Brodie Moncur, the protagonist of William Boyd’s latest novel, has a gift: His perfect pitch and attention to detail make him a once-in-a-generation piano tuner, employable anywhere in the world. He takes his skills from Edinburgh to Paris and St. Petersburg, working with some of the most renowned musicians of the late 19th century. Even bloody bouts of tuberculosis don’t dim his prospects.

But his brilliance is threatened by his love for an unattainable woman. Lika Blum, a mediocre Russian singer, lives with John Kilbarron, one of Brodie’s main clients. Brodie is drawn to Lika’s blonde beauty, her kindness and the way she fills him with contentment “like a powerful liquor; like some ambrosial, aphrodisiacal tonic invading every blood vessel and capillary in his body.”

Soon enough, though, it becomes clear that Brodie gives in to his feelings at his own peril. Kilbarron is a drunk and a drug user, and his manager brother is not above threats to get the best deal for his brother—and himself. After their illicit love affair turns deadly, Brodie and Lika find themselves on the run across Europe, and Lika faces a terrible choice to ensure her lover’s safety.

Boyd, the author of more than a dozen novels, including Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa, is exceptionally good at evoking a vivid sense of place. He takes us to the gloomy Scottish countryside and the Mediterranean shores of Nice, enveloping the reader in a time in European history when horses are being replaced by cars, women still have few choices, and men can settle their feuds without the interference of law. Love Is Blind is a cautionary tale in how passion can both lift up and destroy lives.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón returns for the fourth and final time to his gothic Barcelona and (every book lover’s fantasy) the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. In The Labyrinth of the Spirits, Zafón introduces Alicia Gris, a fierce, courageous but damaged young woman who was orphaned during the Spanish Civil War and recruited to become a member of the Spanish secret police. Already disillusioned at 29 with the darker demands of her work, Alicia reluctantly agrees to investigate one final case for her boss, Leandro Montalvo, in exchange for her freedom. She and her partner, Juan Manuel Vargas, must investigate the disappearance of Spain’s Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls.

When Alicia discovers a copy of a rare book by Victor Mataix hidden in Valls’ desk, she and Vargas start down a twisting path that leads them back to Barcelona and eventually reveals connections between Valls’ mysterious disappearance and a series of atrocities committed years earlier during the corrupt Franco regime. At the same time, Alicia must confront her own complicated past, which includes a return to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War provides the perfect setting for Zafón’s novel, with its shadowed, misty labyrinth of streets, foreboding buildings and sinister sense of corruption. The plot is exquisitely intricate, like an elaborate steampunk timepiece. Alicia, a fragile but ferociously formidable, vampire-like seductress, is unforgettable. The pacing is exceptional, with its incessant, rolling waves of tension. Even the dialogue is remarkably sharp and fresh.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits is a masterpiece more than worthy of sharing a shelf with its bestselling predecessors, The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven. For those who have read Zafón’s earlier novels, some loose ends are finally resolved. Readers’ one regret will be that Labyrinth is the last in this ingenious cycle.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Novels revolving around the assassination of John F. Kennedy have become a genre unto themselves. There are plenty, and likely even more conspiracy theories to boot. So at first take, November Road, the new thriller from author Lou Berney, may seem like just another book to add to the stack. Berney, though, is not just another author. Through gorgeous prose, the Edgar, Macavity and Anthony Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone elevates an otherwise simple cat-and-mouse story into a heartfelt journey of hope and discovery for two characters running from their pasts.

While the loss of the president is certainly felt throughout November Road, it only serves as a backdrop to what is essentially a story of redemption. The novel follows Frank Guidry, an enforcer for mobster Carlos Marcello, whose hands are all over JFK’s death. Frank is tasked with retrieving and disposing of a getaway car parked near the scene of the crime in Dallas, and a hit man has been tasked with disposing of Frank once the job is done. Aware that his life is in jeopardy, Frank makes a desperate dash for freedom along Route 66.

At the same time, young mother Charlotte Roy, along with her two daughters, is making her escape from a failed marriage in Oklahoma. Naturally, the storylines eventually cross as Frank encounters Charlotte, whom he sees as a way to throw off his pursuer. What begins as a convenient way to cover his tracks evolves into a serious romance between the two characters. But with a killer after Frank, the suspense builds toward a fateful showdown.

In the end, November Road is more than the sum of its parts—a thrilling plot, an iconic period piece and unforgettable characters. Above all, it’s an American novel not to be missed.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Lou Berney for November Road.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

One of the enduring staples of fiction is the English country house. They are centerpieces of many novels, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Kate Morton puts one such house at the center of The Clockmaker’s Daughter.

The house, situated on the River Thames, is Birchwood Manor, with staircases that turn at odd angles and “wall panels with clever concealments.” The house also conceals a secret inhabitant: a ghost who once went by the name Lily Millington and who now spies on guests who periodically drop by.

Lily first came to Birchwood in July 1862, when aspiring artist Edward Radcliffe invited fellow anti-establishment types to the house for a summer of painting. He couldn’t have predicted the fateful night to come, a night that featured “[t]wo unexpected guests. Two long-kept secrets. A gunshot in the dark.” That gunshot took the life of Fanny Brown, Edward’s fiancée.

Cut to 2017, when Elodie Winslow is working as an archivist, caring for the former belongings of Victorian banker James Stratton. One day, she discovers a waxed cardboard box containing a document case belonging to Stratton and a sketchbook of Edward’s. Among the drawings is one of Birchwood Manor.

It turns out that the house has relevance to Elodie’s family. What follows is an intricate tale that involves an 8-year-old girl who grows up in Bombay before her English parents abandon her at Birchwood in 1899; a 1920s historian researching the story of Edward Radcliffe; and a present-day journalist in search of a gem known as the Radcliffe Blue.

The Clockmaker’s Daughter is overstuffed with incident, but readers who enjoy a symphony of voices and multiple storylines will find much to like here. Morton builds considerable drama as she unveils the secrets behind Fanny’s death, the gem and more. It’s an imaginative tale for fans of historical fiction.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A novel from the multiple award-winning author Kate Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Life After Life) is always cause for celebration. Transcription, based on the life of a former Secret Service worker during World War II, is no exception.

A hallmark of Atkinson’s work is her playful use of time. Transcription starts at the end of a life when, at 60, Juliet Armstrong is hit by a car in a London street. Readers are then plunged back to the 1940s, when 18-year-old Juliet finds herself at loose ends after the death of her mother. Eager to assist in the war effort, she joins MI5. Quickly plucked from the initial tasks of departmental filing and collating, she is placed in an agency-owned apartment, where she transcribes recordings of the secret comings and goings of a group of fascist sympathizers. Juliet is eventually given a nom de guerre and sent to infiltrate a group of wealthy appeasers. The work is mostly dull (transcribing) and occasionally terrifying (shimmying down drainpipes). When the war ends, she presumes her role with the agency is finished as well.

A decade later, Juliet is producing children’s radio dramas, and the personnel overlap between MI5 and the BBC is unusually high. When she is confronted by persons she thought were long gone, she realizes that not everything was tied up as neatly as she was led to believe. Though the war is over, it turns out there are still enemies that must be reckoned with.

Atkinson created a new approach to the detective novel in her delightful Jackson Brodie series, which began with Case Histories in 2004. Similarly, Transcription combines elements of the spy novel with Atkinson’s love of British history, a tremendous knack for getting the details right and a unique take on human behavior. Transcription has its share of intrigues and secrets, but it also has a level of wit and poignancy that many espionage novels lack.

Based in part on archival records and period memoirs, Transcription is a rich, sometimes comic, always insightful peek at a unique aspect of British history. Learning about women who participated in the British Secret Service and the BBC is just icing on the cake.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Time marches on, taking with it alliances and allegiances both political and personal. With a physician’s precision and an artist’s eye, author Daniel Mason (The Piano Tuner) captures the emotional and physical upheaval wrought by war. Right from the start, his new novel, The Winter Soldier, thrums with tension, whisking the reader into the fray.

Amid the disorientation and displacement of World War I, Lucius, a barely trained young medical student, reports to a remote church requisitioned as a field hospital in the Carpathian Mountains. There, he meets the enigmatic Sister Margarete, a nurse who has been the main medical provider with a few orderlies since the previous doctors deserted or died along with her fellow sisters. Quick, witty and knowledgeable, Margarete becomes Lucius’ teacher, while a more than collegial relationship stirs beneath the surface.

As the front advances around them, churning out the wounded, Lucius and Margarete toil side by side in their “patch and send” hospital. Amputations, nervous shock, skulls caved in, typhus, rats and lice—it’s exhausting to imagine the onslaught of it all, but Mason deftly renders every scene in vivid detail. Winter’s inevitable descent looms over them constantly, ready to take the lives they struggle to save. Yet even in winter, to paraphrase Camus, an invincible summer lies within. Hope, love, desire, laughter, even beauty exist alongside the blood and mayhem.

The arrival of a wrecked shell of a soldier, trapped in both body and mind, brings a reckoning. Choices made by both nurse and doctor shape the young soldier’s life for good and for ill, reverberating until the novel’s final page. Through Vienna, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Galicia, The Winter Soldier roams from battlefields and hospitals to villages and ballrooms, never losing the thread between Lucius and Margarete.

With striking prose and an unencumbered pace, The Winter Soldier makes for a uniquely compelling read.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s hardly surprising that Frances de Pontes Peebles’ award-winning debut novel, The Seamstress, was published a decade ago, as her follow-up, a sweeping, cinematic and thoroughly engrossing tale about an enduring friendship and the story of samba, is a mighty accomplishment—the kind of novel that demands ample time to write.

Two girls—beautiful and privileged Graça, who has a captivating singing voice, and orphan Dores, nicknamed “Jega,” which means “donkey” in Portuguese—grow up in the early 20th century on the same sugar plantation in Brazil, which Graça’s family owns. Dores is the more levelheaded and intelligent of the two, and Graça is an impetuous risk-taker. When they first hear music on the radio, their lives are forever changed. As teens, Graça’s rebellious nature wins over her friend, who harbors an unrequited love for her, and they escape via a boarding school trip to Rio de Janeiro’s gritty Lapa neighborhood, with the aim of pursuing their dreams.

Though the girls are originally a musical duo, it’s clear that Graça is the star. She is renamed Sofia Salvador after finding success in a nightclub owned by a local gangster, and Dores cedes the spotlight to write her friend’s songs. Amid a colorful canvas of sex, corruption, drugs and violence, the history of samba unfolds. The young women’s relationship is often strained, but they remain united through ambition.

When Hollywood calls, Sofia Salvador becomes an international star during World War II, a pin-up for the troops à la Carmen Miranda. But there is a price to pay.

The Air You Breathe unfolds from Dores’ first-person perspective as she reflects on her life and losses. A sense of melancholy imbues the tale, but Dores has a compelling and fascinating voice. She is unashamed of her sexuality and confident in her ability to write songs in a male-dominated arena, and her strength and singularity propel this unforgettable novel.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Frances de Pontes Peebles.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The classics are experiencing a feminist revolution. Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey—the first to be written by a woman—was published to great acclaim at the end of 2016. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a contemporary reworking of Antigone, won the 2017 Women’s Prize. And American author Madeline Miller has just published Circe, her second novel based on classical characters. Joining this group is the award-winning British novelist Pat Barker (The Regeneration Trilogy, Toby’s Room), whose 14th novel, The Silence of the Girls, is a reimagining of one of the key episodes in the Iliad, told from the perspective of a captured queen living in the Greek army camp during the final weeks of the Trojan War.

Briseis was the queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms when her city was sacked and her husband and brothers were killed. A prize of battle, she becomes the property of Achilles, and she lives in the women’s quarters but is available to him as his concubine and slave. When King Agamemnon demands Briseis for his own, Achilles relinquishes her but, as a show of resistance, refuses to fight the Trojans any longer. In Barker’s retelling, Briseis finds herself torn between the two men, helpless but also uniquely positioned to observe the power struggle whose outcome will decide the fate of the ancient world.

The Iliad concerns a war fought over a woman, and women play a major role in the epic poem as nurses, wives and, of course, unwilling sex slaves. Yet the lack of women’s voices in the original text is deafening. In The Silence of the Girls, Briseis is the master of the narrative, telling her story in counterpoint to Achilles, becoming her own subject rather than his object. Her voice is wryly observant and wholly cognizant of the cost that she and other women have paid for the violence and abuses of war perpetrated by men. Barker’s retelling of some of the most famous events of the Iliad feels strangely relevant to today—displaced peoples, war refugees, abandoned women and children, sexual violence—and assures us that women’s voices will be silent no longer.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.