Review: Winter Is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones by Carolyne Larrington

Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

Release Date: January 30, 2016

I love A Song of Ice and Fire and I love comparing and contrasting the parallels of fantasy to real history and historical folklore, so this book was right up my alley and it did not disappoint.

I'm not as into fantasy as some people, I mostly read the popular titles, but there's no question A Song of Ice and Fire has always been a series that interested historical fiction readers even if they are not heavy fantasy readers. This books really covers all the reasons why this is the case, exploring all the influences from and parallels to medieval history and folklore. It's well known that the series is loosely based on the Wars of the Roses, that the Lannisters are often compared to the House of Lancaster, the wall to Hadrian's Wall, etc. But this books delves much deeper than that, drawing on the authors extensive knowledge of medieval history, culture, and myths.

I was a little surprised to see the author made no connection between Cersei's walk of shame and Lady Godiva's naked ride. Granted, Godiva was not being punished like Cersei was, but it's believed the legend of her ride was based on the medieval custom for people to make public processions in nothing but a shift, or underwear, in penance for their crimes or sins. While the book does make connections of Cercei's walk of shame with other medieval examples of the same or similar custom, namely that of Jane Shore's, I really would have thought Lady Godiva deserved a mention too. I guess the mention of the medieval practice itself was the most important thing.

It should be noted that it makes comparisons not only to the books but also the TV show, especially where they differ. This gives it a fully rounded and comprehensive feel, and I found it very enlightening.

Upcoming Historical Mysteries

The Shattered Tree: A Bess Crawford Mystery (Bess Crawford Mysteries) by Charles Todd

Release Date: August 30, 2016



At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher-bearers find an exhausted officer, shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford’s aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is, the officer isn't British--he's French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German.

When Bess reports the incident to Matron, her superior offers a ready explanation. The soldier is from Alsace-Lorraine, a province in the west where the tenuous border between France and Germany has continually shifted through history, most recently in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, won by the Germans. But is the wounded man Alsatian? And if he is, on which side of the war do his sympathies really lie?

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A Death Along the River Fleet (Lucy Campion Mysteries) by Susanna Calkins

Release Date: April 12, 2016



Lucy Campion, a ladies’ maid turned printer’s apprentice in 17th-century London, is crossing Holborn Bridge over the murky waters of the River Fleet one morning when, out of the mist, she sees a specter moving toward her. Frightened at first, Lucy soon realizes the otherworldly figure is in fact a young woman, clearly distraught and clad only in a blood-spattered white nightdress. Barely able to speak, the woman has no memory of who she is or what’s happened to her. The townspeople believe she’s possessed. But Lucy is concerned for the woman’s well-being and takes her to see a physician. When, shockingly, the woman is identified as the daughter of a nobleman, Lucy is asked to temporarily give up her bookselling duties to discreetly serve as the woman’s companion while she remains under the physician’s care.

As the woman slowly recovers, she begins—with Lucy’s help—to reconstruct the terrible events that led her to Holborn Bridge that morning. But when it becomes clear the woman’s safety might still be at risk, Lucy becomes unwillingly privy to a plot with far-reaching social implications, and she’ll have to decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect the young woman in her care.

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The Chelsea Strangler by Susanna Gregory

Release Date: January 14, 2016



In the sapping summer heat of 1665 there is little celebration in London of the naval victory at the Battle of Lowestoft. The King, his retinue and anyone with sufficient means has fled the plague-ridden city, its half-deserted streets echoing to the sound of bells tolling the mounting number of deaths. Those who remain clutch doubtful potions to ward off the relentless disease and dart nervously past shuttered buildings, watchful for the thieves who risk their lives to plunder what has been left behind.

At Chelsea, a rural backwater by the river, with fine mansions leased to minor members of the Court avoiding the capital, there are more immediate concerns: the government has commandeered the theological college to house Dutch prisoners of war and there are daily rumours that those sailors are on the brink of escaping. Moreover, a vicious strangler is stalking the neighbourhood.

Thomas Chaloner is sent to investigate the murder of the first victim, an inmate of a private sanatorium known as Gorges. There have been thefts there as well, but the few facts he gleans from inmates and staff are contradictory and elusive. He realises, though, that Gorges has stronger links to the prison than just proximity, and that the influx of strangers offers plenty of camouflage for a killer - a killer who has no compunction about turning on those determined to stop his murderous rampage.

Upcoming Historical Fiction Releases

The Girl from The Savoy: A Novel by Hazel Gaynor

Release Date: June 7, 2016



Dolly Lane is a dreamer; a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but her life has been fractured by the Great War. Memories of the soldier she loved, of secret shame and profound loss, by turns pull her back and spur her on to make a better life.

When she finds employment as a chambermaid at London’s grandest hotel, The Savoy, Dolly takes a step closer to the glittering lives of the Bright Young Things who thrive on champagne, jazz and rebellion. Right now, she must exist on the fringes of power, wealth and glamor—she must remain invisible and unimportant.

But her fortunes take an unexpected turn when she responds to a struggling songwriter’s advertisement for a ‘muse’ and finds herself thrust into London’s exhilarating theatre scene and into the lives of celebrated actress, Loretta May, and her brother, Perry. Loretta and Perry may have the life Dolly aspires to, but they too are searching for something.

Now, at the precipice of the life she has and the one she longs for, the girl from The Savoy must make difficult choices: between two men; between two classes, between everything she knows and everything she dreams of. A brighter future is tantalizingly close—but can a girl like Dolly ever truly leave her past behind?

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A Certain Age: A Novel by Beatriz Williams

Release Date: June 28, 2016



As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young paramour, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. An intense and deeply honorable man, Octavian is devoted to the beautiful socialite of a certain age and wants to marry her. While times are changing and she does adore the Boy, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question, and there is no need; she has an understanding with Sylvo, her generous and well-respected philanderer husband.

But their relationship subtly shifts when her bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the sweet younger daughter of a newly wealthy inventor. Engaging a longstanding family tradition, Theresa enlists the Boy to act as her brother’s cavalier, presenting the family’s diamond rose ring to Ox’s intended, Miss Sophie Fortescue—and to check into the background of the little-known Fortescue family. When Octavian meets Sophie, he falls under the spell of the pretty ingénue, even as he uncovers a shocking family secret. As the love triangle of Theresa, Octavian, and Sophie progresses, it transforms into a saga of divided loyalties, dangerous revelations, and surprising twists that will lead to a shocking transgression . . . and eventually force Theresa to make a bittersweet choice.

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Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris by Serena Burdick

Release Date: July 12, 2016



The Savarays are at the center of bourgeois Parisian society, as supporters of the Impressionist movement, friends of Édouard Manet, and citizens relatively unaffected by the Franco-Prussian war raging beyond their estate - until their beloved adopted son Henri, a burgeoning artist, disappears early one morning and 18-year-old Aimee Savaray sets out to find him. But Henri doesn't want to be found, and only one member of the family knows why. As Aimee seeks refuge in the art world, mentored by Manet, she unwittingly finds her way back to Henri. After so many years passed and secrets buried, their eventual reunion unmasks the lies that once held the family together, and now threaten to tear them apart.

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The Enemies of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) by Sally Christie

Release Date: September 13, 2016



In the final installment of Sally Christie’s “tantalizing” (New York Daily News) Mistresses of Versailles trilogy, Jeanne Becu, a woman of astounding beauty but humble birth, works her way from the grimy back streets of Paris to the palace of Versailles, where the aging King Louis XV has become a jaded and bitter old philanderer. Jeanne bursts into his life and, as the Comtesse du Barry, quickly becomes his official mistress.

Told in Christie’s witty and engaging style, the final book in The Mistresses of Versailles trilogy will delight and entrance fans as it once again brings to life the sumptuous and cruel world of eighteenth century Versailles, and France as it approaches inevitable revolution.

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Mata Hari's Last Dance: A Novel by Michelle Moran

Release Date: July 19, 2016



Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom…or death. Alone and despondent, Mata Hari is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she’s been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers.

As Mata Hari waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison. Beginning with her carefree childhood, Mata Hari recounts her father’s cruel abandonment of her family as well her calamitous marriage to a military officer. Taken to the island of Java, Mata Hari refuses to be ruled by her abusive husband and instead learns to dance, paving the way to her stardom as Europe’s most infamous dancer.

Upcoming Historical Fiction

At the Edge of Summer: A Novel by Jessica Brockmole

Release Date: May 17, 2016



The acclaimed author of Letters from Skye returns with an extraordinary story of a friendship born of proximity but boundless in the face of separation and war. Luc Crépet is accustomed to his mother bringing wounded creatures to their idyllic château in the French countryside. Yet his maman’s newest project is the most surprising: Claire Ross, a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl who inspires Luc in ways he never thought possible. Then, just as suddenly as Claire arrives, she is gone, whisked away by her grandfather to the farthest reaches of the globe. When she returns years later, World War I is raging. Will Luc and Claire, both altered by the conflict and the many years apart, be able to find each other and recapture what was lost?

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The Virgin's War: A Tudor Legacy Novel by Laura Andersen

Release Date: July 12, 2016



It’s 1585, and the balance of European power is tilting dangerously toward war. It will take all of Elizabeth Tudor’s skill and wiles to defend England from the looming threat of the Spanish Armada.

Complicating matters is Elizabeth’s beloved daughter—the result of the Queen’s tempestuous marriage with her worst enemy: King Philip of Spain.

As Elizabeth commits her riches, her honor, and her people to the coming war, the Queen will risk everything—even her own life—to preserve England’s freedom.

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Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Release Date: March 22, 2016



A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement.  Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito, and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past?

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Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen: A Novel (Six Tudor Queens) by Alison Weir

Release Date: May 31, 2016



In this captivating novel, the first in a dramatic new six-book series about each of English King Henry VIII’s wives, bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir brings to life the tumultuous tale of Katherine of Aragon, Henry’s first, devoted, and “true” queen.

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The Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay

Release Date: June 14, 2016



In 1919, the Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping by. Their father is a low-paid boot-stitcher in Johnson City, New York, and the family is always one paycheck away from eviction. When their father’s hand is crushed and he can no longer work, their irrepressible mother decides that the vaudeville stage is their best—and only—chance for survival.

Traveling by train from town to town, teenagers Gert, Winnie, and Kit, and recent widow Nell soon find a new kind of freedom in the company of performers who are as diverse as their acts. There is a seamier side to the business, however, and the young women face dangers and turns of fate they never could have anticipated. Heartwarming and surprising, The Tumbling Turner Sisters is ultimately a story of awakening—to unexpected possibilities, to love and heartbreak, and to the dawn of a new American era.

Review: Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

This non-fiction book about the Chicago World Fair of 1893 and how it was marred by the killing spree of H.H. Holmes really does read more like a novel. It's extremely well researched, well written, and highly readable, which is why it is understandably so popular.

However, it did feel like two books were thrown together. It's as though Larson either wanted to write a book about the Chicago World Fair, but he or his editors thought it would be too boring on its own so they threw in the Holmes murders; or he wanted to write about the Holmes killings, but there wasn't enough information about them to fill up a whole book so he filled it out with background on the Fair and it's creators.

It still works really well though, because it's so well written. It may feel like two unrelated books but two very good unrelated books.

The information about the building of the Fair dragged on at times, but it picked up in the second half once the Fair had opened. It was fascinating to read about Holmes and his murders, and how he avoided suspicion for so long.

Creative non-fiction is definitely an art that Larson has flawlessly mastered.