Harold Flashman’s astonishing adventures begin in the early 1800s with his expulsion at age 17 from Rugby School (named after the town, not the sport) for drunkenness. It’s a bawdy, dark comedy that would never past muster in this politically correct era. The man is too much of a scoundrel, and his many sins include […]
As an aficionado of steampunk, I tend to focus on fiction set in the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century. Yet I enjoy historical fiction from all eras. Halestorm (published 2012) is set in the 1700s and features Revolutionary-era American hero Nathan Hale. Despite the rather lame pun of the title, I was interested […]
When as a student in elementary school, I first heard about the underground railroad, I was disappointed to discover it was only a metaphor. In Colson Whitehead’s alternate history, The Underground Railroad, it has real steam locomotives. Though the book won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017, I hadn’t heard of it until I saw a […]
I love historical fiction, and one of the most fascinating settings for that genre is feudal Japan. The culture was quite alien to that of modern America, yet there were shared values like honor, bravery, and chivalry. Mojo Mori’s Six Expressions of Death is a murder mystery set in this era. Though I’ve never been […]
