Friday, 24 April 2026

Another Soul Saved by John Anthony Miller

 



Another Soul Saved 
By John Anthony Miller


Publication Date: April 1, 2026
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 415
Genre: Historical Fiction

Vienna, 1941

Monika Graf, the wife of a wealthy Austrian military commander, steals two Jewish girls from the Nazis—a crime often punishable by death. With soldiers in rapid pursuit, a homeless Jew named Janik, a mysterious man who lurks in the shadows, helps her escape.

Unable to have children of her own, she finds a new purpose in life—rescuing Jewish children from the horrendous Nazi regime. She asks the Swiss for help, trading military secrets she gleans from her husband for the lives of Jewish children. With Janik’s continued support, she also enlists Father Christoff, a priest at St. Stephen's Cathedral coping with unexpected emotions and doubting his commitment to God. Monika quickly forms bonds that can’t be broken, feelings exposed she never knew existed. 

Relentlessly pursued by Gestapo Captain Gustav Kramer, Monika combats continuing risk to her clandestine operation. When her husband, a rabid Nazi, returns from the battlefield severely wounded, she gets caught in a cage that she can’t crawl out of.

Wrought with danger, riddled with romance, Another Soul Saved shows humanity at both its best and worst in a classic struggle of good versus evil.


FIVE MINUTE HISTORY by John Anthony Miller

Another Soul Saved, set in Vienna, Austria during World War II, tells the story of Monika Graf, a wealthy woman married to an Austrian general, who risks everything to rescue Jewish children, betraying both her country and her husband. To fully appreciate the incredible risks that our fictional heroine takes, an overview of the historical backdrop is helpful.

Shortly after Adolf Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933, discrimination and persecution of the Jewish population began, starting with strict laws that impacted their ability to function in society. Throughout the rest of the decade, their plight worsened as laws got harsher, eventually resulting in property confiscation, destruction of Jewish shops and synagogues, and physical attacks. To reduce the Jewish population, the German government strongly encouraged Jews to emigrate. Efforts were organized by different countries—Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands—and various charity organizations, geared specifically to the relocation of Jewish children. When Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, starting the Second World War, emigration was abandoned in favor of forced labor, starvation, and eventually mass murder.
Austria, where our novel is set, was annexed by Germany in 1938. Ninety-nine percent of the Austrian population supported the policies of Adolf Hitler, which made any form of organized resistance almost impossible. Another Soul Saved gives voice to the one percent who didn’t support the Nazis—those risking their lives to save others, knowing that friends, neighbors, and even family members could betray them at any time. 

Monika Graf uses methods based on factual events to rescue Jewish children—and later adults. For example, in other parts of Europe, Hungary in particular, Swiss diplomats discovered that the Nazi regime was fanatical about official documentation. Even the most rapid Nazi would pause when presented with the proper paperwork—or what appeared to be official documents. The Swiss, with Nazi permission, produced a limited number of documents to specify that Jews were emigrating, usually to Palestine, even though it often wasn’t the case. These documents were almost always honored. In Another Soul Saved, Monika works with a Swiss diplomat to get documents for Jewish children, trading military secrets she gleans from her husband for Jewish lives.

The most frequent method used to save Jewish children, especially in Poland, was also referenced in Another Soul Saved. Some pretended to be Catholic, even though preparation was needed—memorizing Catholic prayers, learning a few hymns, and acquiring a basic understanding of the religion. But once able to pose successfully, Jewish children were enrolled in Catholic orphanages, seminaries, and convents.

It was another common practice—used in the novel and throughout Europe—to hide Jewish children, and sometimes entire families, on farms, especially in remote areas. It wasn’t too difficult to blend children with the farmer’s family, or have entire Jewish families pose as relatives, because the rural location had much less exposure to soldiers or the citizens who supported them.

Anyone hiding or rescuing Jews during World War II faced tremendous risks, especially in a location like Vienna, where the population overwhelmingly supported Nazi policies. The notorious Gestapo patrolled city streets, surveilled citizens, used paid informants, and tortured anyone they suspected of wrongdoing, ensuring any threat to the Third Reich was eliminated. Those harboring Jews were hunted aggressively and, if caught, faced arrest, imprisonment, and even death.


This book is available on #KindleUnlimited

John Anthony Miller


John Anthony Miller writes all things historical—thrillers, mysteries, and romance. He sets his novels in exotic locations spanning all eras of space and time, with complex characters forced to face inner conflicts—fighting demons both real and imagined. He’s published twenty novels and ghostwritten several others, including Another Soul Saved. He lives in southern New Jersey.

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Wednesday, 22 April 2026

Bride of the Devil: Agnes, Wife of Robert de Belleme by J.P. Reedman


Bride of the Devil:
Agnes, Wife of Robert de Belleme

Medieval Babes
By J.P. Reedman



Publication Date: August 4th, 2025
Publisher: independently published
Pages: 248
Genre: Historical Biographical Fiction / Medieval Fiction


She is a great heiress; he is the wickedest man in Normandy.


Known to men far and wide as 'The Devil,' Robert de Belleme terrorises France alongside his equally fearsome mother, Mabel the Poisoner. But even a Devil needs an heir, and Mabel chooses the wealthy heiress Agnes of Ponthieu to be her son's bride. The marriage is unhappy, though the longed-for son and heir is eventually born...but when Robert is away on one of his military campaigns, Agnes flees back to her father's castle.

She is not safe; her young son William is not safe.

The Devil will seek to claim his own.

BOOK 13 IN THE MEDIEVAL BABES SERIES.


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This series is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.


J.P. Reedman



J.P. Reedman was born in Canada but has lived in the U.K. for over 30 years. Interests include folklore and anthropology, prehistoric archaeology (neolithic/bronze age Europe; ritual,burial & material culture), as well as The Wars of the Roses and the rest of the medieval era. Novels include the popular  I, Richard Plantagenet series about Richard III, The Falcon and the Sun (featuring other members of the House of York), and Medieval Babes, an ongoing series about lesser-known medieval queens and noblewomen.


Connect with J.P.:

Threads • Bluesky • Pinterest • TikTok



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Five Minute History with Katherine Mezzacappa

Lucie Dumas
By Katherine Mezzacappa




Publication Date: March 30th, 2026
Publisher: Stairwell Books
Pages: 278
Genre: Historical Fiction


London, 1871: Lucie Dumas of Lyon has accepted a stipend from her former lover and his wife, on condition that she never returns to France; she will never see her young son again. As the money proves inadequate, Lucie turns to prostitution to live, joining the ranks of countless girls from continental Europe who'd come to London in the hope of work in domestic service.


Escaping a Covent Garden brothel for a Magdalen penitentiary, Lucie finds only another form of incarceration and thus descends to the streets, where she is picked up by the author Samuel Butler, who sets her up in her own establishment and visits her once a week for the next two decades. But for many years she does not even know his name.


Based on true events.


Five Minute History with Katherine Mezzacappa


I have always been fascinated by Victorian London as a city and time of contrasts. It had a veneer of respectability and moral probity, but this concealed a very dark side. Lucie Dumas, who was a real person, was a part of that. She was found by the writer Samuel Butler streetwalking in Islington. She then abandoned the street in favour of receiving gentleman callers in her lodgings and seems to have done so very discreetly. The census of 1891 records her, by her own description, of course, as a widow, living on her own means.’ The census details the other people who lived in the same building. There was a baker and his family, a journalist, a clerk – all normal people. 


Butler visited her once a week on Wednesday afternoons, paying her a pound a week, including when he was away on holiday, in a relationship that lasted twenty years. Some years into this arrangement he introduced his friend and biographer, who was to call on Tuesdays; Butler would pay for him. Lucie’s response to this arrangement isn’t recorded. When Lucie became ill with tuberculosis, Butler paid her bills at the French Hospital. Most of what we know about Lucie comes from an interview the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge had with Alfred Cathie, Butler’s former manservant, years after Butler’s death. ‘The Governor’ as Alfred called him, never replaced Lucie (though his friend fairly quickly did, something Alfred clearly didn’t approve of).


Lucie left France with a small stipend provided by the father of her child and the man’s wife, but she left behind her little boy. Were she to return, she would lose that money, and she never did go back. There are great swathes of Lucie’s story that I had recreate, as we do not know what happened to her son, or exactly how she came to be streetwalking; the most likely explanation is that the stipend simply wasn’t sufficient, and so Lucie, like many women at the bottom of the economic food chain (such as seamstresses) had to turn to prostitution at least on a part-time basis, in order to make ends meet. The routes out of the profession were largely punitive; women could seek refuge in the Magdalen penitentiaries, as they were called, where they would be laundresses or embroiderers, and might be trained to go into service. The penitentiaries, run by nuns usually (both Catholic and Anglican orders) would normally only accept women and girls they thought could be reformed. These places existed all over the country. There might well be a building in your town that has since been put to some other use, but which was once one of these institutions. Needless to say, there were no penitentiaries for the men who bought these women.


Lucie appears to have escaped venereal disease, but it was a real risk for anyone working in prostitution. The first effective cure for syphilis lay in the future (Salvarsan, first used in the 1910s). Women showing signs of disease could not remain in the penitentiaries but were consigned to the Lock hospitals (there were separate Locks for men). The word lock doesn’t imply that they were locked in. It probably derives from the French word loque, describing a rag wrapped around leprosy sores.


This was too late for my purposes, but is a nugget of research too astonishing not to share. The male Lock Hospital in Covent Garden in the 1920s employed three male nurses who specialised in a urethral irrigation treatment (which sounds very painful). Their surnames were Rodwell, Catchpole and Hardstand…



The Lock Hospital at Hyde Park Corner

Thomas Shepherd, engraved by W Wallis.

Wikimedia Commons: Wellcome Collection




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Katherine Mezzacappa


Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’Association Gold Crown award in 2025 and has also been published in Italian.

Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.

Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story and novel competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She is lead organiser for the Historical Novel Society 2026 Conference in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

Katherine has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church.


Connect with Katherine:

Website • Facebook • Instagram • Bluesky




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Wednesday, 15 April 2026

Five Minute History - The Cathars by David Loux



The Lost Seigneur
(A Chateau Laux Odyssey, Book #2)
by David Loux


Publication Date: October 7th, 2025
Publisher: Wire Gate Press
Pages: 226
Genre: Historical Fiction / Literary Fiction

The Lost Seigneur is a sequel to the award-winning Chateau Laux.

It is the story of Jean-Pierre du Laux, a nobleman in southern France, who was wrongly imprisoned during a time of religious intolerance and subsequently endeavors to return to his family. Many years have passed since he saw them, and his long incarceration has broken his health.

Any reunion would clearly have been impossible, without the unlikely help of a youthful companion that he meets along the way.


Five Minute History - The Cathars 
By David Loux

The origin of the Cathar faith is not known with absolute certainty. Many historians trace its roots to the Byzantine Empire, from where it most likely traveled through the Balkans and arrived in Europe along with the early crusaders returning from the Levant. It was a dualistic faith, grounded in Christian Gnosticism, which clashed with traditional Roman Catholicism.

By 1143, the Cathars were firmly entrenched in southern France. They had their own church structure, with bishops in Albi, Toulouse, Carcassonne and Agen. Cathar adepts freely wandered the countryside, administering the duties of their faith. One of the things that set Catharism apart from its Roman counterpart was that women were considered coequal with men. Many noble families had mothers and sisters who were Cathars.

In response to this competitive threat, the Papacy instituted an inquisition against the Cathars in 1184. A full-blown military crusade against them followed in 1209.

The Protestant Reformation introduced new threats to Rome, and the ensuing Wars of Religion continued the onslaught of one Christian group against another. These wars ended with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which granted some religious toleration to Protestants. But French King Louis XIV instituted the Dragonnades in 1681, which billeted troops in the homes of Protestants, in an attempt to force their conversion to Catholicism. Atrocities were commonplace.

The story of Jean-Pierre du Laux, who is the patriarch in The Lost Seigneur, takes place in the waning years of the seventeenth century and the decades that followed, in a land that suffered a persistent legacy 

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David Loux


David Loux is the author of Chateau Laux, a critically acclaimed, award-winning novel that tells the story of a shocking incident in eighteenth century America. His second novel, The Lost Seigneur, expands on the themes detailed in Chateau Laux, and completes the story of a French family’s migration to America in the eighteenth century.

He lives in the Eastern Sierra with his wife, Lynn.

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Thursday, 2 April 2026

Book Review: The Scald Crow (Beyond the Faerie Rath Book 1) by Hanna Park


 

The Scald Crow
(Beyond the Faerie Rath Book 1) 
By Hanna Park


Publication Date: 26th May 2025
Publisher: Baisong Press
Print Length: 260 Pages
Genre: Fantasy / Romance

Calla left her life behind, haunted by a curse she cannot control. She seeks refuge in the land of a thousand hellos, Ireland, for a fresh start—a place where no one knows who or what she is.

Colm fled from Clonmara seven long years ago, but now it’s his father’s birthday, and the clan has gathered to celebrate the ould one. Each day brings back the memories that ruined him.

Saoirse dwells in the shadows of a lost love, unwilling to move on and unable to forget. The crystals say one thing, but the cold, hard truth tells another.

Ciarán walked away from the woman he loved for the fun, for the craic. He didn’t realize that one rash decision would impact the lives of so many, least of all his own.

Four broken hearts, brought together by the thread of love.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


This felt like one of those books where the atmosphere does as much storytelling as the plot.

The Scald Crow isn’t loud about what it’s doing. Instead, it builds slowly — almost quietly — layering unease, emotion, and fragments of meaning until you realise you’re completely inside it. It’s less about big, dramatic reveals and more about the feeling that something is shifting, just out of view.

What stood out to me most was the way the book handles uncertainty. Calla doesn’t step into Ireland with any sense of clarity or purpose — if anything, she feels slightly untethered from the start. And rather than immediately giving her answers, the story lets her sit in that uncertainty. It allows confusion, instinct, and emotion to guide her, which made everything feel far more immersive.

There’s also a strong sense that identity in this book isn’t something fixed. It’s something that’s uncovered in layers, sometimes reluctantly. Calla’s journey isn’t about becoming someone new so much as realising that parts of herself have always been there — just hidden or misunderstood. I really liked that approach, because it gives her development a quieter, more introspective feel.

Another aspect I found really interesting was how the book treats connection. Not just romantically, but more broadly — between people, between past and present, and even between the seen and unseen parts of the world. There’s this underlying suggestion that certain bonds aren’t entirely rational or explainable, and the story leans into that rather than trying to tidy it up.

The romance fits into that idea quite well. It’s immediate, but it doesn’t feel random. Instead, it has that same sense of inevitability that runs through the rest of the book — like it’s part of something larger rather than a separate storyline.

I also really appreciated the way the modern setting and folklore coexist. The story doesn’t draw a hard line between them. Instead, it lets them overlap in a way that feels natural, as though the older world has simply been waiting in the background all along.

Definitely one I’ll be thinking about — and a series I will want to continue with.


Universal Buy Link

https://books2read.com/u/mBkyKy

Hanna Park

I began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the cat knew. She knows everything.

I write stories that make you laugh, make you cry, and make you love. Thank you, friends, for reading!

In the beginning, there was an empty page.

I am a writer who lives in Muskoka, Canada, with a husband who snores, a hungry cat, and an almost perfect canine––he’s an adorable little shit.

Author Links:

Website • Instagram • Facebook • BookBub • Goodreads 


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Another Soul Saved by John Anthony Miller

  Another Soul Saved  By John Anthony Miller Publication Date: April 1, 2026 Publisher: Independent Pages: 415 Genre: Historical Fiction Vie...