This week, Novelhistorian celebrates its ninth year, and as before, today’s post recalls my favorite novels I’ve reviewed in the last twelve months.

The East Indian, by Brinda Charry, about an Indian boy, Tony, who becomes an indentured servant in the infant Jamestown colony, does something I’ve never seen before. Tony withstands hardship, physical and emotional cruelty, and racism without an ounce of self-pity and with tremendous fortitude because he holds the image of his mother’s love deep in his heart.

For Virginia almost two centuries later, check out The House Is on Fire, Rachel Beanland’s take on a catastrophe that destroys a Richmond theater in 1811. Her novel, which seamlessly weaves four different narratives of the tragedy, reveals the crassness of Virginia aristocrats (and men in general), their selfish subjugation of women, and the racism that feeds ugly behavior.

I’ve never cited two novels by the same author in a year-end compendium, let alone review them within months of each other, so here’s a first. Beanland’s Florence Adler Swims Forever, as compelling a domestic drama as I’ve read in years, depicts an Atlantic City, New Jersey, Jewish family whose younger daughter drowns off the coast. For various reasons, they decide to keep the death a secret from her elder sister, with searing consequences.

A very different pair of sisters appears in Bronze Drum, Phong Nguyen’s lyrical tale from ancient Vietnam. Legend says that two young princesses led a revolt against the Han Chinese conqueror; here’s their story. Their goals aren’t merely political, for the Han overlords mean to impose their culture, in which women are subservient. That doesn’t go down well.

Probably the most famous woman-warrior tale in Western history belongs to Joan of Arc. But unlike the traditional version, Katherine J. Chen’s Joan accents the warrior aspect and downplays the religious motivation. This Joan is decidedly secular, and the narrative has a somewhat modern feel, which may put off some readers. But Chen paints a stirring, deep, psychological portrait, achieving a different kind of truth I find equally relevant.

A century later, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia de’ Medici has a very different problem: she suspects that her husband of about a year, the duke of Ferrara, wishes to kill her. A tense, domestic thriller that’s also beautifully written, The Marriage Portrait lacks the breadth of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell’s previous novel, but I defy you to put Lucrezia’s story down after the opening paragraph.

As long as we’re talking thrillers, consider Robert Harris’s latest, Act of Oblivion, set during the Stuart Restoration in the 1660s. Charles II, after having granted amnesty to Cromwell’s followers, reneges on his promise, which sends two men fleeing to the wild North American colonies. Their escape, the royalists’ pursuit, and the tension between the fugitives form a breathtaking narrative about treachery, revolution, and religious fundamentalism.

The dangers of dogma also emerge in The Winter Guest, William (aka W. C.) Ryan’s marvelously atmospheric mystery-cum-thriller about the Irish Civil War in 1921. An IRA operative looking into the apparent assassination of a heroine of the Easter Rebellion whom he once loved must trod carefully among factions on both sides, whose only common trait is an itchy trigger finger.

Conversely, in The Great Passion, James Runcie’s novel about Stefan, a young boy who studies with Johann Sebastian Bach, religion serves more as a cause to make music than to kill, though eighteenth-century Leipzig hardly seems happy. Indeed, Stefan has just lost his mother; but Bach, and his delightful wife Anna Magdalena, help him through his grief and show him the tremendous power of music to unite faith, art, and hope.

Another great German genius appears in Alix Christie’s Gutenberg’s Apprentice, about Peter, a scribe called from Paris in 1450 against his will to participate in a project he worries might be heretical—the creation of printing. Based on real historical figures, the story reveals in Gutenberg an inveterate schemer and double-crosser who nevertheless gives Peter an education in life, politics, and a revolutionary technology. The scenes in which they figure out how to make printing viable are rewarding in themselves.

In The Underground River, Martha Conway tells how May, a young woman cast unceremoniously adrift in 1838 after a steamboat accident without a penny or prospects, latches on to a floating theater for her livelihood. It’s an engaging coming-of-age story whose stakes include helping runaway slaves, and the characters are a raft—literally—of egotistical theater folk, tragic and hilarious by turns.

Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese’s novel about a fictional inspiration for The Scarlet Letter, shows Isobel Gamble immigrate from Scotland to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1828. Naturally, she meets the tortured Nathaniel Hathorne (he added the w later); it’s literary destiny. Nevertheless, Albanese derives terrific tension from the romantic sparks, Isobel’s absent husband, her involvement with Black neighbors, and life in Salem. I skipped over the heavy-handed attempt, in italics, to parallel Isobel’s witchy ancestors with Salem’s history.

So there are my picks from year nine of Novelhistorian. I hope you like them.