The Most Requested Fall Historical Fiction on Netgalley

Release date: September 17, 2024

This is the story of Oscar Wilde’s wife and son in the years before and after his infamous trial for homosexuality. During an idyllic holiday in the English countryside, Oscar Wilde develops a strong attachment with a young poet and Constance begins to suspect her husband’s affections lie elsewhere. When the truth (or some part of it) is exposed, Constance and her sons are left in ruin, forced to hide their identities in exile. As the years go by, and one son enlists in WWI while the other searches for answers about his family, they all must come to terms with what they lost and who they want to be.

Release date: September 21, 2024

A woman vies to become the wife of the Emperor in this thrilling historical romance set in China’s Forbidden City. Chen Ji Yue knows the courtly games she must play if she wants to become the Emperor’s wife. She must remain chaste while outlasting her rivals and bribing all the necessary officials. But she wasn’t expecting the Master of the Festivity, the one man she must impress to be put before the Emperor, to make her question everything she’s ever wanted.

Release date: October

In turn of the twentieth century Paris, the daughter of Dracula’s killer works as a researcher at the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one knows Samantha herself is abnormal—a fact that could help solve a string of gruesome murders plaguing Paris or get her thrown in an asylum. Now, assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, the detective daughter of Sherlock Holmes’ famed nemesis, Samantha might just get her chance to crack the case.

Release date: November 12, 2024

Framed as a found text, Taiwan Travelogue follows a young Japanese novelist who travels from her home of Nagasaki to Taiwan in the late 1930s, hoping to experience island life and eat as much authentic Taiwanese food as possible. She’s paired up with an interpreter who shepherds her all across Taiwan and proves to be an excellent cook. Despite the growing attraction between the two, Chizuru, the translator, keeps her distance. It’s only later, once they’ve been separated, that Chizuko begins to understand why.

Release date: November 12, 2024

Based on the author’s family history, The Story of the Forest follows a Jewish family in the lead-up to WWI and pre-WWII Europe. A brother takes his young sister to England after an encounter with a group of Bolsheviks in the woods. But their hope for a new start is soon disrupted by the start of the Great War. Their family has survived war and pogroms, but as anti-Jewish sentiment grows in the twentieth century, will they be able to learn new ways to adapt and survive?

Release date: December 3, 2024

In 1968, Nettie Boileau is a Haitian student in Oakland swept up in the idea of revolution when her friend introduces her to the free health clinics operated by the Black Panthers. Soon, she’s head over heels in love with a Party Defense Captain, pregnant, and moving to Chicago. But the segregation and police surveillance here is unlike anything she’s seen before, and her faith in love is shaken by Melvin’s affairs. Nettie will have to rediscover what it means to be herself even as she continues to search for ways to stay true to her roots and fight for the revolution.

Right now I’m reading Madness, a nonfiction book about the history of one of the last segregated asylums in the United States.