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This is where Rachel keeps you up to date with her novels and stories and also shares reviews, highlights and extracts from other authors.

Hypatia of Alexandria
Forgotten Women of History, Historical Fiction, Antiquity Rachel Elwiss Joyce Forgotten Women of History, Historical Fiction, Antiquity Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Hypatia of Alexandria

Few figures from the ancient world deserve as much wonder, controversy, and myth-making as Hypatia of Alexandria. Renowned as a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician in a city often riven by political and religious turbulence, Hypatia has come to symbolise both the intellectual heights of late antiquity and the dangers faced by women who dared to wield knowledge and influence.

Who Was Hypatia?

Hypatia (c. 355–415 CE) was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a respected scholar and the last recorded member of the Museum—the great scholarly institution associated with the Library of Alexandria (interesting fact of the day about the term ‘Museum’). Raised in this environment, Hypatia received an exceptional education in mathematics, astronomy, and Platonic philosophy. By adulthood she had surpassed her father’s reputation, becoming:

  • A leading lecturer in Neoplatonism, attracting Christian, pagan, and Jewish students alike;

  • An authority in mathematics, editing and refining works such as Diophantus’s Arithmetica and Apollonius’s Conics;

  • A public intellectual, known for her counsel to civic leaders, including the Roman prefect Orestes

She was, quite simply, quite a woman!

Murder Most Foul

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Finalist in Book of the Year! 🥳

Finalist in Book of the Year! 🥳

I was overwhelmed last night to receive this surprise email:

“I am pleased to announce that your book, Lady of Lincoln, is a Finalist in The Coffee Pot Book Club Book Of The Year Awards 2025.”

Lady of Lincoln is a finalist for Book of the Year Award with the Coffee Pot Book Club

I’m overjoyed and delighted. 🎊🎊🎊🎊🥂🥂🥂🥳🥳🥳

In particular, I’m so pleased that Nicola (Nicholaa) de la Haye’s story is gaining recognition! 🏰

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Seeds of the Pomegranate by Suzanne Uttaro Samuels
Blog Tour, Historical Fiction Rachel Elwiss Joyce Blog Tour, Historical Fiction Rachel Elwiss Joyce

Seeds of the Pomegranate by Suzanne Uttaro Samuels

I’m very pleased to be hosting Seeds of the Pomegranate on the blog tour today, a novel not just in the historical Fiction genre, but also women’s fiction, immigrant (Sicilian, no less…) fiction, heritage fiction, and gangland crime fiction!!

I’ve got an excerpt from the author (see below), but first, the blurb:

A gritty story of a woman learning to survive in 20th century Gangland New York

 In early 20th-century Sicily, noblewoman Mimi Inglese, a talented painter, dreams of escaping the rigid expectations of her class by gaining admission to the Palermo Art Academy. But when she contracts tuberculosis, her ambitions are shattered. With the Sicilian nobility in decline, she and her family leave for New York City in search of a fresh start.

 Instead of opportunity, Mimi is pulled into the dark underbelly of city life and her father’s money laundering scheme. When he is sent to prison, desperation forces her to put her artistic talent to a new use—counterfeiting $5 bills to keep her family from starvation and, perhaps, to one day reclaim her dream of painting. But as Gangland violence escalates and tragedy strikes, Mimi must summon the courage to flee before she is trapped forever in a life she never wanted.

 From Sicily’s sun-bleached shores to the crowded streets of immigrant New York, Seeds of the Pomegranate is a story of courage, art, and the women who refused to disappear.

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Zenobia of Palmyra: the Queen Who Defied Rome

Zenobia of Palmyra: the Queen Who Defied Rome

In the third century CE, as Rome teetered on the brink of fragmentation, a woman from the desert city of Palmyra rose to challenge the empire itself.

Her name was Zenobia — scholar, strategist, queen, and for a brief, extraordinary moment, empress of the East.

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