Bloodie Bones

In the winter of 1789, Maine midwife Martha Ballard is called to a body trapped in the frozen Kennebec River, then drawn into a rape accusation the town’s powerful men want buried. Drawn from Ballard’s real diary, it is historical mystery with a working woman’s eye for birth, ice, and justice.

On a November night Mary Yellan crosses Bodmin Moor to keep a promise to her dying mother, and finds Jamaica Inn shuttered to honest travelers: her Aunt Patience cowers, Uncle Joss Merlyn runs wreckers, and Mary is drawn to Joss’s brother Jem—a horse thief she dares not trust. Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 novel is Regency mystery historical fiction of Cornish smugglers, a haunted inn, and a young woman who will not look away.

On a February night in 1791, in a hidden London shop, the apothecary Nella waits for a customer who wants a poison the register will record, and twelve-year-old Eliza Fanning arrives with an errand that breaks Nella’s rules. Sarah Penner’s 2021 novel is Regency time-slip historical fiction of that book of names—and of Caroline Parcewell, who centuries later finds a small vial mudlarking on the Thames and follows it back to the shop.

When wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley takes Netherfield, Mrs. Bennet is determined to marry off a daughter—but it is the proud Mr. Darcy, and Elizabeth Bennet’s first impression of him, that turns a Hertfordshire season into the most famous courtship in English fiction. Jane Austen’s 1813 novel is Regency historical romance of manners, money, and a woman who will not marry without respect.

Orphaned Jane Eyre survives Gateshead and Lowood, then takes a governess post at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with the brooding Edward Rochester—and discovers the secret locked on the third floor that makes their wedding impossible. Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel is Regency gothic historical romance: a woman who will not be owned, and the most famous governess courtship in English fiction.

In a Midlands town on the eve of the 1832 Reform Act, idealistic Dorothea Brooke marries the dry scholar Casaubon, while ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate is drawn to beautiful, expensive Rosamond Vincy—two marriages, and a whole province of clergy, bankers, and gossips, testing what a life is for. George Eliot’s novel is Reform-era historical fiction of vocation, money, and the unhistoric acts that shape an English town.