In the verdant Massachusetts countryside, the latest of Samuel Hood’s grand philosophical experiments at Birch Hill is underway. It’s 1871, and a school for the true instruction of girls—“the training of intellects and souls, hearts and minds”—is a novel undertaking. Intending to give young ladies more to do than embroider and play the piano, Samuel sets out to redeem his first failed intellectual endeavor that took place at the farm.

From the outset of Clare Beams’ first novel, The Illness Lesson, hubris clouds Samuel’s judgment. He believes he’s been chosen by God for this transformative work and that his efforts are validated by the surprising return of arresting, brilliantly red birds called trilling hearts. He desires to teach girls—but really to form them in his image, as he’s done with his daughter, Caroline, who reluctantly becomes the only female teacher in the school.

Eight girls arrive and begin their studies, and Beams poetically chronicles their experiences. The reader’s gaze is Caroline’s; we experience with her a growing unease at what begins unfolding at the school. Her father’s grand, even laudable, dream slowly proves disastrous in execution. Before long, the teenage girls are beset by maladies—fainting, red welts and rashes, strange lack of bodily control—and the doctor who is brought in, Hawkins, diagnoses hysteria. It’s a catch-all label, as the insidious Hawkins himself admits, whose “treatment” is as transgressive as they come. Questions of parental consent are swiftly discarded as the doctor goes about his intrusive plans. Resistant but ultimately compliant, Caroline finds even herself swept up in Hawkins’ machinations. Neither her father nor the other male teacher intervenes.

Beams powerfully explores the nature of susceptibility, manipulation and authority, as well as the strength of the female mind and body. The author’s prose is flowing if occasionally florid, but the style suits the historic setting.

Caroline’s father wants to shape girls’ minds and souls, but eventually the girls—and Caroline—are set free to fly. At a crucial turning point, Beams poignantly writes that “with a survivable body, a person could do anything she wanted,” which becomes a fitting anthem.

Witness the tragic descent of Agnes Bain through the loving eyes of her youngest son, Shuggie.

In poverty-stricken 1980s Glasgow, Agnes is the beloved daughter of hardworking Catholics. Known for her elegance and beauty, and already married with two children, she wins the heart of a charismatic taxi driver named Big Shug. Agnes, her children and Shug move in with her parents, but trouble begins after they have Shuggie. One by one, the members of Agnes’ family leave until only she and her favorite, Shuggie, remain.

During the Thatcher era, “industrial days [are] over,” and in an increasing privatized economy, miners and shipyard workers are unemployed, given to restlessness. “Out came the characters shellacked by the grey city, years of drink and rain and hope holding them in place.” Scenes of abandoned coal mines and council housing mimic the dismal mood in the Bain household. Chapters chronicle a downward spiral of drinking, fighting, fleeing, stealing, revenge, sexual aggression and parties gone awry. But a few loving encounters offer hope amid trauma: Shuggie’s big brother saves the day more than once, and Shuggie befriends a girl whose mother is also an alcoholic.

Amid Shuggie’s struggles to be “normal,” Shuggie Bain develops a palpable sense of helplessness. Picked on for playing with dolls, dancing, dressing neatly and speaking with proper diction, he is mostly friendless. He works hard to help maintain his mother’s dignity, often staying home from school to keep “uncles” at bay and to make sure they have food. But despite his best efforts, Agnes’ condition is beyond his control.

Douglas Stuart’s anxious novel is both a tragedy and a survival story. Shuggie is as neglected as Glasgow, but through his mother’s demise, he discovers his strength. Shuggie Bain celebrates taking charge of one’s own destiny.

Storyteller par excellence Isabel Allende brings to life an epic saga in A Long Petal of the Sea.

During the Spanish Civil War in 1938, medic Victor Dalmau aids the fight against ruthless General Franco by tending the wounded under the worst possible conditions, while Roser Bruguera, a young piano student, becomes the lover of Victor’s soldier brother. After Victor’s brother is killed and the Franco-led fascists gain control of Spain, Victor and Roser, fearing even greater atrocities, join the sea of desperate refugees fleeing to France. There, they are detained under horrific conditions in a camp by the sea.

To escape their precarious status as refugees, Victor and Roser marry without love to gain passage on Paulo Neruda’s Winnipeg, the real-life ship that carried more than 2,000 Spanish refugees to a new life in Chile in 1939. Over the next 55 years, and through the rise and fall of another cruel dictator, Victor and Roser build a life together in South America, based first on shared loyalty, and later on something more.

Against a backdrop of violent political and social upheaval, the lives of Allende’s characters quietly unfold in unexpected ways that prove both riveting and satisfying. Allende, a recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award, explores what it means to live in freedom and under tyranny, to feel displaced and at home.

As with Allende’s bestselling novel House of Spirits, subtle touches of magical realism add richness to the story. Although Allende writes of political events and personalities from distant lands and decades in the past, readers may feel a very real sense that these events have much to say about the world today. Some may find hope in Victor’s and Roser’s abilities not just to survive such dark times but also to eventually heal and thrive.

For those familiar with Allende’s earlier work, this novel will not disappoint. For those new to Allende’s writing, A Long Petal of the Sea will prove a captivating introduction.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Isabel Allende on her favorite bookstores and libraries.

If readers believe that witch trials in the late 1600s only occurred in the U.S., Kiran Millwood Hargrave will enlighten them with this harrowing story based on well-documented records. Hargrave, the author of several award-winning children’s novels, shifts to adult fiction with The Mercies, a vivid and immersive depiction of a remote village on Norway’s northeast coast in the early 1600s—and how it was dramatically transformed, first by a violent storm, then by religious extremism.

On Christmas Eve, 1617, a swift, devastating storm strikes the harbor at Vardo, sinking 10 fishing boats and drowning 40 men—the town’s entire male population. Maren Magnusdatter, age 20, sees the storm from the shore and loses, like so many others, her father, brother and husband-to-be. Over the next several months, she and all the women of Vardo realize they will starve if they don’t join together and resume the strenuous fishing once carried out by their town’s men. 

Hargrave skillfully portrays how lines of allegiance are drawn as a handful of women emerge as potential leaders. Some, known for their ardent church attendance, are backed by the local pastor. Others gradually gain their independence by ignoring some of the church’s edicts. Maren is tied to this latter group, mostly because her dead brother’s wife is from a Sami family, a group labeled as heretics and shunned by other townsfolk.

Hargrave’s novel quickly morphs from a portrait of the harsh life in a remote, early 17th-century village to a tale of religious persecution against a growing core of independent women. When a new commissioner arrives—recruited from Scotland, where he has already participated in witch trials—women previously passive in their beliefs quickly stand up as accusers, with dramatic results. Caught in the middle are Maren and the commissioner’s young wife, Ursa, who becomes Maren’s friend and ally.

The Mercies is an exceptional work of historical fiction with a dramatic setting and perceptive insight into the rippling effects of extremism, as seen through the eyes of a carefully crafted cast of characters.

Chris McCormick’s tightly knit second novel begins and ends in anonymity. The opening scene finds an Irish professional wrestler searching for a pub, and the final scene is haunted by the shell of a character—bookends that are a testament to the novel’s timeless, universal message about the fine line between performance and authenticity.

In the 1970s, Ruben and Avo are Armenian cousins-of-cousins, but they’ve considered themselves brothers ever since Avo, a lovable giant, defended the bookish Ruben from classmates’ taunting. Then Ruben’s backgammon opponent, Mina, falls for affable Avo. When Ruben and Mina leave for a backgammon competition in Paris, Avo fears he’ll never see them again. Ruben disappears into France and beyond, and Avo becomes a professional wrestler in America. The triumvirate do eventually meet one another again, under circumstances none of them could have imagined. Many years later, Mina seeks out Terry, Avo’s American pro-wrestling manager, to fill in the gaps of Avo’s mysterious past.

The novel takes place in the generation after the Armenian genocide, incorporating Turkey’s denial of the event into its themes of deception and identity. Chapters toggle among the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, reinforcing time’s circularity. It becomes clear that whether or not historical atrocities are acknowledged, they inevitably shape the past, present and future.

For all the literal and figurative backstabbing throughout the book, there’s plenty of caring, too. The characters’ eccentricities—Terry’s love of cats, Avo’s fanny pack, Ruben’s stiff suit, Mina’s luck—set them apart as much as they draw them to each other. The story plays with the tension between our differences and similarities while also questioning what’s genuine and what’s an act.

McCormick’s facility for metaphor encourages us to keep asking questions and pushing boundaries. Through these creative associations, The Gimmicks stretches the reader’s imagination and capacity for empathy. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Chris McCormick discusses the big questions of The Gimmicks and his lifelong fascination with professional wrestling.

To the Edge of Sorrow, Aharon Appelfeld’s novel about a band of Jewish refugees hiding from German patrols in the forests of Ukraine, could have been just another World War II story of strikes and counterstrikes, bullets exchanged and bombs exploding. But thankfully, Appelfeld instead gives readers an up-close, deeply moving story of characters haunted by grief and loss yet buoyed by courage and hope in the most adverse conditions.

The novel follows the group’s day-to-day efforts to survive, seen through the eyes of the young narrator, 17-year-old Edmund. Haunted by his forced separation from his parents and from his non-Jewish girlfriend after the relentless advance of German soldiers, Edmund finds uneasy comfort among this resistance group.

Guided by a somewhat reluctant leader, Kamil, the group initially strives simply to endure. Searching for food, medicine and shelter is the focus of their everyday existence. They raid local villages and farms to gather only what they need, leaving behind enough for the innocent farmers and families they’re robbing. The only luxury the group affords itself is the few books confiscated along the way, books whose words offer inspiration, comfort and faith.

But the Germans are always close behind and are determined to root them out, forcing the group deeper into the mountains of Ukraine. Infrequent reports over a stolen transistor radio and contact with other refugees are the group’s only real links to developments in the war and their place in it. It’s only upon learning that the Germans are shipping Jews by train to death camps that the group’s mission changes to one of attack and rescue. Edmund eventually earns his place as a soldier within the group’s ranks and participates in the raids. Nevertheless, most of the story revolves around the group itself, composed of stalwart victims of persecution who display enduring compassion for each other as well as relentless faith in humanity.

The author of more than 40 critically acclaimed books, Appelfeld (1932–2018) weaves a memorable chronicle of those who sought to persevere at the height of one of the world’s worst moments.

When your country is being ravaged by war, what parent would turn down the opportunity to send their children to a safer venue? Of course, not every parent has that option, but as imagined by Benjamin Black (the pen name used by John Banville when he writes a thriller) in The Secret Guests, a certain notable couple jumps at the opportunity to shield a future queen of England from harm.

The novel opens in London during the Blitz, as 10-year-old Princess Margaret looks out the palace window to watch the devastation. Her father, King George VI, arranges a plan whereby Margaret and her older sister Elizabeth are shipped off to neutral Ireland while he and the queen consort stay in London “to show Mr. Hitler we’re not afraid of him and his bombs.”

The rest of this subtle if occasionally slow-moving novel is set in Ireland, where the girls, referred to as Mary and Ellen to protect their identities, reside in Clonmillis Hall, a stately residence so dilapidated that when a diplomat knocks on the front door, it falls backward into the house. 

Accompanying the girls are a young Irish detective named Strafford, “one of the very few non-Catholics on the Garda force,” and Celia Nashe, a female secret agent in Britain’s Special Branch who poses as the girls’ governess. Among the book’s many satisfying elements is the portrayal of the prejudice that Strafford and Nashe face in their careers, with Strafford being “the only Protestant at detective level” and an outlier among his countrymen, and Nashe dealing with male colleagues who don’t want “bloody women” among their ranks.

But these are secondary to the main storyline: keeping the girls safe, not just from the German bombing campaign but also from groups who might wish to capture the children to further their political goals.

“I don’t see how it could be possible to hate an entire people,” Strafford says to Nashe midway through the book. At its best, The Secret Guests memorably shows the many forms that hatred can take.

Based on the 1726 story of a British woman who birthed rabbit parts, Dexter Palmer’s Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen brings the past to life with authenticity and unexpected relevance.

The novel opens as Zachary, an apprentice, accompanies his master, surgeon John Howard, to a traveling exhibition of medical curiosities. Shortly afterward, Howard’s patient, Mary, becomes an attraction of her own after the strange birthing. Her reputation follows her to London, where the king summons Howard, Zachary and other surgeons to investigate her as a scientific and preternatural specimen.

The narrative unfolds largely from Zachary’s perspective. Well-off and educated by his town’s standards, Zachary is nevertheless an adolescent, both child and man. The son of a zealous minister, he is also under the tutelage of a John Locke devotee and skeptic. When his new friend Anne, the exhibitioner’s daughter, exposes him to London’s secret haunts, he seems innocent and parochial.

Palmer’s previous two novels, Version Control and The Dream of Perpetual Motion, were literary fantasies, playing with time travel and futuristic technology. In Mary Toft, Palmer reaches into the past for imaginative insights into today’s conundrums. Its antiquated language enhances the characters’ genuine believability. Their sentiments aren’t relegated to a bygone era; rather, they address contemporary audiences directly about present-day issues, namely, how a hoax (aka “fake news”) turns into fact.

Palmer depicts London as a sprawling monster city gobbling up the countryside’s economy and land. Its hustle and bustle conjure current, not just 18th-century, conditions. The novel’s portrayal of motherhood as a woman’s most valued asset also raises the question of how far, in many ways, we haven’t come.

A zesty blend of bawdy entertainment and thoughtful coming-of-age story, Mary Toft tantalizes the contemporary conscious as its truth-seeking characters wade through truth-defying circumstances.

Set in London and alternating between 1926 and 1936, The Glittering Hour is the story of Selena Lennox. Having lost her beloved brother during World War I, Selena understands too well the brevity of life and intends to live every moment to the fullest. 

Selena and her lively companions are collectively known as the Bright Young People. To the dismay of Selena’s staid, upper-class family, her world is an unending series of fast cars, beautiful dresses, wild parties, crazy games and the latest dances, all fueled by alcohol and drugs and documented by photographers. Then one night, Selena meets the totally unsuitable Lawrence Weston, a struggling artist from poor beginnings who bears his own grief. Their encounter will eventually open Selena’s eyes and force her to make a choice that will change their lives.

The Glittering Hour is an exceptional novel about choosing how to live amid powerful grief and true love. Iona Grey, author of Letters to the Lost, has written a moving story that makes readers feel bereft to leave Selena and Lawrence behind at the book’s end in the way that only the best novels can do. Grey’s eye for descriptive detail gives a sumptuousness to almost every scene, and the delicious recklessness of 1920s London comes alive on the page. She is also masterful at using flashbacks and letters to slowly tease out the influences and motivations of her characters—and those of an entire postwar generation.

For readers looking for a tremendously entertaining, emotionally charged story, look no further. The Glittering Hour is just the ticket. 

It’s 1956, and in the American West, military servicemen are returning from Korea and Japan looking for work, the fledgling interstate system is going up, and bomb tests draw Nevada tourists to watch the explosions. This is the backdrop for Shannon Pufahl’s assured debut, On Swift Horses, set in a time and place where the new and old rub up against each other, often uncomfortably. 

As the novel opens, Muriel has left her native Kansas for Southern California to join her new husband, Lee. Lee gets a factory job, and Muriel waits tables at the Heyday Lounge near the Del Mar race track. As she listens to the bar’s regulars, she picks up some insider horse-racing knowledge, which she chooses not to share with Lee. She also pines for Julius, Lee’s unruly younger brother. Julius, meanwhile, gambles and risks his life, first in California, then in Las Vegas and Tijuana, Mexico. 

As different as Muriel and Julius are, they both harbor secrets—one of which Muriel shares with Julius early in the story. And they’re both trying to find a way to love more truly and openly, since neither fits into the strictures that 1950s America wants to keep them in.

On Swift Horses offers many painful reminders of the damage that repression can do, but it’s also a deep-breathing, atmospheric novel. Pufahl renders postwar San Diego, the characters’ rural poverty and 1950s closeted gay life in careful detail, spinning plain language into beautiful images. Her prose carries hints of other writers who combine the bleak and the hopeful, such as Annie Proulx, Wallace Stegner and Kent Haruf. While the novel’s middle drags a little, Muriel’s and Julius’ journeys are compelling and surprising. Pufahl is a novelist to watch.

Observant travelers along Tennessee’s highways may notice roadside signs denoting watersheds across the state. These are regions where water from streams, rivers and lakes provide power, recreation and clean, safe drinking water. The creation of one such watershed is the pivotal backdrop of Mark Barr’s powerful debut novel, appropriately titled Watershed. 

In a rural Tennessee community in 1937, contractors from across the country have converged to construct a federal dam that will help bring electric power and prosperity to the post-Depression-era community. Into this setting comes one such contractor, Nathan McReaken, an engineer hiding a dark secret from his past. Nathan joins the crew at the dam on a probationary period and quickly learns that loyalty, hard work and diligence are no guarantee of continued employment when there are so many others begging for work.

Nathan takes up residence in a boarding house, where he encounters Claire, a local housewife escaping her abusive husband, Travis, who also works at the dam. On her own for the first time, Claire takes on an assistant role to a power company salesman, going door to door to get people signed up for electric service. As Nathan’s past catches up with him and Claire’s relationships with men reach a boiling point, their stories intersect in suspenseful, heartfelt fashion.

Watershed is the second title in the Cold Mountain Fund Book series, a collaboration between Hub City Press and National Book Award-winning author Charles Frazier. But more than that, it’s an eloquently written story of two people and their ambitions, yearnings and passions amid a key historical period.