Review: War Lord (Saxon Tales #13) by Bernard Cornwell

The 13th and final installment of the book series that inspired the TV show, The Last Kingdom, is a sad but necessary conclusion to such a great and epic tale. Uhtred is now in his 70s, and while that's not impossible even for the era (average life expectancy if one survived childhood in the Middle Ages was in the 60s), it is starting to get a bit unrealistic, especially as a warrior who still engages in combat. For the last few books, I've been wondering how long Cornwell could really stretch this out, but now that it's finally come to an end, I will miss it, of course. I think that's why I took so long to finish it, I didn't want it to end.

Uhtred's epic journey was such an enjoyable way to detail the turbulent establishment and unification of the country of England and it's monarchs and leaders who made it happen, starting with Alfred the Great, all the way through the reign of his grandson, Athelstan. While Uhtred's relationship with each of them was always rather grudging at best, I think he secretly wanted to believe in Alfred's vision, and it also brought a lot of humor to the series. 

In some ways, I wish the story could continue, following succeeding monarchs, perhaps through Uhtred's son's voice, but I know it wouldn't be the same. All good things come to an end, and this was a fitting and worthy ending to Uhtred's story.

February 2021 Releases Part 1

The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner 

Release Date: February 2, 2021

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Longest Echo: A Novel by Eoin Dempsey 

Release Date: February 9, 2021

Occupied Italy, 1944. In the mountain regions south of Bologna, Liliana Nicoletti’s family finds escaped POW James Foley behind German lines. Committed to the anti-Fascist cause, they deliver him to a powerful band of local partisans. But when the SS launches a brutal attack against the Resistance, Liliana’s peaceful community is destroyed. Alone and thrown together by tragedy, James and Liliana fight together as Monte Sole burns. Forging an unbreakable bond, they know their only hope of survival is to make it to the Allied lines.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Comes the War (Eddie Harkins Book 2) by Ed Ruggero

Release Date: February 9, 2021

April 1944, the fifty-fifth month of the war in Europe. The entire island of Britain fairly buzzes with the coiled energy of a million men poised to leap the Channel to France, the first, riskiest step in the Allies’ long slog to the heart of Germany and the end of the war.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck

Release Date: February 9, 2021

France, March 1944. Virginia Hall wasn't like the other young society women back home in Baltimore—she never wanted the debutante ball or silk gloves. Instead, she traded a safe life for adventure in Europe, and when her beloved second home is thrust into the dark days of war, she leaps in headfirst.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Paris Library: A Novel by Janet Skeslien Charles 

Release Date: February 9, 2021

Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet has it all: her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Dangerous Women by Hope Adams

Release Date: February 16, 2021

Nearly two hundred condemned women board a transport ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.

(Full description at Goodreads)

January Historical Fiction Releases Part 2

Find Me in Havana: A Novel by Serena Burdick 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Cuba, 1936: When Estelita Rodriguez sings in a hazy Havana nightclub for the very first time, she is nine years old. From then on, that spotlight of adoration—from Havana to New York’s Copacabana and then Hollywood—becomes the one true accomplishment no one can take from her. Not the 1933 Cuban Revolution that drove her family into poverty. Not the revolving door of husbands or the fickle world of film.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Children's Train: A Novel by Viola Ardone  (Author), Clarissa Botsford (Translator)

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Though Mussolini and the fascists have been defeated, the war has devastated Italy, especially the south. Seven-year-old Amerigo lives with his mother Antonietta in Naples, surviving on odd jobs and his wits like the rest of the poor in his neighborhood. But one day, Amerigo learns that a train will take him away from the rubble-strewn streets of the city to spend the winter with a family in the north, where he will be safe and have warm clothes and food to eat. 

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

From the author of the international bestseller The Light Over London and The Whispers of War comes a poignant and unforgettable tale of five women living across three different times whose lives are all connected by one very special place.

In this sweeping novel reminiscent of Kate Morton’s The Lake House and Kristin Harmel’s The Room on Rue Amélie, Julia Kelly explores the unexpected connections that cross time and the special places that bring people together forever.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The City of Tears: A Novel (The Burning Chambers Series Book 2) by Kate Mosse 

Release Date: January 19, 2021

August 1572: Minou Joubert and her husband Piet travel to Paris to attend a royal wedding which, after a decade of religious wars, is intended to finally bring peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots.

Also in Paris is their oldest enemy, Vidal, in pursuit of an ancient relic that will change the course of history.

Within days of the marriage, thousands will lie dead in the street, and Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds . . .

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A Thousand Ships: A Novel by Natalie Haynes 

Release Date: January 26, 2021 

In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.

From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war. 

(Full description at Goodreads)

January 2021 Releases Part 1

Our Darkest Night: A Novel of Italy and the Second World War by Jennifer Robson 

Release Date: January 5, 2021

It is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive—to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met. 

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden  

Release Date: January 5, 2021

Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army—swollen by 10,000 warriors known as The Immortals—have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path, vastly outnumbered, stands an army of freeborn Athenians. Among them is a clever, fearsome, and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Against all odds, the Athenians emerge victorious.

Yet people soon forget that freedom is bought with blood.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Children's Blizzard: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Yellow Wife: A Novel by Sadeqa Johnson 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.

She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known.

(Full description from Goodreads)

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Glamour Girls: A Novel by Marty Wingate 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Ever since she was 10 years old, Rosalie Wright's eyes have been on the skies. But at the age of 18, on the verge of earning her pilot's license, the English farmer's daughter watches her dreams of becoming an aviatrix fly away without her. Britain's entry into World War II brings civilian aviation to a standstill. Then, Rosalie's father dies, leaving her, her mother, and her brothers to run the farm.

Everything changes when she learns that the Air Transport Authority is recruiting women pilots to ferry warplanes across Britain to RAF bases.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Lana's War: A Novel by Anita Abriel 

Release Date: January 12, 2021

Paris 1943: Lana Antanova is on her way to see her husband with the thrilling news that she is pregnant. But when she arrives at the convent where he teaches music, she’s horrified to see Gestapo officers execute him for hiding a Jewish girl in the piano.

A few months later, grieving both her husband and her lost pregnancy, Lana is shocked when she’s approached to join the resistance on the French Riviera.

(Full description at Goodreads)

December Releases Part 2

The Angel of Waterloo by Jackie French 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

She was Henrietta Bartlett, a surgeon's daughter, a survivor of the Napoleonic Wars. But now the battlefield is just a blood-soaked memory, and Hen dreams of peace, a home, and a society that allows women to practise medicine.

On the other side of the world, the newly founded colony of New South Wales seems a paradise. But Europe's wars cast long shadows ...

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Mermaid from Jeju: A Novel by Sumi Hahn 

Release Date: December 8, 2020

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth. While there, she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Chanel Sisters: A Novel by Judithe Little 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family at a young age, they’ve grown up under the guidance of nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Mystery of Mrs. Christie: A Novel by Marie Benedict 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car — strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The War Widow (A Billie Walker Novel) by Tara Moss 

Release Date: December 29, 2020

Sydney, 1946. Though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be home, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance in Europe of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, now that the war is over, the newspapers are sidelining her reporting talents to prioritize jobs for returning soldiers. But Billie is a survivor and she's determined to take control of her own future. So she reopens her late father's business, a private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking.

(Full description at Goodreads)

December Releases Part 1

The Forgotten Orphan by Glynis Peters 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Abandoned when she was tiny, Maisie Reynolds was separated from her twin brother and forced to grow up in Holly Bush orphanage – a place where she has never known love or kindness.

But with the world at war and Hitler’s devastating bombs coming ever closer, fate has other plans for Maisie and a secret from her past changes everything.

When she meets handsome Canadian paratrooper, Cam, Maisie learns that love might not be lost to her after all – but not before her past life and D Day bring a tragic twist to her happiness.

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Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin by Harald Gilbers 

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Berlin 1944: a serial killer stalks the bombed-out capital of the Reich, preying on women and laying their mutilated bodies in front of war memorials. All of the victims are linked to the Nazi party. But according to one eyewitness account, the perpetrator is not an opponent of Hitler's regime, but rather a loyal Nazi.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Arctic Fury: A Novel by Greer Macallister

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge.

A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice?

(Full description at Goodreads)

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The Dead of Winter: Three Giordano Bruno Novellas by S. J. Parris

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Naples, 1566. During a sweltering summer, eighteen-year-old Giordano Bruno takes his final vows at San Domenico Maggiore and is admitted to the Dominican Order—despite doubts over his tendency to ask difficult questions.

Assisting in the infirmary, Bruno witnesses an illicit autopsy performed on the body of a young woman. Her corpse reveals a dark secret, and Bruno suspects that hers may not have been an accidental death.

(Full description at Goodreads)

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Under a Gilded Moon: A Novel by Joy Jordan-Lake

Release Date: December 1, 2020

Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American “royalty,” is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow.

Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians.

(Full description at Goodreads)