The Goethe Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Late Historical (Post 1750s) Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, David Calloway’s book, If Someday Comes will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Goethe contest page year ’round!

The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!

The 2023 Goethe Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Goethe Winners!

Lisa Voelker – The Spoon

The Spoon is historical fiction based on the personal anecdotes of survivors of what we now know as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. At the heart of The Spoon is the true story of two people incongruously brought together during the maelstrom of this historic event; a story that is embodied in one small heirloom and remembered and shared through the generations when the family gathers each year for Christmas.

From Chanticleer:

Lisa Voelker’s historical fiction novel, The Spoon, takes us back to the 1950s in Hungary during the daring student uprising, and attempted revolution,. The author weaves historical facts with fiction in the form of family lore that has been handed down for generations.

We follow scores of people whose lives intersected during this uprising of 1956. The revolution was, at its inception, a time of joyous upheaval, but in less than two weeks became one of devastating dissolution. People fled Hungary by the thousands, but not before giving the Soviet Union a taste of their discontent.

Voelker introduces Rebeka, a member of the Varga family with old ties to the bourgeoisie, who lived a life of privilege on a farm. She is contrasted by Peter, a member of the Turea family who attends Budapest Technical University, where students began demonstrating against the Hungarian Government that was under Soviet control.

Read more here!

Find it Locally and on Amazon

Robert W Smith – A Long Way From Clare

Conor Dolan, a young Irishman, travels to Chicago in 1903 to visit his older brother; instead, he finds a mystery. His journey sparks a quest to peel away secrets and rediscover a dead sibling he idolized but never really knew as he strives to learn the true meaning of brotherhood.

His search reveals an Irish Republican plot to assassinate a visiting British royal. In the process, he is drawn into an alliance with two women: a mesmerizing Jewish widow and a struggling young Irishwoman. Each teaches Conor existential truths of life and love in her own way.

But the brother he finds may not be the brother he remembers. A Long Way from Clare is a story of Chicago’s early twentieth century immigrants and one man’s struggle with both bigotry and justice in an unforgiving city where no good deed goes unpunished.

From Chanticleer:

Twenty-four-year-old Conor Dolan had intended to surprise his older brother and catch up after years apart. However, what he finds when he arrives in Chicago will spark a harrowing mystery, in A Long Way from Clare by Robert W. Smith.

Kevin, a beat cop in twentieth-century Chicago’s worst neighborhood, was found six weeks before Conor’s visit, in what the police have dubbed a suicide. However, Conor has his doubts. Each time he asks people about Kevin, he is met with resistance and denial. When Conor speaks with Detective Flynn, the man assigned to Kevin’s case, his suspicions become certainties. Flynn’s bizarre behavior, the minimal effort on the police’s part to investigate, and the men following Conor at every turn convince him to stay in Chicago rather than return to his home in Springfield.

Conor’s determination to find answers to Kevin’s death lead him in a dangerous dance with darkness amidst the shadows of Chicago’s underworld.

Read more here!

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Mitzi Zilka – Water Fire Steam

The year is 1884. Rolla Alan Jones, an ambitious dreamer fresh out of an East Coast engineering school, is commissioned to design and build the first water system in Spokane Falls, Washington, a booming town of twenty-thousand. He is everyone’s golden boy for five years until the city burns down on August 4, 1889. The once-celebrated engineer is scapegoated for the catastrophe alleging his system yielded inadequate water pressure. Asked to resign, betrayed by his friends, shunned by the community, and abandoned by his pregnant wife and three-year-old son, Rolla must find the strength to reinvent himself or return to New York as an abject failure. Based on a true story, Water Fire Steam is a story of forgiveness and redemption for anyone who has ever had to claw their way back from an unwarranted accusation.

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Susanne Dunlap – The Adored One

Lillian Lorraine was a naive 15-year-old chorine on Broadway when she attracted the notice of the notorious 41-year-old Florenz Ziegfeld. Accustomed to getting what he wanted, Ziegfeld took Lillian under his wing and into his arms, giving her coveted numbers in the Ziegfeld Follies and taking control of her career. But Lillian’s rebellious spirit chafed against him, refusing to play according to his rules, and nearly destroying her own career in the process. The Adored One follows her through rise and fall after rise and fall as she comes of age in a world where her youthful beauty was an asset-and a liability.

From Chanticleer:

Step into the glittering world of fame and betrayal in Susanne Dunlap’s The Adored One. At just four years old, Leleanne de Jacques, aka Lillian Lorraine, began her acting career. After fleeing an abusive husband in San Francisco, Mary Anne, Lillian’s mother, moves to Philadelphia, seeing her daughter’s talent as their potential meal ticket.

Soon after arriving in Philadelphia and changing her daughter’s name, Mary Anne relocates them both again to New York, where she puts Lillian in front of artists who see her potential for print ads. Lillian soon meets Fred McKay, her first talent agent, and she begins performing in Lee Shubert productions.

When Florenz Ziegfeld sees Lillian onstage, he knows he must have her, both in his productions and his bed. At only sixteen, Lillian signs with Broadway’s biggest producer. She begins to spiral soon after. Drinking and partying become a staple in Lillian’s life, and she is soon keeping more secrets than her young heart can handle. Florenz’s obsession, Mary Anne’s domineering, and Lillian’s own need for approval lead her down a dangerous and lonely path. Losing every friend she ever makes as well as a part of herself, Lillian wonders if the prize of fame is really worth the cost.

Read more here!

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Linda Ulleseit – The River Remembers

Samantha Lockwood, Day Sets, and Harriet Robinson come to Fort Snelling from very different backgrounds. It’s 1835 and the world is changing, fast, and they are all struggling to keep up. After she refuses another suitor he’s chosen for her, Samantha’s father banishes her to live in the territory with her brother. He, too, tries to take over her marriage plans—but she is determined to find her own husband, even when her choices go awry.

Day Sets demands that her white husband create a school to educate their daughter, supporting her father’s belief that his people must learn the ways of the white man in order to ensure the tribe’s future. Until events prove her father wrong. Harriet’s life in the territory is more like that of a free person than anywhere she’s lived. She even falls in love with Dred Scott and dreams of a life with him. But they are both enslaved, and she keeps being reminded of how little control she has over her own fate. As their cultures collide, each of these three women must find a way to direct her own future and leave a legacy for her children.

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Nicole Evelina – Catherine’s Mercy

Based on a true story, Catherine’s Mercy brings to life Irish reformer and Sisters of Mercy founder Catherine McAuley.

In 1824, Catherine, a Catholic spinster of 44, unexpectantly inherits millions. However, she doesn’t use it to climb the social ladder or snare a husband; she uses it to fulfill a lifelong dream of building a refuge for the poor and sick of Dublin, Ireland. That an unmarried woman would dare propose such a thing is so scandalous, even her own brother calls it “Kitty’s Folly.” Society turns against her. The Church tries to take over. Catherine must defend her choices or lose not only her inheritance, but her reputation and life’s calling.

One of the first women who seeks Catherine’s help is Margaret, a maid in the house of Lord Montague, the loudest of Catherine’s detractors. Daring to protect herself from his advances and rebel against his maxim of total obedience, Margaret is forced to flee for her life. She desperately approaches Catherine for help, setting off a series of events that haunt Catherine all her days and prompt a rule that holds today, in the real-life Sisters of Mercy.

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William Maz – The Bucharest Legacy: The Rise of the Oligarchs

The CIA is rocked to its core when a KGB defector divulges that there is a KGB mole inside the Agency. They learn that the mole’s handler is a KGB agent known as Boris. CIA analyst Bill Hefflin recognizes that name—Boris is the code name of Hefflin’s longtime KGB asset. If the defector is correct, Hefflin realizes Boris must be a triple agent, and his supposed mole has been passing false intel to Hefflin and the CIA. What’s more, this makes Hefflin the prime suspect as the KGB mole inside the Agency.

Hefflin is given a chance to prove his innocence by returning to his city of birth, Bucharest, Romania, to find Boris and track down the identity of the mole. It’s been three years since the bloody revolution, and what he finds is a cauldron of spies, crooked politicians, and a country controlled by the underground and the new oligarchs, all of whom want to find Boris. But Hefflin has a secret that no one else knows—Boris has been dead for over a year.

Find it Locally or on Amazon

Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Goethe First Place Winners!

You can see our Hall of Fame on the Goethe Grand Prize Winners, including David Calloway’s incredible book If Someday Comes here.

Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Goethe Awards!

Got a great Historical Fiction Story?

The 2024 Goethe Book Awards are open through the end of June!

The Goethe Hall of Fame

Celebrating the Best Late Historical Fiction with the Goethe Awards!

**Send Us Your Story by the end of July!**

One of our many Historical Fiction Categories, Named after German Writer, Scientist and Playwright Johan Wolfgang Van Goethe (1749-1832), Considered to be one of the most Influential and Greatest Writers of the German Language.

This Award Division covers anything after 1750, so there can be anything from The American Revolution, to the 1930s.

For our other Historical Fiction Divisions, See the Chaucer Award for Pre-1750, Hemingway for 20th Century Wartime and Laramie for Western and Americana

Let’s take a look at some of our Grand Prize Winners and Discover your next great read!

If Someday Comes
By David Calloway

This is the true story of my Great-Grandfather George Calloway, a slave in Cleveland, Tennessee, before and during the Civil War. It is written as historical fiction, based on George’s life, and stories I heard growing up. It is a tale of determination, perseverance, and achievement.

George protected his family through war, famine, and plague; he risked his life repeatedly to protect his owner’s family, and thus his own wife and children.

More fact than fiction, George’s story has also been my journey, grappling with the humiliation of slavery; sorting through the many myths and false modern-day narratives, and discovering a long lost relative, I found that to understand America, you must first understand the Civil War. George was then, and remains, a hero of our family.

• Winner, the 2023 Phillis Wheatley Historical Fiction Prize
• Grand Prize Winner, 2023 Goethe award for Historical Fiction
• Winner, The 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards African American Fiction Award
• Finalist, the 2023 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal
• 5 Stars Award, Reader’s Favorite 2023

A Chanticleer Review is forthcoming! In the meantime, visit David Calloway’s website here!

After The Rising & Before The Fall
By Orna Ross

Award-winning Irish author Orna Ross has created a volume comprising the first two novels of The Irish Trilogy, drawing from her Irish birth and upbringing for a special grasp of the country’s history, how its wars and political strivings have affected its people directly, personally, over multiple generations.

Her two books take on a span of time rooted in the early 1920s and delve deeply into the interlocking fate of the extended family and ancestry of Jo Devereux. Jo, the book’s central narrator, leaves Ireland in her twenties, only returning in her forties in 1995 when she learns that her mother is near death.

The journey back will draw her into the family’s complex relationships, and reacquaint her with Rory, her former, and perhaps only, true love.

Read More Here

The Aloha Spirit
By Linda Ulleseit

In Linda Ulleseit’s novel The Aloha Spirit, we meet the plucky heroine, Dolores, as her father leaves her.

“Dolores’s father deemed her useless when she was seven. Neither he nor her older brother, Pablo, ever said that, but every detail of their leaving told her so. Papa had tried to explain the Hawaiian custom of hānai to her. All she understood was the giving away, leaving her to live with a family not her own.”

Her story starts in 1922; the place, multi-ethnic, multilingual Hawaii. Papa, a sugar cane cutter from Spain who worked in Hawaii, decides to take his son Pablo with him to seek his fortune in California. His wife died five years earlier. He leaves 7-year-old Dolores with a large family on Oahu in an arrangement called hānai, an informal adoption. Dolores doesn’t know the family well. She feels abandoned, with no idea when or if her father will send for her or return.

Read More Here

Peccadillo At The Palace: An Annie Oakley Mystery
By Kari Bovee

Kari Bovée’s Peccadillo at the Palace, the second book in the Annie Oakley Mystery series, is a historical, mystery thriller extraordinaire. Fans of both genres will thrill at Bovée’s complex plot that keeps us guessing from its action-packed beginning to the satisfying reveal at the end.

The book opens with the Honorable Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show to England on a voyage to perform for Queen Victoria. They are not on the high seas long, when Annie’s beloved horse, Buck, jumps overboard. Her husband and the Queen’s loyal servant, Mr. Bhakta, jump in to save the horse, or was Mr. Bhakta already dead before he reached the water? Thus, begins the mystery of who killed Mr. Bhakta, leaving all to wonder, is the Queen safe?

Someone wanted the Queen’s man dead, and he is, but was it a matter of racism, intrigue, or an accident? Annie’s search for clues points her in several directions, but is it the doctor, or the woman dressed in rags with the posh accent, or the crass American businessman and his floozy wife? All have motive.  Even Annie’s husband has motive with his Irish background and ties to the Fenians and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Read More Here

The Lost Years of Billy Battles
By Ronald E. Yates

(2018 Overall Grand Prize Winner)

For those not familiar with the series, Yates presents his books as works of “faction,” a story “based in part on fact” but also “augmented by narrative fiction.” The protagonist, William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, born in Kansas in 1860, lives a full 100 years and takes part in some of the most significant events of his time. He encounters key figures of the day (Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, President Wilson, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, among others), gives us their backstories, and quietly appraises them.

Yates, a journalist with a keen eye for nuance and subtlety, has created a protagonist with superb critical thinking skills. William, a journalist, and occasional soldier examines people and transactions from every angle. Just as at ease in a Kansas saloon as he is at the captain’s table on a grand ocean liner on the Pacific, Billy Battles is also ruthlessly honest about his shortcomings and feels tremendous guilt when he acts impulsively or inadvertently causes harm to others. Yates has crafted a fully human character who is easy to admire, perhaps because he is admirably cognizant of his own flaws.

Read More Here

Reviewer’s Note:

I’ve begun few books as eagerly as I did this one. Having read the first two volumes of Ronald E. Yates’ extraordinary trilogy, Finding Billy Battles, I couldn’t wait to continue his story in the final volume, The Lost Years of Billy Battles. The third installment lived up to the exceedingly high standard set in the first two volumes. Billy Battles is as dear and fascinating a literary friend as I have ever encountered. I learned much about American and international history, and you will too if you read any or all of the books. Each is an independent work, but if read in relation to the others, the reader experiences that all too rare sense of complete transport to another world, one fully realized in these pages because the storytelling is so skillful and thoroughly captivating. Trust me; you’ll want to read all three volumes.

Thank you for celebrating our Goethe Hall of Fame Winners with us!

Remember to add your next reads to your StoryGraph or Goodreads account! Now that you’re set on your next five reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Journey Winners is to submit today! 

Those who submit and advance will have the chance to win the Overall Grand Prize of the CIBAs and $1000!

Are you a Chanticleer Author who has some good news to share? Let us know! We’re always looking for a reason to crow about Chanticleerians! Here are some recent achievements from our authors:

• Journey Grand Prize Winner Mark Berridge featured on TedX Brisbane!
• USA Today Best-Selling Author Nicole Evelina Published Nellie Bly Grand Prize Winning Book 
• CIBA Overall Grand Prize Winner Rebecca Dwight Bruff’s novel Trouble the Water brought to stage

Reach out with your news to info@ChantiReviews.com

If you have a great Post 1750 Historical Fiction Story, submit it to us before the end of July to enter the 2024 CIBAs!