Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin

Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All , , , , , , , Coverage

All Historical Fiction Coverage

FictionChildren's & YAYA FictionYAShort StoriesLiterary FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

The Hold List: Born this way

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Chasing Redbird

Sharon Creech’s Chasing Redbird was the first book I ever read by myself, which was a big deal for me; I am dyslexic and struggled to read when I was younger. I was captivated by the main character, Zinnia Taylor, because she was a misfit, just like me. Zinny has six siblings, and in their chaotic home, she often gets lost in the fray. She prefers to spend time with her Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate who live next door and provide her with a safe haven. When Jessie dies unexpectedly, Zinny withdraws even further from her family. As she wrestles with her grief and guilt, she discovers an abandoned 200-year-old pioneer trail on her family farm and becomes obsessed with restoring it to functionality. Her family thinks she’ll give up, but Zinny has to see this project through. It may be the only way to heal her broken world. Creech treats the topic of grief and family dynamics delicately and beautifully, painting a profound picture that will speak to readers of all ages.

—Meagan Vanderhill Cochran, Production Manager

Earthlings

From childhood, we’re trained to take part in society, learning what behavior is praiseworthy, and what behavior is outrageous. By adulthood, most of us conform automatically, but for some, it comes less easily—like Natsuki, the protagonist of Japanese author Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings. As a child, Natsuki feels like an outsider, and she is relieved when her stuffed hedgehog, Piyyut, reveals to her that she is actually an alien from planet Popinpobopia. Her alien’s perspective lets her see her town for what it is: a “Baby Factory” in which humans serve society by working, getting married and having babies that will grow up to become society’s tools in turn. Natsuki struggles to accept that future, though she longs for the security of being normal. Her isolation increases when a teacher sexually abuses her, and no one believes her when she seeks help. Like Convenience Store Woman, Murata’s other novel that has been translated into English, Earthlings pushes readers—hard—to see the absurdity of what is and isn’t considered acceptable. While the subject matter remains bleak, by the end of the book, Natsuki finds allies, and their acts of defiance take on a kind of euphoric hilarity, despite the severity of the consequences.

—Phoebe Farrell-Sherman, Associate Editor

Kaikeyi

In Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi, Princess Kaikeyi is the lone daughter in a family with seven sons. After her father banishes her mother, she is left with only the stories of the gods that her mother once shared with her. Now on her own as the sole woman in her family, she is determined for her voice to be heard. However, her world shatters when the king quickly marries her off for the sake of securing an alliance, despite Kaikeyi begging to remain independent. Before she journeys to the kingdom of her betrothed, she discovers a special magic that can influence how she is perceived within relationships. With this newfound spark of confidence, she plows through societal barriers, fighting on the battlefield for her new home and joining her husband’s council, where she resiliently presses the other men in the room to make changes in their kingdom. After years of ruthless judgment and scorn, Kaikeyi and her two sister-wives, Kausalya and Sumitra, start a women’s council for members of the community to seek advice and direction. Kaikeyi is a persistent force throughout the story, never afraid to disrupt the conditions of society. She rubs people the wrong way and inspires others, making her a dynamic character whose persistence and courage will win readers’ hearts.

—Jena Groshek, Sales Coordinator

The Complete Stories

A keen observer of idiosyncratic behavior, the inimitable Flannery O’Connor spun unforgettable, expansive short stories that brim with characters whose feelings of otherness alienate them from society. The most well-known is The Misfit in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a story that is often readers’ entry point to this Southern writer. The Misfit is “aloose from the Federal Pen” and, with unfailing politeness, executes a family on their way to a vacation in Florida. Complex and contemplative, The Misfit finds “no pleasure [but] in meanness” yet tries to square his crimes with a sense of right and wrong. Other misfits in O’Connor’s stories include Olga in “Good Country People,” an unapologetically surly spinster whose leg was shot off in a hunting accident, and who gets hoodwinked by a Bible salesman. Some of her misfits crave redemption and empowerment—O’Connor was, afterall, a Catholic—while others are unwilling or unable to change. Perhaps the greatest misfit in O’Connor’s stories is the midcentury South itself. A region straining to be better? Or one unwilling to shed the yoke of violence? The Complete Stories is a compendium you can spend a lifetime reading and re-reading, feeling freshly enlightened each time.

—Erica Ciccarone, Associate Editor

If you've ever felt like the odd one out—the black sheep in your family, or loner in your community—you'll love these four books with protagonists who can't help but stand out.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

There Are Rivers in the Sky

Review by Thane Tierney

Water. Generally, we don’t give it much of a thought. Unless there’s too little . . . or too much. Then it fills our consciousness, saturating our brains with phrases like “atmospheric rivers” and “glacial retreat,” or such devastatingly commonplace words as “drowning” and “drought.”

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, here on the head of a learned and cruel Assyrian king, there as a snowflake on the tongue of an impoverished British baby, and yet again as a lifesaving elixir in the possession of a Yazidi grandmother driven into exile by the Islamic State group.

In a fabulist twist, the Booker-shortlisted, bestselling author imbues this recurring molecule with a sense of memory. After a particularly disturbing and graphic passage near the book’s opening, Shafak states her case clearly and succinctly: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

The book opens with King Ashurbanipal in the 640s B.C.E.; then the narrative takes a leap of thousands of years and miles, to Victorian era London. There, a young lad born to an itinerant scavenger is crowned “King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums.” Modeled on real-life Assyriologist George Smith, Arthur rises above his station to become a scholar who, like Ashurbanipal before him, is enchanted by the Epic of Gilgamesh.

From there, the scene shifts to 2014, by the Tigris river in southeastern Turkey. There, Narin, a young Yazidi girl, is preparing for a journey to Iraq with her grandmother so that she can be baptized in a sacred temple. When the girl questions her elder about why they are being forced from their land, the grandmother recounts a brief history of the Yazidi people, concluding that “For us, memory is all we have. If you want to know who you are, you need to learn the stories of your ancestors.”

Shafak seems to be on a mission to prevent us from forgetting, whether it’s the majesty of ancient Mesopotamia, the horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated upon the Yazidis, or the fragile ecosystem of rivers such as the Tigris and the Thames. Like water itself, There Are Rivers in the Sky seeps into the cracks and crevasses of our humanity, unlocking a sense of wonder.

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, touching four lives linked by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Volcano Daughters

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Gina Maria Balibrera’s debut novel, The Volcano Daughters, offers the epic early 20th-century tale of sisters Graciela and Consuelo, born into poverty and servitude on a coffee finca (plantation) on the side of a volcano in El Salvador.

In 1923, Graciela and her mother, Socorrito, are summoned to San Salvador for the funeral of the father that Graciela never knew: a peasant who rose to become the advisor to El Gran Pendejo, the strongman ruling El Salvador. There Graciela meets her sister, Consuelo, who was taken from the finca as a 4-year-old, and lives in luxury with her adoptive mother, Perlita. Soon, Graciela learns that El Gran Pendejo intends for her to advise him as her father did, though she’s only 9. Every morning Graciela is driven to the presidential palace, where she listens to the nonsense El Gran Pendejo spouts, repeating it back to him. Meanwhile, the teenage Consuelo, who failed at the same job, stays busy falling in love with her young art teacher.

That’s only the beginning of The Volcano Daughters, which spans 30 years and multiple settings, including Paris, San Francisco and Hollywood. As El Gran Pendejo’s pronouncements grow more bizarre, he lands on the idea of killing the country’s Indigenous people, who he claims are communists. The massacre that follows separates Graciela and Consuelo, as each flees the country thinking the other dead.

The Volcano Daughters is also a ghost story, as the ghosts of Graciela’s and Consuelo’s best friends from the finca—Lourdes, Maria, Cora and Lucia—share the novel’s first person-plural narration, sometimes disappearing into the story, other times butting in with commentary. 

Because The Volcano Daughters covers so much ground (both literally and narratively), and has a large cast of characters, including the ghost narrators, parts of the story slip by almost too quickly for the reader to connect with them emotionally. Still, Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances.

With its depictions of the 1930s Hollywood scene and Paris art world, and its imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history, The Volcano Daughters stands out. 

Gina María Balibrera brings a bravura, magical-realist style to this story of resilience and love through impossible circumstances, an imaginative retelling of a difficult piece of Central American history.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

Mina’s Matchbox

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Powerful in its nuanced details, Mina’s Matchbox is an immersive and poignant coming-of-age story.

After the death of her father, 12-year-old Tomoko is sent to live with her aunt’s family in the coastal Japanese town of Ashiya, while her mother stays in Tokyo. Mina’s Matchbox chronicles Tomoko’s transformative year with her extended family, from 1972 to 1973, especially her close relationship with Mina, her book-loving cousin who has asthma.

Unlike Yoko Ogawa’s darker novels, such as Hotel Iris and the Orwellian The Memory Police, Mina’s Matchbox adopts a narrative tone that is curious and filled with wonder, conveying Tomoko’s enchantment with the enormous house in Ashiya and its fascinating occupants, such as Tomoko’s quiet aunt; her uncle, prone to mysterious disappearances; her German grandmother, Rosa, who has a unique bond with the housekeeper, Yoneda; and Pochinko, the family’s pygmy hippopotamus. Ogawa draws readers into the personalities and interactions of the family, unraveling the characters’ complex inner lives.

Looking back from three decades later, the adult Tomoko finds profound insights in her childhood delight with the expansiveness of life. Ogawa’s masterful descriptions, too, add depth and suggest simmering secrets that wait to boil over.

Translated by Stephen B. Snyder, Mina’s Matchbox is an elegant and stirring work that captures the dreams of youth, and the lingering sweetness that can remain even after those dreams have faded.

Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox is filled with wonder, conveying 12-year-old Tomoko’s enchantment with her extended family during the year she spends with them, from 1972 to 1973.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Bright I Burn

Review by Sydney Hankin

As the 16-year-old daughter of moneylenders from Kilkenny, Ireland, Alice Kyteler has learned to trust very little. Only the surrounding brooks and forests, the gold stashed in her floorboards, and her own mind make the cut. One wrong turn could paint an immediate bullseye on her back: For a woman in the 13th century, a charge of witchcraft is just a misstep away. With her mother dead at the hands of her father, and herself aware that she is rapidly approaching the age at which she must marry, Alice has more reason than ever to be on her guard around the men in her life.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by the few known details about Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose life author Molly Aitken thoughtfully explores into adulthood and old age. Four marriages—each unmistakably different from the last—shape Alice’s path through the highs and lows of motherhood, work, religion, loss and public life. While her experiences as a young parent are the most emotional and devastatingly palpable, Alice’s defining blend of pragmatism and spontaneity lend a unique outlook to her later years. As she learns to navigate grief and a world awash in fear, Alice’s wistfulness becomes lyrical poetry in Aitken’s hands: “Here, moth larvae nick away at bark until trees crash to the ground, and snow falls, suns set, and rivers change course. It is the place of great sky-shattering storms. A place where two women could stand naked, hair undressed for the wind to dance.”

Memories and dreams, along with letters, songs and the ever-present town gossip, are interspersed with the narrative, creating a quick-moving yet immersive experience that’s better felt than analyzed. While folks looking for a more historically expansive narrative may find Bright I Burn to be too interior, the author’s prowess in character building helps bring Alice’s story to life. Aitken instills a complex and heartbreaking grit in Alice which is both moving and painful to witness.

Bright I Burn is strongly inspired by Ireland’s first condemned witch, whose 13th-century life author Molly Aitken imbues with a complex and heartbreaking grit.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionGothic FictionDebut FictionCrime FictionComing of Age

Find something new in these 5 debuts

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Smothermoss

First lines: “It is happening again. Snow melts, the crust of frost cracks and heaves. Water sinks below ground, swelling channels. Sap rises. Wild garlic sprouts, arbutus creeps, and bloodroot quickens. Curved shoots of spotted skunk cabbage thrust toward the light.”

Read if you enjoyed: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow or Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Alisa Alering’s debut, Smothermoss, is a novel of violence, trust and the landscape of Appalachia. The mountains and hollows, the moss, quartz, water and trees are all painted in their full aliveness.

In the 1980s, Sheila, Angie and their mother are trying to figure out how to survive. Working long shifts at the asylum, their mother is rarely present, and while the two sisters share a small room, their diverging interests and ways of being make it hard for them to relate to each other. Sheila goes to work, she worries, she feeds the rabbits. Angie explores, she knows the neighbors, and she draws mysterious creatures on her own deck of tarot cards which almost seem to self-animate. Then two female hikers are murdered on the Appalachian Trail, and the murderer may not have left the area. The secrets of what happened hide in the landscape. Each scene builds in tension and a sense of wonder, surprising you with the direction these sisters’ future may take.

—Freya Sachs

 

Bright Objects

First line: “Barely an hour before my first death on a warm night in January 1995—when I blacked out in a crumpled Toyota south of a town called Jericho—a bright object was sighted somewhere in the constellation of Virgo, the sign of the maiden, not far from a star named Porrima, after the Roman goddess of prophecy.”

Read if you enjoyed: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh or The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon

A fatal accident, a cosmic visitor and a mysterious stranger all come together in a small Australian town in Ruby Todd’s dazzling debut, Bright Objects.

Young widow Sylvia Knight is recovering from the car accident that killed her husband and left her with serious injuries, both physical and psychological. Profoundly lonely, Sylvia works at the local mortuary, keeps her husband’s grave tidy and puts on a cheerful face for her mother-in-law, Sandy. But she is haunted by sketchy memories of the night of the accident.

When a rare comet appears, Joseph Evans, local meditation teacher and the heir of a wealthy family, sees the comet as a divine messenger and begins a series of mystical lectures that attract a cultlike following. He is eager to involve both Sylvia and Sandy, and Sylvia is distressed to see her mother-in-law drawn in by his promises. Wrestling with suicidal ideation, Sylvia finds her obsession with uncovering her husband’s killer pushing her to the edges of her sanity.

Bright Objects is a riveting literary thriller of obsession, vengeance and astronomy, but its most poignant gift may be its depiction of trying to make sense of life after tragedy.

—Lauren Bufferd

 

Pearl

First line: “Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me Went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned Who do you think was saved?”

Read if you enjoyed: Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin, or Wintering by Katherine May

Sian Hughes’ debut novel, Pearl, offers a coming-of-age story set in rural England, one that reverberates with grief and longing, but also a wry humor.

As the novel opens, narrator Marianne is taking part in an ancient mourning ceremony and fair called the Wakes in her home village in Cheshire. It’s a ceremony that Marianne always attends, one that leads her to ponder the loss of her mother. When Marianne was 8, her mother walked out into the rain one fall day, forever leaving behind Marianne and the rest of their family.

Pearl was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, and is based in part on a medieval poem of the same title. Hughes, who is a poet herself, brings an attention to language and to the natural world that lends a beautiful vibrancy to her sentences. But there’s a droll sensibility here, too: Humor brightens grief-filled and difficult moments, such as an episode of postpartum psychosis. Pearl is also full of the gentle landscape and hallowed folklore of English village life, sometimes with a slightly gothic cast, and to that end, each chapter opens with part of a nursery rhyme or nonsense poem.

Hughes has written a tender debut novel which, at its end, brings the reader back around to the grown Marianne at the Wakes, imbuing the festival with a lovely, redemptive new meaning.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

 

Between This World and the Next

First lines: “Open your eyes. Empty your mind. What’s happening in the present will pass. This is what Song tells herself. It’s dark and hot and the middle of the night. Through the light that comes from the open door, she sees a bead of sweat on the tip of his nose.”

Read if you enjoyed: Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor or Hunted by Abir Mukherjee

As Praveen Herat’s gripping debut political thriller, Between This World and the Next, opens, Joseph Nightingale, a British war photographer nicknamed Fearless after a moment of heroism during the Bosnian conflict, has accepted his old friend Alyosha Federenko’s invitation to Cambodia.

Federenko stashes Fearless at the Naga, a gathering place for the gangs and soldiers of fortune set loose upon the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the chilling pleasures of this book is Herat’s vivid, knowledgeable portrait of this threatening netherworld, from outposts like the Naga to breakaway states like Transnistria. Also at the Naga is Song, a young Cambodian woman enslaved as a cleaner. Song cares for the young children who are brought to the Naga by adult predators and whose gruesome abuse is recorded on video. The existence of one of these videos, handed off to Fearless, sets the elaborate plot rolling with increasing velocity.

The final chapters of Between This World and the Next are breathtaking in their descriptive power and imaginative reach, and the novel’s ending is very satisfying. But some threads still dangle and not all questions are answered—which makes one hope for a sequel.

—Alden Mudge

 

They Dream in Gold

First lines: “His pillow ruptures between her knees. Feathers plucked from the breasts of live geese burst into the darkness of the room. She watches them by the flashes of the storm’s lightning.”

Read if you enjoyed: Village Weavers by Myriam J.A. Chancy or True Biz by Sara Novic.

Playwright and director Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, crackles. Her prose is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one.

Mansour, a child first of Senegal and then of the world, exudes music and wants to make his mark as a musician. Mama Eva, who raised Mansour and keeps her own secrets, aspires to culinary heights. And Bonnie, an only child raised by her grandmother, is entranced by Mansour’s sound on a demo CD before she ever meets him. They all have, as Sennaar writes, “a need for a life of wonder.” After Mansour goes missing while on tour in Spain, the lives of the women who love him are strung painfully taut as they wait for news: Back in her crumbling mansion in Switzerland, Mama Eva worries as she cooks for her long-awaited restaurant’s opening day, while pregnant Bonnie broods and paces.

They Dream in Gold wends from Mama Eva’s 1940s youth in Dakar to Bonnie and Mansour’s first meeting in 1960s New York City, to a Brazilian music festival in the middle of Carnival where Mansour’s star is born. Unreserved and confident, Sennaar’s piercing narrative voice reverberates through a novel pulsing with all the intensity it takes to compose a life and make it sing.

—Melissa Brown

These vibrant novels from first-time fiction writers grabbed our attention right from the opening lines.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

They Dream in Gold

Review by Melissa Brown

Playwright and director Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, crackles. Her prose is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one. Over the course of 400 pages, Sennaar moves swiftly back and forth across continents and generations to tell a vividly realized story of family, identity and love.

Mansour, a child first of Senegal and then of the world, exudes music and wants to make his mark as a musician. Mama Eva, who raised Mansour and keeps her own secrets, aspires to culinary heights. And Bonnie, an only child raised by her grandmother, is entranced by Mansour’s sound on a demo CD before she ever meets him. They all have, as Sennaar writes, “a need for a life of wonder.” After Mansour goes missing while on tour in Spain, the lives of the women who love him are strung painfully taut as they wait for news: Back in her crumbling mansion in Switzerland, Mama Eva worries as she cooks for her long-awaited restaurant’s opening day, while pregnant Bonnie broods and paces.

They Dream in Gold wends from Mama Eva’s 1940s youth in Dakar to Bonnie and Mansour’s first meeting in 1960s New York City, to a Brazilian music festival in the middle of Carnival where Mansour’s star is born. The novel’s five parts flow in and out of each character’s past and present, examining the people who have shaped them, although some side characters are less compelling. Bonnie, Mansour and Mama Eva have each been orphaned in different ways and are looking for home, a place to stay and belong. Unreserved and confident, Sennaar’s piercing narrative voice reverberates through a novel pulsing with all the intensity it takes to compose a life and make it sing.

Mai Sennaar’s prose in They Dream in Gold is elemental, flowing like a river at times, then burning like fire, heightening the reader’s senses until all five mingle into one.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The Seventh Veil of Salome

Review by Matthew Jackson

There is magic in the work of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, even when the story she’s pursuing isn’t overtly magical. The genre-bending novelist (Mexican Gothic, Silver Nitrate) infuses every page with a sense of mythic power, ensuring that readers will be gripped, while also channeling the feeling of a fairy tale that could turn dark at any moment. With The Seventh Veil of Salome, Moreno-Garcia turns that remarkable gift to a Hollywood story and conjures another piece of prose magic.

Inspired by the biblical legend of Salome and its long cultural trail, the story focuses on three women. Vera Larios is unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight when she nabs the leading role in The Seventh Veil of Salome, the latest sword-and-sandal epic to emerge from the Technicolor machine of 1950s Hollywood. Nancy Hartley, an aspiring actress who’s so far been consigned to bit parts, is instantly filled with fury, believing the role to be hers. Then there’s Salome herself, who is caught in the middle of a power struggle in the first century while falling in love with a mysterious and rebellious preacher who threatens to bring turmoil to Galilee.

As each narrative moves forward, Moreno-Garcia captures her characters’ strikingly vivid emotions—Vera’s longing for creative transcendence, Nancy’s lust for success and Salome’s tortured matrix of desire and duty—all while examining the power structures and influences, often male, that threaten to box them in. Each of these women wants something, and their desires and fears weave together across the story, driven by the evocative and carefully structured prose, which is so precise that it’s impossible to mistake one woman’s story for another even as they mirror and complement one another. Vera’s story is not Salome’s, even as she’s playing Salome. Neither is Nancy’s, even as her own desire for agency and power turns darker. Instead, Moreno-Garcia leads readers to question how the legend of Salome has informed our view of driven, creative, seductive, influential women through the ages. It’s an ambitious idea, and one the author captures without ever losing the book’s vivid drive.

The Seventh Veil of Salome is another triumph from Moreno-Garcia, a page-turning historical drama with mythic overtones that will please readers of her realistic fiction and her more fantastical work alike.

The Seventh Veil of Salome is another triumph from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a page-turning historical drama with mythic overtones that will please readers of her realistic fiction and her more fantastical work alike.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Modern Fairies

Review by Lauren Bufferd

“Cinderella,” “Puss in Boots” and “Rumpelstiltskin” are to this day some of the first stories we hear as children—and as we learn from Clare Pollard’s witty, sexy, historical novel, The Modern Fairies, they were all the rage in the court of Louis XIV.

The Modern Fairies is loosely based on a group of real-life salonaires who met at the home of Madame Marie d’Aulnoy, a woman with a troubled past that included imprisonment and a childhood marriage to a cruel aristocrat. D’Aulnoy and her friends were the original collectors and disseminators of well-known folk tales a century before the Brothers Grimm. Just like the princesses in their stories, they inhabited a world of wicked mothers, murderous husbands, locked towers and poisoned fruit.

The women are joined by Charles Perrault, a wealthy widower and advisor to the king, who went on to great fame as one of the first authors to publish a collection of fairy tales. Over the course of a cold winter, certain details of these contes de fées prove a little too close to the realities of court. There is a spy at d’Aulnoy’s gatherings, and meetings become more dangerous as love letters are misdirected, husbands discover cheating wives, and both the local clergy and the king’s chief of police are put on high alert for any whiff of scandal.

The Modern Fairies is arranged as a series of stories within stories, each fairy tale as light as a bonbon yet cleverly revealing aspects of the teller’s situation, whether a violent husband, younger lover or jealous rival. An all-knowing narrator, perhaps Pollard herself, pops up to offer commentary on the societal restrictions experienced by these noblewomen and to reflect on the subversive ties between tales told and lives lived. An award-winning poet and translator, Pollard has great fun with these stories and with the gossip, the flirtations and the sheer amount of sex at the court of Versailles. She demonstrates, too, how important these women were for documenting, embellishing and preserving a wealth of stories, and like them, plays her part in translating an oral tradition into a written one that we can continue to delight in.

An award-winning poet and translator, Clare Pollard has great fun with these cleverly revealing fairy tales told amid gossip, flirtations and sex at the court of Versailles.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

Nicked

Review by Chika Gujarathi

Acclaimed young adult author M.T. Anderson is now crossing into the world of adult fiction with Nicked. Inspired by true events from the year 1087, Nicked follows the heist of the 7-century-old corpse of St. Nicholas, in a thrilling and fast-moving international adventure narrated with wit and humor.

We begin in Bari, Italy, where a pox has afflicted half the town, with the other half in fear of soon joining the first. In response, the monks of St. Benedict take a week-long vigil to ask for healing, and their prayers are answered when a vision of St. Nicholas appears to a lowly monk named Nicephorus.

There is something endearing about Nicephorus which seems not of his time. Skeptical about the authenticity of his vision, which came after going without food and sleep, Nicephorus tries to dissuade the town officials from interpreting his dream as a direct order from the saint to steal his corpse from a church in Turkey. The leaders of Bari are undeterred, however, and when a relic hunter named Tyun shows up with his entourage, which includes a giant named Shchek and a dog-headed man named Reprobus, they eagerly engage his services.

Tyun, a handsome, fearless man of dubious morality, agrees to be the captain of the expedition in exchange for a huge sum of money, and the naive and pious Nicephorus is forced to join as witness and authenticator of the corpse. What follows is an epic adventure on land and sea, enjoyable not just for the Byzantine strategies and sabotage, but also because of the unpredictable pairing of passive Nicephorus with the aggressive and worldly Tyun. And there is a twist—of course there is, because what is an epic adventure without one!

Reminiscent of Indiana Jones and The Princess Bride, Nicked delivers an entertaining and grown-up adventure rooted in religion, humanity and friendship.

Inspired by true events from the year 1087, Nicked is a thrilling and fast-moving adventure in which a naive monk accompanies a relic hunter on a quest to steal the corpse of St. Nicholas.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The Lion Women of Tehran

Review by Alice Cary

“Writing about Iranian women has been a central theme of my life,” Marjan Kamali says in the author’s note to The Lion Women of Tehran. On the heels of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea, Kamali continues this pursuit with the riveting saga of the friendship between Ellie and Homa, which begins in 1950 in Tehran, when the girls are 7, and continues through 2022. The events of their lives are interwoven with Iran’s recent history, including the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the 1979 Revolution and the violence and brutality of the following fundamentalist regime. Prepare to lose yourself in a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, with its maze of stalls and bartering merchants, while artfully exploring the labyrinthine complexities of deep friendship—especially jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness.

After Ellie’s father dies suddenly, Ellie and her mother are forced to move to a new neighborhood, where she meets Homa. Ellie’s mother likes to constantly remind her daughter that they are descendants of royalty and is horrified by their new surroundings, as well as Ellie’s new friend: Homa comes from a poor family, and her father is in jail for opposing the monarchy. Ellie, however, loves Homa’s warm, welcoming household, and wishes Homa’s family was her own. Their class difference, along with Ellie’s mom’s disapproval, drives a wedge into the girls’ friendship. At one point, Ellie muses that Homa “would always see me as too privileged, too shallow, too rich.”

Kamali closely examines how the country’s changing regimes have affected women’s rights, bringing the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody (after allegedly violating the mandatory hijab law) into the novel’s conclusion. From an early age, Homa hopes to become a lawyer who crusades for change and women’s freedom, but the government as well as an accidental betrayal by Ellie cruelly sidetrack those plans. Homa notes, “That’s how losses of rights build. They start small. And then soon, the rights are stripped in droves.” Kamali writes deftly of the intersection between personal and political issues. She also excels at exploring the bonds of female friendship, as well as the changing and complex nature of mother-daughter relationships, especially in terms of heritage, family shame and secrets.

Reminiscent of The Kite Runner and My Brilliant Friend, The Lion Women of Tehran is a mesmerizing tale featuring endearing characters who will linger in readers’ hearts. 

Prepare to lose yourself in Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar while artfully exploring the labyrinthian complexities of deep friendship.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Glassmaker

Review by Matthew Jackson

There is an immediate richness to the historical fiction of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures), one that goes beyond carefully researched details and evocative prose, and into deep emotion. In her 12th book, The Glassmaker, Chevalier weaves a tapestry of character and conflict, change and stability, to create a story that elegantly glides along the line between historical drama and something more experimental, while never losing sight of the tactile humanity that gives her work such pure, invigorating life.

The glassmaker of the title is Orsola Rosso, a young woman living on the island of Murano just off the coast of Italy next to Venice. When we meet Orsola, the Renaissance is in full swing, and Murano’s reputation as the “Island of Glass” means that her glassmaking family enjoys a stable, happy life. That all changes when Orsola’s father, the heart of the family, dies in an accident in their workshop, leaving his son unprepared to take over the business. With her family’s future in question, Orsola begins a secret glassmaking enterprise of her own, making beads over a burning lamp in a corner of the Rosso kitchen. What begins as a chance to earn some extra money soon turns into something more, as Orsola’s life, and the lives of those around her, are forever changed by her approach to her craft.

Chevalier, too, takes a uniquely impactful approach to her craft. Steeped in detail, The Glassmaker charts the history of Venice and the delicate balance of trade that keeps the glassmakers working. But instead of transpiring over decades, the Rosso family story stretches over centuries, with the same characters aging slowly while the world around them changes dramatically. Venice goes through wars, regime changes, plagues, political upheaval and much more, and all the while Orsola makes beads, and she and her family persevere.

Through her measured, passionate prose, Chevalier sinks us into this strange relationship with time, where the passage of years is as moldable and oozing as molten glass fresh from a furnace. The characters and their lives take on an almost meditative quality, and The Glassmaker becomes a study not just of history, but of what endures history. That makes it a potent, bewitching bright spot in a stellar career.

Tracy Chevalier’s 12th book is potent, bewitching and addictive as it elegantly glides along the line between historical drama and something more experimental.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The God of the Woods

Review by Arlene McKanic

The most delicious thing about a mystery like Liz Moore’s spellbinding The God of the Woods is finding out who did it. There’s the thrill of suspecting this character, then suspecting that one a few pages later, then being absolutely sure that the other one did it—only to have your certainty upended when you find out the real culprit. Of course there are red herrings, like the sounds of footsteps in an abandoned slaughterhouse that turn out to be a family of squirrels. (Or were they?)

The story begins in the summer of 1975, at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York operated by the fabulously wealthy Van Laar family. Barbara Van Laar is a camper that year, even though her home’s a short walk from the cabins. Barbara wants to get away from her family, and as you come to know them, you can’t blame her. The only things colder than this lot are possibly freshly dead fish on beds of ice. Then, Barbara goes missing. Fourteen years earlier, her older brother, Bear, also went missing and was never found. Foul play is suspected in both cases.

Though full of nerve-shredding suspense, Moore’s novel is really about families: good families, bad families, birth families and chosen families, rich families and poor families. Living among the frosty Van Laars as a mere ornament has destroyed Barbara’s mother, Alice, in mind and body. Meanwhile, though she is considered an eccentric loner by most people, camp director T.J. Hewitt has a devotion to her blood and chosen kin that is deeper than anyone, including the reader, suspects. And investigator Judyta Luptack’s Polish Catholic family is so conservative that she, a 26-year-old woman who’s making a good living, is scared to move into her own place. Much like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Judy has to put up with condescension and sexism, and there’s even a local serial killer for her to do the quid pro quo business with. But you’ll be turning pages fast enough to forgive the unneeded resemblance. The God of the Woods is a beautifully written, devilishly clever work.

Set in the summer of 1975 at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York, Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods is a devilishly clever work full of nerve-shredding suspense.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Recent Reviews

All Reviews

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features