Carla Jean Whitley

Elm Howells led a charmed life. As a member of the Tinsley family, she found use for her art history degree through employment at the family’s prestigious New York City auction house. She also found joy outside of work: Elm and her husband, Colin, were the parents of son Ronan and daughter Moira. But her life was forever changed during a 2004 vacation to Thailand, when Ronan was swept away by a tsunami. In the years since, his death has colored everything in Elm’s life, including the decisions she makes at work.

Meanwhile, Spanish-born painter Gabriel Connois is trying to make a name for himself in Paris’ art scene. His adopted last name is already a success, thanks to his distant ancestor Marcel Connois. Gabriel has taken steps to prove his talent as well: He financed his Parisian art education by forging a Connois painting that belonged to his mother so he could replace it, and then sell the original. When an art dealer approaches Gabriel to paint a number of works “in the style of” famed artists, the money and the opportunity are too good to pass up.

Elm is desperate to reduce the pain caused by her son’s death. Gabriel is determined to get his shot at artistic success, no matter the cost. In Allison Amend’s A Nearly Perfect Copy, the lives of these art connoisseurs run along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, paths as Elm and Gabriel go to extremes in their work and personal lives.

Amend’s talent is on full display as these smart, complex narratives dance around each other, each capturing the reader’s imagination without ever detracting from the other story. Although she’s received critical acclaim for her work in a number of literary publications and for her historical novel, Stations West, this finely rendered portrait of two lives should introduce Amend to a wider audience.

Tia, Caroline and Juliette live in various neighborhoods and suburbs of Boston, but their worlds are farther apart than the miles would suggest. Tia works every day to rise above the hardscrabble circumstances of her youth. She’s a 20-something orphan, a single woman who is looking for a person to call her own.

Caroline is a pathologist who is deeply in love with both her work and her husband. She struggles, though, to feel at home in their sprawling, sterile McMansion and in her role as an adoptive mother to the couple’s daughter, Savannah.

Juliette seems to have it all: a thriving business, two smart sons and an attractive, loving husband. And then she stumbles upon a secret that her husband, Nathan, has hidden for years—one that connects these three very different women in surprising ways.

In The Comfort of Lies, the latest effort by best-selling author Randy Susan Meyers (The Murderer’s Daughters), hiding the truth proves no comfort at all. Meyers offers plenty of insight into each woman’s psyche as they struggle to untangle the web that has brought them together. By facing the realities of their lives and relationships, Tia, Juliette and Caroline come to terms with their challenges. Meyers’ carefully told story is a satisfying examination of the imperfect paths we all walk.

The Rovaniemis are an unusual family. That’s obvious at first glance; modern-day American families rarely include nine children. But the family’s membership in an incredibly conservative branch of the Lutheran church makes it clear that they’re to be in the world, but not of it. They aren’t allowed to listen to music with a beat, though the children each play orchestral instruments. Dancing is forbidden. Movies are off limits.

So the children walk a fine line as they try to fit in at school and at work while respecting their church’s rules—or, in the case of three of the Rovaniemis, as they attempt to leave the church’s influence behind. The eldest, Brita, follows in the family’s footsteps as she gives birth to seven children. Others rebel as they leave for college, but later settle into a church-approved life. Paula deals with the difficulty of being the awkward daughter among beauties. The younger children face the burden of their older siblings’ choices, and sometimes find themselves lost in a family of so many.

A compelling first novel explores how extreme faith is challenged by the modern world.

In We Sinners, author Hanna Pylväinen’s debut novel, a different, distinctive Rovaniemi voice takes the lead in each chapter, creating a novel that reads almost like a series of connected short stories. These powerful vignettes reveal the faith’s influence on the family’s relationships. Pylväinen’s own background—she grew up in, and left, just such a church—lends an expert voice to each character’s compelling perspective. The children who leave the church realize that freedom comes at a price, and those who remain face the constraints their faith places on relationships. But despite the family’s differing views on faith and life, they are brought together through shared blood and experience.

Pylväinen’s straightforward but gripping storytelling and fully developed characters make it clear that this new voice in literature is one to watch.

Sunny Mann seems to lead a perfect life. She's married to her childhood sweetheart, who has become wealthy thanks to immense success in his field. But his field is robotics, and sometimes Maxon has trouble distinguishing his human emotions from a robot's machinations. Maxon knows he loves, regrets and forgives, but he finds it difficult to understand why he is different from his beloved robots. 

And Sunny has trouble accepting that. She's playing the role of the perfect housewife, caring for the couple's autistic son, Bubber, while putting on her best smile for their wealthy neighbors, even while Maxon is on a mission to populate the moon with the robots he's constructed. Everything looks Stepford-perfect—that is, until Sunny's in a car wreck and her perfectly coifed blonde 'do flies off, revealing her completely bald head. 

It's just one of many idiosyncratic twists in Shine Shine Shine, an amusing and unpredictable novel from book doctor Lydia Netzer. Netzer has spent her career fixing others' manuscripts, and with this first major publisher effort she proves a creative force in her own right. 

On a rocket bound for the moon, Maxon reckons with his humanity as compared to the perfectly structured machines he adores. But his love for Sunny reminds him that he is, in fact, human. Meanwhile, Sunny is left earthbound, pregnant with the couple's second child and, after the wreck, suddenly determined to unmask herself and reveal her imperfections for all to see. 

As they face challenges without the lifelong support system they've provided each other, Sunny and Maxon must confront the realities of loving flawed beings. Ultimately, Shine Shine Shine is a story about the nature of love—and a lovable, quirky novel from a new voice in fiction. 

Honor Tait was a Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent during the first half of the 20th century, renowned for her incisive journalism but also recognized for her beauty and romantic entanglements (both real and rumored). Tamara Sim has been asked to write a 4,000-word profile of Honor, who’s now nearing 80, for a highbrow magazine. Too bad Tamara is much more comfortable composing catty 200-word captions and snarky lists of celebrity gaffes. One of Honor’s pieces was among the texts Tamara was to study in college; Tamara didn’t finish the reading. 

When Tamara arrives at Honor’s flat for their interview, it’s hate at first sight. The younger writer is 45 minutes late and clearly hasn’t read much of Honor’s work—not even the forthcoming book that’s the impetus for the interview. When Tamara finally gets Honor talking, Tamara spends most of the interview doodling her interpretations, factual or not, of the scene before her.

As the two women craft their current assignments—Tamara’s on Honor, Honor’s coda to her Pulitzer piece—British novelist Annalena McAfee illustrates the contrast between their work. Though Honor is writing about experiences decades in the past, she relies on fact and reporting. Tamara’s ever-changing narrative of her experiences with Honor becomes a different story every time Tamara puts pen to paper.

The Spoiler recounts the interaction between these women, opening with their disastrous first interview and then following both as they process the thoughts and challenges it instigated. Honor reflects on a career gone by, but Tamara worries that she doesn’t have enough information for a lively story after the initial botched conversation. So she crashes a supper with Honor’s closest confidantes, attends a lecture Honor gives (but fails to take notes on the content), spends days outside of Honor’s house and then follows her on excursions across town, seeking a sexy, scandalous angle for her piece.

A journalist herself, McAfee creates a complete picture of the world in which the two writers exist, giving life to the newspaper office where Tamara works four days a week, and detailing every picture and trinket in Honor’s home. And by the time the twists of this story are untangled, Honor’s and Tamara’s lives are inextricably interwoven.