Historical Fiction

Cases of Circumstantial Evidence
By Janet Lewis
· Introduction by Kevin Haworth

This is the first digital version of Cases of Circumstantial Evidence, a collection of three historical novels by noted American writer Janet Lewis.

The Wife of Martin Guerre
By Janet Lewis
· Introduction by Kevin Haworth
· Afterword by Larry McMurtry

The Wife of Martin Guerre—based on a notorious trial in sixteenth-century France—is “one of the most significant short novels in English” (Atlantic Monthly). Originally published in 1941, it still raises questions about identity, belonging, and about an individual’s capacity to act within an inflexible system.

The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron
By Janet Lewis
· Introduction by Kevin Haworth

This historical novel is the third and final book in American poet and fiction writer Janet Lewis’s Cases of Circumstantial Evidence series, based on legal case studies compiled in the nineteenth century. In The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron, Lewis returns to her beloved France, the setting of The Wife of Martin Guerre, her best-known novel and the first in the series.

The Trial of Sören Qvist
By Janet Lewis
· Introduction by Kevin Haworth

Originally published in 1947, The Trial of Sören Qvist has been praised by a number of critics for its intriguing plot and Janet Lewis’s powerful writing. And in the introduction to this new edition, Swallow Press executive editor and author Kevin Haworth calls attention to the contemporary feeling of the story—despite its having been written more than fifty years ago and set several hundred years in the past.

Holy Week
A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
By Jerzy Andrzejewski
· Introduction by Oscar E. Swan
· Foreword by Jan T. Gross

At the height of the Nazi extermination campaign in the Warsaw Ghetto, a young Jewish woman, Irena, seeks the protection of her former lover, a young architect, Jan Malecki. By taking her in, he puts his own life and the safety of his family at risk.

At the Palaces of Knossos
By Nikos Kazantzakis
· Translation by Theodora Vasils and Themi Vasils

Blending historical fact and classical myth, the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ transports the reader 3,000 years into the past, to a pivotal point in history: the final days before the ancient kingdom of Minoan Crete is to be conquered and supplanted by the emerging city-state of Athens. Translated by Theodora Vasils and Themi Vasils.The

Alexander the Great
A Novel
By Nikos Kazantzakis
· Translation by Theodora Vasils

In this historical novel based on the life of Alexander the Great, Kazantzakis has drawn on both the rich tradition of Greek legend and the documented manuscripts from the archives of history to recreate an Alexander in all his many-faceted images.

The Wife of Martin Guerre
By Janet Lewis

Set in 16th century France, this compelling story of Bertrande de Rols is the first of the Cases of Circumstantial Evidence.