By Seth Grahame-Smith
Grand Central Publishing | 336pgs
Release Date: March 02, 2010
Seth Grahame-Smith’s fantastical foray into the horror/history genre Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, opens in a small cabin in Indiana, during the year 1818. Lincoln, a boy of just nine years, watches his mother’s life slip away as she suffers from a mysterious illness called “Milk Sickness.” Later as a young man, he learns that his mother’s death was caused by a vampire, and embarks on a life-long crusade to fight against the undead masses. Though Lincoln’s great accomplishments of ending slavery and fighting to keep America united have been well documented, his vendetta against vampires remained secret. Author Seth Grahame-Smith is finally able to bring these secrets to light with the discovery of The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Drawing on events recorded in the diary, Grahame-Smith stages an epic “biography” of the 16th President, revealing the shrouded history of the Civil War, and the role the undead evil-doers played in the upheaval.
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By Edward Rutherfurd
Doubleday | 880pgs
Release Date: November 10, 2009
Bestselling historical novelist, Edward Rutherfurd, weaves the compelling strands of The Big Apple’s rich history into a fascinating multi-generational tale. The story follows several families, from different ethnic and economic backgrounds, through the years as their fates intertwine to become part of the tapestry of New York’s history. New York: The Novel spans more than three centuries, beginning in the 1600’s with the Native American and Dutch settlements, leading into the bloody conflicts of the Revolutionary and Civil wars, followed by the explosion of the Industrial revolution and the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Rutherfurd details New York’s development as a financial center, and its rapid population growth due to massive waves of immigrants looking for a better life in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Readers experience New York’s rocky ride in the 20th century, with the stress of World War II and the financial recession of the ’70’s, as well as its economic and cultural resurgence in the ’90’s. The tragic events of 9/11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center bring the novel to a close.
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David Garrick as Richard III (detail) by William Hogarth
Did history and literature give Richard III a bad rap? Shakespeare immortalized the English king as a Machiavellian tyrant, and history has branded him as a hunched-backed villain, rumored to have murdered two princes in order to secure his ascension to the thrown. But according to author Philippa Gregory, Richard III may have just been misunderstood. In a recent interview with the LA Times, she discusses her new historical novel The White Queen (Touchstone, 432pgs), and her surprising take on this controversial figure. “It’s an act of historical recovery,” she says, “…history, of course, gets told by the victors. That’s what Shakespeare tapped into in his play about Richard — that and a medieval belief that a malformed mind led to a malformed body.” Gregory argues that there is historical evidence that supports a case for Richard’s innocence and for the guilt of the Tudor family, who eventually took Richard’s life and his thrown during the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
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By Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore
Spiegel & Grau ©2008 | Hardback 500pgs
Blindspot opens in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution, during the spring of 1764. When portrait painter Stewart Jameson sets foot on the docs of Boston Harbor, he arrives not hoping for a new life, but running from an old one. Wanted in his homeland of Scotland for outstanding debts, he has come to the Colonies to escape jail time and find his only true friend. Accompanied by his mastiff, Gulliver, he quickly sets up a small artist studio on Queen Street and advertises for a young man to apprentice him in his art.
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