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FictionInspirational FictionHistorical Fiction

Inspirational novels for spring 2025

Set during World War II, Ace, Marvel, Spy and Midnight on the Scottish Shore chronicle the stories of two women whose lives are testaments to the power of courage during times of upheaval.
Set during World War II, Ace, Marvel, Spy and Midnight on the Scottish Shore chronicle the stories of two women whose lives are testaments to the power of courage during times of upheaval.
FictionPoetry

Scorched Earth

Tiana Clark’s searching second poetry collection, Scorched Earth, embraces “too muchness” as a pure expression of the politicized body, history and art.
Tiana Clark’s searching second poetry collection, Scorched Earth, embraces “too muchness” as a pure expression of the politicized body, history and art.
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Fiction

A duo of daring debuts

Feature by Trisha Ping

What comes to mind when you think of women’s fiction? If the word is “predictable,” think again: Two fearless first-time novelists are turning tropes upside down.

In their first novels, authors Eliza Kennedy and Sarai Walker are pushing the boundaries of popular fiction with female-centered stories that blend dark twists and searing social commentary in ways that draw from literary fiction (Notes on a Scandal to Anna Karenina) and suspense (insert obligatory Gone Girl reference).

Lily Wilder, the charismatic narrator of Kennedy’s I Take You, is doubting her decision to marry—but not for the reasons you’d expect. Lily, a successful lawyer, isn’t worried that the ceremony won’t be picture-perfect or that her fiancé will run out on her: She’s afraid that marriage will cramp her not-exactly-monogamous lifestyle. 

As for Plum Kettle, the overweight protagonist of Sarai Walker’s Dietland, the person who changes her life isn’t a man. It’s a mysterious young woman, who initiates the virtually housebound Plum (who is planning on having bariatric surgery) into a secret society of guerrilla fighters who are committing terrorist acts against the patriarchy. Targets range from gang rapists to a “Girls Gone Wild”-type filmmaker.

Lily and Plum are heroines who lie outside the social norms, both those of real life and those of women’s fiction. Lily loves her fiancé, Will, but she also loves sex—lots of it. She isn’t sure if she can change that about herself, or if she even wants to, although by accepting his proposal she’s signed on to try.

For her part, at more than 300 pounds, Plum is not conventionally beautiful, although it’s hard to say for sure since she is usually described through her own very critical eyes. Plum defines herself by her weight, hiding her body in shapeless, colorless clothes and spending years on thankless diets waiting for her skinny self—whom she calls Alicia—to emerge so she can finally start living.

Still, it’s not entirely unusual for stories to start out with women who are a little bit different. After all, that’s why their lives aren’t perfect, right? As the pages turn, you’re waiting for the moment when Lily and Plum transform, become what society expects—which makes you realize just how well-trodden the tropes of popular fiction can be. But as Dietland and I Take You approach their very different but equally satisfying conclusions, it becomes clear that this isn’t the point. Plum and Lily don't need to change—the world does. 

Readers will find themselves cheering on these two truly unconventional heroines all the way to the last page—and be thinking about their choices long afterward.

 

RELATED CONTENT: Read our online Q&As with Kennedy (I Take You) and Walker (Dietland). 
 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What comes to mind when you think of women’s fiction? If the word is “predictable,” think again: Two fearless first-time novelists are turning tropes upside down.
Fiction

The unsolvable Ripper

Feature by Adam Morgan

More than 100 years have passed since the Autumn of the Knife, when the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper terrorized the streets of London. Amy Carol Reeves, author of the YA Ripper trilogy, says, “writers and readers are drawn to this story because it’s a case that will never be solved,” leaving plenty of space for imagination. Such is the case with two new Ripper-themed books by celebrated historical crime novelists Stephen Hunter (Hot Springs) and Alex Grecian (The Yard).

Both, of course, begin with blood. Stephen Hunter’s brisk, gory epistolary novel, I, Ripper, combines the memoirs of an ambitious journalist with the Ripper’s secret diary. The journalist, an Irishman who goes by “Jeb” to protect his identity, warns readers straight away:

“Make peace now with descriptions of a horrific nature or pass elsewhere. If you persevere, I promise you shall know all that is to be known about Jack. Who he was, how he selected, operated, and escaped. . . . Finally, I shall illuminate the most mysterious element of the entire affair, that of motive.”

Hunter’s version of Jack the Ripper is a cold, verbose intellectual. Beginning with the first canonical Ripper murder of Mary Ann Nichols in 1888, it’s a well-researched retelling of history full of surprising revelations. Hunter’s 19th-century London is full of striking and authentic period details—including racism, class warfare and the treatment of Jews in Victorian England—but women are relegated to the alcoholic prostitutes at the other end of a knife. “I needed to puncture her more,” the Ripper says. “Why? God in heaven knows.”

In Alex Grecian’s fourth Scotland Yard Murder Club book, The Harvest Man, the Ripper returns to London after last wreaking havoc in The Devil’s Workshop. But in this installment, Jack plays second fiddle to a villain even more horrifying: the Harvest Man, who wears a medieval plague mask and slices the faces off his victims, continuously mistaking them for his parents.

“He stared intently at the mother and father, tried to gauge the shapes of their skulls beneath the masks they wore. . . . Those were features they couldn’t hope to hide from him. He had chosen the right people this time, his own parents, spotted among the teeming masses. He was nearly sure of it.”

The Murder Club regulars are back: Detective Inspector Walter Day, his old partner Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, the forensic pathologist Dr. Bernard Kingsley and even their favorite criminal informant, Blackleg. More pulpy and hardboiled than I, Ripper, Grecian's newest trades Hunter’s intricate prose for snappy dialogue in another gripping Victorian team-up. Where Hunter excels at a carefully constructed, suspense-driven plot with clear ties to history, Grecian supplies a strong cast of beloved characters and great one-liners. Although, for the record, Hunter packs a few jokes in, too (“‘Can I say ‘belly?'’’ I asked. ‘It seems rather graphic.’”).

Unfortunately, female characters in both books are largely either victims or hero’s wives. “A surface reading of the case shows only Jack the Ripper, the all-male Scotland Yard investigators, and the female victims,” says Reeves. “But we have so many cases of extraordinary women like Aphra Behn who are under-recognized in history.” Regardless, both I, Ripper and The Harvest Man are frightening, well paced, effortless reads.

More than 100 years have passed since the Autumn of the Knife, when the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper terrorized the streets of London. Amy Carol Reeves, author of the YA Ripper trilogy, says, “writers and readers are drawn to this story because it’s a case that will never be solved,” leaving plenty of space for imagination. Such is the case with two new Ripper-themed books by celebrated historical crime novelists Stephen Hunter (Hot Springs) and Alex Grecian (The Yard).

NonfictionFiction

Behind the battle

Feature by Kenneth Champeon

Inspect Europe today, and you would struggle to believe that its greatest scuffles were once about anything other than bailouts and shared currency, or Eurovision and football. Yet 2015 marks the bicentennial of a battle that stands as a summation of that continent's centuries of bloody wars, particularly those of the 20th: Waterloo, which took place on June 18, 1815. Two new books take different approaches to remembering this conflict.

In his history, Waterloo, novelist Bernard Cornwell asks, why another book? Waterloo is among the most chronicled battles of all time. Paraphrasing the British general Wellington, Cornwell also concedes that describing a battle is like describing a dance. Yet it is describing this already well-chronicled dance in exacting detail that Waterloo attempts to achieve.

Still reeling from Napoleon's wars of conquest, Europe is appalled to learn that he has returned triumphantly from exile, retaken Paris and set his sights on Belgium. It falls to Wellington ("the unbeatable") to stop Napoleon ("the unbeaten"). Spoiler alert: He does! But the outcome is never certain in Cornwell's telling. He even points to Frenchmen like Victor Hugo, who tried to snatch a literary victory from the jaws of putative defeat.

Waterloo is wonkish as military history goes. Much attention is paid to the arithmetical and geometrical difference between columns and lines, for example. It therefore suffers from a lack of historical context, but compensates by quoting liberally from the battle's participants. Cornwell refers to a massive model of the battlefield residing today in a British museum. His book is largely the play-by-play of that model in motion.

Waterloo may be the first modern battle, both in its intensive use of artillery and its appalling rate of casualties. The dead bodies becoming mud themselves suggests the First World War. Bodies forming great fatty pyres, or being ground up for fertilizer, or their teeth extracted—or Napoleon's loose talk about exterminating barbarians and the Parisian woman's capacity for replenishing the war dead—are a reminder of the inhumanity of the Second.

Like Ken Burns, Cornwell clearly prefers to focus on the more dulce et decorum est aspects of pre-modern conflict, the gallantry and bravery, the tear-jerking letters home. He's written an elegy for war before the machines took over—poignant and inspiring but ultimately nostalgic.

PHILOSOPHY OF WAR
If the battle appears now to us as an exercise in romantic futility, imagine what it must have seemed to the hordes of rabbits near the battlefield. This thought experiment motivates Leona Francombe's The Sage of Waterloo, an unusual but effective "tale" weaving philosophical history with animal story, as if the last chapter of 1984 had been recounted by the fauna of Animal Farm.

The tale is told by William, a rabbit named after the allied commander William of Orange. It's mainly a dialogue between William and his sagacious grandmother, Old Lavender, concerning the baffling behavior of their superiors in the food chain. They conclude that rabbits would never engage in wholesale killing and that humans are only irrational for doing so. 

Francombe later posits that women don't care much for war either, suggesting that she is using her rabbits as symbols for women. Indeed, Francombe leans rather heavily on the testimony of one actual English woman, Charlotte Eaton, who witnessed the battle's aftermath. Francombe praises the "female sensitivity" Eaton brings to her account, a sensitivity she finds lacking in accounts by male writers, among whom she might include Cornwell.

This may be true, but otiose. If Waterloo proves anything, it is that men, and not just armchair warriors, tend to delight in violence. Old Lavender is right when she says that "war desperately needs a female perspective," but Francombe might be discouraged to dwell much on the female capacity for aggression, from Queen Elizabeth to today's pro-military "security moms.” In Cornwell's Waterloo, one dead soldier is a woman in disguise.

As the sage herself repeats, too much comfort "dampens the brain.” Nietzsche couldn't have said it better. But despite these inconsistencies, the novel is an exquisite and amusing meditation on a battle whose meaning clearly invites debate, by humans or otherwise. 

Inspect Europe today, and you would struggle to believe that its greatest scuffles were once about anything other than bailouts and shared currency, or Eurovision and football. Yet 2015 marks the bicentennial of a battle that stands as a summation of that continent's centuries of bloody wars, particularly those of the 20th: Waterloo. Two new books take different approaches to remembering this conflict.
Fiction

Spotlight: Psychological thrills

Feature by Sheila M. Trask

How well can you really know someone? Can you comprehend the hidden desires harbored by your neighbor, your fiancé, your best friend or your daughter? Or do you only see the fiction they present to the world? 

These two probing psychological thrillers reveal what can happen when the perfect facade crumbles, leaving the innocent among the ruins.

In her skillfully plotted debut, The Bones of You, Debbie Howells uses two narrators to get at the truth of what happened on the day 18-year-old Rosie was brutally killed in an otherwise quiet English village. Rosie haunts these pages with flashbacks to her troubled life and terrible death, and possesses an oracle-like knowledge of others’ emotional states and motives, recalling the afterlife narrator of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Most of the story, however, comes from kindhearted Kate, a neighbor and mother to her own 18-year-old daughter, who befriends Rosie’s mother, Jo Anderson. Though she’s just lost her daughter and has another one to protect, Jo’s focus seems to be on decorating her perfect home and attending awards dinners with her internationally acclaimed journalist husband, Neal. At first Kate puts this down to the peculiarities of grief, but when Neal becomes a suspect and anonymous messages begin appearing at Kate’s door, she has to wonder what’s really happening at the Anderson house. Howells leads us down a winding path to the truth, where each character reveals just enough of his or her secrets to drive suspense skyward and keep readers from guessing who was really responsible for Rosie’s death until the strangely satisfying truth is revealed.

Appearances are similarly deceiving for Morgan Prager, the Brooklyn college student at the heart of The Hand That Feeds You, by Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment, writing together for the first time as A.J. Rich. An altruistic woman with a weakness for rescue dogs—her small apartment holds a Great Pyrenees and two pit bulls—Morgan is engaged to the charming Bennett and almost finished with her thesis on victim psychology. All is right in her world—until she arrives home to find bloody paw prints on the floor and her fiancé’s mauled body on her bed. Morgan’s grief and guilt overwhelm her as she tries to understand how she could have been so wrong about her sweet dogs. Then she discovers she was wrong about Bennett as well, who had several other “fiancées” waiting in the wings. Some have died suspicious deaths, and others are still waiting for their beloved’s return. The writing is fast-paced yet psychologically nuanced as Morgan chases down the truth, questions her own research and faces her traumatic past, all the while fighting to get her dogs back. The final twist is creepy and unexpected, and the action-packed last pages fly by as we fight alongside Morgan to understand who can be trusted in this world.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

How well can you really know someone? Can you comprehend the hidden desires harbored by your neighbor, your fiancé, your best friend or your daughter? Or do you only see the fiction they present to the world?
Science Fiction & FantasyFiction

Putting a magical spin on the past

Feature by Adam Morgan

2015 BookPage Summer Reads

No matter how strange or outlandish, most fantasy novels take place in a world that bears at least some resemblance to our own. 

But when a fantasy writer takes the opportunity to cast a spell over the past, it provides a different sort of magic. Two new novels put imaginative twists on history.

In Bell Weather, Dennis Mahoney (Fellow Mortals) reimagines the colonial era of the 1700s, when European empires fought over the Americas. Except in his story, the Old World is Heraldia and the New World is Floria. While the geography and historical milieu are familiar, the main departure from reality is in the details of the natural world.

The rustic town of Root in the colonies of Floria is home to a variety of miraculous flora, fauna and (as the book’s title implies) meteorological phenomena. Ember gourds burst into flame after ripening, winterbears hibernate in summer and stalker weeds roam the forest looking for defenseless plants. Cathedrals and mansions are built from pale lunarite rock, seasons change in a matter of hours, and sudden “colorwashes” transform the landscape. 

In the New World colonies, tavern owner Tom Orange rescues a mysterious woman from drowning. Her name is Molly Bell, daughter of one of the most powerful men in Floria. As a group of bandits known as the Maimers terrorize the countryside, stealing whatever part of their victims’ bodies they deem most valuable, Tom must help Molly escape the inevitable fallout from her past. 

Mahoney’s prose is lyrical and well honed, and his characters are engaging, but it’s the magical realism of the wilderness that makes this world so memorable and fascinating.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, on the other hand, takes place in a very recognizable Victorian-era London—with a few steampunk and supernatural flourishes. In 1883, a bookish Whitehall telegraph cleric named Thaniel Steepleton comes home to find someone has broken into his flat. Instead of stealing valuables, they’ve left him a mysterious gold pocket watch that winds up saving his life after a bomb is planted by Irish terrorists at Scotland Yard. Thaniel’s search for the watch’s creator leads him to one of the most interesting fictional characters in recent memory, Keita Mori.

Mori is a Japanese watchmaker who is part inventor, part mystic—he combines the deductive brilliance of Sherlock Holmes with the clairvoyance of Dr. Manhattan. Thanks to his ability to see potential futures, Mori has altered the course of history several times. Among his many inventions is a sentient, clockwork octopus, which is quite possibly the highlight of the novel. Together with Oxford scientist Grace Carrow, Thaniel tries to solve the mystery of the terrorist bombings. Could they be one of Mori’s attempts to alter the future? 

Natasha Pulley’s debut is a clever detective story, a thrilling steampunk adventure and a poignant examination of the consequences of class warfare and English, Irish and Japanese nationalism in the 19th century.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

No matter how strange or outlandish, most fantasy novels take place in a world that bears at least some resemblance to our own. But when a fantasy writer takes the opportunity to cast a spell over the past, it provides a different sort of magic. Two new novels put imaginative twists on history.
Fiction

Shivers under the sun

Feature by Arlene McKanic

2015 BookPage Summer Reads

The good and useful thing about scary stories is their variety. They may leave you sad, mad or contemplative—but all of the good ones make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Not even 40 pages into Sarah Lotz’s latest thriller, Day Four, it becomes clear that when things start going pear-shaped on a cruise, you don’t even need the supernatural to have a good horror story.

The Beautiful Dreamer is the not-quite jewel in the crown of the Foveros Line, which has a reputation for gifting its passengers with norovirus. Passage is cheaper than the going rate, and it shows. We have neon and general garishness, annoyingly chipper cruise directors and staff who are only on the ship because no one else will hire them. The passengers are spoiled, ugly and miserable. Indeed, at least two of them took the cruise with plans to commit suicide.

Then, something happens and the boat is dead in the water. There’s no electricity and no way to call for help. Passengers move to the decks to avoid the stench from the overflowing toilets. Then they start seeing and hearing impossible things. A woman spots a little boy running through the corridors, even though this is an adults-only cruise. A man swears he’s seen the devil. Stress is a perfectly logical explanation, but. . . . Lotz revels in her characters’ discomfort—a beautiful reminder that you don’t have to like a character to care what happens next. But her real genius is putting the action on a crippled, noisome ship that the world seems to have forgotten. The characters, and the reader, want to get off this bucket, but how? It’s worse than being on the Nostromo. And it makes Day Four irresistible.

After reading Paul Tremblay’s mightily disturbing novel, you may wonder why more teenage girls don’t lose their minds. In A Head Full of Ghosts, an exorcist is called in. But the real demons that torture Marjorie Barrett are external.

The story is narrated by Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, who recounts events of 15 years before. Now 23, Merry blogs about the wildly popular reality show that featured her family. Yes, Marjorie’s suffering was on TV for the world to witness. Why? 

First, there’s the patriarchy. In one queasily funny scene, the men who torment Marjorie during her exorcism refuse to believe that she can be possessed by a female demon. Demons are male, and they like to prey on adolescent girls, who in turn need learned male priests to save them.

Second, there’s Marjorie and Merry’s dad. John Barrett is a failure. And not because the family finances were wiped out when his job went away, although money is a big reason for the camera crew. John is a failure because he doesn’t respect the women who love and live with him. He crushes his wife, and he is certainly one reason why Marjorie goes crazy. The only one he doesn’t grind down is Merry, because she’s tough and funny and smart and reminds you of Scout Finch.

But in the end, even Merry has her own demons. What happens to her 8-year-old self is so appalling and unfair that it’s almost unbelievable—a scary story, indeed.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The good and useful thing about scary stories is their variety. They may leave you sad, mad or contemplative—but all of the good ones make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
FictionDebut Fiction

Trouble in paradise

Feature by Eliza Borné

2015 BookPage Summer Reads

Two new novels set in privileged northeastern communities showcase the darker side of family life.

Julia Pierpont’s anticipated debut reminds readers of a universally acknowledged fact: It’s a strange feeling when you realize your parents are human. For most of us, it happens in late adolescence or even early adulthood—when Mom and Dad start speaking up about job conundrums or relationship woes, or even (God forbid) sex. 

Among the Ten Thousand Things hinges on a devastating event that forces Kay Shanley, 11, and her 15-year-old brother, Simon, to prematurely confront a painful secret. In an explosive opening scene, Kay intercepts a package from her father’s lover—a printed chronicle of his affair, complete with explicit emails and a cruel letter addressed to Kay’s mom, Deb, who was meant to receive the R-rated evidence. Once Kay and Simon learn of their father’s infidelity, nothing is ever the same—though the events after the crisis are neither neat nor predictable. 

The Shanley family is outwardly accomplished though inwardly troubled. Jack, the father, is an acclaimed, though controversial, artist (one memorable scene involves an installation art piece gone horribly, horribly wrong). Kay has trouble fitting in at school and understanding her father’s affair, and she expresses herself by writing smutty “Seinfeld” fan fiction. Simon is a computer game-playing, pot-smoking, sullen teenager—impatient with his sister and ticked off at both parents. Deb, a former professional ballerina and a doting mom, tries to keep life as normal as possible for her children while processing her anger at Jack.

Pierpont is a strong, confident writer, and her well-observed characters feel deeply human. She is also a deft storyteller; many readers will be floored by an unexpected narrative twist in the middle of the novel that upends the conventions of plot structure and adds depth to the second half of the book—a welcome, if initially unsettling, surprise. Among the Ten Thousand Things is an impressive debut—a family drama alternately bright and bleak from a gifted young author.

Read our Q&A with Julia Pierpont.

A NOT-SO-PERFECT SUMMER
Even bleaker is The Invaders by Karolina Waclawiak, set in a “Connecticut postcard-perfect” town. In alternating chapters, the story is told by Cheryl, the second wife of a successful businessman, and her stepson, Teddy, who has recently been kicked out of Dartmouth. Both Cheryl and Teddy feel a deep dissatisfaction with daily life in Little Neck Cove, and throughout an eventful, often violent summer they turn to each other—not to mention painkillers and booze—to cope with neighborhood busybodies and gossips. 

Cheryl feels like an outsider among the Country Club set (it doesn’t help that her husband’s first wife fell drunkenly to her death off a dock). She is stuck in a loveless marriage; for pleasure, she anonymously calls random numbers from the phonebook to see who will respond to her sultry voice. Cheryl also holds a scandalous secret, the keeping of which creates much of the novel’s tension. Teddy binges on sex and drugs.

The Invaders is a stiff cocktail without a chaser: It will wake you up, though it’s hard to get down. It lacks subtlety and feels as though it were written to shock—though some scenes are also wickedly funny. Little Neck Cove seems like a terrible place to live, though readers won’t mind gawking at its melodramatic residents for a while before returning to their own, more peaceful lives.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

Two new novels set in privileged northeastern communities showcase the darker side of family life.
Fiction

The mockingbird sings again

Feature by Lily McLemore

It’s one of America’s most iconic pieces of literature, and now, 55 years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has a companion.

In February, seemingly out of nowhere, HarperCollins Publishers announced on behalf of Harper Lee, 89, that her second book, Go Set a Watchman, would be published on July 14.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird has never been out of print since it was published in 1960, and it is one of the most enduring, beloved American novels ever written. Told from the perspective of 6-year-old Scout Finch, the novel follows the rape trial of Tom Robinson, an innocent black man; his lawyer and Scout’s father, Atticus; and the trial’s effect on Scout and the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama. Go Set a Watchman unfolds 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird and focuses on the adult Scout as she returns home to visit her father. Upon her return, she struggles with her feelings toward her hometown’s residents and its past, as well as her changing relationship with her father and his beliefs.

Calling Go Set a Watchman a “new” book from the reclusive literary legend is a stretch, however. It was Lee’s first attempt at a novel and was written in the mid-1950s, before To Kill a Mockingbird. Upon reading the manuscript, her editor suggested that she expand Scout’s intriguing recollections of her childhood into a novel. Eventually, this became To Kill a Mockingbird. The early novel was redis- covered by Lee’s lawyer in 2014 and is being published as it was originally written. In a statement released by her lawyer, Lee says, “I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.

Although To Kill a Mockingbird was published to immense critical praise, Lee has refused to embrace stardom, rarely making public appearances or granting interviews. Instead, she has chosen a secluded life in her small hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. The private author has said very little about Go Set a Watchman, but she did send a note to a particularly persistent journalist. Her handwritten message? “Go away!”

After the initial excitement about the announcement of Lee’s new book, many voiced concerns that HarperCollins was taking advantage of the 89-year-old author. It seemed to some a bit too coincidental that the novel was announced a year after the death of Lee’s sister, lawyer and trusted confidante, Alice. The state of Alabama looked into concerns of elder abuse, but concluded that the claims were unfounded. Lee herself adamantly denied these accusations in a statement: “I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to [Go Set a] Watchman.” The novel has an initial print run of 2 million, and it is the most pre-ordered book in HarperCollins’ history.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s one of America’s most iconic pieces of literature, and now, 55 years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has a companion.
FictionDebut Fiction

Debut authors writing from the outside in

Feature by BookPage contributors

Looking at a world from an outsider’s point of view is a common theme in literature—with good reason. It supplies a powerful perspective and often enlightenment, as demonstrated in these four memorable first novels.

REACHING A BREAKING POINT
The Islamophobic phase of America’s fitful xenophobia is nothing new: The religion may change, but the fear rarely does. Rajia Hassib’s In the Language of Miracles shows its effect on an Egyptian-American family after their eldest son kills his Christian girlfriend. The novel is topical both in its take on race relations and in its depiction of a troubled young man with ready access to firearms.

Samir and Nagla Al-Menshawy are model immigrants. Samir is a doctor building a family practice and aspiring to home ownership. Nagla is a supportive wife, and their kids, Hossam, Khaled and Fatima, are, in Samir’s words, “well-bred.” But something goes wrong with Hossam, even if what exactly that is isn’t clear. Is he mentally ill, or does he only suffer from the “loneliness and boredom” afflicting many newcomers? Either way, one day, in a fit of jealousy, he takes his girlfriend’s life and his own. Some reactions are predictable: threatening letters and graffiti (“Go Home”). Others are more sinister: posting photos of Samir’s house and children to Facebook. Hassib makes it clear, however, that 9/11 did change things for Muslim Americans. Khaled concludes that, as a Muslim, he is frequently seen as “a cancer that brought nothing but suffering.”

Hassib, who was born and raised in Egypt before moving to the U.S. at 23, is a capable writer, especially when dealing with the interpersonal. Her natural use of language resembles that of Khaled Hosseini. Both writers deal with a common theme: Sometimes melting pots have a propensity to boil over.

—Kenneth Champeon

MAKING THE WRONG FRIEND
If Shirley Jackson and Mary Gaitskill had a literary daughter, it might be Ottessa Moshfegh, whose unnerving debut is sure to garner attention. Part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age novel, Eileen shares a week in the life of its title character: a young woman stuck in a dead-end job in a juvenile detention center who crosses paths with a polished and privileged social worker. Looking back on her life, Eileen narrates with a precise, mesmerizing clarity. 

In her early 20s, Eileen is living in a dilapidated house in an unnamed Massachusetts town with her alcoholic father. Eileen, who also drinks too much, loathes her body and settles more deeply into her filthy home every day. She heartily despises her co-workers and harbors an unrequited crush on a guard, more out of boredom than real emotion. But when the attractive new head of education, Rebecca St. John, makes overtures of friendship, Eileen can’t resist her charm. She soon finds herself complicit in Rebecca’s atypical methods. 

Eileen takes place over a single snowy week, and the locations—from the attic bedroom and dank bars to the narrow linoleum halls of the jail—add to the feeling of claustrophobia that Moshfegh, currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, expertly builds. It’s the how and not the why that this strange and unsettling novel reveals, and readers will be holding their breath by the final pages.

—Lauren Bufferd

ODD COUPLE IN AN ODD LAND
Fans of immigrant stories—think Americanah or House of Sand and Fog—will be captivated by Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, the striking first novel from Ohio-based writer Julie Iromuanya. 

Nigerians Ifi and Job may have married sight unseen, but they’re united by their determination to present themselves as the perfect, upwardly mobile immigrant couple to their families back home. This provides something of a challenge, since Job—who has been in America for nearly two decades—is not the doctor he claimed to be during their courtship, but a college dropout. As Ifi adjusts to her new home (under Job’s dubious tutelage), they attempt to make the most of their circumstances. That is, until Job’s first wife, whom he married for a green card, resurfaces.

Iromuanya weaves this tale of a mismatched couple with dark humor and careful observation. From the first scene, where Job tries to woo Ifi with techniques learned by watching American pornography (spoiler alert: it doesn’t go over well), it’s clear that no subject is off-limits. Her insights into assimilation—its difficulties and pitfalls—are astute and at times, eye-opening.

—Trisha Ping

THE INSULATED ELITE
For centuries, New York City has been a magnet to dreamers with fantasies of catapulting themselves into the upper echelons of society. Unfortunately, as Evelyn Beegan discovers in Stephanie Clifford’s debut novel, Everybody Rise, the higher you rise, the farther you have to fall should you lose your grip on the social ladder.

Evelyn has landed a job with an up-and-coming social media site, which seeks to attract the crème de la crème. Therefore, Evelyn makes it her mission to land Camilla Rutherford—the queen bee of Manhattan’s young, beautiful and rich—as a client. Knowing that a blue blood like Camilla would never rub elbows with a new-money nobody, Evelyn sets out to reinvent herself. What begins as fudging the truth soon spirals until Evelyn barely recognizes herself. It’s only a matter of time before her carefully constructed house of cards comes tumbling down.

With Everybody Rise, Clifford has crafted a sharp and witty cautionary tale about wealth and the pursuit of the American dream in the 21st century, right before the 2008 financial crash. Her shrewd look at upper-class dynamics in modern day New York society takes up the torch of Edith Wharton. And although her story is sobering in its scope, Clifford keeps it afloat with bursts of comedy; the end result is a thoughtful yet entertaining yarn that manages to bring to mind both The Great Gatsby and The Shopaholic series. Filled with scandal and schadenfreude, Everybody Rise will keep readers flipping pages.

—Stephenie Harrison

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Stephanie Clifford about Everybody Rise.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Looking at a world from an outsider’s point of view is a common theme in literature—with good reason. It supplies a powerful perspective and often enlightenment, as demonstrated in these four memorable first novels.
Fiction

Tales that pack a powerful punch

Feature by Michael Magras

Some people would have you believe that short stories are the literary equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues, a place to hone your skills until you’re ready for a bigger and more prestigious stage. But as masters such as Alice Munro have proven, a great short story is no less of an achievement than a great novel.

These four collections demonstrate that a new generation of authors is happy to experiment with the possibilities of the short form.

The most audacious collection here is Only the Animals by the South African and Australian writer Ceridwen Dovey. How’s this for a daring conceit: Each story is written from the perspective of an animal killed in a conflict wrought by humans. And an author appears in almost every narrative.

A cat owned by Colette escapes from the author’s car and witnesses horrors on the front lines in France during World War I. Chimpanzees in Germany who are being trained to adopt human characteristics become more refined even as food rationing dehumanizes men and women. A dolphin born into captivity writes to Sylvia Plath, “a human writer who meant something to me,” to explain the circumstances by which the dolphin performed echolocation activities for the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.

Seeing events through an animal’s eyes gives us an outsider’s perspective on major events in recent history, including atrocities like the rise of Nazi Germany and the wars in the Middle East. In forcing us to do so, Dovey suggests that some animals have a capacity for empathy that humans would do well to emulate.

RUSSIAN JEWELS
The Tsar of Love and Techno is an intricately structured and powerful collection. These interconnected stories set in Russia span more than 70 years. They begin with the tale of Roman Markin, a “correction artist” who works for the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. His job is to airbrush images of political dissenters out of photographs and paintings. One of the dissenters is his younger brother, Vaska.

In memory of his brother, Roman draws tiny portraits of Vaska in the pictures he censors, including a photo of a ballerina who looks like Vaska’s widow and a painting of a dacha in a pasture. The painting links tales of the ballerina’s granddaughter, a telephone operator at a nickel combine who wins the Miss Siberia pageant and marries the 14th richest man in Russia; a former deputy art director who, after the 1999 bombing of Chechnya, is forced to become head of the Chechen Tourist Bureau; and a soldier who carries a mix tape his brother gave him before his first tour of duty.

This collection showcases Marra’s wit and his gift for unforgettable details, such as when a soldier fires a round into the earth to loosen it before he digs a grave. Some characters are capable of great brutality, whereas others are capable of declaring that no invention is “more humane, more elegant, more generous” than the wheelchair ramp. The Tsar of Love and Techno is the work of an elegant and generous writer. 

EVERYDAY PROBLEMS
Lauren Holmes’ debut, Barbara the Slut and Other People, is lighter fare than the previous books, but don’t equate light with inconsequential. Holmes’ deceptively breezy stories focus on women grappling with sexual politics and make important observations about challenges faced by millennials.

A 20-year-old woman from Los Angeles travels to Acapulco to see her distant mother and to announce that she’s a lesbian. “Mike Anonymous” is a quietly devastating story of a woman who works at a clinic that helps people with sexually transmitted diseases, and of a married Japanese man convinced that he’s HIV positive. And in the title story, a high school senior applies to Princeton and struggles to lose the reputation she earned several times over in 11th grade.

Holmes, whose work has appeared in outlets like Granta and Guernica, has a keen ear for dialogue and a sharp memory for the high school life, as proven in the description of a student who “removed her retainer with her tongue and spit it onto her desk every time she was about to say something in class.” Barbara the Slut contains surprisingly tender depictions of love and family, which show that you should never judge a book by its title.

HOME TO KANSAS
Andrew Malan Milward focuses on the rich history of his home state of Kansas in his second collection, I Was a Revolutionary. Milward’s hometown of Lawrence has been the site of significant moments in American history, including pro-slavery guerrillas’ 1863 massacre of abolitionists—the largest act of domestic terrorism until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He recreates many such historical moments in these stories.

The protagonist of “The Burning of Lawrence,” which chronicles the 1863 killings, is the Confederate guerrilla fighter William Quantrill. “The Americanist,” a modern-day story about a gay couple, invokes John Romulus Brinkley, the “Goat Gland Doctor” of the 1920s who injected goat testicles into men to improve their virility. “What Is to Be Done?” presents the eccentric sculptor Samuel Perry Dinsmoor, a retired teacher who, in later years, was known to lecture about socialism to a roomful of invisible students.

Milward’s habit of providing excessive historical detail diminishes the tension at times, but when he minimizes background information, as he does in the brilliant title piece, the results are compelling. There are lovely, unexpected touches: A pro-slavery fighter in “The Burning of Lawrence” trashes an abolitionist’s home, but pauses long enough to play the family’s organ with “long-dormant familiarity.” 

Throughout the book, Milward makes astute observations about politics, not only about the political climate of past eras but also of our own—a rarity in contemporary American fiction.

Who says short-story writers occupy a low rung on the literary hierarchy? As these collections prove, great short fiction not only is its own major league but also boasts an impressive lineup that any contingent would envy.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Some people would have you believe that short stories are the literary equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues, a place to hone your skills until you’re ready for a bigger and more prestigious stage. But as masters such as Alice Munro have proven, a great short story is no less of an achievement than a great novel. These four collections demonstrate that a new generation of authors is happy to experiment with the possibilities of the short form.
FictionDebut Fiction

Two delectable debuts

Feature by Amy Scribner

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point. 

Both feature a protagonist chasing a food dream, one in the Big Apple and the other all over Europe. And both have enough mouthwatering descriptions of meals to send you rummaging for something to munch on.

The fun, frothy Food Whore has traces of The Devil Wears Prada, except instead of a cruel magazine editor, the villain is the entire Manhattan restaurant scene. Tia Monroe dreams of writing cookbooks and enrolls in the prestigious New York University culinary masters program. But when her bid for an internship with a famous cookbook author is botched, Tia begins ghostwriting columns for weaselly New York Times restaurant critic Michael Saltz, who has lost his ability to taste food. 

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Saltz gets to keep his coveted job at the Times, and Tia gets the thrill of seeing her words in print, albeit under someone else’s byline. She also gets access to Saltz’s private account at Bergdorf Goodman. In no time, down-to-earth Tia becomes a fashionista who breaks up with her steadfast boyfriend and starts dating one of New York’s hottest chefs. But Tia quickly learns how brutal it is in the culinary world, where restaurants will do anything to get a good review. 

Food Whore is the first novel from Jessica Tom, a Brooklyn writer who graduated from Yale University and, much like Tia, wrote restaurant reviews for the school paper. Tom nails the dog-eat-dog restaurant world, whipping up a remarkably entertaining debut.

In Vintage, Bruno Tannenbaum is on the other side of his career from young Tia. After years as a food columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Bruno is sliding into obsolescence. He once wrote a little-known novel he was proud of and a gimmicky best-selling cookbook he was less proud of. But now, he’s sleeping on his mother’s couch (wife kicked him out for cheating), unemployed (newspaper let him go) and drinking too much (see previous). When a Russian restaurateur enlists Bruno’s help in solving the mystery of a lost vintage of French wine, Bruno senses a story that could revive his career and prove to his family that he still has what it takes to provide for them.

Vintage is a whirlwind of a book, with the charmingly rough Bruno spinning through France, Moldova and Russia as he chases down the wine, which he believes was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. He finds romance with a French winemaker, intrigue in a Russian prison and answers where he never expected them. 

Author David Baker is the director of the documentary American Wine Story, and he delivers a walloping good time in Vintage. While the book is clever and funny, it’s also a tender meditation on the power of food and wine to heal even the sorest of hearts. Bruno is a character for the ages, a passionate foodie who finds his own winding road to redemption.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point.
Graphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Dive into a great graphic

Feature by Hilli Levin

Fall is a busy season in the publishing world, which means plenty of new arrivals are hitting the shelves! For readers looking for a little change of pace—and a more visual reading experience—we've rounded up our favorite graphic novels and memoirs that will bring a little color into these increasingly gray days. 

ADVICE FROM YOUR BETTER SELF
From The New Yorker cartoonist and author of the graphic memoir Cancer Vixen comes this satirical send-up of the New York media world. Self-serving Ann Tenna runs a celebrity gossip site that would make writers at TMZ blush, but a fateful car crash on her birthday leaves her unconscious and clinging to life. In a Christmas Carol-style chain of events, Ann leaves her body and comes face-to-face with her higher self, who takes her on a reflective journey through her most cringe-worthy life choices. Marchetto's laugh-out-loud and out-there tale is filled to the brim with pop culture references and lush artwork, making this one cosmic trip worth taking.

THROUGH THE LENS OF CHILDHOOD 
French author Riad Sattouf chronicles his childhood as the son of a French mother and Syrian father in his playful yet brutally honest graphic memoir. Sattouf was adored and doted on by his father, an academic and firm believer in pan-Arabism and the importance of education for the Arab people. Years living in Gaddafi's Libya—where each citizen was guaranteed housing, but squatters frequently took claim of the Sattouf's various residences and a later stint in Assad's Syria—take a toll on the family's bright-eyed idealism. At first called a little angel for his flowing gold locks, Sattouf is later insulted for his "ugly yellow Jewish hair," and he must come to terms with his feelings of being an outsider in a part of the world his father so badly wants to make theirs.

SUPER STAN
It's almost impossible to have a conversation about the evolution of graphic storytelling without dropping Stan Lee's name at least a few times. One of the most influential creators in the comic world (Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men, to name a few) tells his own story in the unmistakably zippy style he's known for in his new autobiography. Starting from his childhood in a Depression-hit Manhattan, Lee chronicles his first meetings with collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, but his moments of pride are balanced by shocking, painful recollections of his personal losses and family struggles. For fans of the Marvel brand and the wide world of superheroes, this is a well-executed autobiography that should not be missed.

RACING TOWARD SHAMBALA
This innovative hybrid is a captivating tale that weaves sections of prose alongside pages of comic panels for an action-packed story. Set during World War I, this immersive read will satisfy fans of classic good vs. evil adventure stories. The globe-trotting action follows an underground group of explorers sworn to seek out and solve the world's greatest mysteries, and in this volume, the Guild must travel to the golden city of Shambala from Buddhist mythology. If you're a fan of Indiana Jones, then this book will satisfy your desire for a little nostalgic fun. 

CLOWNING AROUND
Peruvian-born and acclaimed author Daniel Alarcón is known for his gorgeously rendered prose that draws frequent comparisons to Steinbeck, Nabokov and Roberto Bolaño. In his first graphic novel, he expands upon his short story, first published in The New Yorker in 2003, which follows a young Peruvian journalist in the wake of his father's death. After discovering his father's secret second family at his funeral, Chino is sent on a strange, almost absurd reporting assignment: write a feature on Lima's street clowns. What follows is Chino's tender recollections of his early childhood, interspersed alongside his increasingly sad observations of the poor working clowns. Stark visuals from Sheila Alvarado make this forelorn, moving work of literary fiction come to vivid life. 

Fall is a busy season in the publishing world, which means plenty of new arrivals are hitting the shelves! For readers looking for a little change of pace—and a more visual reading experience—we've rounded up our favorite graphic novels and memoirs that will bring a little color into these increasingly gray days.
NonfictionFictionLiterature

Sweet holiday selections for serious readers

Feature by Julie Hale

Merry and bright: that’s the forecast for bibliophiles this holiday season. Inspired gift ideas for lovers of literature are as plentiful as snowflakes in December. Our top recommendations are featured here.

OUR BELOVED DETECTIVE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet, a novel for which he earned £25—not even peanuts compared to the bucks being generated by the lucrative sleuth today. Somehow, a century and a quarter after his debut, the detective has become an entertainment-industry titan as the star of a successful movie franchise and two popular TV series. Doyle’s detective is undoubtedly having a moment, so the timing couldn’t be better for The Sherlock Holmes Book, a handsomely illustrated volume that provides background on every case Holmes ever faced, starting with A Study in Scarlet and ending with The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place. Each case is accompanied by an easy-to-follow flowchart, which breaks down the deductive process Holmes used to crack it. In-depth character profiles, a Doyle biography and fascinating chapters on forensic science make this the ultimate Sherlock scrapbook. It’s a must-have for devotees of the great detective.

BIBLIOPHILES TRAVEL GUIDE
Perfect for the armchair traveler or the reader who enjoys hitting the road, Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee is a meticulously researched, beautifully written survey of the nation’s most beloved literary sites. From the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington Station, New York, to the Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the dream destinations of every book lover are included in this fascinating tour. Along with stops at familiar spots like Hannibal, Missouri, and Walden Pond, the narrative includes visits to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation and sites in South Texas. Fishkin considers the storytelling traditions of these and other parts of the country, highlighting the great writers native to each, and the result is a vivid mosaic of the cultures, voices and geographies that inform America’s literary inheritance. Packed with photographs, this book features more than 150 National Register historic sites. It’s the ultimate trip advisor for lovers of literature and history. 

CHARTING THE CLASSICS
In Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff interprets classic narratives as maps. Not the Google kind, mind you. DeGraff isn’t a conventional cartographer, he’s an artist, and his maps—subjective, frequently surreal topographic renderings of narratives both epic (Moby-Dick) and miniature (“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”)—rather than orienting the viewer, often have the opposite effect. DeGraff’s depictions defamiliarize well-known works, uncovering facets the reader never imagined. In his treatment of Hamlet, he tracks the path of the prince’s madness as it contaminates the palace of Elsinore. Inspired by the social factors at play in Pride and Prejudice, he maps the novel as a series of precarious catwalks between family estates. In all, DeGraff charts 30 narratives. He’s a genius at identifying and connecting a work’s key coordinates, then using them as the basis for remarkable visualizations. Each of his colorful, ingenious maps is accompanied by an introductory essay. With Plotted, he guides literature lovers off the beaten path and into newly charted territory.

THE MARCH CLAN REVISITED
There’s comfort to be found in the pages of a classic. A tried-and-true title holds out the promise of pleasure to a reader and never fails to keep the contract. Case in point: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott—surely one of the most reread works in all of American literature. The story of the March sisters, first published in 1868-69, receives the royal treatment in The Annotated Little Women, a deluxe edition of the novel filled with rare photographs, illustrations and other Alcott-related memorabilia. This lavish volume features notes and an introduction by John Matteson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. Matteson offers insights into the author’s creative life and provides context for the novel, finding new dimensions in the familiar classic. Arriving in time for Christmas—the same holiday the Marches celebrate so memorably in the opening chapters of Little Women—this treasure trove of a book is the perfect gift for bibliophiles who fancy old favorites. 

VINTAGE KEYS
We may be living in an age of featherweight laptops and magic tablets, but the typewriter—that clunky classic—remains the most literary device of all. It’s an icon of the writing life, the truest emblem of an author (nothing says “vagabond novelist” like an Olivetti or Underwood). Journalist Tony Allan honors the PC’s stately precursor in Typewriter: The History, The Machines, The Writers. Providing a compact overview of the instrument’s evolution, Allan’s quirky volume is filled with typewriter trivia, retro posters and ads, vintage photos of classic machines and quotes—now golden—from those who pecked their way to fame (including, of course, Ernest Hemingway: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”). With a foreword by Paul Schweitzer, owner of the Gramercy Typewriter Company, this uncommon little stocking stuffer is the sort of thing literary types live for.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Merry and bright: that’s the forecast for bibliophiles this holiday season. Inspired gift ideas for lovers of literature are as plentiful as snowflakes in December. Our top recommendations are featured here.

Trending Fiction

FictionDebut Fiction

Two turtledoves

Francesca Hornak, Samantha Silva

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Holiday preparations flood our hearts with the warmth of Christmases past—or the echoes of family dinners best forgotten. Wherever your memories lie, two debut works of Christmas fiction are sure to lighten your spirits.

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FictionSpeculative Fiction

Megan Angelo

Cursive, privacy and other things worth saving

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Journalist Megan Angelo has written extensively about pop culture, motherhood, womanhood, TV and film for the New York Times, Glamour, Elle and more. Her debut novel, Followers, is a perfect intersection of her passions that delivers a curious tale of three influencers and their followers, from 2015 to 2051.

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