From age 13, Marian Graves is determined to fly. “Her belief that she would fly saturated her world, presented an appearance of absolute truth,” Maggie Shipstead writes in her epic and exciting novel Great Circle. As a girl in 1920s Montana, Marian’s dream seems nigh impossible, but she bargains and sacrifices her way into procuring precious flying lessons—and so discovers an all-consuming, lifelong love of the sky.

Marian’s insatiable thirst for flight, her desire to transcend societal constraints and see as much of the world as possible, drives Great Circle. Shipstead, bestselling author of Seating Arrangements and Astonish Me, sweeps readers from earth to sky and back again, across 600-plus pages and throughout multiple eras and locales, from Prohibition-era Montana to World War II Europe to present-day Los Angeles.

Maggie Shipstead offers a marvelous pastiche that explores what it takes to live an unusual life.

Tragically, like Amelia Earhart before her, Marian goes missing—in 1950, during her attempt to fly around the world over the North and South poles. Her mysterious disappearance becomes the stuff of legend, another adventurer lost to the skies. Decades later in 2014 Hollywood, Hadley Baxter also yearns to soar. When the opportunity to play Marian in a biopic comes along, Hadley sees it as a chance to reignite her creative spark, dampened by years of squeezing herself into others’ ideas of who she should be.

As the two women’s stories unspool—rife with ambition, desire, triumph and failure—numerous other characters come to the fore with fully realized tales. The book’s level of detail is considerable and impressive, whether Shipstead is explaining airplane mechanics, describing life during wartime or otherwise layering her story over and through history. Her nonlinear storytelling creates a marvelous pastiche of adventure and emotion as she explores what it means (and what it takes) to live an unusual life.

Underpinning it all is a reverence for nature, thrumming in the forests of Montana, the jagged peaks of Alaska and the stupefying ice shelves of the Antarctic. Shipstead’s exhilarating, masterful depictions of Marian’s flights feel like shared experiences that invite readers to contemplate both magnitude and majesty. Great Circle is sure to give even firmly earthbound readers a new appreciation for those who are compelled ever skyward.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Maggie Shipstead may not want to be a pilot, but she can’t help but explore that skyward impulse.

Loosely based on true events—and the real people and animals that played a part—The Elephant of Belfast captures the turmoil of both a city and a young woman’s life during World War II.

S. Kirk Walsh’s first novel opens in 1940, just as German bombardment begins to threaten Northern Ireland. The Bellevue Zoo has welcomed a new elephant named Violet to its menagerie, parading the pachyderm through the streets of Belfast with all the pomp of a visiting dignitary. Onlookers are bewildered, but young zookeeper Hettie Quin finds a sense of purpose in the elephant’s presence.

Hettie’s older sister is dead and her father absent, and she tiptoes around the house she shares with her mother, Rose. Hettie wants to be taken seriously as the only female zookeeper at Bellevue, though navigating her terse boss and the physical demands of working with large exotic animals proves challenging. But Hettie steadily proves to herself that she is capable, even resilient, despite the nearly constant state of upheaval caused by her tense relationship with Rose, confusion about the opposite sex, the ever-present Catholic and Protestant divide and the threat of bombing raids.

When the Luftwaffe bombs start to fall in April 1941, caring for Violet becomes Hettie’s sole focus. In a time where everyone is looking for something solid to hold on to, Hettie has Violet, and their relationship keeps the young woman from falling into total despair.

With such a unique premise, the novel remains engaging despite occasionally clichéd prose and a plot that gets bogged down in detail. Hettie’s grief and longing are palpable, her mounting losses real and tangible. Through heart-stirring scenes of violence and destruction in a city unprepared for the chaos of war, Walsh showcases a flair for description and emotion, and for rendering ordinary lives amid extraordinary circumstances.

The Château de Chavaniac, a beautiful stone castle in the remote reaches of the mountains of Auvergne, is the birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette, a man who played an integral role in the French Revolution and who famously helped the American colonies win their independence from British rule. In The Women of Chateau Lafayette, the marquis is a mere supporting figure as author Stephanie Dray’s novel instead follows three women over three eras of the château’s history.

First there’s Adrienne Lafayette, the marquis’ wife. History has all but forgotten her role as adviser and strategist to her husband, but she put her life and family at risk in pursuit of liberty for all of France. Then during World War I, Beatrice Astor Chanler, a millionaire’s wife and former actor, uses the family fortune to restore the crumbling château, transforming it into a sanctuary for sick and orphaned children. Finally there’s Marthe Simone, one of those orphans, who grows up at the château and works there as a teacher as the Nazis occupy France. Marthe uses her gift as a talented artist to falsify paperwork and protect Jewish children at the manor.

Dray is a bestselling historical novelist who has previously written about Eliza Hamilton and Patsy Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s daughter. Her ability to create engaging narratives from history, incorporating rich details and fully drawn characters, is downright magical. Adrienne and Beatrice are both based on real women whose stories come vividly to life here, while Marthe is a composite character inspired by the manor’s female resistance fighters, an artist-in-residence and other figures from the château’s history.

In The Women of Chateau Lafayette, we move among the extravagance of Marie Antoinette’s royal court, the brutality of trench warfare in World War I and the misery of a French countryside slowly starving under Nazi rule. It’s an epic, gripping novel, a powerful depiction of the way brutal conflicts based on prejudice and greed tend to repeat time and again. And through it all, Dray poignantly reminds us of the undervalued contributions of women throughout history.

“I had freed my family by force of will,” says Adrienne. “Not only my family, but those who had been arrested for our sake. I had done it without sacrificing any principle or doing violence. It was not the sort of victory for which people built stone monuments, but I hoped it might still, someday, be remembered.”

When an author threads a story with multiple perspectives that span years, they run the risk that readers will prefer one character’s voice over another, creating a divide in investment that’s difficult to bridge. With The Lost Apothecary, first-time novelist Sarah Penner takes that risk, weaving together the tales of three women separated by more than two centuries but united through pain, fear and hope. In Penner’s case, the risk pays off in a spellbinding way.

In 1791 London, Nella works in her apothecary shop with a very specific purpose: making discreet poisons to help women rid themselves of the dangerous men in their lives. Nella’s work is solitary for good reason, until she meets Eliza, a 12-year-old whose curiosity transforms her from unlikely client to unlikely friend. 

Meanwhile in the present, Caroline is making a solo journey to London in the wake of her husband’s infidelity. As she wanders the city, a chance discovery reawakens her long-buried passion for history, and as she seeks her new purpose in life, she just might find it in the story of Nella and Eliza.

What’s most striking about The Lost Apothecary is not how expertly Penner braids the three strands of her story together, though the structure and pacing are certainly well done. What is most admirable is that, as she leaps between first-person perspectives—including two women who are often reflecting on the exact same events—the sense of character never once falters. Their presences and voices are distinct, even as they’re bound by an emotional link that is clear to the reader (though not always clear to the characters). There’s a powerful unity to this story, making it nimble yet sturdy, light yet satiating.

Like in a well-brewed potion, all the ingredients have been given exactly the right level of care and time, and the result is a novel that simply overwhelms with its delicate spell.

“I sometimes wondered what it would have been like to be raised a normal girl,” says the narrator of Carol Edgarian’s novel Vera. “But that was not my story.”

It is 1906, and Vera Johnson is being raised in a “respectable” household by a widowed Swedish woman pretending to be her mother. Vera’s real mother, however, is Rose, the madam of San Francisco's most infamous brothel. Rose has kept Vera a secret for nearly 15 years while continuing to provide for her financially. Then the destructive San Francisco earthquake happens, shaking more than the ground beneath their feet.

Readers may come to Vera for a tale about the San Francisco earthquake, or for a juicy novel about the women who populate society’s underbelly. But the novel is actually about motherhood and Vera’s struggle to be cared for as she needs to be. Vera yearns for her mother’s love and respect, and she doesn’t care about how Rose’s disreputable place in society could impact her own life.

The many memorable characters populating Vera may provide interesting fodder for book club conversations. Vera is feisty and chafes at the confines of life in this era; her refusal to conform brings to mind a more street-savvy Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. She is forced to be stronger than any 15-year-old should have to be. And Rose intriguingly demonstrates the tough choices a woman of her time must make in order to be truly free.

That said, the plot of Vera is overly complicated and features a bloated cast of characters. Rose’s employees and neighbors, as well as the city’s politicians, all have subplots to which Vera is only loosely connected. As a result, much of the novel feels like it’s scrambling to tie up loose ends rather than foregrounding the narrator’s own story.

Vera is an engaging novel that could have been executed more succinctly.

Grab a cup of tea and a scone, and curl up with The Kitchen Front, Jennifer Ryan’s positively delicious novel about four British women competing in a cooking contest during World War II. The winner will become the first female host of a BBC radio show called “The Kitchen Front,” which guides listeners in creative ways to use food rations. Ryan, author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir and The Spies of Shilling Lane, continues to excel at creating warmhearted, intriguing homefront drama.

Both the book and the contest are divided into three rounds, in which each contestant must cook a starter, main course and dessert. The stakes are high for the competitors, each of whom yearns for the career-boosting prize. There’s Audrey, the anchor of the book, a struggling war widow with three sons, as well as her estranged, wealthy sister, Lady Gwendoline, who’s trapped in a loveless relationship with her abusive husband. Lady G’s shy young kitchen maid, Nell, is also competing, as well as a professional cook from France named Zelda, a single woman who’s trying to hide an unplanned pregnancy.

Ryan uses alternating chapters to explore each woman’s personality, moving the drama steadily along with brisk dialogue and action. This is very much a book about women’s rights, strengths and abilities, and the class differences among characters add drama and a dash of complexity.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Jennifer Ryan marvels at the upbeat attitudes of the homefront cooks who inspired The Kitchen Front.

Recipes are included for each round, some adapted from wartime leaflets. They’re fun to read, and each is well integrated into the unfolding drama. Readers are likely to be more inclined to try some (vegetarian Lord Woolton pie or Audrey’s fruit scones) than others (Lady Gwendoline’s sardine rolls). Historical details sprinkled throughout are equally fascinating, such as the fact that during the war, the moat around the Tower of London was drained to grow cabbages and potatoes that fed struggling Londoners in the East End.

Though the four contestants each face personal difficulties, endure shortages and fear bombing raids, their village of Fenley feels removed from the raging horrors of World War II. Ryan injects humor into their sorrow—as well as empowerment—as the group gradually learns to band together and pool their talents instead of facing off as kitchen opponents.

While The Kitchen Front goes down like a spoonful of sugar, Ryan manages to instill substance and plenty of food for thought in its creative and ultimately uplifting story.

One might wonder if anything new can be written about Paris, but Janet Skeslien Charles reminds us of the city’s evergreen appeal and unbounded potential for stories with The Paris Library, which tells of the very real, very beloved American Library in Paris and the role it played during World War II.

The year is 1939, and Odile Souchet is nervously reciting the Dewey Decimal System as she prepares for a job interview at the American Library. It’s not common for young ladies of her class to get jobs, but Odile is in love with books as if they were walking, breathing bodies, and she wants nothing more than to be a librarian at a place she has loved since her childhood. It’s no surprise to the reader when she lands the job.

The comfort and whimsy that young Odile once experienced at the American Library are still very much alive. However, everything changes when the Germans occupy Paris and threaten to destroy everything she holds dear. Together with the rest of the staff, Odile joins the resistance, delivering books to Jewish readers banned from entering the library. When the war eventually ends, instead of rejoicing, Odile learns of betrayals that make it impossible for her to remain in the city she loves or to work in a place she had come to know as her sanctuary.

The book skips ahead to 1983 Montana, where we find Odile living alone. In all these years of calling a small American town her home, she hasn’t managed to shake off the mystery surrounding her. When a school assignment connects a lonely and curious teenage girl named Lily with Odile, a friendship is forged, and the two slowly confront the consequences of present and past choices.

What makes The Paris Library such a tender read is Charles’ firsthand experience at the American Library, where she was the programs manager. This is where she first discovered the stories of the brave librarians who fought the Germans with nothing more than books. Her meticulous research brings these figures to life with Odile as their narrator. Furthermore, Charles’ Montana roots help shine light on the small-town life that Lily can’t wait to escape. Together the two storylines provide wonderful insight into relationships and friendships that transcend time and place.