Histria Books is pleased to announce the release of Firebrands: A Sizzling Gilded Age–Style Tale of Morals Versus Money by Vicky Oliver. This novel is published by Histria Fiction, an imprint of Histria Books dedicated to outstanding original works of fiction.
In 1908 Manhattan, suffragist Helena James is fighting for the vote while trying to understand the man her sister plans to marry. Firebrands puts her in a city where political speeches share the streets with labor protests, factory workers face locked doors, and powerful men keep watch on anyone who challenges them.
Rather than treating activism as a series of stirring speeches, the novel stays with the less glamorous decisions: how to get a march onto the streets, win over a reluctant business owner, or decide which women the movement will help first. Helena is outspoken, but she is not always certain she is right, particularly when her principles collide with her sister’s hopes. The book also asks who gets protected by a campaign for women’s rights and who is asked to wait. At a moment when public causes can be flattened into slogans, Firebrands looks closely at the choices and relationships that make change possible.
Praise for Firebrands:
In Vicky Oliver’s Firebrands, Gilded Age high society and downtown grit mix in this electric novel about sisterhood, activism, and love. — Luis Jaramillo, Author, The Witches of El Paso, and the award-winning short story collection, The Doctor’s Wife
Against a backdrop of old New York, Firebrands not only faithfully renders a city steeped in its time period, but asks us to consider how much has actually changed—about the patriarchy, about the labor movement—and whether or not we are as far from the past as we would perhaps like to believe. — A.E. Osworth, Author, Awakened, a USA Today Bestseller, and We are Watching Eliza Bright
Vicky Oliver is the author of six nonfiction books on careers, including 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions, which has sold nearly 100,000 copies. She has also published 15 personal essays, serves as nonfiction editor and an art editor at LIT magazine, and co-hosts the Resilient Women podcast. A Brown University graduate, she earned an MFA in fiction from the New School in 2022. Her novel Firebrands (Histria Books, 2026) was a finalist for historical fiction in the 2025 Writers’ League of Texas awards and the 2024 Killer Nashville Claymore Awards. Both sides of her family had ancestors living in Manhattan during the period in which the novel is set.
