Should Have Told You Sooner is an emotionally layered story of lost chances, found courage, and the complicated path between the two. Jane Ward gives us Noel, a woman whose past mistakes aren’t just baggage—they’re buried truths, the kind that shape your whole life if left unspoken.

Noel isn’t a heroine who gets everything right, and that’s exactly what makes her unforgettable. As she navigates the slow unraveling of secrets and the tentative pull of a long-lost love, her work in the art museum world becomes the perfect metaphor: recapturing what’s been forgotten, holding on to what’s still worth saving.

The narrative moves effortlessly between past and present in a way that feels both grounded and immediate. It’s a portrait of a woman learning that the stories we tell (and the ones we don’t) can shape not just who we were, but who we still might become.

Quietly powerful and beautifully told.

Michelle Cameron’s wonderful historical novel, Beyond the Ghetto Gates, is set in Ancona, a seaport on the Adriatic in Central Italy. In 1797, Napoleon’s Grande Armée invaded and liberated the Jewish population, which had been confined to living behind iron gates since the mid-1500s. Cameron’s story, both tragic and hopeful, centers around a headstrong young girl named Marielle. She is gifted in working with numbers and dreams of running her father’s business, which creates beautiful ketubot (Jewish marriage certificates). I loved reading about her coming of age in this rarely explored setting during the Napoleonic Wars.

Napoleon’s Mirage by Michelle Cameron reunites the reader with the trio of main characters who inhabited the wonderful tale of historical fiction told in her previous novel, Beyond the Ghetto Gates. We return to Ancona, Italy’s center of ketubah artistry and its beautiful decorative Jewish marriage contracts. There, Mirelle is reeling from society’s condemnation and is about to lose the family business. Fighting with the Grand Armée in Egypt, Daniel is struggling with his loyalty to the increasingly despotic Napoleon Bonaparte and Christophe is striving to rise above his inner demons and prove himself a man. Napoleon’s ill-fated assault on Egypt and Syria, is a perfect backdrop for three characters coming of age and grappling with disillusionment and loss of hope. Highly recommended.

I’ll say it—Mark Smeaton is my new favorite character of the Tudor era. In The Queen’s Musician, Martha Jean Johnson creates an unforgettable classic hero, one for the ages. He’s talented, he’s sensitive, he’s loyal. He follows his heart, to a fault. But like many of the people who surround him, his life is not his own.

In the opening scenes, Mark witnesses the spectacular ruin of his patron, Cardinal Wolsey. It’s a fall from grace, a loss of innocence, an event that will color young Mark’s every interaction with the world. Everyone associated with the cardinal is suspected of treason, and Mark’s future is in jeopardy. He’s been raised in Wolsey’s household, having been taken from his home and family at a young age after his talents were discovered.

Without having much choice in the matter, Mark is placed in Henry VIII’s court, where he plays his lute and meets the familiar players, all touchingly and freshly portrayed by Johnson. Everyone has their moment in the sun, and everyone loses, a collective rags-to-riches-to rags story, driven by the king and Thomas Cromwell (and as we know, he will get his, well after this novel closes). There’s Madge Shelton, a lady-in-waiting trapped in her position because she’s a Boleyn relative, Anne Boleyn, doomed by her own victories, and a brilliantly drawn Francis Weston, a prisoner of his charm and appeal. And more. No matter their station, from the lowly musician to the queen, all these characters operate, and attempt to find happiness, in the very narrow sliver of their lives that they control.

When you pick up this book, you may already know the ending, but you won’t be able to put it down.

I love great historical fiction about women. This one drew me in and made me question whether art can exist absent the artist’s human desires, a fascinating subject on its own. The Vow opens a tantalizing portal into the mind of Angelica Kauffman, a pioneer female history painter who crossed paths with the titans of art and society in late 18^th century London and Rome. I read its chapters into the night, fascinated by the emotional complexity of the woman Jude Berman recreates in these pages. Torn between her earthly and creative passions, Angelica’s life is populated by a vivid cast of male characters, each with his own designs on her body, her time, and her talent. Their betrayals, large and small, provide rich context to the series of vows she makes over her long and illustrious career, and make her achievements seem even more remarkable. The prose is beautiful and thought provoking, and Berman’s thorough knowledge of her subject enhances its elegance. I loved this book, and know you will, too.

Emily Matchar weaves an addictive tale of family secrets in her multi-generational tale, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier.

Told by multiple narrators and in four timelines, this expertly woven historical novel follows the fortunes of the Zelner family through 20th century America. While struggling to make a life in the small resort town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, they grapple with the horrors of family members left behind, exclusion, and heartbreak.

Matchar’s main character, Doree, growing up at the dawn of the 1960s, bears the scars of a family torn apart. The Zelners survive the pain of immigration, the Holocaust, and otherness, but family secrets still divide them. In the words of their patriarch, Sol, they find “strength in the hardships of life,” and this quality sustains the family through its trials.

A wonderful novel for WW2 fans and all historical fiction readers.

This captivating novel will draw you in and hold you through its last word. I opened my copy of Saving Vincent on a long airplane flight and couldn’t stop reading.

Joan Fernandez deftly and eloquently captures the colors of Jo van Gogh’s world, where this captivating young woman faces the unique chaos and promise of a new century with courage and determination. I loved reading about the clash between classical and modern art, the political disharmony, the changing roles of men and women, how new inventions were upending established ways of life. But most of all, I loved Saving Vincent’s heroine, an ordinary young woman who triumphs over obstacles placed in her path, both by society and by her nemesis, a man with a hidden wound.

It’s an unknown tale of resilience, a beautiful coming-of-age story, a must-read.

You know I love Allison Pataki’s books, especially 2020’s The Queen’s Fortune: A Novel of Desiree, Napoleon, and the Dynasty That Outlasted the Empire. And how could I not be a fan of that novel? The Queen’s Fortune reimagines the life of Désirée, the Queen of Sweden who also happens to be the mother of Oscar, the handsome prince my upcoming novel’s heroine, Jacquette, falls for.

But it’s Allison’s latest historical fiction release, Finding Margaret Fuller, that has me staying up nights.

I’m just going to admit it—I had never heard of Margaret Fuller when I picked up this book. But my book club selected it, and I was hooked when Nathaniel Hawthorne appeared in the first sentences. I had read Laurie Lico Albanese’s Hester, which fictionalizes Hawthorne’s inspiration for the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, and I loved it. Hawthorne, I must admit, is now one of my favorite early-19^th century sex symbols. Next to Oscar, of course.

But I digress.

You must read Finding Margaret Fuller, even if you already knew that Concord, Massachusetts was like an 1830s version of The Breakfast Club. I’m not kidding, it was. And Margaret Fuller, the author, journalist, advocate for women’s rights, salonist-extraordinaire, was its brightest star, outshining her illustrious posse—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, my beloved Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and others.

And, as usual, Pataki does a masterful job, even taking a story revealed in the first pages to be tragic and turning it into a testament of the power of hope.

What a second act, after the triumph that was Cecily, Annie Garthwaite gives us the Plantagenet matriarch in all her glory as a mature woman, widowed and the mother of three volatile yet beloved sons. It is her relationships with these three men that make The King’s Mother a compelling, emotional journey through midlife, motherhood, and independence. The three sons, King Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of York (later Richard III) would give any mother a migraine, but Cecily manages to survive and do her best to save the dynasty and the realm. I loved it.

In the first pages of BROKEN COUNTRY, the reader learns that Gabriel Wolfe has returned to Meadowlands. Just as when Mr. Bingley leased Netherfield, it is certain the implications for the story world will be profound. What follows is a brilliant treatment of one woman’s consuming passion for her first lover, her abiding love for her husband, and her devotion to her lost boy. The central love triangle intersects and collides with Beth’s love for her son, a conflict that will feel familiar to many. What made this book special for me was Hall’s deep appreciation of the uniqueness of love and passion, which she depicts without elevating one over the other. Beth is an expertly drawn character who lives a lie without lying to herself. It’s a book I will purchase in hardcopy to keep on my shelf.

I received a free ARC eBook of BROKEN COUNTRY from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

#BrokenCountry #ClareLeslieHall #SimonBooks