Historical Fiction | Archaeolibrarian

Welcome to Archaeolibrarian, Stories Worth Unearthing.

We're so glad you're here. This is our little corner of the internet where a lifelong love of reading gets to run wild through honest reviews, blog tours and the occasional bookish rabbit hole. We dig through every kind of story, from quiet historical fiction to sweeping fantasy, to bring the good ones up into the light.

We truly believe there's a perfect book out there for every reader, and we'd love to help you find yours. New content goes up regularly, so do pop back often to see what we've been reading lately.

We also have a store over on Bookshop.org, and it's one of our favourite things about running this blog. Every book we've reviewed or featured on tour lives there (whenever it's available on the site), so you can go straight from reading about a book to actually getting your hands on it — while supporting your favourite local independent bookstore at the same time. It really is a win all round!

Guest Post: Renaissance Rivals by Karen Essex

Pitted against each other by the ruthless political landscape and by the men they loved, Isabella and Lucrezia must learn how to survive in a world where women are treated as prizes, pawns, and weapons. Their battle is intimate, brilliant, and borders on the fatal, a war fought with jewels, letters, seduction, betrayal, and the strategic intelligence of women who refuse to disappear.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Aug 12

Spotlight: Dragonslayer's Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr by Jennifer Ivy Walker

As the Norns tighten the intricate threads of fate, Brynhildr must guide Sigurd toward his destiny as a dragonslayer—by defying the web of wyrd and incurring the wrath of Odin.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Aug 7

Spotlight: The Fern Flower by Kathleen Shoop

Born into privilege as the daughter of the Tsar’s favored vodka maker, Mila appears to have everything: wealth, status, and a household devoted to her happiness. But behind the gilded doors of her family estate, she is trapped by the cruelty of a stepmother whose greatest wish is to give birth to her own child.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Aug 5

Guest Post: The Duty of Daughters / El Deber de las Hijas by Wendy J. Dunn

Doña Beatriz Galindo is an uneasy witness to the Holy War of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon. A holy war pushing the Moors out of territories ruled by them for centuries. Beatriz does not want a life like other women. She desires power over her own destiny. Even if this means walking a far harder road.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Jul 30

Spotlight: One More Hour of Daylight by C.M. Gray

On the first day of World War II, a young man makes a promise—one that will shape every choice he makes for the next four years.

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Archaeolibrarian

Jul 29

Review: The Spirit of the Times by Justin Newland

In fourteenth-century Central Asia, Karia is a young woman living under the yoke of Mongol occupation. But she’s different. She’s a fighter with supernatural powers. She could use them to keep the Black Plague at bay and solve the mystery of the purple skies at dawn – if only she could overcome her self-doubt.

Tours

Merissa

Jul 27

Spotlight: Fearless Hearts Forbidden Love (Hearts of Sparta Trilogy #1) by Anthea Laurelton

Spartan warrior, Diokles, has waited years for the opportunity to right a failure that torments his heart and integrity. Sent to hunt down a threat to Sparta, this campaign may be his final chance to restore his honour and uncover the traitor whose actions blighted his life. Success is at his fingertips, but when duty forces him to take an unwilling accomplice, his plans are challenged in ways he never foresaw.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Jul 21

Snippet: The Valet's Witness by Rohn Hein

In the summer of 1776, as the Declaration of Independence takes shape within the charged chambers of the Second Continental Congress, two lives unfold in quiet, irrevocable collision-one etched into the official record, the other deliberately erased from it.

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Archaeolibrarian

Jul 20

Spotlight: Via Malorum by G.G. MacLeod

In the shadowed streets of ancient Rome, 37 CE, power is a blade that cuts both ways. Agrippina, a towering enigma of ambition, slips from Caligula’s gilded cage with her newborn son, Domitius, her mind a labyrinth of cold calculation. At her side prowls Messalina, a siren in scarlet, her seductive cunning as deadly as her blade. Together, they navigate a city teeming with decadence and deceit, pursued by whispers of treachery and the emperor’s wrath.

Tours

Archaeolibrarian

Jul 16