I'm never sure how best to categorise them, but I've got a pile of books from the period/historical shelves to introduce today, so let's start from the top and work down.
"Better than Philippa Gregory" says The Bookseller of Anne O'Brien's work, and just out is her Virgin Widow, the story of Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, twice betrothed to the future Richard III. "A rich and compelling tale of love, ambition, lust and intrigue", and a chunky 600-pager at that.
Next we go to pre-war Paris and Julie Orringer's novel The Invisible Bridge
Back in time to the Tudor court and The Confession of Katherine Howard by Suzannah Dunn. Interestingly, this is described as "a historical tale with a refreshingly contemporary feel - human drama, not costume drama", and it promises passionate love and betrayal a-plenty.
I've slipped a male writer in among the girls with Robert Sackville-West's portrait of a house and its inhabitants, Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles. Childhood home to Vita Sackville-West and now owned by the National Trust, Knole is one of the largest houses in England, "all the rooms, and the objects that fill them, are freighted with an emotional significance that has been handed down from generation to generation."
Last but by no means least, a novel set in the 1950s. The Eloquence of Desire by Amanda Sington-Williams "explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya", and is written in "haunting and rhythmical prose".
Lots of good things there on the tbr pile, and a rich variety of styles as well as settings, by the look of it.
