New Reviews: Historical Fiction

A tour-de-force performance by Gemma Whelan makes listening to this audiobook worthwhile. Jane Boleyn--Lady Rocheford--is a canny observer. She watches, she waits, she gathers information, and she reveals secrets to her spymaster, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell then uses the damaging particulars against his enemies. Whelan portrays each character with enthusiasm, growling... Read More

Andrew Miller narrates his newest audiobook, which was a finalist for this year's Booker Prize. Set during England's great winter freeze of 1962-1963, this ambitious story focuses on two married couples who are neighbors in a village. Eric is a doctor married to Irene, a former society girl, while Bill, an inexperienced farmer, is with Rita, a working-class girl with a... Read More

Kristin Atherton narrates the story of Grace, a young woman who is isolated at her unpleasant aunt's rambling English mansion at the close of the Victorian era. Grace's obsession with secretly painting perfect copies of famous works of art is interrupted when a man claiming to be her long-lost cousin Charles arrives to claim his inheritance. Atherton portrays the self-possessed... Read More

John Ridge, son of a Cherokee leader, finds himself at odds with the Christian values he's learned at a New England school. They don't align with the realities he's come to observe: racism and attempts at sowing tribal division. The strength and hope in narrator Cameron DelGrosso's voice gradually fades when Ridge returns home and the brutal seizure of Cherokee lands begins.... Read More

In a soft, melodic voice, Saskia Maarleveld breathes life into this novel set in 1895 London. Lady Duxbury, a three-time widow who survived an abusive marriage, shelters three vulnerable young women under the guise of a book club. Eleanor, a physically and emotionally abused mother; Rose, an American dollar princess; and Lavinia, a bullied young woman with a domineering father,... Read More

"Bridgerton" heartthrob Luke Thompson performs this novel with restraint, ensuring that the self-deluded first-person narrator is fully believable. The setting, Venice in 1899, has a gloss of wrongdoing. The protagonist, an unsuccessful English writer named Evelyn Dohlman, is a morally ambiguous soul. He speaks no Italian, and his recent bride, an American heiress, has cooled... Read More

This gripping historical thriller is compellingly narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. The story takes place in Vienna in 1938, just as Germany has annexed Austria and begun its relentless campaign against Jews. Greta Kolbe is an 18-year-old Jewish girl who joins the Austrian resistance and becomes a target of the Gestapo. The majority of the audiobook chronicles her perils,... Read More