Sarah Dunant has visited the turbulent beauty of the Italian Renaissance before, in rich historical novels like The Birth of Venus. With Blood & Beauty, she returns to this fascinating era, but this time she’s trained her acute storytelling eye on real historical figures: one of Europe’s most infamous families, the Borgias.

Turning the lives of people who actually inhabit the pages of history into a compelling, dazzling fictional narrative is a new challenge for Dunant, but she rises to it beautifully. Filled with rich detail and page-turning drama, Blood & Beauty is an ambitious and bravura new work from a powerful voice in historical fiction.

Beginning with the election of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI in 1492, Dunant charts 10 years of turbulent, romantic and often chaotic Borgia rule in Europe. As a Spanish clergyman surrounded by Italians, famous as much for his wealth and the love of his illegitimate children as for his statue in the church, Alexander knows he must be shrewd and smart if he is to bend Europe to his will. To satisfy his unceasing desire for power amid the ever-turbulent politics of a divided Italian peninsula, he turns to his two most famous children, the warrior Cesare and the charming Lucrezia, key to the future of his dynasty.

The most striking thing about Blood & Beauty is how unreservedly Dunant luxuriates in the pageantry and drama of the period. She labored to strip away some of the centuries’ worth of propaganda and rumors surrounding the Borgia family with this novel, and she succeeds in that, but she also never shies from draping the work in gorgeous prose. The bombast and the high stakes of this story come to vivid life with every word. It’s a refreshingly unrestrained treatment of the genre, and it makes the tale all the more engaging.

Perfect for readers who love danger, romance and lots of palace intrigue, Blood & Beauty is a triumph on an epic scale. Dunant takes us deep into this gorgeous but often deadly world, and we never want to leave. Lucky for us, the epilogue notes that she’s already planning another Borgia book.

In his 15 novels, Chris Bohjalian has delved into a potpourri of weighty topics, including environmental activism, medical malpractice suits and interracial adoption. Some of his more recent novels are injected with an element of mystery, and he continues on that track with his latest—a brilliant blend of historical fiction and a chilling serial killer story.

This gripping novel opens in Florence in 1955 with the brutal murder of Francesca Rosati, daughter-in-law of Antonio and Beatrice Rosati.

Serafina Bettini is part of the homicide unit investigating Francesca’s murder, and she first interviews Cristina, the Rosatis’ only daughter, who discovered the body. In only a few days her mother, Beatrice, is murdered in the same manner, and it becomes clear that a serial killer is methodically eliminating the Rosati family one at a time. Wondering if the motive may trace back to the war years when the villa was occupied for a time by supporters of Mussolini, Serafina questions Cristina about her family’s involvement with either the Nazis or the local partisans trying to sabotage the Nazi efforts, bringing up painful memories.

Bohjalian deftly ties together the stories of these two young women as the killer is identified and the long-harbored revenge is revealed. He succeeds in turning a historical novel into a page-turner that the reader will not soon forget.

A novel about terse men with guns will inevitably summon comparisons to Hemingway. One set in the South will likewise invoke Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. The Son by Philipp Meyer has its Hemingway-esque motifs; scenes of scalpings and general rapine do recall McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Meanwhile, Meyer’s decision to write using different voices riffs on Faulkner’s stylistic experiments.

At times Meyer does seem to be aping these predecessors, but his latest book is no mere homage. This talented young writer—one of the New Yorker’s “20 under 40”—has his own voice, and it owes as much perhaps to Virginia Woolf as to the male American canon.

The Son concerns several generations of Texans: Eli McCullough, his son Peter and Peter’s granddaughter Jeanne Anne. Eli’s tale, told in straight narrative, is set before and during the Civil War. Peter’s, told in diary form, centers on the Great War. J.A.’s, told in interior monologue, spans the latter 20th century.

The most compelling of these characters is Eli, who watches Comanches murder his family and then is taken captive by them. Years pass, and he becomes accustomed to their independent ways, so that even after his so-called liberation, Eli pines for his adoptive people.

Peter’s main struggle is with the Mexicans who once owned the Lone Star State. He witnesses Mexicans being massacred, and when one survivor calls him to account, he must choose between his love for her and his duty to a family who scorns the “wetbacks.”

For J.A., the problem is how to carry on the family name in a completely masculinized culture (women, Eli had said, “had no common sense”). She also struggles with her Texan pride, given that her nation, rather than being grateful for the state’s once indispensable oil production (“life as they knew it did not exist without Texas”), treats her kind with chilly Yankee superiority. On top of that, J.A. is a McCullough, and her ancestors’ enemies remember.

Meyer writes with grace, if not economy, and always with great sympathy, only occasionally careening into the saccharine. His knowledge of Comanche folkways is admirable, and, unlike Hemingway, he can write convincing women.

The novel’s epigraph is from Gibbon, and so its overarching theme is ephemerality—the decline of families shadowed by the decline of empires—a theme evident as well in the title of Meyer’s previous work, American Rust. The Son is a shining second step in a promising career.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a Q&A with Philipp Meyer for The Son.

An inventive English chef is kidnapped and forced onto the Flying Rose, a pirate ship helmed by a seemingly mad, but striking, female captain. The premise of Eli Brown’s novel Cinnamon and Gunpowder grabs your attention; his witty wordplay and deft characterizations will keep you turning pages.

God-fearing Owen Wedgwood is appalled by the brutal seafaring ways of the fiery Hannah Mabbot and her crew, and even more by the ultimatum she hands him: To keep his berth and life, he must please her palate with delectable Sunday suppers using a skeletal kitchen of meager and questionable foodstuffs. The novel is his journal, and Brown bestows a dry-witted and intriguing voice on his narrator.

A chef falls under the spell of a female pirate in a rollicking high-seas adventure.

With his employer, Lord Ramsay, dead and his escapes unsuccessful, Wedgwood unwillingly becomes a party to skirmishes against the vengeful privateer Laroche and heists of British ships stuffed with spoils of the opium and tea trades that dominated the early-19th-century era in which the novel is set. Mabbot’s hunt for the Brass Fox, an elusive figure whose interests may or may not be at odds with hers, drives the action.

As each Sunday looms, the captive chef makes do. Mouthwatering descriptions of his triumphs suggest the author himself to be a man of daring appetite. Culinary conversation mingles easily with the vernacular of sailing and Wedgwood’s poignant musings on faith, food and the meaning of life. At the mercy of whatever edibles the crew pillages, Wedgwood manages to create menus to rival a restaurant chef’s. He coaxes braised pheasant, whelks poached in wine lees, sundried tomato puttanesca and even a mango tart glazed with brandy and honey, from his galley. Over these meals, Mabbot and Wedgwood share stories, and a form of trust grows, along with a surprising sympathy.

From the English coast through the Sunda Strait to China, Cinnamon and Gunpowder tells a salty tale in the most entertaining sense of the word. Brown spins an adventure story with the weight of history to it, and plenty of absurdity for comic relief. Much is lost and much is gained as this questing narrative reaches its spectacular crescendo.

By all appearances, Thea Atwell lives a charmed life. A child of Emathla, Florida, “a stone’s throw” from Gainesville, she rides horses and explores the lush land with her cousin and twin brother, insulated from the Great Depression by her family’s citrus fortune.

But in July of 1930, at age 15, Thea is sent to a year-round camp for girls in the Blue Ridge Mountains, an idyllic enclave where Southern young women go to become ladies. Because as the headmistress says, “Becoming a lady is not simply a thing which happens, like magic . . . becoming a lady is a lesson you must learn.” Turns out Thea has done something very bad, and the camp—far away from Florida—is her punishment.

Sensual, lush and surprising, this debut set in the North Carolina mountains is a story to savor.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, Anton DiSclafani’s sensual debut novel, shifts back and forth from Emathla to North Carolina, building toward the “series of events” that leads to Thea’s banishment. The story hinges on this mysterious transgression, something so terrible that the Atwells do not send for Thea at Christmas or visit when she falls ill at camp. In spite of this, the headstrong young woman is able to settle into life at Yonahlossee, where she quickly makes a best friend and establishes herself as a top equestrienne. However, home is never far from her mind, even when Thea has grown to like her world of “horses and girls, girls and horses.” Readers who have experienced the joy of riding—the adrenaline of fearless jumping, the pleasure of grooming, the comfort of getting to know a horse—will appreciate the scenes of Thea with her animal.

DiSclafani unspools the drama slowly and seductively, tempting the reader with ominous letters from Florida and other hints from Thea’s past. This pace allows the author to dreamily revel in lovely settings—the picturesque camp in the mountains or the wilds of the Atwells’ land in Emathla—but at times the plot feels languid. Still, patient readers will be rewarded with a passionate climax. The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a story to savor in the heat of summer.

Ava Lark is different. She’s divorced, an unusual state of being in 1956, and one that the women at her part-time job and in her neighborhood treat as though it’s a contagious disease. And she’s Jewish, which leaves those same women feeling affronted when she declines to decorate for Christmas.

Ava struggles to believe that she deserves a happy life, even years after her husband, Brian, left her for a mistress. She blames herself for his departure, as does their son, Lewis. Ava makes his life worse, Lewis believes, by not dressing or acting like other mothers, whose fear of anyone different is only exacerbated by the Cold War. Lewis’ only solace is in his friends Rose and Jimmy, the other fatherless children on his suburban Boston street.

After 12-year-old Jimmy vanishes, his sister Rose, at age 13, joins Ava and Lewis in shouldering the blame for a loss that isn’t her fault. Rose’s mother is convinced that if Rose had been with her brother that afternoon, he would still be around. Lewis likewise regrets not meeting his friend at the appointed time on that fateful day.

Jimmy’s disappearance leaves those who were close to him questioning who they are and what they know to be true—questions that continue to haunt them years later. Both Lewis and Rose have held people at arm’s length, reluctant to let others into their lives for fear of sharing their past. Indeed, in Caroline Leavitt’s 10th novel, Is This Tomorrow, the past colors each moment in the characters’ present. As they attempt to discover what’s behind Jimmy’s disappearance and their resulting tumultuous lives, Rose, Lewis and Ava must retrace their steps to find understanding.

Leavitt’s compelling work explores how a tragedy casts a shadow—not only upon the days that immediately follow, but sometimes the rest of a life. Life isn’t always what we expect, a fact that is thoughtfully explored in this beautifully rendered tale.

Be careful what you wish for—this adage rings true for The Edge of the Earth protagonist Trudy, a young, educated girl living in Wisconsin in the late 1800s. Her upbringing is sheltered and traditional: After college, she is expected to marry her childhood friend, Ernst, and enter into a life of security and domesticity. Feeling overwhelmed by these preordained arrangements, Trudy is caught off guard when Ernst’s cousin, Oskar, returns to town. Naïve and vulnerable, she quickly falls for the intelligent and adventurous Oskar, abandoning the safe path that lies before her, and the two marry.

When Oskar takes a job as a lighthouse keeper, the couple moves across the country to Point Lucia, California. Their new home is surrounded by choppy waters, rugged mountains and impenetrable fog. Isolated from all but the other lighthouse keeper and his family, Trudy finds her world quickly changed. Burdened by work, Oskar grows distant and cold, and Trudy relies on letters from her parents and her childhood friend, Lucy, to keep her afloat. She becomes fascinated by the sea and its inhabitants, embarking on a scientific quest that uncovers some of the island’s secrets and alters each character’s fate.

Author of the 2000 bestseller Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz has created a haunting story. While many surprises are revealed within the final chapters, Schwarz slowly and beautifully describes the depths of each character throughout the novel. Set in a murky, isolated portion of the Pacific coastline, The Edge of the Earth paints a rich picture of mountainous landscapes and the aquatic life that Trudy comes to know so well. Told in brilliant detail, this is a memorable tale of an uncommon woman who embarks on the road less traveled.

The Fever Tree, Jennifer McVeigh’s riveting debut novel, follows a pampered British woman, Frances Irvine, who leaves her insular life and journeys to the Southern Cape of Africa during the 19th-century diamond rush.

When Frances suddenly loses her father—and subsequently her station in life—she must choose whether to become a maid in her aunt’s home or travel to South Africa to marry a man she does not love, Dr. Edwin Matthews. Reluctantly engaged and en route to Africa, Frances falls for handsome diamond trader William Westbrooke, but soon learns he is a man of weak promises and loose morals.

Disillusioned and heartbroken, Frances is forced to ?nish her journey to meet Dr. Matthews in the Karoo, a distant hinterland outside of Kimberley. Once there, she realizes her husband’s duty as a doctor has set him on a crusade to end the corruption inherent in the European colonial rule. Frances must make a brutal decision: Will she choose passion over morality, material wealth over integrity?

McVeigh’s exhaustive research shines through the vivid recounting of the harsh lives of the settlers of South Africa. Drought, deplorable mistreatment of the native Africans, and abject living conditions are illustriously brought to life and, at times, difficult to digest. The Fever Tree is an engaging read; its capricious heroine grabs you from the start, urging you to ride out her journey before the morning alarm rings.

Joyce Carol Oates must have had a ball writing The Accursed. This long (more than 600 pages), nutty tome covers a fractious year in the life of the Princeton upper crust in the early 20th century. Why Oates would bring such woe upon the place where she has happily lived and worked for years is anyone’s guess, but the result is tremendous fun.

The misfortunes that bedevil the Slades, Burrs and other muckety-mucks during that year of 1905-1906 seem to have been prompted by a lynching that draws forth the powers of darkness from a shadowy, scabrous netherworld called the Bog Kingdom. The first of these denizens of the dark to arrive in Princeton is Axson Mayte, who seduces a virginal Slade girl at the very moment of her marriage to a West Point graduate. It’s worse than “Downton Abbey”! Mayte is followed by a Count Gneist, who seems to be some sort of vampire and seduces one of the Slade girl’s relatives. Then, there’s the devilish Countess who almost seduces—wait for it—Woodrow Wilson, who at the time was the president of Princeton U.

Besides Wilson, there’s a nice sprinkling of historical characters throughout this novel, and Oates despises all of them. This reader is certain the only reason she doesn’t flat-out kill Wilson or have him dragged down to the Bog Kingdom is because, well, she couldn’t quite get away with that. Teddy Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, Upton Sinclair, Jack London and Mark Twain (and his noisome cigars) are portrayed with an almost gleeful viciousness, for these ghastly men and their fictional counterparts represent the very worst aspects of misogyny and patriarchy. Even those hearty socialists, London and Sinclair, think nothing of trampling or dismissing their women, and a goodly number of the fictional patriarchs are downright homicidal, not only toward their simpering, suffering wives, but their little children, too.

These overheated, intertwined stories are narrated by an elderly chap who was one of those little children who just managed to escape with his life. Though the narrator is speaking from the perspective of 1984, he sounds peculiarly Jamesian; when he mentions television near the book’s end the reader is actually startled.

Speaking of the book’s end, it’s so preposterous and over the top that the reader has to be impressed. But how else could Oates finish this tale? It’s bad enough, she seems to say, that Wilson went on to become the president of the United States. She had to make amends.

Anyone who takes on The Accursed should settle in for a long, bumpy, screwy, improbable but engrossing ride.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a Q&A with Joyce Carol Oates for The Accursed.

From acclaimed short story writer and former Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist Marisa Silver comes her latest (and perhaps most astounding) work, Mary Coin. This exquisitely written novel, Silver’s third, re-imagines the life of Dorothea Lange, the famous Depression-era photographer who shot the iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph in 1936. Silver’s tale weaves in and out of the life of not just the photographer but also her subject, binding these two women together in more ways than one.

Silver follows the lives of three pivotal characters: Mary, the migrant mother; Vera Dare (a pseudonym for Lange); and Walker Dodge, a present-day history professor whose focus is less on his troubles within his family and more on the mystery of his family’s legacy after the death of his reticent father. Silver effortlessly takes her readers from the desolate fruit orchards of Northern California to the eclectic hills of San Francisco, capturing the excess of America’s wealth before the Great Depression struck the country.

Stoic Mary is a mother of seven fighting to feed her kids on the impossibly low salary of a migrant worker; Vera, a once polio-stricken artist, struggles with her philandering husband, her physical handicap and her ability to balance being both a mother and a artist. Readers will find themselves drawn to both women, despite the massive economic bridge that separates them, and will want to research the photographer and subject to see how closely Silver hewed to the truth of their intertwined lives. Fans of historical fiction will not be disappointed.