Myfanwy Cook

2 months ago | historicalnovelsociety.org | Byzantine Empire |Bywater Books |Lara Byrne |Myfanwy Cook

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOKDebut novelists Elyse Durham, Joanna Miller, Tiffany L. Warren & Jane Yang explore captivating characters from hidden gems of history. Joanna Miller shares the moment that sparked her debut, The Eights (Fig Tree/Putnam, 2025): “In October 2020, Oxford University shared a series of photographs to commemorate one hundred years of women being awarded degrees.

Oct 31, 2024 | historicalnovelsociety.org | Byzantine Empire |Bywater Books |Lara Byrne |Myfanwy Cook

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOKWith their debuts, Tammy Armstrong, Fiona Britton, Rosa Kwon Easton & Anna Rasche take their readers into unexplored corners of the past. Rosa Kwon Easton’s novel White Mulberry (Lake Union, 2024) is set in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. The original idea for the story and the central character, Miyoung, “came from some faded documents I found on my father’s desk some twenty years ago,” she says.

Jul 31, 2024 | historicalnovelsociety.org | Byzantine Empire |Bywater Books |Lara Byrne |Myfanwy Cook

BY MYFANWY COOKPanoramic vistas of the past have been conjured up by debut novelists Flora Carr, Emily Dunlay, Nathan Gower, and Lisa Medved. The idea for The Engraver’s Secret (HarperCollins Australia, 2024) by Lisa Medved came to her ten years ago when she “visited the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, which is the former home of Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens,” she says.

Apr 30, 2024 | historicalnovelsociety.org | Byzantine Empire |Bywater Books |Lara Byrne |Myfanwy Cook

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOKFor bestselling author Robin Oliveira, her creative journey to produce her latest novel A Wild and Heavenly Place (Putnam, 2024), which is set in the 19th century and transports the reader from the grim streets of Glasgow to the Pacific Northwest, was an engaging one. Finding an appropriate setting was vital because she is “a creature of place,” she says. “Landscape resonates within me, holds a persona, helps me to find peace.

Apr 30, 2024 | historicalnovelsociety.org | Byzantine Empire |Bywater Books |Lara Byrne |Myfanwy Cook

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOKClaire Coughlan, Eve J. Chung, Kuchenga Shenjé & Susan Weissbach combine a love of excavating facts and desire to convey explanations about their characters’ lives to provide readers with innovative glimpses into the past. A little over ten years ago, Susan Weissbach, author of Klara’s Truth (She Writes Press, 2024), was “journaling about the experience of psychotherapy as both a psychotherapist myself, and as someone who has been in psychotherapy,” she says.