Mahmoud Ezzedine, a talented physician to the Ottoman sultan, did not want to be included […]
I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer, by Mary Beth Norton
When I read about history, I’m generally reading about life in chaotic times: wars, plagues, […]
The Blue Maiden, by Anna Noyes
Anna Noyes’s The Blue Maiden is a strange book, about a strange pair of sisters. […]
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, by Lina Rather
Childbirth is stressful and unpredictable in real life but, in Lina Rather’s brisk novel, A […]
The Ghost Theatre, by Mat Osman
All the world’s a stage, said the bard, and the men are merely players. Most […]
The Bloodless Boy, by Robert J. Lloyd
Set more than 100 years before the founding of the Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard, […]
The Manningtree Witches, by A.K. Blakemore
We like to think that we would be heroes, the kind of people who would […]
The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan OrpÃ, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia, by Max Besora
In the prologue to the descriptively titled The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and […]
Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, by Rivka Galchen
How we deal with adversity in life depends a lot on how we answer this […]
The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple
As I read The Anarchy, a history of how the East India Company came to […]