Bookshelf, Winter 2026

Since I laid out my own writing plans in the previous post, I decided that rather than share the usual New Year’s resolutions (ephemeral as those so often are), I would instead look at the items on my virtual bookshelf, most of which are intended to provide material for future posts, either as blog Q&As, New Books Network interviews, or as research for a stand-alone novel I’m considering slotting in somewhere between Song of the Sleuth, which I’m currently drafting, and its successor, Song of the Silenced. More on that last as the plans develop.

Jennifer Ashley, Eloise and the Queen (JA/AG Publishing, 2025)

I love Jennifer Ashley’s Below Stairs mysteries, featuring the Victorian-era housekeeper Kat Holloway, but I was surprised to learn that she’s also started a series called Ladies of Tudor England, contemporary with my own novels and to some extent overlapping, since her first heroine, Eloise Rousel, niece of the real-life Kat Ashley, has a gift for embroidery that some of my own characters would appreciate. In addition to various more scholarly books on Elizabeth I’s London, I look forward to reading this one for its insights into what it might have been like to live at the late sixteenth-century Tudor court.

Janie Chang, The Fourth Princess (William Morrow, 2026)

I’ve loved Janie Chang’s previous novels, especially The Phoenix Crown, which she cowrote with Kate Quinn, another favorite author of mine. This one, a Gothic novel set in early twentieth-century Shanghai and involving both cross-cultural (Chinese/European) contact and a menacing house filled with secrets, looks like a real page-turner. Find out more from my written interview with the author, scheduled to appear here on the blog around the time of the book’s release in early February.

Sandra Freels, Anneke Jans in the New World (She Writes Press, 2026)

This novel about the early days of Dutch colonization in North America has been timed to appear on the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York (then Fort Amsterdam) as well as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s pure historical fiction, tracing the life of one of the author’s remote ancestors as she leaves the Netherlands under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and settles into her new home.

The struggles of daily life are front and center here, but we also see the gradual expansion of white colonization and the deteriorating relationship between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. The Dutch experience in the New World is certainly not unique, but it has been less explored, which gives this novel a new and interesting take on a familiar story. I’ll be talking with the author on the New Books Network in late February, but the book will already have been out for about six weeks by then.

Kaoru Mori, A Bride’s Story, no. 15

(Yen Press, 2025)

Anime is not my thing, as a rule, but I make an exception for this gorgeous series of books set in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. My favorites—it won’t surprise you to learn—explore life on the steppe at the point when the Russians are moving in but have not yet taken control.

When I first saw this one, I actually had limited expectations, because it features a hapless English photographer whose appearance throughout the series has not won me over. But the book surprised me because it takes him and his intended bride, a steppe nomad who was mistreated by her first husband, back to Victorian England and shows the pair of them coping with his well-off family’s prejudices even as they work their way to a closer relationship and the heroine, Talas, finds a place where her skills and knowledge can thrive. The cultural clash, because it has real emotional power, adds depth to an already compelling story.

Casey Scieszka, The Fountain

(Harper, 2026)

The idea of immortality has fascinated humanity for millennia. What would it be like to live forever? Most people, I think, wouldn’t want to continue life endlessly if it meant growing steadily older and more decrepit, but the draw of eternal youth and beauty has not, if you’ll pardon the pun, faded.

Reading The Fountain, however, may change your mind. Casey Scieszka’s heroine, Vera Van Valkenburgh, looks to be in her mid-twenties but she has lived for more than two centuries—as have several members of her family, although it seems as if none of them know why (we do find out at the end, but I won’t spoil it for you).

When we meet her, Vera is making yet another attempt to end her own life, which turns out to be as fruitless as her many previous attempts. What brought her here, why she wants so strongly to end it all, what gets in her way—all these elements play out through the course of the story, which will certainly get you thinking about whether immortality, even if it means perfect health, is really all it’s cracked up to be. Check back here in mid-March, when the book releases, for my written Q&A with the author.

Linda Wilgus, The Sea Child (Ballantine, 2026)

Early nineteenth-century Cornwall has been the setting for numerous romance and adventure novels because of its long connections with smuggling and piracy, the result of a rugged coastline characterized by numerous inlets and coves. The Sea Child takes this tradition and runs with it, focusing on Isabel Henley, a young woman who, as a child of four, was plucked from the sea with no knowledge of her parents or her home.

Adopted by local landlords, Isabel grows up, moves away, marries a navy man, and, after his death in battle, returns to her childhood village. There she discovers that the legend surrounding her—that she is not entirely human but a daughter of the Sea Bucca, a merman who haunts the waters of the Cornish coast—survives and thrives. Isabel discounts the locals’ tale, but she can’t deny that the river calls to her as she strolls along its banks at twilight … Find out more from my interview with the author for New Books in Historical Fiction, which should post in a couple of weeks, not long after the book release.