In her first novel, Emily Robbins thrusts the reader into the throes of a forbidden love triangle, set amidst political unrest in the Middle East. Bea is an American student studying abroad and working as a maid for a family in a country that is never named, but strongly resembles the current state of Syria. Obsessed with the Arabic language and the idea of love, Bea’s deepest desire is to have access to a book called “The Astonishing Text.” The story inside the text bears a striking resemblance to her own, as she falls for a policeman she is not supposed to talk to, and he, in turn, falls in love with the other maid that serves her host family named Nisrine, who is an Indonesian woman with a husband and child in her home country. Despite her ties to her family abroad and knowledge of Bea’s affection for the policeman, Nisrine returns his sentiments and Bea becomes the carrier of their love poems to each other.

As their romantic interest develops, so does the growing unrest in their country. The father of Bea’s host family participates in the revolutionary protests in the city, and turmoil surrounds him as the government seeks to expose him as a rebel.

A Word for Love is modest and lovely; it deals with complex issues like the flaws in language and the distance between what is said and what is meant through beautiful composition and simple words. Robbins does a wonderful job of writing about the uniqueness of Arabic in a relatable way: “In Arabic, the words for freedom is hurriya. I remember first learning this word as a beginning student, and memorizing it by its nearness to the English word ‘hurray.’ The joy it brought me.” As the novel moves to its dramatic and shocking climax, every word begins to feel heavy and important, as if the reader is also holding an “astonishing text.” Robbins drives home the lesson that, despite conflict, language is transcendent.

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“This is a hell of a country, isn’t it? You choose your story. Then you go out and make it happen.” In Lydia Peelle’s debut novel, The Midnight Cool, main characters Billy and Charlie are doing exactly that, harnessing their charm, grit and self-reliance to forge a better life. This theme is not new, but in the gifted hands of Peelle it rises off the page in a fresh, daring fashion. 

The Midnight Cool opens in the summer of 1916, as war rages in Europe and political tensions are running high. Charlie and Billy are traveling horse traders who arrive in Richfield, Tennessee, a fictional town just north of Nashville. Both are smooth-talking grifters who specialize in the art of the underhanded deal. 

Upon arriving in town they set their sights on a gorgeous mare who belongs to the wealthy Leland Hatcher. Despite warnings from Catherine, Leland’s daughter, they purchase the mare only to discover her violent, deadly past. Indebted and unable to unload the temperamental animal, they turn to selling mules to the British army to recoup their lost funds. All the while, Charlie’s feelings for Catherine, a woman very much above his station, are intensifying, and the bonds between Charlie and Billy are beginning to fray.

Peelle is a writer to watch. She deftly recounts the surprisingly fascinating history of mules, who bore the brunt of American labor during this period and whose resiliency and strength made them key players in the war effort, while also giving us a rich, satisfying novel, full of memorable characters grappling with love, loyalty, identity and the struggle to build something that lasts in a rapidly changing world.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s fitting for a Civil War-era story to be told in letters: The excruciating wait between each hoped-for missive is mirrored in this debut novel’s slow and gradual denouement. Author and playwright Susan Rivers employs not only letters, but also diary entries and inquest reports to tell a story loosely based in fact. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Placidia Fincher, young and newly wed to a major in the Confederate army, is jailed and accused of adultery and infanticide. Her husband has been away for two years, adding to the intrigue. Only Placidia and her few slaves, particularly one named Achilles, know what transpired. 

As attested to in an author’s note, Rivers’ research has been thorough, and she writes convincingly in a mid 19th-century style and mindset. She is adept at creating arresting imagery and constructs a stark contrast between the life of privilege Placidia left and the life of struggle she comes to upon marrying the major, moving to his remote farm, and mothering Charlie, his son by his first wife. After only two days as husband and wife, the major is called back to the front, and his “fair girl” Placidia must run the farm and protect the homestead. 

Passages relating to what Placidia and others suffer build slowly and unfold in painstaking detail, making them all the more appalling. The cruelty in a world besieged by war is hard to fully comprehend. Men fought on battlefields, but everyone at home was fighting, too—to survive. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Rivers gives readers an illuminating glimpse into a part of our country’s past that still has repercussions in the present.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook

Like many coming-of-age stories, History of Wolves features a grown-up narrator looking back on an event in her teenage years that forever changed her belief in the way the world works. The brilliance of this novel is that the events that ruined Madeline, aka “Linda,” are so appalling that they may change the way the reader believes the world works as well.

The story opens in the middle of a typically punishing Minnesota winter; the superbly talented Fridlund makes you feel the cold in your joints and imagine the sound of a knock on the crust of ice over a snowdrift. Linda lives with her hippie parents in such poverty that they not only lack central heating but a door: Only a tarp stands between them and the cold. 

Then a new family moves into a new house across the lake from Linda: Leo and Patra Gardner and their little boy, Paul. Linda is taken on as Paul’s babysitter. To the perceptive Linda, they are just a shade off normal, which entices her because she’s just a shade off normal herself. But soon the reader, with a skin-crawling dread worthy of any decent slasher movie, begins to realize that something’s more than just not right. You only hope that it’s not what you think it is.

But learning that it’s not what you think it is brings no relief, because what is really going on is ever so much worse. When what happens happens, you want to stop and go back to the beginning of the book to search for the clues you knew had to be there. You’ll find them.

Fridlund earns a place as a top-notch writer with this remarkable, disturbing debut.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Most adults experience at least one great romantic love in their lifetime. Outcomes obviously vary, but not the initial devotion and desire. In Stephanie Gangi’s The Next, 46-year-old Joanna DeAngelis found her soul mate unexpectedly in Ned McGowan. Ned, a professor at Columbia, is 15 years Joanna’s junior. Despite the age difference, they were ablaze with passion from the moment they met. But after Joanna is diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, Ned commits a deplorable act of betrayal.

As her daughters, Anna and Laney, care for her, Joanna spends her final days obsessed with Ned and his perfect new life, which she follows on social media. As Joanna takes her last breath, her singular focus is vengeance. So, what happens when one dies filled with such intense drive? Joanna becomes a ghost residing in “the next,” seen and felt by whomever she chooses. She is raw energy, and revenge is her only goal. 

In spirit form, Joanna is sultry, witty and as unrelenting as her combined lust and hatred for Ned. Anna and Laney take turns narrating the aftermath of their mother’s death, as does Ned himself. Each speaker’s voice and inner monologue beautifully captures the essence of that particular character while adding context to current and past events. 

In her first adult novel, Gangi has created deeply flawed characters that readers still care about a great deal. Her style is gritty and descriptive, with no subject considered taboo. The Next is a fast-paced ghost story, but it is also a story about the bonds between people: family, friends, lovers and survivors. How does one move past tragedy and injustice? Gangi has presented us with an unforgettable tale describing how one family does just that.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set against the backdrop of World War II, award-winning journalist Armando Lucas Correa’s The German Girl follows 12-year-old Hannah Rosenthal, who is attempting to flee Nazi Germany with her family and her best friend, Leo Martin. After many refusals, the Rosenthals are overjoyed when they are given the chance to escape to freedom aboard the SS St. Louis, a floating fairy tale making its way toward Cuba. But the outlook soon becomes grimmer for the desperate family. Hannah and Leo promise to stay together—and are forced to make impossible decisions.

Alternating with Hannah’s story is that of Anna Rosen, a 12-year-old girl in present-day New York. Anna is coming to terms with the death of her father when she receives a package from the mysterious great-aunt in Cuba who acted as a mother figure to Anna’s late father. Searching for answers and a deeper understanding of her father, young Anna and her mother set off on their own journey to Havana’s shores.

Correa, the editor-in-chief of People en Español, successfully weaves a profoundly emotional coming-of-age tale, based on the real-life journey of the St. Louis from Hamburg to Havana, and the 900 refugees aboard. Despite this heavy subject matter, Correa’s impeccably researched historical details shine through, grounding the novel and honing its point.

Though at times The German Girl is heartbreaking, the novel never wallows, and readers can often feel joy and excitement emanating off the young narrators. Correa’s characters and details are beautifully crafted, creating an insightful and poignantly timed exploration of the refugee experience.

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In her anticipated fiction debut, The Undoing of Saint Silvanus, Beth Moore weaves an introspective, genre-bending narrative. Moore, a popular author of Christian nonfiction and founder of Living Proof Ministries, tells the story of Jillian Slater, who travels to New Orleans after receiving news of her alcoholic father’s death. 

Upon arriving at Saint Silvanus, the church-turned-apartment-building that her grandmother runs, Jillian learns that things are worse than she’d anticipated. Her father isn’t just dead but murdered, her cold and aloof grandmother isn’t happy to see her, and someone is leaving threatening, strange tokens on the doorstep of Saint Silvanus. Aided by her grandmother and a colorful cast of Saint Silvanus residents, Jillian seeks to learn more about her father’s death and her family’s secrets.

Though it’s a fast-paced story, The Undoing of Saint Silvanus also contains moments of introspection—both for Jillian and for the reader—that are among its strongest scenes. Moore’s vivid and often delightful descriptions of New Orleans, Saint Silvanus and the multiple supporting characters add a lively sense of place. The gripping mystery will keep readers engaged till the end, where Jillian finds both answers and a new relationship with God.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Charles Wang pops another aspirin and thinks of all the ways America has failed him. The country may have made the no-name immigrant into a cosmetics billionaire and given him a designer Bel-Air mansion that even Martha Stewart covets, but when the markets crashed, so did his empire. Now that he thinks about it, Charles is also angry at the Japanese for invading China and at the Communists for taking his family’s ancestral lands. Clearly, the world has screwed with the Wangs long enough!

With this exaggerated tirade, Jade Chang begins her hysterical debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, which is set soon after the financial crisis of the last decade. Too vain to believe that it’s all over, Charles has one last scheme to return glory to the family. The first step is a cross-country drive from Los Angeles to New York to gather up the Wang clan, before returning to China to somehow reclaim their lost land.

Embarking on this epic road trip in a borrowed station wagon are Charles; his second wife, Barbra; and two of his children, Andrew, a wannabe comedian, and Grace, a teen fashion blogger, each gathered up from an expensive school Charles can no longer afford. Their collective hope lies in upstate New York with Saina, Charles’ oldest daughter, who escaped the financial catastrophe but has plenty of personal struggles.

Though the Wangs are poor and desperate, they never lose humor or hope. The zany scheme to reclaim the family riches takes a backseat to the family relationships, including loving, supportive and playful moments between the siblings. Charles, too, evolves from a failed businessman to a loving father who is willing to do anything to make sure his children are taken care of. Readers will be cheering for these underdogs.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Readers have long been fascinated by stories of women apart from the world, from 19th-century tales of girls imprisoned in convents to more contemporary gems like Ann Patchett’s The Patron Saint of Liars (1992). Sarah Domet’s debut novel, The Guineveres, is a wonderful entry into this rich tradition.

Four girls, all improbably named Guinevere, are left by their parents with the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration. The convent, at first, seems similar to an all-girls high school, complete with cutely named factions. The titular girls (known as Vere, Gwen, Ginny and Win) initially bond over their shared name as well as their desire to escape. It turns out, however, that the convent is not unlike the real world. The girls experience friendship and romance, tragedy and betrayal. 

The Guineveres is mainly narrated by the more reserved Vere, who tells the story as an older woman looking back, and Domet deftly handles this retrospective voice. Brief chapters on the lives of various female saints imbue The Guineveres with a broader sense of the adversity women have faced over the centuries. All the while, Domet sustains a sense of humor. “Who’s the patron saints of patron saints?” Win quips at one point.  

At times sacred, occasionally profane, The Guineveres is a heavenly read from an author worth watching.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.