Historical Fiction – Write on the World

I’ll Take the Fire by Leila Slimani: A fascinating literary excavation that never quite becomes a novel

June 8, 2026May 29, 2026 Mandy Webster

Some novels pull you into a character’s inner life so completely that you feel as if you’ve lived beside them. Others keep you at arm’s length, asking you to observe rather than emotionally participate. I’ll Take the Fire by Leila Slimani, which releases June 9, 2026, firmly falls into the latter category. And while there’s a great deal here to admire intellectually, I often found myself wishing the book had trusted readers with less exposition and more intimacy.

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The novel follows Mia Daoud, a young Moroccan woman searching for sexual, political, and personal freedom as she moves between Casablanca, Paris, and London against the backdrop of major historical upheavals. Slimani explores feminism, class, identity, religion, colonialism, family expectations, and artistic ambition, all through a lens that feels deeply autobiographical. The book is filled with sharp observations about power and liberation, and the historical material woven throughout the narrative is genuinely compelling.

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Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes is a haunting Southern Gothic that demands to be felt

May 29, 2026May 22, 2026 Mandy Webster

Some horror novels rely on monsters lurking in the shadows. Others understand that the most terrifying things are the systems people willingly protect. Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes, releasing June 9, 2026, is a Southern Gothic horror novel that understands this completely. Beneath its ghostly atmosphere and supernatural elements lies a brutal examination of generational trauma, misogyny, power, and the impossible expectations placed upon women to absorb suffering quietly so that everyone else can remain comfortable.

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Recently, I’ve seen discussions online asking readers to name books they’ve loved that were written by authors of color. Inevitably, there are always people who respond with things like, “I don’t pay attention to the race of the authors I read,” as though being “colorblind” is somehow the ideal approach to literature. But stories like Our Sister’s Keeper are exactly why intentionally seeking out voices different from our own matters. This is a novel that forces readers to confront lived experiences they may never have otherwise considered. It explores generational trauma, gendered expectations, institutional abuse, and the long shadow of racism in ways that feel both deeply personal and horrifyingly systemic. It’s impossible to walk away from this novel unchanged if you are willing to truly engage with what it is saying.

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Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher: A gothic horror that burrows under your skin

March 18, 2026February 28, 2026 Mandy Webster

In Wolf Worm, T. Kingfisher delivers a slow-burning gothic nightmare set in the woods of North Carolina, where scientific curiosity collides with something far older and far more feral. Releasing March 24, 2026, the novel follows Sonia Wilson, a scientific illustrator in 1899 who has been surviving on the borrowed credibility of her late father’s reputation. When she accepts a position with the reclusive Dr. Halder to illustrate his insect collection, she believes she’s securing stability. Instead, she steps into a story that opens with a chilling admission: “I saw the devil in these woods.”

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Kingfisher’s prose reflects Sonia’s artistic eye. Descriptions feel layered, as if applied with a brush—yellow ochre laid in for a dog’s fur and then lifted back out again along the face. The natural world is rendered with precision and technique, which makes the corruption creeping through it feel even more invasive. As animals begin behaving strangely and local whispers about “blood thieves” grow louder, the beauty of the environment becomes inseparable from the horror beneath it. This is a novel saturated with insects—some of them of the burrowing-into-flesh variety—and Kingfisher does not shy away from the visceral implications.

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Crown City by Naomi Hirahara: A cozy mystery steeped in California history and cultural collision

February 18, 2026February 14, 2026 Mandy Webster

What if a cozy mystery also sent you down historical rabbit holes you didn’t even know existed? That’s the quiet magic of Crown City by Naomi Hirahara, a genre-bending historical mystery set in Pasadena at the turn of the twentieth century that releases February 24, 2026.

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Set in 1903, Crown City follows eighteen-year-old Ryunosuke “Ryui” Wada, newly arrived from Japan and eager—if a little overwhelmed—to reinvent himself in America after the deaths of his parents. He finds work as an apprentice to an art dealer, moves in with a photographer roommate named Jack, and begins to piece together a life amid Pasadena’s booming prosperity. When a painting is stolen from the studio of celebrated Japanese artist Toshio Aoki, Ryui and Jack are hired to investigate, pulling them into a mystery that quickly turns more dangerous than either expects.

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Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth: Obsession, family loyalty, and the danger of loving too much

January 26, 2026January 24, 2026 Mandy Webster

Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth is a gothic, psychologically rich literary novel that burrows under your skin and stays there. Set in 1965 in the quietly watchful town of Ballycrea, the story opens with the arrival of the O’Leary siblings, whose carefully guarded past and tightly bound loyalty to one another immediately raise questions no one is quite asking out loud.

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Following her acclaimed novel Sunburn, Howarth once again writes with precision and restraint, layering unease rather than rushing toward easy answers. At its heart, this is a novel about grief and survival, and about what happens when sibling devotion turns inward and begins to do real harm. The O’Learys have lost their parents and, in the absence of any other safety net, have clung to one another so fiercely that none of them are truly allowed to grow.

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The Pōhaku by Jasmin Iolani Hakes: An epic, indigenous saga about land, memory, and survival

January 23, 2026January 17, 2026 Mandy Webster

Jasmin Iolani Hakes’s The Pōhaku is the kind of novel that reminds you why sweeping, multi-generational storytelling can feel so immersive and necessary when it’s done well. Spanning from the 1800s into the 1990s, this ambitious saga follows generations of women from one Hawaiian family, all bound by their responsibility to protect an ancient stone—the pōhaku—and by the land that shaped them.

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The novel opens in 1992 as Hurricane Iniki bears down on Hawaiʻi. A young woman lies comatose in a hospital after a mysterious fall from a cliff, watched over by her estranged grandmother. Did she jump, was she swept away by a wave, or was something else at play? The grandmother believes the answer lies not only in the pōhaku itself, but in a devastating omission: her granddaughter was never told about the stone, nor about the family’s sacred responsibility to protect it. As the storm approaches, the grandmother begins telling her the story anyway, hoping that restoring this broken line of knowledge might be enough to bring her back.

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Why Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is the historical novel you need to read

April 4, 2025February 20, 2025 Mandy Webster

What if I told you that a woman’s fight for agency in 15th-century China mirrors struggles women still face today? Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a beautifully immersive historical novel that transports readers to 15th-century China, offering a rare and fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman physician. Inspired by a real historical figure, Tan Yunxian, this novel provides a story rich in cultural detail, deep friendships, and the persistent struggle for women’s agency within the confines of a patriarchal society.

The cover of Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See — Get your copy of Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See from my online bookstore today!

I don’t often read historical fiction, but when I do, I’ve found that stories set in China tend to focus on the brutalization of women. While those narratives are important, it was refreshing to encounter a story in which the female protagonist is not constantly subjected to violence. Of course, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women does not shy away from the reality that, in 15th-century China, women were still regarded as property, their lives dictated by the expectations of men. However, the novel offers a nuanced exploration of how women navigated these restrictions, particularly through the lens of medicine, female friendships, and quiet forms of defiance.

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