Wannabe detectives and aspiring magicians alike will delight in The Grimoire of Grave Fates, an anthology of 18 interlinked stories penned by such beloved YA authors as Kat Cho, Marieke Nijkamp, Mason Deaver, Darcie Little Badger and Kwame Mbalia.
The compelling Agatha Christie-esque whodunit is set at the Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary, a prestigious school founded by famous “astronomy sorcerer” Galileo Galilei that educates future sorcerers. In recent eras, the academy has adopted a “more global view of magic,” resulting in updated classes, travel to different countries and policies meant to ensure greater diversity and inclusivity.
Unfortunately, this has had no effect on the employment of Septimius Dropwort, a professor of magical history—and a proud, vocal, abusive bigot. It’s not surprising, then, that when he’s found murdered on school grounds, nary a tear is shed. But accusations aplenty arise: Since he has mistreated and alienated pretty much everyone, everyone is therefore a viable suspect.
The book’s writers have created an appealing cast of characters with a range of backgrounds, abilities and personalities, all of whom are preoccupied with fulfilling their magical destinies while attempting to excel in a place that can feel inhospitable.
As The Grimoire of Grave Fates editors Hanna Alkaf (Hamra and the Jungle of Memories) and Margaret Owen (Little Thieves) write in their note to readers, “Some readers may have felt painfully excluded from stories about witches, wizards, and magic schools that could not imagine people like them; some have been deliberately shut out. Above all, we hope that everyone can see themselves somewhere in these pages.”
As the story progresses and the students join forces to find the killer before one of them is blamed, they gradually realize they’re not as alone as they first thought. Delightful details abound: Taya, in the art-based magic program, has a lioness familiar named Ketesl; Maxwell blends math and magic; and Jamie sneezes ice crystals after walking through a ghost. Together, the students home in on the elusive culprit, attempt to evade harm and collectively remind the school that its extraordinary attendees deserve more support—a resonant message of hope for a better future, magical or otherwise.
This YA anthology set at a magical academy offers a resonant message of hope for a better future.
Owls are adorable, alluring and enduringly fascinating. They’ve been featured in everything from ancient cave paintings to the works of Picasso, iconic Tootsie Pop commercials, the Harry Potter series, mythology and poetry.
“What is it about owls that so enthralls us?” asks bestselling author, prolific science writer and passionate bird advocate Jennifer Ackerman (The Genius of Birds, The Bird Way) in the very first line of her wide-ranging and wonderful new book, What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds. She explores this question with her trademark thoroughness and care, leading readers on an in-depth tour through the extraordinary world of owls. Scientists, field researchers, academics and volunteers (aka “citizen scientists”) serve as dedicated guides, as eager as the author to share knowledge and admiration in hopes of inspiring others to protect these special birds.
Ackerman chronicles her travels to places such as the Mission Mountains in Montana; Norfolk Island in Australia; southeastern Brazil; and Waynesboro, Virginia, in chapters covering owls’ evolution, communication, breeding, migration and—of course—wisdom. She visits wildlife centers, peers up at countless trees and tromps through nighttime landscapes with fellow owl lovers to hear about the astonishing things they’ve discovered. There are funny tidbits, too; as one Montana field researcher quipped, “This is not the first time we’ve found a nest when someone had to pee.”
Less quotidian revelations include the thrill of first hearing great horned owlets vocalizing in their eggs and the gratifying achievements of education in Kikinda, Serbia, where hundreds of long-eared owls roost in the town square. (A public awareness campaign transformed superstitious fear into immense hometown pride.) During her reporting, Ackerman also learned about new research indicating that owls are more clever and intentional than previously realized: They have emotions, engage in altruism and play. “We think we know something about them, and then, poof! they dispel our theories, offering up bent or broken rules and unexpected qualities,” she writes.
Ackerman also reminds readers that owls are at risk of extinction, thanks to “human-induced climate change” via deforestation and development, rodenticides, wildfires, et al. What should we do? “Everything in our power,” she writes, to learn about and preserve owl populations around the world. Reading the edifying and immersive What an Owl Knows is an excellent place to start.
Bestselling author and passionate bird advocate Jennifer Ackerman goes around the world to find out why owls so intrigue humans in her wide-ranging and wonderful new book.
The old saying “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” was seemingly coined for Jacintha “Jack” Cross and Gabe Medway, both of whom are even more enamored with their jobs because they get to work with the person they love most. The married couple runs a London penetration testing firm that does extensive security assessments for a range of well-paying clients. Gabe handles the digital aspects and Jack the physical; as she sneaks around supposedly secure buildings in search of vulnerabilities, her husband is the flirtatious and supportive voice in her earpiece.
Alas, not long into bestselling author Ruth Ware’s action-packed thriller Zero Days, everything comes crashing down: After a late-night job, Jack arrives home to discover Gabe has been murdered. Even worse, she is the prime suspect.
Reeling from shock, contending with horror and confusion and highly skeptical of law enforcement, Jack goes on the run. She puts her prodigious skills and hard-won confidence to use as she attempts to solve the crime and identify the real killer. “Solve the next problem,” she tells herself. “And then the next one after that. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until you can’t walk any further.”
Ware humanizes the badass Jack by rendering her vulnerable to injury, self-doubt and exhaustion. There’s London’s vast CCTV system to consider, too, plus the impossibility of knowing who she can trust to help her find shelter, money and information. She’s got her sister, Helena, and Gabe’s oldest friend, Cole, in her corner, but Jack can’t shake her fear and wariness as she moves through the city and plumbs the dark web in search of answers.
In Zero Days, Ware creates escalating tension while immersing readers in Jack’s tumultuous emotions and instinctive decision-making. She layers her story with fascinating details about Jack’s unusual profession while offering an implicit (and clearly well-researched) warning about the vagaries of technology. The book’s focus on the impact of intense grief is balanced by glimmers of hope among the devastation. As Jack reflects, “Gabe’s death had brought me close to the worst of humankind—but there were still good people out there.”
Ruth Ware’s action-packed thriller Zero Days is as much an exploration of grief as it is a warning about the vagaries of technology.
After 18-year-old Roy Matthews was executed for murdering high school seniors Eliza Dunning and Travis Pratt, the small town of Ludlow heaved a massive sigh of relief that evil had been banished from their Kansas community.
But Eliza’s younger sister, Greer, isn’t so sure. She’s long been convinced the case was not as open-and-shut as it seemed, leaving her with a “nagging feeling I’d carried for fourteen years, like a claw in my gut, telling me this wouldn’t be over until every dark secret had been dragged out into daylight.”
As Amy Engel’s multilayered and engrossing I Did It For You opens 14 years later, those feelings surge to the surface when Greer’s father calls to tell her another teenage couple has been killed—in the same way, in the same location, with the same type of weapon.
The police consider it a copycat crime but Greer doesn’t, and she rushes from her Chicago home to Ludlow, eager to assuage her guilt at not pushing harder that awful summer. Could she have prevented this new crime? Will the truth help repair her broken family? Can she unearth the truth before the killer strikes again?
Engel imbues her protagonist with an authentic, contemplative voice. Greer grew up loving Ludlow because of its beauty, “the sound of wind whispering through wheat, the metallic smell of a thunderstorm rolling in fast from the north,” and reveling in the way she felt free to be herself among people she’d known forever. But since Eliza died she’s been adrift, unable to enjoy her life because her sister’s was cut short.
Back in Ludlow, Greer slips into familiar patterns but also makes a surprising new friend: Roy’s older brother, Dean, who joins her quest for truth. This allows Engel, a former criminal defense attorney, to sensitively explore what it’s like to be left behind from the perspective of not only the victim’s family but that of the perpetrator’s, a choice that makes I Did It For You stand out from other hometown mysteries. It’s a tense and immersive novel that considers the delight and darkness of living in a close-knit small town, as well as the ways in which unresolved anger and shame can eat away at a life.
I Did It For You is a tense and immersive mystery that considers the delight and darkness of living in a close-knit small town.
In the five far-ranging, multipart essays that make up her profound, often piercing new book Thin Skin: Essays, Jenn Shapland moves between numerous weighty topics—turning a curious eye upon everything from capitalism to nuclear power to climate change to personal identity—and draws connections only to tear them apart in her exploration of “the idea of our utter physical enmeshment with every other being on the planet.”
“To dig in the earth disturbs and destroys, but it also unearths, aerates,” Shapland writes. “To what extent is my own research a form of extractivism, a digging and unearthing that is painful to me, to the people I interview, to the people I tell about what I learn, to you?”
Despite this pain, Shapland dons a tall stack of writerly hats—historian, memoirist, naturist, harbinger—and sets what she discovers against the backdrop of her own life, as in her critically acclaimed My Autobiography of Carson McCullers. Sometimes there is affirmation of her lived experiences; more often, such personal application raises additional questions about what she and we have been taught to be correct, true, acceptable.
In the titular “Thin Skin,” Shapland shares that a dermatological condition requires her to “build up my skin each day to face the world,” but New Mexico, where she lives with her partner, Chelsea, and their cats, has caused her sensitivities to flare. No wonder: Multiple fascinating, devastating interviews discuss Los Alamos National Laboratory and the poisonous radioactive waste that now lurks within the state’s beautiful landscape. And in “The Toomuchness,” she examines her own culpability in perpetuating capitalism, gazing at her jampacked closet and its resident moths as she considers, “Why is private property, accumulation, the only way to see our relationship with the world?”
Shapland interrogates other aspects of the personal and the political throughout, such as in “The Meaning of Life,” where she asks why having children is still a societal default, pointing out that “children are part of the system that entrenches us in capitalist striving and labor production and endless competition.” As in all of her Thin Skin essays, Shapland challenges readers to broaden their perspective and perhaps even join her in being thin-skinned, in order “to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice.”
In her profound, often piercing new book Thin Skin, Jenn Shapland challenges readers to broaden their perspective and perhaps even join her in being just a little bit more sensitive.
It’s been several years since Guinevere “Nev” Tallow’s mother disappeared, and their life has since been dominated by their father’s destructive habits—trying numerous get-rich-quick schemes and imploring Nev to pay off the loan sharks that storm into their apartment and fill the air with anger and threats.
By the start of bestselling graphic novelist Ethan M. Aldridge’s first prose novel Deephaven, Nev has decided they’ll no longer be dragged down by a selfish and uninterested parent. Instead, they’ll plunge into the unknown, thanks to a full scholarship offered by the prestigious Deephaven Academy. For Nev, their first day going to Deephaven provides a deeply meaningful opportunity to “be the person they needed to be . . . to finally feel comfortable in their own skin, a chance to start over.”
That’s no small feat: Nev tends to be shy, more an observer than a joiner (“They really, really, weren’t good at conversations”). But they’re determined to find a home in this gothic manse.
As befits an eerie dark academia tale, the academy is rife with dark hallways, rooftop gargoyles and a sense of foreboding that overlays the hustle and bustle of a new school year. The principal and prefects are polite but seem to be hiding something. For example, Nev wonders, why is the east wing closed for repairs when there’s no structural damage to be seen? And if the wing is indeed empty, why is a scratching sound coming from behind its walls?
Nev likes to wear a big green coat, its many pockets filled with components they use to make intricate mechanical toys. Solving puzzles is second nature, and they resolve to use their “mechanical mind and magpie instincts” to figure out—with the help of new friend Danny—what’s really going on at the school. It’s a scary proposition, and Aldridge’s twisty narrative and spine-chilling illustrations heighten the suspense of Nev’s daring mission in this engaging page-turner of a series kickoff. Spooky yet heartfelt, Deephaven is sure to delight fans of Netflix’s “Wednesday” and anyone who likes a cleverly conceived gothic tale featuring creepy creatures and found family.
Ethan M. Aldridge’s twisty narrative and spine-chilling illustrations heighten the suspense of Nev’s daring mission in this engaging page-turner of a series kickoff.
Julia Kelly has written numerous international bestsellers in the realms of contemporary and historical romance as well as historical fiction (The Last Dance of the Debutante). Now, she’s setting her writerly sights on historical mystery with the new Parisian Orphan series, set in London during the Blitz.
In the meticulously researched, murder-and-intrigue-laden A Traitor in Whitehall, Kelly turns the locked-room trope up a notch by beckoning readers deep underground to the Churchill War Rooms (CWR), a command center established by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It was constructed to be safe from bombs and prying enemy eyes, cloaked in concrete and characterized by tight security measures—but although every employee is extensively vetted, the CWR is not immune to the darkest human impulses.
Evelyne Redfern learns this the hard way in the most horrifying first week at work ever. After a patriotic-yet-unchallenging stint at a munitions factory, she is hired for the CWR typing pool by an old family friend, Mr. Fletcher, who knew Evelyne’s parents, French society page regular Genevieve and louche British adventurer (as well as neglectful parent) Sir Reginal Redfern. Their bitter and highly publicized divorce when Evelyne was a child earned her the media nickname “The Parisian Orphan.”
Now in her 20s, Evelyne has been enjoying the relative anonymity of London but, after months of boredom at her factory job, is ready to make a more meaningful contribution to the war effort. She’s keeping an eye out for anything unusual at the CWR, per Mr. Fletcher’s instructions. Certainly, stumbling across the body of a recently murdered co-worker fits the bill. It’s a shocking yet fortuitous discovery: Since age 16, Evelyne has been a constant reader of mystery novels, and she thinks, “having adjusted to the reality of there being a dead body in my presence, I had been drawn to investigate.”
A minister’s aide named David Poole joins Evelyne’s crime-solving efforts; he’s been on the hunt for a mole, and it’s likely the murder is linked with treason. Kelly emphasizes the duo’s relentless search for the killer via tense, realistic interrogations and nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse sequences through underground hallways and the streets of London. A cast of opinionated side characters and a wealth of fascinating historical details add to the fun in this engaging, atmospheric series kickoff.
A murder takes place in Winston Churchill’s secret war rooms in Julia Kelly’s engaging, atmospheric A Traitor in Whitehall.
Leonie Swann’s darkly humorous cozy mystery The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp, translated from the German by Amy Bojang, features a quirky cast of older characters who live together in Sunset Hall on the outskirts of a British village called Duck End.
The residents also share space with a free-range tortoise named Hettie who, in the book’s attention-grabbing first chapter, discovers the body of housemate Lilith in the garden shed—a death the group has not yet reported to the authorities.
Understandably, it’s a huge relief when the police come knocking and it’s not Lilith they’re concerned with, but rather their neighbor Mildred, found dead on her terrace from a gunshot. The group decides their neighbor’s murder presents an opportunity: They’ll simply figure out who killed her and attribute Lilith’s death to the murderer as well. They’ve got the qualifications, as several of them have done sleuthing work in the past, and they’ve got the time. Easy peasy!
Carrying out their plan is more difficult than anticipated, not least because Agnes, a cranky force of nature who often leads the group, has been feeling and acting off lately. Her memories are jumbled, her perceptions a bit askew and she’s been fainting quite often, making it difficult to inspire confidence while withstanding police questioning. There’s plenty of wariness among the other residents, too; after all, they don’t know each other that well, and why does the house gun keep going missing, anyway?
As tensions mount and the police grow increasingly suspicious of Sunset Hall, Swann conveys with wit and empathy the push-pull of wanting to achieve things but feeling hobbled by age, infirmity or self-doubt. As in her first novel, 2007’s Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, Swann assembles an unusual group of intrepid detectives and manages to find the fun among the fear in an engaging and offbeat tale of murder and occasional mayhem.
Leonie Swann gives the “quirky older sleuths” trope a jolt of black comedy in The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp.
If you’re a Maria Bamford fan, you’ve probably already ordered your copy of her hilarious, devastating, fascinating new memoir Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere. If you aren’t yet clued into her comedic stylings, you might look at the wide-eyed, beautiful woman on the cover and think, “What do I know her from?”
The answer is: loads of things, from stand-up specials to “Arrested Development” to “Lady Dynamite” to iconic Target commercials (or perhaps you’ve heard her in “Adventure Time” and “Big Mouth”). She’s an accomplished comedian who’s brought joy to countless people—and she also has from mental illness, having battled debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders and bipolar disorder since childhood.
The author is a winsome and unapologetic tour guide through her life thus far, musing on her “splintered, discomfiting need to reveal all my thoughts and flaws—which is either radical honesty or narcissistic showboating” and sharing her hope that “if I can be grandstandingly open about something taboo, maybe someone else might feel a little less isolated by knowing my own sad story (and have a few laughs)?” Bamford reflects on the groups she’s joined in search of achievement, belonging and healing, including Suzuki Violin, Overeaters Anonymous and Debtors Anonymous. She’s also a self-taught expert in the work of Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) and Richard Simmons (Richard Simmons’ Never-Say-Diet Book).
Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult is the definition of kaleidoscopic: In addition to loopy riffs, career insights and beautifully sad recollections of her mother’s illness and death, there are painfully honest chapters about the time period in which Bamford’s “mind/body had become a vibrating razor blade of electric psychic pain.” The resulting psychiatric hospitalizations were often grueling, but ultimately offered a hopeful path forward.
The importance of getting such help is central to Bamford’s story and at the heart of her hopes for readers. She writes that, rather than a book about triumphing over obstacles, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult is more of a “series of emotional sudoku puzzles . . . I haven’t figured it out.” And no matter where readers are on their own puzzle-solving journeys, she wants them to internalize something the late Jonathan Winters said to her after her first hospitalization: “You just keep going, kid.”
Celebrated comedian Maria Bamford is a winsome and unapologetic tour guide through her own life, reflecting on her search for achievement, belonging and healing.
18-year-old Effy Sayre has read the late Emrys Myrddin’s books “so many times that the logic of his world was layered over hers, like glossy tracing paper on top of the original.” Emrys is the country of Llyr’s most beloved author, and his novel Angharad has long served as a balm for Effy’s troubled soul and a source of support on her darkest days.
As Ava Reid’s darkly dramatic A Study in Drowning opens, readers are swiftly drawn into Effy’s miserable life in her first year at Llyr University. Because its literature college doesn’t admit women, she’s a reluctant architecture student adrift in a sea of snide, unfriendly men. Meanwhile, nightmarish visions of the Fairy King that have plagued her since childhood exacerbate her anxiety.
A ray of hope arrives when Myrddin’s family begins searching for someone to redesign their estate, Hiraeth Manor. This feels like fate to Effy—especially when she wins the competition to secure this daunting project. Grateful for the escape, she sets off for Myrddin’s cliffside hometown, the Bay of Nine Bells.
Thanks to Reid’s knack for atmospheric, immersive writing—as seen in her adult fantasy novels, The Wolf and the Woodsman and Juniper & Thorn—humidity seems to rise from the page as Effy strives to comprehend her strange new reality. Not only is Hiraeth Manor mildew-ridden and on the verge of crumbling into the sea, but another Llyr University student is on-site: the self-important Preston Heloury, who is ostensibly there for an archival task—but asks Effy to join his true mission to debunk Myrddin’s authorship of Angharad.
Readers will delight in the scholars’ slow-burn attraction as they delve into Myrddin’s complicated legacy. Reid uses the characters’ clashing worldviews to prompt readers to consider the ways in which power structures affect what we learn and believe. A Study in Drowning is at once an absorbing gothic mystery and an intriguing social commentary set in a richly detailed world where history and magic collide.
A Study in Drowning is at once an absorbing gothic mystery and an intriguing social commentary set in a richly detailed world where history and magic collide.
Louise Hare’s second Canary Club Mystery, Harlem After Midnight, begins with tragedy: A policeman gazes down at a grievously injured young woman lying on the ground in front of a three-story apartment building. Did she fall from the topmost window, or was she pushed?
Hare rewinds her story to the days leading up to this disturbing discovery, picking up where her series’ first installment, Miss Aldridge Regrets, left off. Lena Aldridge, a 26-year-old singer from London, is still reeling from her voyage on the RMS Queen Mary. It started with excited anticipation for a role on Broadway and ended in despair after a series of murders, the evaporation of her job opportunity and the revelation that a fellow passenger was in fact her New York City-based birth mother, the wealthy Eliza Abernathy.
Lena is relieved and grateful when Will Goodman, a handsome musician she met on the ship, suggests she stay with his friends in Harlem. Married couple Claudette and Louis Linfield are eager to get to know the first woman Will’s brought around in years. Will’s half sister, Bel Bennett, is curious, too, but her mix of effusive charm and snide duplicity leaves Lena feeling unmoored.
While wondering whether she and Will will have a future together and the music careers they desire, Lena also resolves to learn more about her beloved late father, Alfie, a pianist who lived in New York some 30 years ago. Harlem After Midnight’s timeline moves between 1936 and 1908 as Hare juggles the compellingly conceived perspectives of Lena, Alfie and his sister, Jessie, whom Lena has never met. Will she find out why Alfie left New York for London, track down her aunt and perhaps even connect with her mother before she’s due to board the Queen Mary once again? And who is the unfortunate young woman from the beginning of the book, and what does her fate have to do with Lena’s quest?
Through Lena’s eyes, Hare conveys the glory of the Harlem Renaissance, shines a light on New York’s painful history of segregation and emphasizes the value of learning about—and from—those who came before us. The resonance of family history and the dangerous potency of long-held secrets collide as Lena reckons with her past and strives to create a new path forward.
Louise Hare gives readers a glorious tour of 1930s New York City in her second Canary Club mystery, Harlem After Midnight.
Nowadays, it’s common to see advertisements for all manner of sleep-related products, from sleep trackers to CPAP machines to sunrise alarm clocks. Similarly, it’s not unusual for people to enthusiastically discuss sleep hygiene, circadian rhythms or owl vs. lark tendencies. Self-awareness is a beautiful thing, but how did we get here? After all, as Discover magazine contributor Kenneth Miller reveals in his engrossing Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep, “Just a century ago, only a handful of scientists studied sleep. . . . Most saw slumber as a nonevent,” something that “could be safely minimized or eliminated altogether.”
But there were outliers, Miller explains, academics who knew sleep was not merely a pause but rather the precious foundation of our waking hours. In Mapping the Darkness, the author has crafted linked biographies of four groundbreaking scientists—Nathan Kleitman, who in the 1920s incited a cascade of scholarly interest in sleep; Eugene Aserinksy, a student of Kleitman’s; William Dement, Kleitman’s mentee; and Mary Carskadon, who started as Dement’s lab assistant—and the ways in which their discoveries resulted in our present-day understanding of sleep.
In 1938, Kleitman and colleagues lived in a Kentucky cave for a month to examine sleep cycles. Over 20 years later, in the 1960s, Dement set up a cat-filled lab in a Quonset hut near Stanford University to focus on REM sleep. The fruits of these experiments and the research they subsequently inspired were helpful in analyzing root causes of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle tragedy (sleep deprivation was a contributing factor) and understanding teenagers’ need for more sleep than their younger counterparts.
Among many other topics, Miller also chronicles research into the impact of shift work on sleep, treatments for sleep apnea and important sleep-related studies Carskadon is conducting today. But while knowledge is certainly power, he cautions that we’re still experiencing “society’s ongoing, and ever-escalating, assault on sleep” due to digital devices, poor work habits and more. The impressive work of reportage that is Mapping the Darkness is an impassioned reminder to appreciate the researchers whose work has transformed our slumber—and do our best to give sleep the respect and attention it deserves.
Kenneth Miller’s Mapping the Darkness is a portrait of four groundbreaking scientists and how their discoveries impacted our understanding of sleep.
When Evelyne Redfern is selected for a position in Winston Churchill’s underground cabinet war rooms, typical new job nervousness is quickly replaced by horror when a colleague is murdered. Soon, the clever and charismatic Evelyne finds herself teaming up with handsome and cagey minister’s aide David Poole in an effort to solve the murder and root out treason amid the ranks—even as bombs fall overhead.
Congratulations on kicking off a new series! Will you introduce us to Evelyne Redfern? The daughter of a famous English adventurer and a glamorous French socialite, Evelyne Redfern rose to international fame in the 1920s when her parents’ contentious divorce and custody battle placed her firmly in the pages of newspapers and earned her the nickname “The Parisian Orphan.” However, when Evelyne’s mother suddenly died, her father uprooted her from her life in Paris and dumped her in an English boarding school.
Now in her early 20s and working in a royal ordnance factory as part of the war effort, she’s recruited by an old friend of her parents to work as a typist in Churchill’s cabinet war rooms. However, when Evelyne discovers the body of a fellow typist, she finds herself at the center of the desperate chase for a killer.
You’ve written contemporary romance, historical romance and historical fiction, nearly all set in England. And you’re an American expat living in London. Tell us more about your connection to the U.K. Although I grew up in Los Angeles, I have the good fortune to be both American and British by birth thanks to my British mother and American father. Because of this, my family has always had a strong connection to the U.K. I chose to study British history at university, and it seemed only natural to write about British history when I began seriously pursuing a publishing career while working as a journalist in New York City.
Eventually, I decided to move to London to be closer to my immediate family, who had all relocated to the U.K. As I explored my new city, I kept coming across World War II monuments. I became curious, and as I began to read as much as I could about the period, the book ideas began flowing.
“A lot of my compulsion to write about the past is wrapped up in trying to understand the present.”
In your acknowledgements, you share that you’ve always wanted to write a mystery and followed a “long and winding path” to get here. What sorts of twists and turns did you encounter? I’ve been toying with writing a mystery set in the Churchill War Rooms, which are now a museum, ever since I went to visit with a friend. However, at the time I was already writing historical novels highlighting what British women did during the war and I was also working a day job, so I didn’t think I could add a mystery novel to the mix and still find the time to sleep! That all changed in June 2021 when I quit my day job to write full time. After taking a month off to recharge, I wrote up the pitch for A Traitor in Whitehall and the Parisian Orphan series and sent it to my agent that same week. The rest, as they say, is history.
You do an excellent job of immersing the reader in Evelyne’s daily life, from the line for the shower at her boarding house to the shiver-inducing feeling of working deep underground. What was your research process like? I really lucked out with living in London and having access to the Churchill War Rooms. (Note to other authors: It is incredibly helpful when there is an entire museum dedicated to the subject of your book!) The Imperial War Museum has a fantastic catalog available online as well as great books. I leaned heavily on an exhibition catalog for the CWR that showed everything from the orange passes that workers would carry to the type of typewriter that was used in the typing pool.
When it came to researching the rest of the book, I had the good fortune of having written four historical novels set during WWII, so I had a lot of prior knowledge that I could draw on for the details of everyday life during the Blitz.
Evelyne and David conduct numerous interviews as they winnow down their list of suspects, and you’ve created a very in-the-moment feel for those encounters. How did you go about achieving that realism? I worked as a TV news producer for six years in New York City, and part of my job was to write the copy that my anchors would read. Writing words that are meant to be read out loud is a very different discipline than writing prose because you have to think about breath and tone and simplicity. (Case and point, that last sentence would be challenging to read off of a teleprompter!) That early training in TV writing still helps me to this day when tackling dialogue in my novels.
Evelyne’s own mother’s death wasn’t properly investigated, influencing her choices and actions. Is the theme of history repeating itself something you are drawn to while writing historical fiction? A lot of my compulsion to write about the past is wrapped up in trying to understand the present. Most of my research at university was about the evolving role of British women in society, as well as changing class structures. Those two themes thread through a lot of my books because they’re still topics that feel very relevant today.
Evelyne understands the power of gossip in the workplace. Can you share a bit about why you made gossip an important element of the investigation? When I started writing about an amateur female detective in 1940, I knew that one of the things she would inevitably have to contend with was men constantly underestimating her. Although the male detectives working on the case dismiss her, her eventual sidekick David Poole quickly understands that Evelyne has access to knowledge and information—like office gossip—that he never would. Being a woman is one of Evelyne’s great superpowers.
Female friendships are central to your story, from Evelyne’s long-term bond with aspiring actress Moira to her tentative new rapport with her coworkers and housemates. Why does that sort of affection and loyalty interest you as a writer? My friendships with other women are such an important part of my life; it would be strange for me not to give my characters those kinds of relationships too. Female characters deserve rich, complex interior lives and relationships that reflect that. I hope that, just as we’re starting to see more layered female characters in television and movies, there will be even more of a push towards literary heroines with rich lives as well.
“Being a woman is one of Evelyne’s great superpowers.”
Evelyne is never without a book, and her favorite authors include Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. Are you also a reader and devoted fan of these writers? Did they or their work inspire you as you created A Traitor in Whitehall? I have been reading mysteries for as long as I can remember, influenced in great part by my mother. She’s such an avid reader of crime fiction that we call the part of my parents’ house where all of those books sit “Murder Hall.” When I told her my idea for A Traitor in Whitehall, she recommended I read The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, which is a wonderful overview of the authors of the age and their works. I quickly realized that I had only scratched the surface of the genre, and I’ve been devouring golden age mysteries ever since to try to catch up.
Police detectives greet Evelyne’s penchant for mystery novels with patronizing dismissiveness. Do you think whodunits are underappreciated? Have you ever found yourself defending your fondness for them? I think it’s sometimes easy for people to dismiss genre fiction because they think it’s all formulaic. However, I’ve always loved Nora Roberts’ quotation comparing writing category romance to performing “ ‘Swan Lake’ in a phone booth.” I will always defend genre fiction as deceptively sophisticated because, as a writer, you know that your reader will have certain expectations for your book. If you write a mystery novel, the detective needs to have figured out the central puzzle by the end of the book. However, there’s real challenge in writing a fresh, exciting story that manages to surprise the reader along the way.
Who’s your favorite side character (and why is it the slyly fabulous Aunt Amelia)? Aunt Amelia is absolutely my favorite side character because I think she has the bold straightforwardness I would want if I was a little braver. She also is a woman with a past that’s only hinted at in A Traitor in Whitehall. While I have an idea of what that past is, I’d love to delve deeper into her background because I feel like she has some great stories to tell.
While writing A Traitor in Whitehall, did any part of the story or characters surprise you? When I sat down to write A Traitor in Whitehall, I don’t think I had any idea what I was in for. From the very first chapter, Evelyne sprung to life almost fully formed on the page. It felt a bit like she was a runaway train and I was just along for the ride. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that this is my first book written in first-person POV, and I really wanted to make Evelyne’s voice shine through. She’s a determined, curious, intelligent woman who is also a loyal friend. I hope readers will fall in love with her the way that I have!
What’s up next for you—any tidbits you want to share with readers? I am currently working on the second book in the Parisian Orphan series, which has been such fun to write. The second season of the The History Quill Podcast, which I co-host with the historical novelist Theo Brun, is also underway. The podcast, which is all about writing historical novels, features interviews with well-known and debut authors. It’s been such a pleasure to speak with people who are so generous sharing their experiences with the craft and business of publishing.
Photo of Julia Kelly by Scott Bottles.
Julia Kelly’s first historical mystery, A Traitor in Whitehall, takes readers into Winston Churchill’s secret underground headquarters during World War II.
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