What draws you to a historical fiction book cover? 

Welcome to my monthly historical fiction cover competition. I hope you find some new books and authors for your ‘must read’ list. If a cover interests you, just click on the link to learn more about the book.

My May winner is:

The Girl Puzzle by Kate Braithwaite

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This cover drew my attention immediately. The clever combination of images suggests a bit of mystery and Victorian intrigue. I had to find out more and went straight to Amazon to see what it was all about. It sounds like a fascinating story. Publication is 5th of May but is available now for pre-order. Congrats Kate!

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Her published story is well known. But did she tell the whole truth about her ten days in the madhouse?

Down to her last dime and offered the chance of a job of a lifetime at The New York World, twenty-three-year old Elizabeth Cochrane agrees to get herself admitted to Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum and report on conditions from the inside. But what happened to her poor friend, Tilly Mayard? Was there more to her high praise of Dr Frank Ingram than everyone knew?

Thirty years later, Elizabeth, known as Nellie Bly, is no longer a celebrated trailblazer and the toast of Newspaper Row. Instead, she lives in a suite in the Hotel McAlpin, writes a column for The New York Journal and runs an informal adoption agency for the city’s orphans.

Beatrice Alexander is her secretary, fascinated by Miss Bly and her causes and crusades. Asked to type up a manuscript revisiting her employer’s experiences in the asylum in 1887, Beatrice believes she’s been given the key to understanding one of the most innovative and daring figures of the age.

To find out more, please click here

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As always, it was difficult to choose. Here are some other wonderful covers to tempt you!

Teen & Young Adult Historical Fiction.

Every choice has a consequence.

When a magical picture frame reveals the danger facing a teenage traitor, her best friend hatches a plan to sneak her out of Nazi Germany. Options are few. Choices are desperate.

Decades later, an aged Nazi hiding under an alias plans to die with his secrets intact. Confronted with his role in the fate of his sister and her best friend, he must decide: maintain his charade or face the consequences of the path he chose so long ago.

In this powerful conclusion to Risking Exposure, interwoven tales of guilt, sacrifice, and hope crack the divide between personal safety and loyalty to those we claim to love.

To find out more, please click here

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“Through the Fire” is a novel in short stories about Prince Konstantin Romanov of Russia. Konstantin was a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II and the third son of the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, the Imperial Family’s famous poet.

Prince Konstantin was a decorated war hero who was an officer in an elite Imperial Guards unit during World War I. “Through the Fire” is an alternate history that examines the life that Konstantin might have lived if the Russian Revolution had been averted, and the Romanovs had retained their throne. It is set in the same alternate historical universe as Tamar Anolic’s previous novel, “Triumph of a Tsar.”

To find out more, please click here