Since Rebecca D’Harlingue has show you hers and C.V. Lee has shown you hers, it’s now my turn to share my historical fiction short story picks.

Let’s start with A Detective’s Life, Sherlock Holmes, edited by Martin Rosenstock, (2022).

I read the very big The Complete Sherlock Holmes (all four novels! all fifty-six adventures!) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle back in high school. A few years later I devoured paperback editions of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and The Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. Then I read Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes and the Seven Percent Solution (1974), Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series (1994+), and Carole Nelson Douglas’s Irene Adler series (1990+). Fun stories, all of them!

I thought I was a Sherlock Holmes fan for life, but then something started happening…more and more contemporary authors started using Sherlock Holmes and other Holmesian characters in their books, and these stories were more stale than satisfying. It seemed for a while that writers saw recycling Sherlock Holmes characters as their ticket to fame, fortune, and great reviews. As a reader, I was all for a great Sherlock Holmes homage, but couldn’t stand to read any of these new, less creative works.

So, except for continuing with Laurie King’s latest Mary Russell books and rereading a few of Doyle’s original stories, I stopped reading any Sherlock Holmes stories. Until 2022, when I realized that to write a better historical crime short story, I needed to study more historical crime short stories. Like those stories in Sherlock Holmes, A Detective’s Life. I’m so glad that I broke my Sherlock Holmes embargo, because the stories in this anthology are entertaining, engaging, and (I was delighted to discover) charming.

This anthology is a collection of twelve short stories chronicling Holmes’s detection work starting from his early years at 221B Baker Street through his final years, and each story reads like each author was having fun when they wrote it. The standout stories include the Prologue which was “penned” (upon the death of Holmes’ biographer John Watson in 1930) by Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Spiritualist Detective” by Stuart Douglas, and Eric Brown’s finale, “Peril at Carroway House”.

Stories from Suffragette City, edited by M. J. Rose and Fiona Davis, (2020).

On Saturday October 23, 1915, thousands of American women marched shoulder-to-shoulder along Fifth Avenue in New York City. Their goal? The right to vote in all US elections. This twelve-story anthology chronicles those women marchers, their male cohorts and challengers, and—delightfully—some of the children that would benefit from a woman’s ability to vote.

Many of these stories integrate real women and men, real deeds, and real efforts made around the parade, and together these stories chart the energy and enthusiasm needed to carry the strenuous day to completion. (Finally, on August 18, 1920, almost five years after this march, American women achieved voting rights.)

The standout stories in Stories from Suffragette City include Steve Barry’s “Deeds Not Words”, Jamie Ford’s “Boundless, We Ride”, and Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s “American Womanhood”. Special kudos for the excellent illustrated map of the Suffragette Parade Route; it really sets the tone of the book and pulls all of the stories together.

Ribbons of Scarlet: A Novel of the French Revolution’s Women, Prologue by Allison Pataki, with chapters by Stephanie Dray, Heather Webb, Sophie Perinot, Kate Quinn, E. Knight, and Laura Kamoie, (2019).

In 1789, one hundred and twenty-six years before the 1915 American suffragette’s march, thousands of angry and impoverished women working in the marketplaces of Paris instigated another march, and this six-hour march from Paris to King Louis XVI’s Palace of Versailles was one of the initial dominoes that eventually toppled Louis’ reign.

The six women’s stories included in Ribbons of Scarlet are more novellas than short stories, but they are written so well and with such continuity, that they are quickly read. All of the stories standout, and it’s very satisfying to see events from multiple perspectives. Don’t miss the Foreword, which sets the revolutionary scene and unites the stories, and also take a look at the Authors’ Notes at the end of the book, for a little more perspective to each story.

Need more short story suggestions? Here’s my September Historical Fiction Short Story Anthology List Link. While you’re there, be sure to check out  Destiny Comes Due, the latest Paper Lantern Writers anthology, which releases this November 1st.

Destiny Comes Due

 Happy Reading!