It has been a quite awhile since I’ve had the spare time to simply peruse the aisle at my local Barnes and Noble. I was gratified to see many new HF titles on the “New Releases” shelves. The following caught my eye and will hopefully join the towering TBR pile in the near future:

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake: Weaving together the stories of three very different women loosely tied to each other, debut novelist Blake takes readers back and forth between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. (from amazon.com)

Purge by Sofie Oksanen:  When Aliide Truu, an older woman living alone in the Estonian countryside, finds a disheveled girl huddled in her front yard, she suppresses her misgivings and offers her shelter. Zara is a young sex-trafficking victim on the run from her captors, but a photo she carries with her soon makes it clear that her arrival at Aliide’s home is no coincidence. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in a complex arithmetic of suspicion and revelation to distill each other’s motives; gradually, their stories emerge, the culmination of a tragic family drama of rivalry, lust, and loss that played out during the worst years of Estonia’s Soviet occupation. (from amazon.com)

The Confessions of Katherine DeMedici by C.W. Gortner: From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen. (from amazon.com)

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliviera: Mary Sutter is a brilliant, head­strong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine-and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak- Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens-two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary’s courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering-and resisting her mother’s pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister’s baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital. (from amazon.com)

Private Life by Jane Smiley: Traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II. (from amazon.com)

I was also thrilled to see HNS member Susan Higgenbotham’s The Stolen Crown, HNS member Mitchell James Kaplan’s By Fire, By Water, and Helen Hollick’s Pendragon’s Banner in the new releases trade paperback section, right at eye level!

The historical fiction genre is still going strong, I see, and I am sure at least part of its success is due to the continuous professional efforts of The Historical Novel Society in supporting HF writers and educating readers.