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Blending historical fact with fiction, a novel set in other times and places can transport you into the past more convincingly than a dry historical treatise - and entertain you in the bargain. What I look for in historical fiction are books by authors who, after reading the histories and doing the research, create stories based in the past that include characters I want to know better and a plot that keeps me turning pages - books like Peter Ackroyd's The Clerkenwell Tales, Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom, and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.

Now you can spend less time searching and more time reading as I watch for new historical fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. New on the historical fiction shelves:

Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd. St. Martin's Griffin. Print Length: 384 p. TIME FRAME: Early 19th century England. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Mary Crawford, a minor character in Mansfield Park, takes center stage in Shepherd's debut, a clever reworking of the Austen novel that's strong on plot, character, and historical accuracy. Shepherd has altered Austen's characters, some beyond recognition. Most notably, meek and unassuming Fanny Price has become 'a monster of complacency and pride' in Kingsley Amis's phrase borrowed from his essay on Jane Austen. Mary, whose cheerful disposition and wit ensure her acceptance at Mansfield Park, suffers much at Fanny's hands. When Fanny turns up dead in a trench on the park grounds, an apparent victim of foul play, a horrified Mary winds up playing detective. While mystery fans will find much to like, it is Austenites who will be most gratified, particularly by how well Shepherd has captured the tone of Austen's original." - Publishers Weekly.

The Doctor and the Diva by Adrienne McDonnell. Viking. Print Length: 432 p. TIME FRAME: Early 20th century America, Italy and Trinidad. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"It is 1903. Dr. Ravell is a young Harvard-educated obstetrician with a growing reputation for helping couples conceive. He has treated women from all walks of Boston society, but when Ravell meets Erika - an opera singer whose beauty is surpassed only by her spellbinding voice - he knows their doctor-patient relationship will be like none he has ever had. After struggling for years to become pregnant, Erika believes there is no hope. Her mind is made up: she will leave her prominent Bostonian husband to pursue her career in Italy, a plan both unconventional and risky. But becoming Ravell's patient will change her life in ways she never could have imagined. Lush and stunningly realized, The Doctor and the Diva moves from snowy Boston to the jungles of Trinidad to the gilded balconies of Florence... as she is forced to choose between the child she has always longed for and the opera career she cannot live without." - Amazon.
Less expensive alternative: Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett.

The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory. Touchstone. Print Length: 448 p. TIME FRAME: 15th century England. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $112.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Having fictionalized Elizabeth Woodville in The White Queen (2009), royal chronicler Gregory now turns to Henry VIII's other indomitable grandmother. The opposite of her alluring Yorkist rival, plain Lancastrian heiress Margaret Beaufort grows up knowing women are useful only for bearing sons, but divine visions grant her an unwavering conviction about her future greatness. At age 12, she weds Lancastrian warrior Edmund Tudor and pours her ambition into his posthumous son, Henry. Constantly separated from her beloved child after her second marriage to a pacifist knight, her frustrations are palpably felt; she later brokers her own union with a crafty turncoat who may be the key to her hopes. While England seethes with discord during the turbulent Wars of the Roses, Margaret's transformation from powerless innocent to political mastermind progresses believably as rival heirs to England's throne are killed in battle, executed, or deliberately eliminated... - Sarah Johnson for Booklist.

The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Print Length: 304 p. TIME FRAME: 1930s Long Island, New York. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A fireworks factory explodes in a quiet seaside town. In the house on Salt Hay Road, Clay Poole is thrilled by the hole it’s blown in everyday life. His older sister, Nancy, is more interested in the striking stranger who appears, dusted with ashes, in the explosion’s aftermath. The Pooles - taken in as orphans by their mother’s family - can’t yet know how the bonds of their makeshift household will be tested and frayed. The House on Salt Hay Road is suffused with a haunting sense of place: salt marshes in the summer, ice boats on the frozen Great South Bay, Fire Island at the height of a storm. A vivid and emotionally resonant debut, it captures the golden light of a vanished time, and the hold that home has on us long after we leave it." - Amazon.
Less expensive alternative: Oliver's Surprise, another fictionalized account of the Great Hurricane of 1938.

A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett. Island Books. Print Length: 576 p. TIME FRAME: Victorian England. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (99 reviews). First published in 1993 and now available in e-book format. Kindle edition $5.19. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In 1866, tragedy strikes at the exclusive Windfield School. A young student drowns in a mysterious accident involving a small circle of boys. The drowning and its aftermath initiates a spiraling circle of treachery that will span three decades and entwine many loves. From the exclusive men's club and brothels that cater to every dark desire of London's upper classes to the dazzling ballrooms and mahogany-paneled suites of the manipulators of the world's wealth, Ken Follett conjures up a stunning array of contrasts. This breathtaking novel portrays a family splintered by lust, bound by a shared legacy... men and women swept toward a perilous climax where greed, fed by the shocking truth of a boy's death, must be stopped, or not just one man's dreams, but those of a nation, will die."
"Political and amorous intrigues, cold-blooded murders and financial crises...old-fashioned entertainment!" - San Francisco Chronicle.