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If you’re making lists of classic science fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery and historical fiction, works by Ray Bradbury and Dan Simmons must appear on every one. Only these two authors have had the skill and the nerve to excel in every one of these genres. But there is more to the Bradbury-Simmons connection than mere range. What binds them together most poignantly is their fierce love and explicit regard for the literary tradition. For instance, Charles Dickens often haunts Bradbury’s works. Now it is Simmons’ turn to raise the ghost of the creator of Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist and, of course, Edwin Drood.

In Drood, Dickens is ironically overshadowed by his close friend and collaborator Wilkie Collins, the brilliant but lesser-known mystery novelist. Collins narrates a detailed, “revisionist” account of Dickens’ final years after his near-fatal railway accident in 1865. Through the voice of Dickens’ jealous friend, Simmons manages to fuse all his genres, and then some. Drood is at once an intimate view of the amours of two beloved Victorian writers, an extensive and meticulously researched piece of English historical fiction, a fantasy of doppelgangers and Egyptian rites, a quaint exercise in 19th-century science fiction (including mesmeric trances and the technology of London sewage), a dark and bloody detective story, a novel of purest horror (with brain-eating beetles and walking Undead), and the latest in a long line of impossible efforts to finish Dickens’ last, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Simmons’ splendid pastiche is all the more engaging because we can never really know why Dickens was inspired to make such a radical departure in his final work, let alone how he would have completed it had he lived.  Drood will shock and delight readers as a plausible Amadeus fable: the mediocre artist (Collins/Salieri) spirals into a murderous rage against his nemesis, the Inimitable Genius (Dickens/Mozart), whose greatness only he is close enough to fully understand and articulate. There’s only one flaw in the Amadeus model, and it’s a decisive one: in real life, both Salieri and Collins produced genuinely beautiful work. Simmons’ self-evident hope for his wildly macabre Drood is that it will lead a new flock of readers to Collins’ wonderful Woman in White and Moonstone.

Michael Alec Rose is a composer and Vanderbilt University music professor who owes his lifelong love of literature to Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

If you’re making lists of classic science fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery and historical fiction, works by Ray Bradbury and Dan Simmons must appear on every one. Only these two authors have had the skill and the nerve to excel in every one of these genres.…

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Jackson Taylor weaves an affecting—if at times disturbing—and ultimately hopeful tale while tackling issues of gender, class, family and race in his first novel, The Blue Orchard, based upon the remarkable life of his grandmother, Verna Krone. In 1954, Verna, a white nurse, and Charles Crampton, an African-American physician, were arrested in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for performing scandalous “illegal operations”; in Taylor’s hands, this is the pivotal point from which Verna looks back on her life.

Born into poverty in rural Pennsylvania, Verna, a bright student, is pulled out of school in the 1920s to support the family. Thus begins her journey from home to home and job to job, endlessly searching for some control over her life. During her term as a hired farm girl, her boss takes advantage of her, leaving her pregnant at 14, but under the guidance of a local midwife, her “trouble” is taken care of.

Pregnancy, parenting and children’s fates are major themes in The Blue Orchard, as Verna later becomes a mother, leaves her newborn son to be raised by her own unwilling mother, marries a man who has abandoned his children and becomes the vigilant caregiver for thousands of women of all ages, incomes and situations, who surreptitiously stream through her door to recover from abortions performed by Dr. Crampton—an occupation that brings her financial security beyond her wildest dreams but invokes new stresses and fears.

Verna is a flawed but strong woman whose self-examination is uncompromising. Her association with Dr. Crampton, a pillar of Harrisburg’s African-American community whose ties to the Harvey Taylor political machine build him up but tragically leave him a broken man, exposes her to dirty politics, deceit, injustice and emergencies that bring out the best and worst in her. Taylor’s unflinching and gracefully written novel brings us face-to-face with ugly national and personal realities, not only helping us to understand our collective history and family dynamics, but also helping to frame the contemporary abortion debate. A moving and important novel, The Blue Orchard is a fine read.

Sheri Bodoh writes from Eldridge, Iowa.

Jackson Taylor weaves an affecting—if at times disturbing—and ultimately hopeful tale while tackling issues of gender, class, family and race in his first novel, The Blue Orchard, based upon the remarkable life of his grandmother, Verna Krone. In 1954, Verna, a white nurse, and Charles…

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No one is more surprised by the success of her first two novels – The Sparrow and Children of God – than Mary Doria Russell. "God knows, writing about Jesuits and space was not a sure thing," Russell exclaims, laughing, during a call to her home in "an unfashionable suburb" of Cleveland where she lives with her husband, a software engineer, and their son, Dan. The family moved there in 1983 when Russell, a paleoanthropologist by training, got a job teaching anatomy at Case Western Reserve University. She became a novelist by accident when she lost her teaching job. "Not only did I not want to be a writer when I grew up, the last time I took an English class was when Sonny and Cher were still married!" she says. "I didn’t know that I’m not supposed to be able to get away with the stuff that I get away with."

The stuff Russell gets away with is a spellbinding, provocative mix of believable characters, compelling plotlines, good – often great – dialogue, and moral philosophy. The Sparrow and its sequel, Children of God, dazzled science fiction fans and general readers alike with the story of Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz’s catastrophic mission to the planet Rakhat and his return some years later to find the extraterrestrial civilization in turmoil as a result of its contact with humans.

In her new novel, A Thread of Grace, Russell turns her attention and her considerable talents from the future to the past to vividly dramatize the little-known story of how a wide network of Italian priests, nuns, villagers and farmers saved the lives of nearly 43,000 Jews in the final years of World War II.

"That Italy – an ally of Germany, a Fascist country – would have the highest survivor rate of all the countries in occupied Europe was fascinating to me. I felt the desire to understand what went right," Russell says. Researching the book, she spent a great deal of time in Europe talking to aging Jewish survivors and their Italian rescuers. Her sense of obligation to the people she talked to sustained her through the seven long years it took her to complete the book. "I felt such a sense of responsibility to the people who had taken the time to let me into their lives and tell me what happened to them in their youth," she says. "I needed to make sure those stories weren’t forgotten, that I wasn’t the only one to hear them and be moved by them."

Drawing on these true-life stories, her own imagination, her great skill as a storyteller and a compulsion to get it right, Russell fashions a moving and suspenseful novel that also manages to convincingly explore the most challenging moral and ethical questions of our times.

Russell’s story begins on September 8, 1943, the day that Italy’s surrender to the Allies unleashed a flood of Jewish refugees struggling over the Alps from France to safety in Italy. Among these are 14-year-old Claudette Blum and her father Albert, Belgian Jews who have barely managed to stay ahead of the advancing Nazis. Their hopes for safety, however, are quickly dashed as the Nazis occupy Italy and force the Blums into hiding in a rural village whose inhabitants have never before met a Jew. That Claudette eventually survives the war – though emotionally and psychologically scarred – is a bright moment in an otherwise wrenching tale. Others from Russell’s vibrant palette of heroic, kind, likeable characters are not so lucky.

"I was concerned that I was writing a feel-good Holocaust book," Russell says with passion. "I was afraid that in writing about Italy, where 85 percent of the Jews did survive, that it would be another opportunity for people to think that they would have been clever enough or plucky enough or imaginative enough to survive. But all the survivors tell you that it was just blind dumb luck. It wasn’t intelligence. It wasn’t bravery. You just turned left instead of right without knowing you’d made a decision."

Discussing the problem with her 16-year-old son Dan on the drive home from school one day, they decided they would simply flip a coin to determine the characters’ fates. At home, Dan flipped for each character heads he lived; tails she died. "And then it was my problem," Russell says wryly.

The impact of these unexpected outcomes is powerful, casting into high relief the moral questions about World War II or any war that are so important to the emotional force of A Thread of Grace. Russell presents a complex moral universe: her most appealing character, Renzo Leoni, a resourceful, funny, brave Italian Jew whose actions save the lives of many, is consumed by guilt over his participation in the Italian conquest of Ethiopia during which he became a decorated war hero. And Werner Schramm, a Nazi doctor who is responsible, by his own count, for the deaths of 91,867 people, is, quite simply, a very likeable guy.

"Schramm," Russell says, "was remarkably easy to write, and I find that one of the scariest pieces of self-knowledge that this book provided. I understand Schramm in ways that I find really distressing. At different points in my life I would have been far more amenable to the idea of a master race. I can understand how I might have been willing to think that I was extra special. There but for the grace of God go I."

But despite the complex moral picture Russell presents in A Thread of Grace, she expresses unreserved admiration for the Italian peasants who took in and hid the Jewish refugees. "Would I have had the guts to do what they did?" she says. "Not a chance. To do what they did when they took in these Jews – these strangers, these foreigners – would be as though it were September 12, 2001, and a Muslim family knocked on your door and said, the FBI is looking for us but honest to God we are innocent. Can you help us? And you did. If nothing else, I wanted to show how dangerous it was. And how courageous these people really were."

Alden Mudge writes from Oakland, California.

 

No one is more surprised by the success of her first two novels - The Sparrow and Children of God - than Mary Doria Russell. "God knows, writing about Jesuits and space was not a sure thing," Russell exclaims, laughing, during a call to…

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Girl with a Pearl Earring made Tracy Chevalier a household name in the historical fiction world. And now, with the dazzling Remarkable Creatures, Chevalier gives us another intriguing celebration of women and friendship.

Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster, has just moved to Lyme Regis, a town on the southern coast of England, with her sisters. She falls in love with scouring the beaches for fossils, and meets a young girl and fellow fossil-hunter, Mary Anning. As Mary grows up and the two follow their shared passion, they find themselves making discoveries that cause a stir in the scientific community and hold implications for science and religion that they could never have foreseen.

The novel weaves together many fascinating elements, not the least of which are the fossils themselves. Chevalier captures their beauty and mystery perfectly and allows readers to feel her subjects’ obsession with them. As Mary and Elizabeth diligently and excitedly uncover these messages from another era, the reader sees how little was initially known about fossils and how they affected the way we view the world.

Of course, the fossils are not the only stars of the novel—Mary and Elizabeth, based on real historical figures, will fascinate readers as well. At age 11, the real-life Mary Anning discovered the first ichthyosaurus skeleton ever found. Despite little education and even smaller means, she somehow managed to engage middle-class men of science in her pursuit of fossils and helped pave the way for Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Less is known about the real Elizabeth Philpot, only that she was an avid collector of fossil fish—one species is even named after her—and, given their differences in age and class, a somewhat unlikely friend of Mary’s. But Chevalier brings her to life. Both women will enthrall readers with their aspirations, fears and obstacles and, above all, their admirable determination.

The story unfolds gracefully and will keep you eagerly turning pages until the novel’s close. There’s humor, romance and a down-to-earth kind of suspense. But most of all, there are the believable and well-crafted personal triumphs and tragedies of two women who defied convention and changed their corner of the world. Indeed, Mary and Elizabeth are remarkable creatures.

Jessica Inman writes and edits in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

A celebration of women, science and friendship, Remarkable Creatures imagines the lives of two real-life fossil hunters in the 19th century.
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Last year, Jennifer Haigh impressed readers with her brilliant debut, Mrs. Kimble. With her second novel, Haigh does it again differently, but just as well. Baker Towers focuses on an immigrant family from the company coal town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania. The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines, Haigh writes. This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things. Her characters at first appear to be stereotypes, but soon display their uniqueness. The mother, Rose, is Italian-American and forever cooking pasta and having babies. Yet she had the courage to marry Stanley and become the only Italian wife living on Polish Hill. Even more unexpected is their quiet, studious daughter Joyce’s ardent desire to join the Women’s Air Force.

Stanley’s untimely death in early 1944 leaves Rose a widow with five children. Georgie, the oldest, is serving in the South Pacific; Lucy, the youngest, is a baby on the hip. In between are Dorothy, Joyce and good-looking little Sandy. How the family manages the life they inherit is the story Haigh tells so compellingly, demonstrating how a small town can both smother people and give them comfort. The female characters in Baker Towers prove especially interesting as they meet the challenges of changing mores. Dorothy finds that her true path has little to do with the straight and narrow; Lucy discovers that education and a career can take her away, but will also serve her well if she decides to go back home. The towers in the title describes tall pillars of smoldering coal. They seem a permanent part of the landscape, yet, in the end, Haigh shows that permanence lies not in the mine, but in the impression made on the rich mix of people who grew up in old Bakerton. Anne Morris writes from Austin, Texas.

Last year, Jennifer Haigh impressed readers with her brilliant debut, Mrs. Kimble. With her second novel, Haigh does it again differently, but just as well. Baker Towers focuses on an immigrant family from the company coal town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania. The mines were not named…
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In the beginning of Abundance, Sena Jeter Naslund’s astonishing, richly imagined novel, 14-year-old Maria Antonia stands naked on an island in the Rhine River, neutral territory between her Austrian homeland and France. Poised to marry the heir to the French throne, the princess must shed every thread of her Austrian existence and be remade into Marie Antoinette, future Queen of France.

It’s a fitting metaphor for a woman who would spend the rest of her life in the prying public eye. Long before Princess Diana was chased by paparazzi, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child in front of hundreds of people and was dressed and bathed each day by bickering noblewomen. Tabloid-like pamphlets filled with false allegations of the queen’s scandalous sexual escapades regularly papered the streets of Paris.

Bolstered by meticulous research and delivered in glowing prose, Abundance reminds us why Marie Antoinette remains one of history’s most beguiling, contradictory women. Naslund, the author of the bestseller Ahab’s Wife, digs deep into the queen’s story, exploring her loving yet ultimately unfulfilling marriage to the ineffective King Louis XVI and her often frivolous pastimes, including a serious gambling addiction. We all know how this story ends, yet Abundance will have you holding your breath until the final march to the guillotine.

In the beginning of Abundance, Sena Jeter Naslund's astonishing, richly imagined novel, 14-year-old Maria Antonia stands naked on an island in the Rhine River, neutral territory between her Austrian homeland and France. Poised to marry the heir to the French throne, the princess must…
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In Michael Crichton’s posthumously published Pirate Latitudes, the grog is strong, the wenches are saucy, the blood is spilled by the bucket and the cutthroats do their slicing with fiendish regularity. The hero of this fast-paced novel is Charles Hunter, a Harvard-educated swashbuckler who is a privateer captain of some renown. He does not like to be called a pirate—a point he makes by nearly drowning a man in a plate of gravy—but in Jamaica’s Port Royal in 1665, that distinction is a fine one.

Port Royal is a city of riches that is little more than a den of thieves. It also is Great Britain’s precarious toehold in a Caribbean dominated by Spain. Hunter, like other privateers in the sometime employ of the British, earns his living by raiding Spanish merchant ships. Now a storm has separated a Spanish galleon holding untold riches from its escorts, and Captain Hunter has his eye on the prize. With the blessing of Port Royal’s British governor, Sir James Almont, Hunter and his picaresque crew sail off to capture the treasure.

While the galleon El Trinidad is nearby, it rests in a harbor protected by an impregnable fortress. The Spanish commander of the harbor at Matanceros is the ruthless Cazalla, who tortured and murdered Hunter’s brother. To steal away with the galleon, Hunter must first figure out a way to silence the cannons of Matanceros without meeting the same fate as his brother.

An assistant discovered this completed manuscript in Crichton’s computer after the best-selling novelist’s death in 2008. Crichton appears to have done a good deal of nautical and political research for his old-fashioned adventure yarn. With its numerous battles, hurricanes and even a Kraken-like monster that rises from the depths to block Hunter’s path home, it’s rather different from the author’s normal fare (Jurassic Park, The Great Train Robbery, The Andromeda Strain). But action on the high seas is always fun, especially guided by the talented—and gone-too-soon—Michael Crichton.

 

Ian Schwartz writes from San Diego.

In Michael Crichton’s posthumously published Pirate Latitudes, the grog is strong, the wenches are saucy, the blood is spilled by the bucket and the cutthroats do their slicing with fiendish regularity. The hero of this fast-paced novel is Charles Hunter, a Harvard-educated swashbuckler who is…

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Historical novels, according to author John Smolens, are “a unique amalgam of fact and fiction, conjecture and illusion,” and that’s certainly what he gives us in his sixth novel, The Anarchist. The titular figure, Leon Czolgosz, was a disgruntled Polish American from Cleveland, only in his 20s when he took on the cause of anarchy in America, inspired by the work of Emma Goldman and other turn-of-the-20th-century ideological rabble-rousers who fomented revolution against the political and industrial status quo, in particular in northern midwestern cities like Chicago.

Czolgosz went down in history as the assassin of President William McKinley, and that event is the main focus of Smolens’ dogged piece of fiction, which early on traces the movements of both men until leading up to their fateful encounter at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo in September 1901. Smolens’ third-person account is driven by the surrounding activities of federal agents and a local lawman, immersed in the tawdry bordellos and gruff canal life of multiethnic Buffalo, striving to keep tabs on underground political activities and, at the story’s outset, investigating the grotesque dockside murder of a prostitute. The historical details of  McKinley’s demise—he lived on for more than a week after his shooting, medical doctors somewhat confused about how to treat his fatal wound—are joined alternatingly with the account of Czolgosz’s finals days and his rather swift prosecution and execution, the latter taking place a mere six weeks after the crime. Smolens focuses the wind-up and climax of his book on the exploits of the feds—along with a key civilian informant, Moses Hyde—who become embroiled in an attempt by Czolgosz sympathizers to trade hostages for the assassin’s release.

Only one perceived hiccup in this well-researched historical novel: Smolens has the crowd singing “God Bless America” during one of McKinley’s public appearances; that song wasn’t written by Irving Berlin until 1918, and didn’t spread to the American consciousness at large until more than two decades after that. Nevertheless, The Anarchist is a well-rendered, credible mixing of documented events with imaginative projection into the tenor of a teeming American era, when the nation was embroiled in vaguely imperialistic activities abroad, the business world was booming and immigration was at its peak.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.
 

Historical novels, according to author John Smolens, are “a unique amalgam of fact and fiction, conjecture and illusion,” and that’s certainly what he gives us in his sixth novel, The Anarchist. The titular figure, Leon Czolgosz, was a disgruntled Polish American from Cleveland, only in his 20s…

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As the story of the pioneers of any land becomes legend, many details fall away. Who were the women behind the men and what happened to them? What was their contribution to the creation of a country? <b>Ines of My Soul</b>, the tale of Chile’s conquest by the Spanish in the 1500s, is international best-selling author Isabel Allende’s way of answering that question. As told in flashback by a courageous Spanish seamstress who becomes the mother of the land, <b>Ines of My Soul</b> dramatically recreates the adventure, romance and achievement of an indomitable woman in the untamed wilderness of South America.

When Ines Surez’s good-for-nothing husband disappears in the New World, she sets out to find him, freeing herself from the repressive environment of Spain. Ines’ adventures begin during the long sea journey to the Americas. Her keen mind and beauty soon capture the attention of Pedro de Valdivia, field marshal to the explorer Francisco Pizarro, governor of Peru. Together, Ines and Pedro lead the expedition destined to colonize the wild and fertile land of Chile. Their love affair ultimately raises Ines to the heights of society, where she proves her nobility by defending the nascent town of Santiago from the attacks of the fierce natives.

In this, her ninth novel, Allende’s love of her native lands she was born in Peru and raised in Chile before immigrating to the United States shines through. Ines, Pedro and the indigenous Chileans come alive, clashing with swords and clubs, facing starvation, betrayal and, finally, triumph. Allende weaves meticulously researched historic detail about the real-life Ines with brilliant imagination in this riveting tale, demonstrating again a singular talent for storytelling that grows stronger with each new work. <i>Kelly Koepke writes from Albuquerque, New Mexico.</i>

As the story of the pioneers of any land becomes legend, many details fall away. Who were the women behind the men and what happened to them? What was their contribution to the creation of a country? <b>Ines of My Soul</b>, the tale of Chile's…

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Jeff Shaara, one of the grand masters of military fiction, returns with the final novel of his acclaimed WWII trilogy. No Less than Victory concludes the epic tale of the war in Europe from the Battle of the Bulge through the German surrender.

Shaara’s plump third installment illuminates the final six months of the war as told by a handful of men on both sides. The battles and timeline themselves are painstakingly accurate. As Shaara himself says, the only reason he is forced to call his work fiction is because he must use dialogue. And he uses it well. While battles may be enough for military buffs, it’s the dialogue and thoughts of Shaara’s characters that make the book a narrative success. On the American side, the story is mainly told by a trio of soldiers, two of whom you may have heard of: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George Patton.

Eisenhower comes across as wholly human and singularly humane. You’ll feel his exasperation when dealing with British Gen. Montgomery—whom Shaara absolutely skewers—and have a lump in your throat as Ike gets his first glimpse of a German concentration camp. Patton does not entirely shed the famous portrayal by George C. Scott, but we do get a glimpse beneath the bravado.

No story of WWII is complete without GIs. Their story is told by Private Benson, a raw recruit unlucky enough to arrive just before the Bulge. Benson is scared and confused, but draws courage from his fearless buddy Mitchell, whose hatred of the Germans grows along with his love of war.

The Germans are mostly represented by Gen. Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, who knows by the winter of 1944 that he is merely following Hitler into the abyss, but has little choice but to continue. Curiously, Shaara is gentler with much of the German military hierarchy than he is with the English. His empathy is fitting—on the front lines, where Shaara’s writing is limpid and concise, politics do not exist, only soldiers.

Ian Schwartz writes from San Diego.

Jeff Shaara, one of the grand masters of military fiction, returns with the final novel of his acclaimed WWII trilogy. No Less than Victory concludes the epic tale of the war in Europe from the Battle of the Bulge through the German surrender.

Shaara’s plump third…

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Joseph Kanon has made his mark in the literary thriller genre, starting with 1997’s Edgar-winning Los Alamos. His fascination with the post-WWII era continues in Stardust, which blends one man’s search for the reasons for his brother’s death with an eye-opening look at the machinations of the Hollywood studios during the Communist witch hunts.

Ben Collier (formerly Kohler) returns to the U.S. at the end of the war, taking the train from New York to California, where his brother Danny, a movie director, is hospitalized—supposedly after jumping from his fifth floor apartment. On the train Ben meets a producer who knows Danny and promises Ben he will help him with a movie he has been assigned to make for the Army—a short film dramatizing the horrors of the concentration camps.

Ben reaches the hospital in time to see Danny briefly come out of his coma, then die. Their father died in the Holocaust, and Danny later helped many Jewish Germans, including his own wife, Liesl, escape. At his funeral, Ben meets some of these emigrants who owed Danny their lives; Ben senses they are demanding some kind of justice.

Kanon thus sets the stage for the melding of these two plots: Ben’s search for his brother’s killer set against the backdrop of the politics and paybacks of the competing studios in Hollywood’s early years.

At the same time, the war’s aftermath is leading to the hunt for Communists all over the country—but nowhere is the hunt fueled by such fervor as in Hollywood. As Ben gradually unravels the intricate ties between Congress, the FBI and its informants, he simultaneously garners information about who might have wished Danny dead—information that puts him in danger, as well.

Once again Kanon has woven real-life figures—from Paulette Goddard and Jack Warner to Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann—into a taut thriller, all set against the background of one of the least laudable moments in our country’s history.

Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado.

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Joseph Kanon has made his mark in the literary thriller genre, starting with 1997’s Edgar-winning Los Alamos. His fascination with the post-WWII era continues in Stardust, which blends one man’s search for the reasons for his brother’s death with an eye-opening look at the machinations…

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Paris just after the Napoleonic Wars was a thrilling place to be. The intellectual life of the city was in full flower, with Madame de Stäel presiding over salons and scientists like Georges Cuvier investigating the origins of life. But it was also a dangerous place: Napoleon’s defeat and exile were traumatic and the Terror, despite having occurred two decades before, had left some of its survivors feral. It’s into this ferment that medical student and narrator Daniel Connor arrives, from staid Edinburgh, in 1815.

Daniel gets into trouble immediately when he’s robbed en route to Paris by a mysterious and alluring woman who goes by the name of Lucienne Bernard. She pilfers not his money, but the items he’ll need as an entree into the world of M. Cuvier: letters of introduction, notebooks, a mammoth bone and, most precious of all, coral specimens. Distraught, Daniel turns first to M. Jagot, a crook turned private eye who has a long history with Madame Bernard, then to the thief herself. Not surprisingly, Daniel falls in love with this intriguing woman who’s nearly twice his age, and the reader can hardly wait to find out whether the young man will ever get his belongings back—and, more importantly, if Lucienne really loves him, or is just leading him on in a labyrinthine game. Stott’s skill as a writer is such that one thinks she might be doing both.

Aside from her graceful writing style and believable characters, Stott also delights with her grasp of history. Romantic, full of twists and turns and glimpses of the past, The Coral Thief is an unlikely page-turner.

Arlene McKanic writes from South Carolina.

Paris just after the Napoleonic Wars was a thrilling place to be. The intellectual life of the city was in full flower, with Madame de Stäel presiding over salons and scientists like Georges Cuvier investigating the origins of life. But it was also a dangerous…

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Part historical novel, part love letter to New Orleans, A Separate Country is the remarkable new novel by Robert Hicks, author of the bestseller The Widow of the South. Based on the real life of Confederate General John Bell Hood, the novel imagines Hood in the years after the war, crippled and trying to find peace despite his infamy. He ends up in New Orleans, a city both beautiful and corrupt, peaceful and filled with the cacophony of drinking, gambling and any other vice one can dream up.

Hood sets up shop as a cotton trader, but without any real business skills, he fails quickly. He spends years trying to write a book in defense of his war experiences, but his only real success is in marrying Anna Marie Hennan, a young Creole woman he meets at a ball: “I saw that if I had gone through my life intent on the ugly and difficult (as I had!), shedding every delicate and perfect part of my soul like so many raindrops, Anna Marie must have followed behind me gathering what I sloughed off so that one day I might sit in a ballroom in New Orleans and see for myself what I had lost.”

After several happy but increasingly impoverished years during which they have 11 children, Anna Marie and the Hoods’ oldest daughter, Lydia, die during a Yellow Fever epidemic. Hood, himself stricken with fever, calls his friend Eli to his deathbed and gives him the manuscript of a book he’s written—one not about war but about his life after the war. Eli also discovers Anna Marie’s secret journals, and he pieces together the story of their extraordinary, tough life together.

Hicks once again delivers a lovely, richly detailed tale pulled partly from history, partly from his own imagination. He captures the enchanting, dark, humid soul of post-war New Orleans, a time when anything was possible but nothing—at least for one Confederate—was easy.

Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

Part historical novel, part love letter to New Orleans, A Separate Country is the remarkable new novel by Robert Hicks, author of the bestseller The Widow of the South. Based on the real life of Confederate General John Bell Hood, the novel imagines Hood in…

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