Beena Kamlani’s detailed historical debut, The English Problem, follows an Indian man who journeys to England in the 1930s to study law and support Indian independence, but finds himself caught between his ambition, his heart and his values.
William Boyle has a pointillist’s eye for detail, and in Saint of the Narrows Street, you can smell the cigarette smoke and desperation wafting from the dive bar and the freezer lasagna reheated when the priest drops by uninvited.
In Nancy Johnson’s second novel, People of Means, she follows a mother and daughter grappling with the ideals of Black excellence and realities of racial discrimination in 1960s Nashville and 1990s Chicago.
Though it delves into real challenges facing women and queer people in the early 20th century, Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s witty sophomore novel, Mutual Interest, never takes itself too seriously.
As a novel of adventure and redemption and as a story of a woman coming into her own, Allegra Goodman’s 16th-century tale, Isola, is a rewarding read.
Charmaine Wilkerson’s second novel, Good Dirt, reminds us that we need access to a multitude of stories for a full understanding of our country’s rich and complicated past.
Fast-paced, engaging and surprising, Lauren Francis-Sharma’s Casualties of Truth examines the legacy of apartheid through the life of a lawyer whose long-ago summer in Johannesburg comes back to haunt her.
The gorgeous language and fantastical premises Karen Russell (Orange World and Other Stories, Swamplandia!) employs are always animated by deep feeling and big ideas. The Antidote (only her second novel!), shares that depth and heft: It opens with the April 1935 “Black Sunday” dust storm enveloping the tiny town of Uz, Nebraska. Uz is home to a prairie witch, known as the Antidote, who possesses the ability to store memories that her neighbors would rather not retain themselves. But when the darkness and terror passes, the Antidote discovers that it has blown away all the memories she’d kept for the townspeople along with their topsoil. Russell unspools a story of holding on to community through hardship that’s also an investigation of what has been omitted from American memory, and how we could reclaim it.
Fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid and all things space and astronomy will find themselves united in anticipation of the bestselling author’s upcoming release, Atmosphere: A Love Story. The Daisy Jones & The Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Malibu Rising author’s latest complex protagonist is one of the first women to train with NASA in the 1980s. Of course, with space travel, the stakes are incredibly high, and she and her fellow candidates will be tested to the max in this suspenseful romantic drama.
The author of Room also writes some seriously good historical fiction, like 2023’s Learned by Heart, which fictionalized the youth of Anne Lister. The Paris Express, set later in the 19th century, follows a large cast of characters, each with their own reasons for taking a train to Paris—one of whom is an anarchist with a plan to derail the fated trip.
Costanza Casati’s captivating and historically insightful second novel, inspired by a real Assyrian queen, is a resonant page turner.
Caryl Phillips (The Lost Child) once again explores the impact of the strictures of colonial rule in the Caribbean in the absorbing Another Man in the Street.
What do the 1978 Met Gala and a 1936 Egyptian archeological dig have in common? According to the latest historical novel from Fiona Davis, the answer might be an ancient curse.
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