I'm chatting with Liza Nash Taylor, author of Etiquette for Runaways and In All Good Faith. Highlights include: - origins of Etiquette for Runaways (Hint: don't text and talk!) - Moll Flanders as inspiration for the main character May Marshall  - finding Easter Eggs to inspire plot  - what happens when a fully formed character pops into your head and just won't go away  - Prohibition-era moonshine in Etiquette for Runaways   - Black performers in Jazz Age Paris and being inspired by Josephine Baker  - a reading from Etiquette for Runaways - inspira ..read more

Listed in the Dance category on Art In Fiction, The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds (2021) is the first offering in T E. Knsey’s A Dizzy Heights Mystery series. London, 1925: With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn. Superintendent Sunderland has had word that a deserter who stole a fortune in diamonds as he fled the war is a member of the Aristippus private members’ club in Mayfair―where the Diz ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Vindicated (2020) is Kathleen Williams Renk’s debut novel. Mary Godwin is a teenager with a formidable pedigree. Both of her parents are philosophers, but it is Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother she never met, who haunts her waking and dreaming worlds. Reading about her mother's life and death inspires Mary to keep a journal. Just as the tumult of her parents' relationship comes alive in her imagination, she meets emerging poet Percy Shelley. Even though he is married and his wife is pregnant, Shelley threatens to kill himself if Mary wil ..read more

Listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction, Concord (2021) by Don Zancanella is the story of three icons of American literature when they were young and in love. Summer has come to New England and Henry David Thoreau and his brother John are in love with the same girl. Reclusive writer Nathaniel Hawthorne is courting Sophia Peabody of the remarkable Peabody family of Boston. And the brilliant Margaret Fuller and equally brilliant but married Ralph Waldo Emerson find themselves engaged in a passionate affair of the mind and heart.   Eventually, everyone  -- Henry, Margar ..read more

Listed in the Theater category on Art In Fiction, A Train to Moscow (2022) by Elena Gorokhova is set in post-WWII Russia. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei. Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden tr ..read more

Listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Siren of Sussex (2022) is Book 1 in Mimi Matthews’s Belles of London series. Evelyn Maltravers understands exactly how little she's worth on the marriage mart. As an incurable bluestocking from a family tumbling swiftly toward ruin, she knows she'll never make a match in a ballroom. Her only hope is to distinguish herself by making the biggest splash in the one sphere she excels: on horseback. In haute couture. But to truly capture London's attention she'll need a habit-maker who's not afraid to take risks with his designs—and with his ..read more

https://bookshop.org/a/19048/9781637320761Listed in the Decorative Arts category on Art In Fiction, Maud’s Circus (2020) by Michelle Rene is based on the true story of North America’s first female tattoo artist. In a time when women were restricted in every aspect, Maud Wagner ran away to join the circus when she was a teenager. By 1904, she was working as a contortionist at the World’s Fair when she met the famous tattoo artist, Gus Wagner. She struck a deal with him: she’d give him a date if he gave her a tattoo—and taught her how to create them. Along with her husband and daughter, for more ..read more

Listed in the Theater category on Art In Fiction, A Tender Thing (2020) is Emily Neuberger’s debut novel. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Eleanor O'Hanlon always felt different. In love with musical theater from a young age, she memorized every show album she could get her hands on. So, when she discovers an open call for one of her favorite productions, she leaves behind everything she knows to run off to New York City and audition. Raw and untrained, she catches the eye of famed composer Don Mannheim, who catapults her into the leading role of his new work, "A Tender Thing," a provocative lov ..read more

Listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction, The Last Masterpiece (2023) by Laura Morelli is inspired by the true story of the Monuments Women, the Fifth Army WACs, and the looted Florentine aft collections during World War II. In the summer of 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery. When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world ..read more

Join me as I chat with Samantha Silva, author of Love and Fury and Mr. Dickens and His Carol. Highlights: Origins of Love and Fury Why Mary Wollstonecraft--her life, her writing, and her ongoing contribution as the "first feminist" Structuring Love and Fury - the use of ten plot points Sense and sensibility in Love and Fury Mary Wollstonecraft's long road back into public consciousness a hundred years after her death Reading from Love and Fury Finding moments as metaphors when writing historical fiction Writing history and writing historical fiction -- what ..read more