sold off at eighteen to an impoverished earl, who promptly spent her fortune on wine, women, and impressing Edward, Prince of Wales—the future Edward VII. After an initial, understandable reluctance to commit herself to another husband, Frances has yielded to her attraction to her next-door neighbor George Hazelton—an English gentleman but not a titled one, employed on slightly mysterious assignments for the Crown.

In this book, they are all set to marry, and Frances believes her only problem is her interfering mother. But the night before, she learns that two warring robber barons both plan to attend. Sure enough, the more disreputable of the pair is murdered during the wedding. The police suspect Frances’s younger brother, forcing her and George to cancel their honeymoon in the hopes of solving the crime. Meanwhile, the long-suffering Inspector Delaney does his best to keep them from meddling in his investigation, with the usual mixed results. This latest installment comes out on June 28, which leaves you plenty of time to devour the first four entries in this light-hearted and engrossing series. I’ll be hosting a written Q&A with the author here on June 24.

Louise Hare, Miss Aldridge Regrets (Berkley, 2022)
Another murder mystery with an interesting twist. Lena Aldridge is a mixed-race singer who has never known her mother. It’s 1930s London, and the Great Depression has made work difficult to find for almost everyone. After a series of theater jobs, Lena has fallen on hard times, reduced to singing in a crummy Soho bar owned by her best friend’s husband. Her father, a pianist, has died a few months before, and when the bar owner is murdered one evening, Lena accepts what seems like a too-good-to-be-true opportunity to travel all expenses paid to New York for a starring role in a Broadway show. What happens next defies her expectations in both good and bad ways.

The twist is that the first person we meet in the novel is not Lena but the murderer, who reappears from time to time throughout the novel commenting on and evaluating decisions without revealing their identity. I did eventually figure out what tied the threads together, but even then Hare managed to deliver more than one surprise at the end. This book comes out on July 5, and I’ll be hosting a written Q&A here on July 22.

Catherine Lloyd, Miss Morton and the English House Party Murder (Kensington, 2022)
I had not heard of Catherine Lloyd before her publicist sent this book my way, but a little digging turned up the fact that she has eight previous novels in a separate series, set during the Regency in the English village of Kurland St. Mary. I’ve now read most of those and enjoyed them, as well as this latest opening to a second series.

As the title suggests, the new novel features Lady Caroline Morton, whose illustrious heritage has been tarnished by the financial ruin and suicide of her father a few years earlier. We are now in early Victorian Britain, but the economic opportunities of young women—even noblewomen—are still extremely limited. Caroline’s family would support her, but life as a poor relation has its drawbacks, and she has taken a position as companion to a wealthy but less-cultured widow, Mrs. Frogerton. But when Caroline’s cousin insists on celebrating her birthday with a house party and invites Mrs. Frogerton and her daughter to attend, Miss Morton (she prefers to avoid the “Lady” as inappropriate to a woman with a job) can’t refuse. A succession of uncomfortable encounters with her past culminate in the troubling disappearance of a trusted servant, then an outright murder that hardly anyone else will admit could be anything but an accident—all taking place in a classic locked-room setting when floods prevent anyone within the house party from leaving the estate. This well-written mystery will make its debut on May 31, and I’ve timed a podcast interview with the author to run on the New Books Network in early June.

Kelly Rimmer, The German Wife (Graydon House, 2022)
Despite my frequent complaints about the ongoing avalanche of books set during World War II, they keep coming my way, and once in a while one of them catches my attention. At first, I thought this one was set in the 1950s, which is the reason I agreed to take a look—and one part of it is. But the action then is counterposed to the 1930s and 1940s, in both the United States and Germany, and the story moves seamlessly back and forth between the two countries and two points of view: Sofie Rhode as the German wife of the title and Lizzie Miller, a hard-scrabble woman from the Dust Bowl who doesn’t take kindly to German scientists showing up in her home town right after the war.

Rimmer’s portrayal of Sofie, a woman who inwardly resists Nazism yet nonetheless finds herself on the wrong side of a war she doesn’t want, is the high point of the novel—thought-provoking and compelling without pulling punches. Lizzie, too, emerges as a fully formed if troubled person, haunted by her past. You can find out more about the book, due June 28, from our written Q&A, scheduled for July 8.

Francesca Stanfill, The Falcon’s Eyes (Harper, 2022)
Another unexpected find—very long at 800+ pages but nonetheless captivating. Isabelle, a young countess living in Provence in the twelfth century, has neither looks nor fortune nor a pliant demeanor to guarantee her a husband. Her parents have reconciled themselves to keeping her at home as a drudge for the rest of her life, but an unexpected marriage proposal from Lord Gerard de Meurtaigne—who has money but not the aristocratic heritage Isabelle can provide—sends Isabelle’s life in a new direction. Her parents insist she accept, and she does, even though she has never set eyes on her prospective bridegroom. What else is a medieval woman to do?

At first, Isabelle’s marriage pleases her more than she expected, but soon elements of darkness creep in to disturb her happiness. What happens next should be experienced, not divulged, but we know from the beginning that Isabelle attends the death of Queen Eleanor of England and Aquitaine, the shining example of a twelfth-century alternative to Isabelle’s conventional upbringing. The road between those two opening scenes takes Isabelle through a lifetime of challenges, but it’s well worth following to the end. The chance to do so comes with the novel’s publication on July 5; I will be interviewing the author in July, but exactly when and in what format remains undetermined.