Head Back in Time with These 2 Books

by MK French

Today, I have a couple of novels set in the past. The first is set during the Golden Age of Hollywood and the second is an alternate history story featuring vampires. Happy Reading!

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The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

August 2024; Del Rey; 978-0593600269
audio, ebook, print (336 pages); historical fiction

In 1950s Hollywood, Vera Larios is an unknown Mexican ingenue cast in the lead as Salome for a big-budget picture. Plenty of people talk about her, including bit player Nancy Hartley, who will do anything to win fame. Both actresses are determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood, and this is also the story of Salome herself, desiring the prophet who foretold doom for her stepfather Herod. In a tale about three women trying to make it in a man's world, there will be tears and tragedy galore.

The Seventh Veil of Salome is told through various points of view, from Hollywood players to Vera, Nancy, and Salome herself. Hollywood is cutthroat and difficult to navigate, with everyone wanting an angle to get ahead. It's very much a white game, with so many different cuts at Vera for her Mexican heritage, color of her skin, and her inexperience with the Hollywood machine. She's also fielding her family issues, dating life, nascent paparazzi, and trying to please a rigid studio. Nancy is mean and petty, angling to get more but not willing to admit that she can't play the Hollywood game, either. This is juxtaposed with Salome's story, where she's being used as a pawn in a political game between her stepfather and Rome, with an undercurrent of unrest in the country.

We're right there in the thick of it with this story, and the way the threads are woven is seamlessly done. Some of the interactions are masterfully done, and I was utterly gutted with the following: "I'm not going to love someone in fractions, and I won't be loved in quarters or in halves. You take the whole of me, if you want it." The tension of the ending was well done, and didn't go the way I thought it would even though it made sense. So much of Hollywood is smoke and mirrors, and the ending reflects that well.

Buy The Seventh Veil of Salome at Amazon

This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings

August 2024; Sourcebooks Fire; 978-1728297866
audio, ebook, print (480 pages); historical fantasy

In an alternate 1926, vampires known as reapers are on the rise in New York. The Saint family hunts them, giving them more power than those in organized crime. Now home after five years away, eighteen-year-old Elise Saint is the reluctant heir and target for all of the Harlem reapers. Layla Quinn became a reaper five years ago, betrayed by Elise herself. Some reapers are turning human again, and they leave brutal killings behind. When Layla is framed for one of these attacks, the Saint patriarch offers her a deal she can't refuse: work with Elise to investigate how these murders might be linked to shocking rumors of a reaper cure. Now the former friends must work together to discover the truth behind the threat that endangers them all.

This Ravenous Fate is the first book of a duology, with a world where vampires are hurt by specific kinds of steel and they're an everyday menace for police and hunters to deal with. Elise is traumatized by the attacks that sent her to France, but she refuses to allow her ten-year-old sister become the heir to the Saint empire of bullets and research into reaper treatments. The Saints want to eradicate all reapers, and the human-reaper alliances will fall if they get their way. In addition to the difficulties of reapers, there are prejudices and outright racism against Black people, the poor, and those that stand in the way of those with something to gain the most by the reaper cure. It doesn't help Elise's anxiety that her father is austere and interested in results and his empire. There are secrets that her father keeps, that his associates keep, and that the older reapers keep as well. Elise is caught in between too many people, and her emotions are used against her to keep her in line. The various plots are all in play, and Elise knows very little about most of them. This is a bloody, dangerous world, and the love Elise and Layla develop here isn't enough to keep the worst of it at bay. It's likely the next half of the duology that will.

Buy This Ravenous Fate at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and a golden retriever.

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