Since I’ve never been much of a believer in New Year’s resolutions, as noted previously on this blog, and I covered most of my own news in last week’s post, I decided to kick the year off with a short list of interviews with other authors planned for 2025. I’ll start with those whose books I’ve already read and to whom I’ve sent questions, although in most cases the answers have yet to reach me.
None of these books has been published yet, although two will be out next week. The other two are due near the end of the month. So do check those links in the titles around the publication dates listed here.
Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen (Dutton, 1/7/25)
This fascinating novel combines and contrasts the lives of two women, Charlotte Cross and Annie Jenkins, associated with New York’s Metropolitan Museum in 1978. Charlotte, the assistant curator of the Egyptology Department, is simultaneously coordinating the arrival of the Tutankhamun exhibit at the Met and writing a paper on (the fictional) Hathorkare, one of Egypt’s few female pharaohs, whom Charlotte believes has been unjustly maligned. Annie has stumbled into a job with Diana Vreeland, charged with organizing the famous Met Gala.
A theft at the museum throws Charlotte and Annie together, and their shared quest to recover the missing artifact, known as the Cerulean Queen, sets them off on a journey that reaches deep into Charlotte’s past. The novel, which also moves back and forth between Charlotte’s first trip to Egypt in 1936 and her present in 1978, is utterly compelling, not least because of its richly developed characters. I had a lovely conversation with the author just before New Year’s, and the interview should be available on the New Books Network by the middle of this month.
Joseph Finder, The Oligarch’s Daughter (Harper, 1/28/25)
Another story with alternating time lines, although neither of these can be considered historical fiction. The first occurs in the present day, the other five to six years in the past. In the current timeline, Grant Anderson, a boat builder in New England, is minding his own business when several thugs from his past track him down and force him to flee for his life. In the earlier time line, a young Wall Street analyst named Paul Brightman attends what he anticipates will be a boring social event, only to run into a beautiful blonde who gives her name as Tatyana Belkin. Paul finds her instantly appealing.
Suffice it to say that Tatyana is not telling Paul the full story, and over time his attraction to her drags him into a situation that operates by rules he neither recognizes nor completely understands. How these two threads intertwine, I will leave readers to discover. I’m scheduled to interview Joseph Finder here on the blog when the book comes out at the end of January.
Poppy Kuroki, Gate to Kagoshima (Ancestor Memories 1; Harper, 1/28/25)
What could be better than a time-travel novel that visits a location that has not already been explored in fiction a thousand times? Such is the case with Poppy Kuroki’s latest book, which kicks off a new series.
The heroine, who bears a British passport and the very Celtic name of Isla Mackenzie, has traveled to Tokyo in part to escape an unfortunate romance and in part to track down information about her Japanese third-great-grandfather, whom family tradition portrays as one of the last samurai. On a trip to the former Satsuma province, where her ancestor reportedly lived, Isla gets caught in an ancient temple that transports her from 2005 to the 1870s. Despite her sketchy Japanese, which includes none of the local dialect, Isla manages to convince the people of Kagoshima that she is human, not a demon. Still, her red hair and her strange name mark her as an obvious foreigner, and that’s not much better in the eyes of a society in the midst of simultaneously adopting and resisting Western incursion.
The rich detail, the emotional development, the drama of the samurais’ last stand, the fast pace, and the unfamiliar setting combine to make this a novel well worth reading. I’ll be hosting a written Q&A here on the blog later this month.
Kate Mosse, The Map of Bones (Joubert Family Chronicles 4; Mantel, 1/7/25)
As a historian specializing in early modern Europe, I had, of course, heard of the Huguenots and even developed a broad mental outline of their history in France before encountering Kate Mosse’s Joubert Family Chronicles. But that Huguenots had emigrated to what would become South Africa to escape persecution from the French government after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes—that was news to me. But it is, apparently, historical fact, and it forms the backdrop to this engaging novel.
The book opens in 1687, eight years before the Revocation. Dragoons are stationed in Suzanne’s family home in La Rochelle, France, and one night a drunken soldier rapes her. To protect her from further assault, Suzanne’s grandmother spirits her away to Amsterdam, where a Protestant government will accept its co-religionists, if somewhat reluctantly. There Suzanne discovers records of her first cousin twice removed, a female pirate captain, and with her grandmother sets out for South Africa to discover what happened to their relative.
Mosse follows that main story to its natural end, but the book continues into the mid-nineteenth century, where Isabelle Lepard, a descendant of the Joubert family and would-be travel writer, undertakes her own voyage to South Africa in search of one missing piece of Suzanne’s puzzle. The result is a genuinely gripping read. I hope to host an interview with the author later this month.
And that’s just the line-up for January! I’ll have a new list—and perhaps a separate Bookshelf post—in a few weeks.