New Reviews: Historical Fiction

Ell Potter delivers a smashing performance of Galland's engrossing novel. The title character is Sander Cooke, an androgynous actor with the Chamberlain's Men in Elizabethan London whose brilliant performances in female roles have made him a celebrity. His best friend, Joan, longs to study, but scholarship is forbidden because she's a woman. So Joan employs cross-dressing to... Read More

Allison Epstein's novel has all the darkness and gravitas of a Dickens work, and narrator Will Watt provides a voice that is appropriately grim. He delivers Epstein's clever imagining of the life of Fagin, from Dickens's OLIVER TWIST, ranging from his early life, including his first name (Jacob), to his ultimate end. Fagin grows up in London's Jewish quarter, poor, despised by... Read More

Thanks to Amy Scanlon's virtuosic narration, paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey's personal and professional lives become historical fiction at its finest. Her story ranges from the 1930s, when she was in her 20s, to the 1970s, when she was a cigar-smoking scientist in her 70s. Listeners hear Mary fall in love with Louis as she illustrates his books on human evolution. The story... Read More

Jane Oppenheimer provides a tone of truthfulness to this historical novel highlighting the friction between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr as they seek to defend a murder suspect in 1800s America. Levi Weeks is accused of murdering Emma Sands, a lively young woman who disappeared from her boardinghouse. Lawyers Hamilton and Burr have political aspirations as each tries to... Read More

Golden Voice narrator Cassandra Campbell tells the WWII story of two childhood friends, Hilde and Hannah, whose lives converge in a "model camp" for Jews, Theresienstadt. The camp is described in Nazi propaganda as Hitler's "gift to the Jews"--however, it's actually a concentration camp with dehumanizing work, scant food, and harsh punishments. Hilde, an aspiring filmmaker and... Read More

Talented narrators Clare Corbett and Melanie Crawley deliver a haunting ghost story that shifts between 1776 and the present day. Corbett gives illiterate Hettie Gale a sharp West Country accent as she recounts her life and death in the late 1700s. Hettie's story alternates with that of soft-toned Alice McKenna, performed by Crawley. In the present time, Alice searches for her... Read More

This long, drawn-out audiobook is a fictional account of the ultra-glamorous lives of two of the richest women of all time, Barbara Hutton and Doris Duke. The smooth, nonjudgmental voice of narrator Whitney Dykhouse describes their lifestyles. Listeners hear about designer clothes, priceless jewels, and sumptuous meals; valuable antique furnishings, enchanting villas, and... Read More

Elyse Durham's debut novel takes listeners from the 1941 Siege of Leningrad through the Cold War via the lives of Maya and Natasha, twin orphaned sisters. Illegitimate daughters of a prima ballerina who died shortly after their birth, they are raised and trained by the state to live their mother's destiny in the Kirov School of Ballet. Yelena Shmulenson's narration captures... Read More

Canadian author James Arnett's historical fiction tells a little-known chapter of America's first civil war, the Revolutionary War. Simon Vance narrates with the gravitas of a history professor, highlighting the motivations and humanity of two Loyalist farmers, Richard Lippincott and James Moody. Lippincott, a Quaker, is trying to live a peaceful life amid the guerrilla... Read More

Faladé re-creates a post-WWII Paris filled with verve, trepidation, and heartbreak. As the City of Lights mends physically and emotionally from the war, it's overflowing with international students--Africans, Indo-Chinese, Arabs, and Americans. Narrator Jasmin Walker shines as she portrays Minette Traoré, a spirited French-born girl of Senegalese descent, and Cecile Rosenbaum,... Read More

A new contribution to the exciting stories of women who fought against the Third Reich, this audiobook is narrated by Gilli Messer with excellence. Providing various accents and voices, Messer brings honesty and insight to the story's characters. Elena Bruskina is a young Jewish woman who becomes a sniper for the Soviet Union after seeing her family murdered in the Minsk... Read More

This thrill ride of an audiobook tells the many stories of those onboard Train 721, which crashes in Montparnasse station in October 1895. British narrator Justin Avoth narrates the drama at a good pace and keeps the story moving. Donoghue brings her plotting skills, eloquent style, and eye for social mores to the cast of fictional people who are on the train. To the group she... Read More

Keeping track of the wide range of accents of a cast of characters from multiple countries--New Zealand, London, France, and Hungary, to name a few--is a daunting task. English actor Bessie Carter does just that in this delightful crumpet of historical fiction. Carter employs her best BBC English for famed mystery author Dorothy L. Sayers, who spearheads the effort to form a... Read More

A group of acclaimed narrators delivers an absorbing performance of David Baldacci's new novel. In 1944 London, well-born 15-year-old Molly, 14-year-old Charlie from London's East Side, and Ignatius Oliver, a bereaved bookshop owner, are flung together to forge a found family in the midst of war. While the writing suggests a young adult novel, the complex story will certainly... Read More

Mia Hutchinson-Shaw gives a vibrant performance in this variation on TRUE GRIT, which captures the historic quality of the Old West in the mid-1800s and a woman who poses as a man to survive a journey. Haidie Richards's father left home years ago to seek his fortune mining gold in Colorado and disappeared. Convinced he's still alive, she begins a dangerous trek with her sister,... Read More