Book picks similar to
The Pope's Butcher by Joseph C. Gioconda


medieval
fiction
historical-fiction
thriller

Charlock's Secret


Leah Moyes - 2020
    Trapped in time, her survival and return are threatened by her tortured heart.Ensnared by hopelessness and grief, 24-year-old Kat Shelton, accepts a position as the curator of an old English estate with the sole purpose of running away from her memories and to bury life’s pain.What she finds on her journey is much more than she bargained for—an arrogant employer, patronizing staff, and a chaotic system, to name a few. Then to top it all off, an unforeseen tumble down the antiquated cellar steps brings her to a sudden halt.Waking up in the year 1878, and mistaken for the children’s new governess, Kat scrambles to navigate nineteenth-century British lifestyle and culture. An impossible feat if it weren’t for the help of the Gilford girls and their charming and handsome brother, Merritt.Will Kat find the strength, love, and forgiveness she yearns for in the past? Or will her path bring her back to the reality she fears?

The Deep


Alma Katsu - 2020
    Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner's illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers - including millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher - are convinced that something sinister is going on . . . And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not - could not - have survived the sinking of the Titanic . . .

Davenport House


Marie Silk - 2016
    She lives isolated in the Pennsylvania countryside with her affluent and secretive family. When her father dies suddenly, Mary becomes pained with grief and increasingly suspicious of those around her. A humble servant girl has the chance of a lifetime to become a lady's companion. Costly dresses, exquisite rooms, and fine dinners are pleasant distractions from what is really happening in the house.

Abandon


Blake Crouch - 2009
    Recently, a similar party had also attempted to explore the town and was never heard from again. Now the area is believed to be haunted. This crew is about to discover, twenty miles from civilization with a blizzard bearing down, that they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.Revised edition: This edition of Abandon includes editorial revisions.

The Locksmith's Daughter


Karen Brooks - 2016
    She has apprenticed with her father since childhood, and there is no lock too elaborate for her to crack. After scandal destroys her reputation, Mallory has returned to her father's home and lives almost as a recluse, ignoring the whispers and gossip of their neighbors. But Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster and a frequent client of Mallory's father, draws her into his world of danger and deception. For the locksmith's daughter is not only good at cracking locks, she also has a talent for codes, spycraft, and intrigue. With Mallory by Sir Francis’s side, no scheme in England or abroad is safe from discovery.But Mallory's loyalty wavers when she witnesses the brutal and bloody public execution of three Jesuit priests and realizes the human cost of her espionage. And later, when she discovers the identity of a Catholic spy and a conspiracy that threatens the kingdom, she is forced to choose between her country and her heart.Once Sir Francis's greatest asset, Mallory is fast becoming his worst threat—and there is only one way the Queen’s master spy deals with his enemies…

Exile


B.K. Greenwood - 2021
    It's a battle he won't survive.When he awakens three days later, clawing his way from a shallow grave, Marcus must face the reality of his new existence. He cannot be killed--but that won't stop him from dying time and again over the next 2,000 years.Meanwhile, others like Marcus plan to bring the world crashing to its knees. Can he prevent the inevitable and find redemption?"An extraordinary idea extraordinarily well-told. Greenwood has a special talent for creating believable characters in a believably realized historic setting."---Ron Miller, Hugo Award-winning Author

The Drowning Kind


Jennifer McMahon - 2021
    Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives deeper into the research herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

The Penmaker's Wife


Steve Robinson - 2019
    Angelica Chastain has fled from London with her young son, William. She promises him a better life, far away from the terrors they left behind.Securing a job as a governess, Angelica captures the attention of wealthy widower Stanley Hampton. Soon they marry and the successful future Angelica envisaged for William starts to fall into place.But the past will not let Angelica go. As the people in her husband’s circle, once captivated by her charm, begin to question her motives, it becomes clear that forgetting where she came from—and who she ran from—is impossible.When tragedy threatens to expose her and destroy everything she’s built for herself and William, how far will she go to keep her secrets safe? And when does the love for one’s child tip over into dangerous obsession?Alias Grace meets Peaky Blinders in this tale of obsession, ambition and murder in Victorian England.

Yesternight


Cat Winters - 2016
    In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories, at first believing they’re no more than the product of the girl’s vast imagination. But, slowly, Alice comes to the realization that Janie might indeed be telling a strange truth.Alice knows the investigation may endanger her already shaky professional reputation, and as a woman in a field dominated by men she has no room for mistakes. But she is unprepared for the ways it will illuminate terrifying mysteries within her own past, and in the process, irrevocably change her life.

Disappeared


Colin Falconer - 1997
    Spanning two decades, this is a cocktail of love, betrayal, politics and revenge.

The Ancient Nine


Ian K. Smith - 2018
    Calls his mother—who raised him on her own in Chicago—every week.Dalton WinthropA white-shoe legacy at Harvard, he's just the most recent in a string of moneyed, privileged Winthrop men in Cambridge. He's got the ease—and the deep knowledge—that come from belonging.These two find enough common ground to become friends, cementing their bond when Spenser is "punched" to join the Delphic Club, one of the most exclusive of Harvard's famous all-male final clubs. Founded in the nineteenth century, the Delphic has had titans of industry, Hollywood legends, heads of state, and power brokers among its members.Dalton Winthrop knows firsthand that the Delphic doesn't offer memberships to just anyone. His great-uncle is one of their oldest living members, and Dalton grew up on stories of the club's rituals. But why is his uncle so cryptic about the Ancient Nine, a shadowy group of alums whose identities are unknown and whose power is absolute? They protect the Delphic's darkest and oldest secrets—including what happened to a student who sneaked into the club's stately brick mansion in 1927 and was never seen again.Dalton steers Spenser into deeper and deeper recesses of the club, and beyond, to try to make sense of what they think they may be seeing. But with each scrap of information they get from an octogenarian Crimson graduate, a crumbling newspaper in the library's archives, or one of Harvard's most famous and heavily guarded historical books, a fresh complication trips them up. The more the friends investigate, the more questions they unearth, tangling the story of the club, the disappearance, and the Ancient Nine, until they realize their own lives are in danger.

The Hangman's Daughter


Oliver Pötzsch - 2008
    And her father’s wisdom and empathy are as unusual as his despised profession. It is 1659, the Thirty Years’ War has finally ended, and there hasn’t been a witchcraft mania in decades. But now, a drowning and gruesomely injured boy, tattooed with the mark of a witch, is pulled from a river and the villagers suspect the local midwife, Martha Stechlin.Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor race against the clock to find the true killer. Approaching Walpurgisnacht, when witches are believed to dance in the forest and mate with the devil, another tattooed orphan is found dead and the town becomes frenzied. More than one person has spotted what looks like the devil—a man with a hand made only of bones. The hangman, his daughter, and the doctor’s son face a terrifying and very real enemy.Page Numbers Source ISBN: 054774501X

Bad Robot


John Benedict - 2018
    Luckily, he discovered the med error quickly and was able to save the patient. Mortified, Brandt decided not to mention his mistake to his coworkers, and to his surprise, he was hailed as a hero for his diagnostic skill. Afterward, he began to consider not just the implications, but the potential. Could this advance his career? Could it impress a certain female coworker? OR scrub nurse Kaycee Blair is gorgeous and knows it. Her tastes run to the finer things in life, and she is not above using her beauty to advance her goals. Though she’s currently dating Brandt, the brilliant ICU nurse whose career is on the upswing, Kaycee finds herself drawn to Dr. Salazar, the hospital’s new robotic heart surgeon. Dr. Dominic Salazar is a man blessed with Mediterranean good looks, supreme confidence, and obvious wealth. He is also a virtuoso with the Michelangelo robotic surgical system. However, due to a prior indiscretion, he was forced to give up his prestigious chairmanship of robotic surgery at Mass General and relocate to Swatara Regional Hospital. Dom is determined to rehabilitate his reputation, repair his marriage, and return to a more suitable academic center. But when he meets Kaycee—someone he knows should be off limits—all bets are off. Anesthesiologist Luke Daulton is back after his harrowing brush with death at the hands of Dr. Katz. A series of unexplainable—and deadly—post-surgical complications eventually entangle Luke in the tumultuous love triangle between Brandt, Kaycee, and Salazar; a triangle rife with sex, jealousy, anger, and revenge—where murder is just a matter of time.

The Lioness


Chris Bohjalian
    When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebra storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests—including Katie’s best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor who stars alongside Katie in the highly controversial film “Tender Madness”—will spend their days taking photos, and their evenings drinking chilled gin and tonics back at camp, as the local Tanzanian guides warm water for their baths. The wealthy Americans expect civilized adventure: Fresh ice from the kerosene-powered ice maker, dinners of cooked gazelle meat, and plenty of stories to tell over lunch back on Rodeo Drive. What Katie and her glittering entourage do not expect is this: A kidnapping gone wrong, their guides bleeding out in the dirt, and a team of Russian mercenaries herding them into Land Rovers, guns to their heads. As the powerful sun gives way to night, the gunmen shove them into abandoned huts and Katie Barstow, Hollywood royalty, prays for a simple thing: To see the sun rise one more time. A blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change, The Safari is a vibrant masterpiece from one of our finest storytellers.

The Measure of Gold


Sarah C. Patten - 2020
    It is 1940, and Germany has just invaded France. Across the ocean, in Sweetwater, Tennessee, Penelope, a beautiful alchemist, receives a letter from her childhood friend, Naomie, urging her to France. Bereft from the loss of her widowed father, Penelope leaves her life and travels to German-occupied Paris. There, she meets Naomie's brother, the brilliant alchemist Fulcanelli and his mysterious apprentice, Lucien.Falling headlong into the alchemy's esoteric world, she helps Fulcanelli and Lucien resist the Nazi forces. She trains as a spy and infiltrates a powerful brothel, Le Chambrement. As the horrors of war close in around her, Penelope must seduce a murderous Nazi officer in a desperate calculation to save her lover, Lucian. Through the devastating magic of life, Penelope learns that alchemy has far more to do with the person than the element.The Measure of Gold is an epic story of alchemy, betrayal, courage, and transcendent love.