THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (October 22, 2023): This week’s issue features “Hunting the Falcon,” on this week’s cover, Tina Brown, who reviewed it, calls it “a fierce, scholarly tour de force,” adding: “The authors, a husband-and-wife historian team, are a dream pairing.”

When Courtly Love Goes Wrong, It’s Deadly

In “Hunting the Falcon,” the historians John Guy and Julia Fox take a fresh look at an infamous Tudor marriage — and find there is indeed more to know.

By Tina Brown

HUNTING THE FALCON: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage That Shook Europe, by John Guy and Julia Fox

Anne Boleyn glanced over her shoulder repeatedly as she waited at the Tower of London for her executioner, a specialist swordsman who had been summoned from France. Would Henry VIII, who could spare lives as casually as he snuffed them out, spare her life on the scaffold as he’d been known to do before?

1960s London Comes Alive in a Fierce, Funny Coming-of-Age Novel

In “The Halt During the Chase,” by Rosemary Tonks — first published in 1972, and newly reissued — a young woman goes in search of herself.

By Mary Marge Locker

THE HALT DURING THE CHASE, by Rosemary Tonks

From the first page of this clever, fishy little novel, our narrator, Sophie, is the kind of woman whose laughter is a weapon. She could scare off an assailant with one well-timed whack of her tongue. Originally published in 1972, “The Halt During the Chase” is the second Rosemary Tonks novel to be reissued by New Directions in as many years, bringing a new audience to her charming and imperfect heroines, who are all voice, half poetry and half snarl.