Karl Marlantes, author of the epic Deep River, returns with a new tale of the Koskis, a family of Finnish immigrants to the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. Set just after World War II, Cold Victory follows Louise Koski, granddaughter-in-law of Aino Koski, Deep River’s fiery and unforgettable protagonist.

Louise moves to Helsinki with her husband, Arnie, who’s been appointed as the military attaché to the American legation. Soon she befriends Natalya Bobrova, while Arnie befriends Natalya’s husband, Mikael. The two men discover they previously met during the war, when Russians and Americans were still allies. Meanwhile, Arnie’s Finnish cousin struggles to run an impecunious orphanage, which Louise, whose one sorrow in her otherwise sunny life is her childlessness, takes up as a cause. But how to raise money? After Arnie and Mikael decide on a booze-fueled lark to have a cross-country skiing race, Louise gets the idea to fundraise through a raffle where people bet on who will win.

This is a terrible idea.

In an atmosphere of ratcheting Soviet-U.S. tensions, news of the race quickly travels and becomes a symbol of the international divide: Soviet communism vs. American capitalism. The two men, unreachable in the snowy wilderness, have no way of knowing that if Mikael loses this race, Comrade Stalin will send him to Siberia. Or worse.

Utilizing short, punchy chapters full of period detail, Marlantes keeps you wondering how this potentially deadly breach of protocol is going to end. His investigation of postwar diplomacy just as the Iron Curtain is about to fall for good is riveting. You’ll be as shocked as Louise at how paranoid the Russians are about everything: It’s a given that friends, husbands, wives and au pairs spy on each other, that apartments are bugged, that one misstep can result in being taken away and killed. Marlantes cleverly demonstrates how, in a Soviet satellite, even American optimism becomes dangerous. As Louise realizes, “naiveté was not an excuse; it was a flaw. And it was a flaw that hurt people.” Cold Victory is another enthralling work from a great writer.

As long as piracy has existed, it has been shrouded in myth, legend and rumor, which compromises the reliability of primary texts describing its major figures. Author Katherine Howe tackles this historical pitfall in her newest novel, A True Account.

Hannah Masury, nicknamed “Hannah Misery” by the clientele at the waterfront inn where she works in colonial Boston, has a small life. As an orphan and a girl, she doesn’t possess much in the way of prospects. When, on a balmy June morning in 1726, Hannah witnesses the hanging of a pirate named William Fly, something breaks open in her. In a matter of hours, a combination of coincidence and terrible timing leads to Hannah running for her life. With nowhere to turn, she seeks refuge aboard the ship of infamous pirate Edward Low, in disguise as a cabin boy.

Meanwhile, in 1930s Cambridge, a bright-eyed freshman named Kay brings Dr. Marian Beresford a tattered manuscript that claims to be a true account of the adventures of one Hannah Masury. Marian almost immediately dismisses it, but her initial skepticism gives way to a guarded curiosity. Could the manuscript be genuine? If it is, did Hannah intentionally alter details to hide something? And if she did . . . what exactly is waiting to be unearthed?

Using dual narratives and timelines to create a work of metafiction, Howe examines the contradictory tales of the real Edward Low through the lenses of Hannah and Marian.  Conceptually, the idea is fascinating, though Hannah’s narrative of transformation is the more interesting and better constructed of the two. Too often, Marian teeters on the edge between character and device, and her sections can veer into a juvenile tone. In contrast, the use of a diaristic narrative to tell Hannah’s story invites readers to feel the rush of clandestine discovery alongside Marian and Kay.

While the novel might have been stronger with Hannah’s voice alone, her half of the story is too compelling to be overshadowed. Readers who found their childhood love of pirates rekindled by the HBO superhit “Our Flag Means Death” (which involves other real-life pirates such as Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and Calico Jack) will be enamored with Howe’s piratical retelling in which the heroes are as unlikely as buried treasure itself.

In the summer of 2019, bestselling author Lauren Grodstein (A Friend of the Family) visited the Oneg Shabbat Archive in Poland, which houses diary entries and records documenting Jewish life under German occupation during World War II. As she read testimonies and reflected upon her own family’s departure from Poland, Grodstein found inspiration for her next novel, a stirring work of historical fiction that takes readers into the Nazis’ largest ghetto.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves tells the story of Adam Paskow, who is recruited by the Oneg Shabbat just months after being relocated to a shared apartment in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. Emanuel Ringelblum, the group’s leader, explains to Adam that his assignment is to record “all the details, even if they seem insignificant. I don’t want you to decide what’s significant. . . . Our task is to pay attention. To listen to the stories.”

So Adam begins to conduct interviews with his flatmates as well as with children from the English class he teaches. Acting as something of a Greek chorus, these voices vacillate between the mundane, the macabre and occasional moments of joy, demonstrating how the community doggedly clings to any semblance of normalcy. We come to see that, for Adam and all the Jews stripped of their rights and freedoms, it is an act of resistance to simply persist in the business of daily living and continue to enjoy simple pleasures wherever they may be found.

Adam also transcribes his own life story, musing not only on his increasingly bleak present reality but also his life before the war, when he worked at a prestigious school and was happily married until his wife’s tragic death. Though he believes the great love of his life is behind him, we witness Adam slowly form a romantic connection with Sala, a married mother with whom he now shares cramped living quarters. Their mutual attachment transforms their time in the ghetto into something more than survival.

As its plot advances, We Must Not Think of Ourselves is most concerned with exploring the internal lives of its characters and giving faces to the people who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto. By keeping the novel’s scope intimate and personal, Grodstein lets readers experience Adam and his compatriots’ loss and resilience in a visceral, rather than intellectual, way. Emotionally charged and meticulously researched, We Must Not Think of Ourselves pays homage to the Oneg Shabbat’s goal of honoring the Jewish people by bearing witness to the entirety of their experience. This is a compelling and compassionate tribute that will resonate deeply with readers.

Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the early 1920s, when the British writer William Somerset Maugham and his secretary (and lover) Gerald Haxton visit the coastal province of Penang, Malaysia, as the guests of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn.

Part of Penang’s European elite, Lesley and Robert live a comfortable, privileged life although their marriage is no longer as intimate as it once was and Lesley suspects Robert of having an affair. Over the course of his visit, Lesley shares her concerns with “Willie” and mentions that she was once close to the revolutionary leader Sun Yat Sen, who spent time fundraising in Penang. Lesley was also a friend of Ethel Proudlock, whose murder trial in Kuala Lumpur sent shock waves through the British expat population. These details provided the seeds for several of Maugham’s future works, most notably “The Letter,” the final story in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree.

The House of Doors alternates between Lesley’s and Willie’s perspectives as Lesley unburdens herself to Willie, disclosing her fears of her husband’s infidelity and her involvement in Sun’s movement. Willie draws inspiration for his stories from Lesley and other locals, while hoping to dig himself out of a financial hole and worrying that Gerald will leave him now that money is flowing less freely.

Tan’s choice to tell the story from the view of the colonizing class highlights his characters’ limitations and blind spots. Many of the characters are living double lives; Willie hides his homosexuality, and Lesley too keeps an intimate relationship secret. Perhaps this is why, for a novel about desire and revolutionary politics, the tone of The House of Doors is surprisingly cool: The moral complexities of a colonial society are hidden behind a veneer of restraint and manners. Tan’s eye for detail and understated storytelling bring a subtle edge to this thoughtfully written, atypical historical novel that searches for the emotional truth behind the facts.