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Described by the New York Times as “a love letter to old-fashioned department stores,” and by author Hillary Mantel as “the book I most often give as a gift to cheer people up,” The Women in Black (2020) by Madeleine St. John explores the lives of five women who work in the Ladies’ Frocks department of a fictional high-end retail establishment, F.G. Goode, during the 1950s.

I started reading the novel Anywhere You Run (2022) because I was soon to interview the author, Wanda Morris, for WPL’s Thriller Author Panel. I wanted to be prepared, of course, but by the end of the book I was far more than that.

An engrossing historical romance featuring spies during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Elle Burns is now a free woman. In 1862, she goes undercover, working as a slave in the household of a Confederate senator in Richmond, Virginia. She meets Pinkerton Secret Service Agent Malcolm McCall, a Scottish immigrant, and the pair form an uneasy alliance. As their relationship (both professional and personal) grows, Elle and Malcolm must navigate the uneasy world of race, politics, and war. 

Loosely based on true events at a Russian nuclear facility in the 1960s, The Half Life of Valery K (2022) follows the story of a Russian nuclear scientist, pulled from a freezing gulag to lend his expertise to what seem to be human radiation trials at the mysterious City 40. Never sure who to trust and who to fear, he picks his way through a minefield of misinformation and mystery. 

Set in 1893, The Once and Future Witches (2020) takes us back to the fight for women’s suffrage, with a magical twist. Following three estranged sisters who are drawn back together by the suffragist movement and the pull of long-lost witchcraft in their blood, this compelling story is a magical, feminist adventure with dangers and issues that also seem to mirror today’s world.  

The Nickel Boys, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, is a slender volume, clocking in at only two hundred-some pages long.

Thanks to WPL’s Fiction Book Group, I was able to read Maggie O’Farrell's most recent novel,

A lesser known title in Jane Austen's collection of novels, Mansfield Park is certainly a wild ride and does not disapoint in all that is ridiculous and full of drama. Heroine Fanny Price is born to a poor family with many, many siblings, and is taken in by her aunt and uncle who can afford to give her a proper, respectable upbringing. Her experience in her new home, Mansfield Park, is something to be desired as her family members constantly treat her as their servant, entertainment, and charity case, while they behave in the most selfish, unobservant way possible.

Kate Grenville takes us back to the colonization of Australia in this hauntingly atmospheric tale. Thornhill, a British convict, is sentenced to be deported to Australia for a petty crime committed in his quest to survive poverty.

Uniquely narrated by a fig tree, The Island of Missing Trees switches between two timelines to tell a story of love, heartbreak and a nation torn apart.  

When Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves, opens, it’s 1867 and winter in Dove River,

The Personal Librarian tells the story of Belle da Costa Greene, hired by J. P. Morgan to serve as the curator and librarian of his newly-constructed Pierpont Morgan Library.