Historical Fiction Book Reviews

Mike Cobb unravels a sinister, masterfully penned drama in The Devil You Knew. Summoning demons of the past still haunting America today, this period mystery jabs at the most painful nerves of culture and history.

The tone is grimly set in the opening chapters – the deep South of the 1960s, where religion and bigotry reign over a land already scarred by so much sin. When young girls begin disappearing, and then turning up dead, the small community at the heart of this novel is shaken to its core. Billy Tarwater would rather doodle in the hymnal than make […]

A gripping mystery that reveals its villain long before the final page, Myers by Jeff Lee is a character-driven thriller that exposes the grim repercussions of trauma and war, showing how the severe residual trauma and haunting memories of survivors can have their own terrible repercussions.

Plunging readers into a wind-blown, easily forgotten part of America, this novel is an exposé of violence, history, and family. The story pits two such souls against each other, the town’s police chief, Karl Myers, and Jerry Peterman – a soldier who never really stopped fighting, and who has forgotten any language but domination. […]

Steeped in the charm, pace, and painful realities of a bygone era, Dead Beckoning by Mike Cobb is a stunning peek into late 19th century America, and the lives embroiled in a tragic mystery.

Baker Bass is a Georgia country boy with the heart of a gentleman, who finds himself in small-town high society thanks to the love of his life, Ella. His ambitions take their family to Atlanta, where they shift to being small fish in an ever-growing pond. Running a successful sundry shop in a Southern city is no easy feat, but when he is falsely fingered in […]