Adjoa Andoh performs much of Housegirl, Michael Donkor’s accomplished, affecting debut novel, in sparkling Ghanaian English, immersing listeners in the world of Ghana and the Ghanaian diaspora. At 17, Belinda leaves her village and her mother behind to work as a housegirl for a wealthy couple who returned to their native Ghana to retire in luxury after making their fortune in London. Belinda finds solace in the daily domestic grind and in Mary, the charming, irrepressible 11-year-old housegirl-in-training who becomes like a little sister to her. But Belinda is uprooted again when close Ghanaian friends of her employers take Belinda to London, where she is tasked with befriending and providing a positive influence on their sullen teenage daughter, a student at an exclusive, mostly white private school. Surprisingly, their friendship blossoms after a few bumps, just as tragedy takes Belinda back to her homeland. At its core, Housegirl is a warmly perceptive look at female friendship as well as the angst, melodrama and confusion of coming of age in two clashing cultures.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At some point in every person’s life, the question of a legacy arises. What will be left for those to come, and what for those left behind? For some, this translates as possessions; for others, simply memory is enough. Wyatt Hillyer’s legacy is the truth of his own life, set down in a letter to a daughter he never knew. The only thing he can leave her is the key to a tangled web that surrounds her earliest moments and the time leading up to her creation. The tapestry of Wyatt’s profound letter is woven from complicated threads, including two parents driven to simultaneous, but separate, suicides over the love of one woman; an itinerant German student’s arrival during a time of intense xenophobia; an uncle driven mad by the coming war; a ferry sunk by a German U-boat; and an unrequited love for an adopted cousin. 

Mainly set in the years immediately prior to World War II in the Maritime Provinces of eastern Canada, Wyatt’s stirring tale is at once human and grand. Visited by unthinkable tragedy, brief glimpses of joy and the slow grind of life, Howard Norman’s tale washes over the reader like the sea laps at stones on a beach as the tide comes in. Slowly drawn deeper into the life of a man forced to do the best with what he had, the reader finds suddenly that, like Wyatt, he is treading water while everyone else has moved further up the shore.

The quiet power of this book comes on slowly and unrelentingly, offering a mesmerizing look into one man’s past. Creating one of the most captivating and effective uses of the retrospective letter format in recent memory, Norman’s prose is understated, eloquent and perfectly chosen, and his novel paints a picture of one man’s legacy that will not soon be lost.

Except for John le Carré, there is really no worthy competitor for the master of the historical spy novel, Alan Furst. Like his other espionage novels, Spies of the Balkans is rich with historical detail; this time, Furst’s setting is the port city of Salonika, Macedonia, at the time Greece was at war with Mussolini.

Costa Zannis, a senior police official, is our protagonist, and he doesn’t disappoint. Although not the stereotypical hero, he is charismatic, smart and humorous when the time is ripe. Despite a less than perfect appearance, Zannis has a romantic streak, and occasionally falls into passionate trysts with Demetria, an incredibly beautiful woman he cannot have. Less interesting to him is Roxanne, who turns out to be a double agent.

The one girl he can always count on is Melissa, his faithful, soulful dog. Even spies need nurturing, especially when Zannis is called up for a brief period of active duty to protect his people from the Germans. Zannis risks his life many times to help rescue a sliver of Germany’s Jewish population, and in the course of the novel, at least 40 individuals who otherwise would have been tortured and killed are saved.

Zannis’ police role makes him instantly recognizable to most people, whether friend or foe, but he keeps his ego in check. Mostly, his life is lonely, though it is always filled with danger and foreboding. Besides the tragedies of war, he deals with everyday police matters, and he frequently travels to achieve small miracles for people at the expense of his personal life. He is one of the more likeable spy characters created by the talented Furst, and Spies of the Balkans is another fast-moving, nuanced novel that will keep you up at night.

Anna Quindlen’s previous novels have all been centered on families—whether average, non-traditional or dysfunctional; she even calls herself “hyperdomestic.” It comes as no surprise, then, that her sixth novel, Every Last One, begins with a lengthy description of the minutiae of the everyday life of Mary Beth Latham—wife, mother of three teenagers and owner of a successful landscaping business.

Her husband Glen, an ophthalmologist, eats the same thing every morning and leaves for work at the same time. Ruby, their “beautiful and distinctive” 17-year-old daughter, is a free spirit who aspires to be a poet. The 14-year-old twins, Alex and Max, are complete opposites of one another, manifested by the line painted down the center of their bedroom, dividing it into halves of light blue and lime green. Every day, Mary Beth tells us, is “Average. Ordinary.”

But looking beneath the placid surface of their lives, we learn of a few worrisome details. Ruby has been through a bout of anorexia—which is now, with a therapist’s help, in the past—and she has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend Kiernan, who is not taking the ending of their relationship well. Max is finding it increasingly difficult being the nerdy, moody twin of the handsome, popular Alex, proficient in three sports. All three children go away to camp that summer, but when Max has to come home early with a broken arm, he becomes depressed enough to see Ruby’s therapist. Kiernan begins showing up at the house again, ostensibly to keep Max company, but his presence feels creepy to Mary Beth, and she asks him to end his visits. The situation becomes increasingly awkward over the fall, with Ruby asking Kiernan to just leave her in peace. On New Year’s things take a violent turn, one which Mary Beth relives over and over, wondering if she could have prevented the horrific outcome.

Quindlen explores Mary Beth’s altered life with such acute empathy that readers can palpably experience her anguish and agonize over each step she takes in her slow recovery as if it were their own. She has penned an unforgettable novel about one woman realizing her worst fears, and then somehow finding the strength to survive.