An emotionally impactful tale centering on the life and legacy of Lexington, a bay colt who became a racing champion in mid-nineteenth-century America. Present at the horse ’s birth is Jarret, an enslaved groom on Dr. Elisha Warfield’s vast Kentucky farm, and man and horse develop an enduring bond. Jarret’s nuanced conversations with traveling equestrian artist Thomas Scott are mutually enlightening. Through Jarret and his father, a free Black man and expert horse trainer, readers encounter a wide range of racial injustices. This perennially and tragically relevant theme extends into the twenty-first century via Theo, a Nigerian American PhD art student. His path intersects with Jess, an Australian-born scientist at the Smithsonian, after Theo saves an old equestrian portrait discarded by his neighbor. Among the most structurally complex of all Brooks’ acclaimed literary historical novels, the narrative adroitly interlaces multiple eras and perspectives, including that of 1950s New York gallery owner Martha Jackson, who appears midway through. From rural Kentucky to multicultural New Orleans, Brooks' settings are pitch-perfect, and the story brings to life the important roles fillled by Black horsemen in America’s past.

In the hills of Appalachia, there once existed a land ruled by a king and a queen. Inspired by distant memories of African kingdoms, a community of formerly enslaved men and women grasped freedom and started lives on mountain land that they owned. They worked hard, lived well, and loved there. For a time the kingdom thrived ... and then it disappeared. Present Day. Nikki hasn't seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she's determined to get answers while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki a shocking story about her great-great-great-grandmother Queen Luella and the very land they are standing on. Land that Mother Rita says must be protected. The more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she finds in the woods--who are buried beneath stone grave markers--the more she understands that sometimes, atonement for the previous generations' mistakes falls squarely on the shoulders of the descendants. And it's up to her to make things right.

The quietly devastating sequel to Brooklyn picks up two decades later with Eilis Lacey, now in her 40s, hemmed in by her overbearing in-laws on Long Island in 1976. First Eilis discovers that her husband, Tony, has been unfaithful, then she learns his family has decided without her consent to raise the child of his illicit affair. Furious, Eilis returns to Enniscorthy, the small town in Ireland she left in the 1950s, and arranges for her and Tony’s teenaged daughter and son to join her there to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Eilis hasn’t been back since the death of her sister, Rose, many years earlier. On that trip, though she was already married to Tony without her family’s knowledge, she fell in love with pub owner Jim Farrell. Jim has never married but is soon to become engaged to the widow Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s dear old friend. Now, Eilis’s second homecoming upends life in the village as she and Nancy each stumble toward what they believe they deserve, and Jim considers what’s more important: his commitments or his desires. Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people (“They could do everything except say out loud what it was they were thinking”), and at using quotidian situations to illuminate longing as a universal and often-inescapable aspect of the human condition. Tóibín’s mastery is on full display here.

Gonzalez laces magical realism into her vivid epic of the Texas-Mexico border and the violence that shapes a family for generations. In 1895, Antonio Sonoro, a bandido living south of the border in the former mining town of Dorado, travels with his brother to Houston to rob a train. A shoot-out with Texas Rangers leaves his brother dead and Antonio with a hideous facial injury that earns him the sobriquet “El Tragabalas” (the bullet swallower ). A parallel narrative set in 1964 follows Antonio’s Mexican movie star grandson Jaime, who stumbles onto his grandfather’s story and realizes its potential as a serious dramatic film role. The more Jaime learns about Antonio and about their family’s perfidious history, the more he believes the film will allow him to redress the Sonoro name. Both story lines feature the mystical figure Remedio, a collector of blighted souls who has haunted countless generations of Sonoros. The novel’s striking centerpiece follows Antonio and fellow desperado Peter Ainsley as they cut a swath across the border badlands. Their blazing guns and rich, Butch and Sundance–esque banter make Jaime’s persistence in bringing their story to the big screen understandable. Readers will find this a refreshingly modern recasting of the classic western.

A woman travels the Caribbean in search of her children after she’s escaped from slavery in Shearer’s lyrical and deeply evocative debut. In 1834 Barbados, Rachel, 40, listens as her sugarcane plantation owner announces slavery has ended but that all the workers are legally bound to the plantation for another six years as apprentices (“six years of cutting and planting and cutting again. Freedom was just another name for the life they had always lived,” Shearer writes). Rachel runs away, desperate to learn the fate of her five surviving children who were sold into slavery. Former tobacco harvesters living on an abandoned plantation help Rachel to Bridgetown, where she is reunited with her mute daughter, Mary Grace. The two travel with a seaman named Nobody and an Akawaio Indian orphan named Nuno, chasing leads on her son Micah in the aftermath of an uprising in British Guiana. Tension mounts with a canoe trip up a crocodile-infested river, which leads them to her son Thomas Augustus and an encampment of runaway slaves. In Trinidad, Rachel finds her daughter Cherry Jane, a radiant beauty with upper-class pretensions and an invented identity as “the daughter of prominent free mulattoes.” Rachel finds her last surviving child, Mercy, pregnant and being whipped on a Trinidad plantation. In scenes of vivid horror, stirring resilience, and moving reconciliation, Shearer shows the cruel effects of slavery and its aftermath. The beautifully written depiction of a mother longing for her children makes this transcendent.

This new work from Verghese (Cutting for Stone) is not just a novel; it is a literary landmark, a monumental treatment of family and country, as sprawling in scope as Edna Ferber's Giant. The story spans over 70 years and three generations of a family living in Kerala on the western coast of India, a place where water has as much significance as land. But for this family, water is also a curse; in each generation, one family member has died by drowning, and the fear of water looms ominously. The story begins with the awkwardness of the arranged marriage of 12-year-old Mariamma—later known as Big Ammachi (Big Mother)—to a man 40 years her senior, an arrangement with which neither bride nor groom is happy at first. But as time passes, the couple adjusts, and a deep love infuses their union and the generations that follow. Big Ammachi oversees her family with patience and wisdom, remaining present even after death. Writing with compassion and insight, Verghese creates distinct characters in Dickensian profusion, and his language is striking; even graphic descriptions of medical procedures are beautifully wrought. Throughout, there are joy, courage, and devotion as well as tragedy; always there is water, the covenant that links all.

Charlotte Sauvin, one of the young residents of 33 Place Brugmann in Brussels, might believe that the fortress-like apartment building will spare its residents the worst of history. But it’s 1939, and her favorite neighbors, the Raphaëls, have already left, their collection of art mysteriously disappeared. As the Nazis continue their relentless march across Europe, the residents arrive at the sobering realization that they are subject to the vicissitudes of history just like everybody else. Through an arresting symphony of the residents’ voices, debut novelist Austen carves a special place in the much-surveyed landscape of Holocaust fiction, especially in her homage to the importance of art. Equally remarkable is her ability to bestow attention on each of the many characters while still driving the plot forward. Among the many are art dealer Leo Raphaël and his son Julian, who finds a new purpose in the war. The systematic build-up to what we know is coming is a master class in assembling disparate experiences to form a whole. And seemingly peripheral players take center stage as the story reaches its tense conclusion. In a powerfully well-written novel, the most chilling thought is subtly said: “What is thinkable is also possible.

As in his classic novel Erasure, Everett portrays in this ingenious retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a Black man who’s mastered the art of minstrelsy to get what he needs from gullible white people. Many of the same things happen as they do in Twain’s original: Jim escapes from enslavement on a Missouri farm and joins up with Huck, a white boy who’s faked his own death. Huck is fleeing from his abusive father, while Jim is hoping to find a way to free his wife and daughter. The main difference is in the telling. Jim narrates, not Huck, and in so doing he reveals how he employs “slave” talk (“correct incorrect grammar”) when white people can hear, to make them feel safe and superior. Everett also pares down the prose and adds humor in place of sentimentality. When Huck and Jim come upon a band of slave hunters, Huck claims Jim, who’s covered by a tarp, is a white man infected with smallpox (“We keep thinkin’ he gone die, then he just don’t”). Clever additions to the narrative include a tense episode in which Jim is fraudulently sold by a slaver to “Dixie” composer Daniel Decatur Emmett, who has Jim perform in blackface with his singing troupe. Jim’s wrenching odyssey concludes with remarkable revelations, violent showdowns, and insightful meditations on literature and philosophy. Everett has outdone himself.

Moreno-Garcia, known for her richly imagined supernatural tales, turns to historical fiction, delving into the glamour and the seediness of 1950s Hollywood with dazzling results. When beautiful young Mexican actress Vera Larios is plucked out of obscurity to star in the epic film, The Seventh Veil of Salome , she unwittingly draws the ire of Nancy Hartley, a white actress who has been struggling and failing to make it big. Despite this, Nancy is convinced that Vera stole her star-making role, and her ire only grows when Vera starts dating a handsome aspiring musician who briefly dated Nancy but broke things off when she got violent with him. As their story unspools, so does that of Salome, the ambitious princess who is torn between her head and her heart when she falls in love with a fiery young preacher who runs afoul of her uncle. Moreno-Garcia is a gifted storyteller, vividly rendering both the intrigue and dangers of the ancient world Salome inhabits and the allure and ugliness (ingrained sexism and racism) of Golden Age Hollywood while spinning a thoroughly captivating, thrilling tale.

Cunningham’s striking debut chronicles the tribulations of a striving Black family in Prohibition-era Chicago. Ambrose Sawyer has made a fortune breeding Kentucky racehorses, but wealth alone doesn’t offer the entrée into elite Black society that his wife Florence seeks. In summer 1921, Florence orchestrates an elaborate social debut for their 19-year-old daughter, Nelly, hoping the young journalist will solidify the Sawyers’ social position via marriage. At the start of the debutante season, Nelly’s editor at the Chicago Defender challenges her to discover the identity of the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street, a shadowy figure rumored to be coordinating the efforts of Chicago’s criminal gangs. Nelly turns to her acquaintance Jay Shorey, the manager of a speakeasy, for access to the city’s underworld. Only a few years older than Nelly and of mixed race, Jay beguiles the reporter with his confidence and magnetism. Their attraction deepens as her investigation proceeds, yet so too do her questions about his connections to the corrupt systems she seeks to expose. Though some plot points feel implausible, Cunningham perfectly captures the contours of Jazz Age Chicago and the varying experiences of its citizens of color. Readers will be eager to see what Cunningham does next.

In this stellar historical mystery centered on a group of women living together in a Washington, D.C., boardinghouse, the action opens on Thanksgiving 1956 at Briarwood House, where a corpse lies bleeding in one of the attic apartments, the police have just arrived, and the tenants have gathered in the living room to await questioning. The narrative then rewinds four and a half years, to when widowed 30-something Grace March arrives at Briarwood. She meets Fliss, a harried new mother; Bea, a former pro baseball player; Claire, a file clerk for Sen. Margaret Chase Smith; Nora, an employee of the National Archives; and Arlene, a secretary for the House Un-American Activities Committee who’s fully embraced the hysterical rhetoric of her boss, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. As the women bond, clash, and pursue various romantic entanglements, they remain committed to holding weekly dinner parties in Grace’s room. As Quinn gradually steers the narrative back toward the violent opening scene, she elegantly explores issues of race, class, and gender, and brings the paranoid atmosphere of McCarthy-era Washington to vivid life.

Born with the umbilical cord around her neck, Princess Aina should expect a life of heartbreak, according to Egbado culture. Five years later, her whole family is slaughtered when a rival king attacks their town. Captured, Aina expects to be killed as a sacrifice or to be enslaved and sent to America. A twist of fate saves her, though, and she soon finds herself on a boat to England as the ward of Queen Victoria. Renamed Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Sarah enjoys the comforts of aristocratic life. But as Sarah grows up, she finds, even in her privileged position, that she is not protected from racism, sexism, and the capricious wishes of a queen. Inspired by the life of the real Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Bryce showcases the hardships of a Black woman in Victorian England. Full of rich historical details, the novel brings Africa and England vividly to life.

It’s been 11 years since King Charles I was executed during the Civil War of 1642-51. Several of the people behind the king’s murder are still free. Richard Nayler, an officer of the Privy Council, is determined to bring them to justice. Harris focuses on two of the “regicides,” Edward Whalley and William Goffe, who fled to Massachusetts. Like most of the characters in the book , Whalley and Goffe are real people, and, as he usually does, Harris sticks closely to the known facts as much as he can (Nayler, the manhunter, is fictional, as is the story of his pursuit of the two regicides). Another top-flight effort from a master storyteller.

Five real-life luminaries from the Golden Age of detective fiction team up to solve a murder.Five months after nurse May Daniels disappeared during a day trip in October 1930 from a railway station near Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a farmer finds her bloody body strangled to death. The French police, unconcerned about the damage they’re doing to the victim and her family, announce on scant evidence that May—whose companion, nurse Celia McCarthy, last saw her entering a ladies’ room she never emerged from—was a drug addict who deserves few tears. By that point, the title quintet—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Baroness Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham—have already sprung into action. Their original motive for traveling to France, proving themselves the equals of G.K. Chesterton and the rest of their condescending male counterparts in the newly formed Detection Club, has morphed into a deep sense of connection to the dead nurse and “an urgent quest to do right.” Working mostly with the reticent, brainy Christie, Sayers, who serves as narrator, methodically retraces May’s last movements and works backward to figure out what she was doing before she and Celia embarked on their trip. Their most promising leads implicate Louis Williams, the son of Mathers Insurance founder Jimmy Williams, as May’s benefactor, beau, and killer. But no reader who’s spent time with any of these writers’ own books will believe that the actual solution will be as simple as that. A routine whodunit enlivened by the byplay among the author sleuths and their determination to stand up to the patriarchy.

In the mid-1970s, after decades in New York, Josephine Wright returns to her sleepy North Carolina hometown of West Mills to be with her beau, Olympus "Lymp" Seymore, whom she knew growing up. Not long after Jo's arrival, Marion Harmon, a prominent Black doctor, is found murdered along with Lymp's half-brother and -sister. Estranged from his siblings and having been heard threatening to kill them, Lymp is immediately suspected. Jo instinctively feels it wasn't him and sets out to do the investigative work the town's police department isn't bothering to do. Gathering clues, she learns many of the town's long-hidden secrets along the way, with her most promising lead centering on Eunice Loving, who brought her son La'Roy to Marion to have his homosexual tendencies "fixed." Marion's "treatment" turned out to be an attempted beating by the biracial sons of Savannah Russet, traumatizing La'Roy and leading to a threatening argument between Eunice and Marion. Despite Eunice having motive, the truth, when it finally comes out, will surprise everyone. It's built around a mystery, but this novel is more a deep literary exploration of the complex dynamics of race, class, and homophobia in the 1970s American South; it proves a worthy successor to Winslow's acclaimed In West Mills.

Homa and Ellie meet as children in the city of Tehran and form a seemingly unbreakable bond. Each has hopes and dreams of the future. Homa longs to become a judge so that she can right wrongs and create a more equitable community. Ellie learns the art of translation, but dreams of a kind husband and a large brood of children. Despite these differences, they become lifelong friends. Coming of age over three decades, the friends must also navigate their country's tumult, which includes social injustice, class divide, immigration disruptions, and the loss of women's rights. Kamali places food center stage with vivid descriptions, from the perfect New York pizza slice to traditional savory Iranian dishes, immersing readers in the culinary delights of Iranian cuisine especially—readers will virtually taste the food on the page. As these two remarkable women strive to overcome the hardships they face and fight for their rights, Kamali’s narrative highlights the struggles of women in Iran and explores relationship challenges between friends and family.

From starting out as a poor shipwright forced to pay her father for her meager freedoms to becoming a notorious pirate captain in her own right, Jacquotte Delahaye has led a storied life. The novel begins in 1665 with her in prison, then goes back to tell her story. The young shipwright dreamt of honing her skills and one day leaving her stifling life in Yáquimo, Santo Domingo. However, a series of events culminating in the deaths of her father and the governor of Yáquimo spur Jacquotte to flee to the open sea, hoping to protect the people she loves. As Jacquotte navigates her new life of piracy, she must take charge and make decisions that will save or doom her crew, demonstrating her incredible strength of will and sharp intellect. Debut novelist Cameron reimagines historical events in portraying her larger-than-life protagonist in a tale of triumph over a male pirate captain, racial inequality, sexism, slavery, and violence. This is a wonderfully gripping adventure story about a lesbian pirate of color who rose from obscurity to infamy at the height of the age of piracy. Fans of LGBTQ+ historical fiction and those who relish tales of notorious figures from the past will find that this novel is an absolute treasure.

San Francisco's beloved Belva Curtis LeFarge Library is clinging to relevance in a fast-paced, tech-forward city. The old building is falling into disrepair, an embezzlement scandal put its endowment on life support, and a tech founder wants its most valuable painting. But the Bel is worth fighting for. After uncovering two mysterious dollhouses, librarian Tildy plans to turn the discovery into a publicity campaign. As Tildy starts to uncover connections between the dollhouses' histories and her own, her mission starts to feel less like a publicity stunt and more like something very personal. Hooper blends Tildy's narration with that of Cora Hale, an up-and-coming artist who finds success in miniatures and an unexpected passion for a new patron in 1910. Fans of Kate Morton, Sarah Blake, and Fiona Davis will appreciate the novel’s lush, atmospheric settings, interwoven narratives, and exploration of historical details. Hooper’s heartwarming story explores the connections between memory and legacy as it shines a light on the often unseen and unappreciated labor of women in the arts.

Set in Louisiana toward the end of the Civil War, this outstanding thriller from Edgar winner Burke explores the corrosive effects of violence. In late 1863, Louisiana is largely under Union control, though bands of marauding Confederate soldiers roam the countryside. Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman reputed to be related to a notorious voodoo priestess, stands accused of murdering the sadistic plantation owner who assaulted her. In jail, she meets abolitionist schoolteacher Florence Milton, who takes Hannah under her wing. Eventually, the two women escape. On the run from slave catchers and a constable who doggedly pursues them, Hannah and Florence make their way across the devastated state. The chorus of narrators who recount the pair’s adventures includes Wade Lufkin, an artist and surgeon’s assistant haunted by the Union soldier he killed during battle, who crosses paths with the women and falls in love with Hannah. Burke stitches plot threads and historical details with ease, weaving it all into an urgent, propulsive story steeped in his deep personal connections to Louisiana. This is masterful.

Fuentes debuts with the astonishing story of two malas , or women who challenge traditional Mexican gender norms. The year is 1951 and Pilar Aguirre, who is eight months pregnant with her second child, has recently joined her husband, Jose Alfredo, in the Texas border town of Barrio Caimanes, where he works as a cowboy. While Pilar is visiting her friend Romi Muñoz, a mysterious older woman shows up and claims to be Jose’s first wife. Soon afterward, Pilar goes into labor and has a stillbirth, which she attributes to a curse put on her by the older woman. A parallel narrative set in 1994 La Cienega, Tex., follows Lucha “Lulu” Muñoz, Romi’s angsty teen granddaughter, who plays in a punk band called Pink Vomit without her father Julio’s knowledge. For his part, Julio worries Lulu will become a mala (“For a Mexican man, a mala is the worst”). After Romi dies in her sleep, Lulu meets Pilar at her grandmother’s funeral. Later, the two become friends and bond over Tejano music, leading to the revelation of family secrets. Fuentes is a seamless storyteller: the narrative is rich in Mexican culture and fully realized characterizations, especially the defiant Lulu and the overbearing Julio.

Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open. Realizing this could be her one chance at reconciliation with her sister, Sylvia is determined to save Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions from closure—and financial ruin.

Three young Black women in 1837 Philadelphia—one enslaved, one free, and one a runaway—find friendship and danger in Lattimore’s richly layered debut. Having fled from the White Oaks plantation in Maryland, Charlotte and her father, James, build new lives in the city. James, who passes as white, becomes a successful furniture maker, while Charlotte shrinks under the guise of being his housemaid. Nell Garner, a young Black woman who visits their house, introduces Charlotte to Philadelphia’s Black society and enlists her in aiding the abolitionist movement. Charlotte maintains her cover story with Nell and other abolitionists for everyone’s safety, but danger ensues with the arrival of Evie, another Black woman enslaved at White Oaks, who’s visiting Philadelphia with Charlotte and James’s owner. After a chance meeting at the local market, Evie and Charlotte rekindle their friendship, and Evie decides to risk running away with the help of Charlotte and Nell. Lattimore effectively develops all three of the central characters’ emotions and perspectives as they reconcile what freedom means to them, and she provides a textured view of such historical events as the building of Pennsylvania Hall as a meeting place for the antislavery movement and its subsequent burning by an angry anti-abolitionist mob. Lattimore is a writer to watch.

Two timelines intertwine in the latest from prolific historical fiction author Davis (The Spectacular, 2021), following the lives of Charlotte Cross and Annie Jenkins. In Egypt, 1937, Charlotte, an anthropology student in the Valley of the Kings, makes life-altering discoveries and falls in love, leading her into the dangerous world of stolen antiquities and the rumored curse of Hathorkare, a misunderstood female pharaoh. Meanwhile, in 1978 New York, after years of caring for her mother, 18-year-old Annie struggles to find her own path. Charlotte's and Annie's stories converge at the Metropolitan Museum during preparations for the lavish Met Gala. Older, wiser, and still haunted by her past in Egypt, Charlotte reconnects with an artifact she hasn't seen in 40 years and must finally confront her long-buried secrets, while Annie learns to take control of her own life. With its themes of antiquities repatriation, personal loss, and women's resilience, The Stolen Queen is a captivating exploration of identity and strength, with twists that will compel readers till the very end.

A group of female munitions workers become friends and soccer teammates in Great Britain during World War I.In 1915, April Tipton, a 19-year-old housemaid, follows her best friend, Marjorie, to London to work in one of the “Danger Buildings” at a munitions factory—a job that pays nearly 30 times as much as her old position, offering the ability for the women to support not only themselves, but their families. While it’s known to be dangerous work because of the chance that the bombs will explode, the poisonousness of the TNT the women work with won't be fully realized until late in the war even though from the beginning it turned the workers’ skin yellow and discolored their hair—thus earning them the nickname canary girls. Helen Purcell, daughter of an Oxford professor, has married into the family that owns the factory. Determined to do her part for the war effort, she begins working at the factory as a welfare supervisor for the workers who are increasingly obviously being poisoned, advocating for the women to her husband, Arthur, who runs the arsenal. Lucy Dempsey—who’s married to Daniel, an Olympic gold medalist–turned–professional soccer player now enlisted as a soldier—begins working at the factory to support the war effort and to earn enough money so she doesn’t lose her family’s home. Each of the women finds her way to the Thornshire Canaries, the soccer team for the arsenal, and as the war progresses, the fan base for the soccer league of “munitionettes” grows ever larger. Chiaverini has written a sprawling, ambitious story: It's part a play-by-play recounting of the Canaries’ soccer games against munitionette teams from across Britain, part a history lesson about the life-altering work undertaken by women determined to be “The Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun” regardless of the risk to their own lives, and part a story of the emotional highs and lows of the women carrying on as best they could during the war years. The good, the bad, and the ugly sides of war on the homefront are highlighted in this uplifting story.

Shaara's latest brings alive the heart-stopping days and nights of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a novel featuring his trademark "you are there" immediacy. In his vivid alchemy of fact-based fiction, here is the Cuban Missile Crisis as readers have never seen it. In addition to the tension-filled corridors of power in Washington, Moscow, and Havana, this story takes us to the decks of destroyers encircling the island, playing cat and mouse with lurking Soviet subs, where the wrong move will set off a shooting war; high above to the cockpits of the U-2 spy planes whose reconnaissance was the vital touchstone against fatal uncertainty; and to the shores of Cuba itself, where CIA operatives once plotted to restore a betrayed revolution.

Gaynor's latest historical is a well-written novel about taking chances and facing loss and fear during a time of uncertainty. It's based on a real organization, the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB), created during World War II to evacuate children out of England to other countries, including Canada and Australia. Thinking of the future of her children, Lily Nicholls, a widowed London mother, must make the tough decision to send them off with CORB. Alice King is one of the volunteers hired by CORB to escort children on these dangerous voyages, and on her first voyage she is put in charge of Lily's children. During their Atlantic passage, the ship is torpedoed, forcing passengers into lifeboats, where their hopes of survival dwindle the longer they go without rescue.

Loskutoff tells the story of a violent radical living within a rural community. For the decades that he sent bombs around the country, Ted Kaczynski lived in a small Montana town. This novel uses that piece of history as a starting point, focusing largely on the Unabomber’s neighbors over the course of several years as they go about their business, unaware that their reclusive neighbor is leaving a trail of violence and death across the nation. Loskutoff opts to tell this story as an ensemble piece, beginning with a man named Duane Oshun, who drives to Montana in the wake of his marriage falling apart and eventually encounters a tattooed pastor named Kim Younger. Duane settles there, finding work as a logger and meeting some of the other townspeople, including Hutch, who keeps wounded animals, including a bear, on his property. The most interesting parts of the novel focus on its more morally conflicted characters, including Duane and a Forest Service agent, Mason, who struggle with the transformation of the region and their own place in it. The work of the Wilderness Society and anti-logging activists looms in the background of much of the novel’s action. As for Kaczynski, he’s portrayed unsympathetically throughout the novel—a man who poisons his neighbor’s dogs and dreams about “cities on fire, dams bursting, and planes falling from the sky.” Nep, the postal inspector who spends years tracking Kaczynski, is a far more compelling character—an agent whose inherent curiosity often leads his interviews into unexpected places. The details of small-town life and communion with the outdoors are neatly rendered, but this novel’s real-life terrorist is its least interesting aspect. Which may be the point. A novel that’s at its strongest when it’s most philosophical and digressive.

A minister is sent to evict the last inhabitant of an isolated island in the North Sea. It’s 1843, and two major upheavals are roiling Scotland. First, the barbaric Clearances, in which landowners replace their “impoverished, unreliable tenants” with profitable occupants like sheep, have finally made their way to Scotland’s austere northern islands. Second, one-third of Scotland’s Presbyterian ministers have revolted against landowner-controlled church appointments—and consequently deprived themselves of any income. Reverend John Ferguson is one of these suddenly impoverished ministers, which is why he agrees to voyage 400 miles into the North Sea to evict a barren island’s sole remaining tenant. Armed with a pistol and a calotype image of his wife, Mary, John is dropped off and told that the boat will return in a month. He’s barely there a day, however, when he falls off a cliff and is rescued by Ivar, the lonely man he’s there to remove. The two men do not share a language, but while Ivar tends John’s wounds and teaches him words like leura (“a period of short, unreliable quiet between storms”), he finds himself increasingly attracted to John…who is too ashamed to admit that he’s come to kick Ivar out of his home. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Mary learns something about this particular clearance that causes her to set off in search of her husband. Will John come to reciprocate Ivar’s more-than-filial feelings? Will Ivar leave peacefully? Will John’s hidden pistol bring the leura to a harsh and sudden end? With her characteristically buoyant prose and brisk sense of plotting, Davies crafts a humane tale about individuals struggling to maintain dignity beneath competing systems of disenfranchisement. But while a lesser author might allow their characters to be terminally lashed by these historical travesties, Davies infuses John, Mary, and Ivar with refreshingly fantastical levels of creativity and grace, which helps them find a startling new way to avert disaster. A deft and graceful yarn about language, love, and rebellion against the inhumane forces of history.

When war was declared in 1939, British life turned upside down. For Emma Taylor, war compounds the horror of losing her father in a fire in his beloved bookshop 10 years earlier. Now a widow and single parent to young daughter Olivia, Emma is facing penury. At the time, Boots the Chemist ran a subscription service called the Booklover's Library , catering to middle- and upper-middle-class customers. Luck puts Emma in the Booklover's Library at just the moment when it needs a new staff member, but the marriage bar denies employment to married women and widows. Recognizing that Emma has the necessary skills to help run the Booklover's Library , Miss Bainbridge, the library manager, employs her on the condition that she pretends that she is unmarried and that Olivia is her sister. The Booklover's Library becomes Emma's solace, especially when Olivia is evacuated to the countryside to protect her from Nazi bombing raids. Martin's book captures the terrible loneliness of parents forced to evacuate their children and the misery of wartime in general. A hopeful, compelling and well-written read about the redemptive power of books, libraries, friendship, and love.

A French anarchist targets a passenger train in the taut latest from Donoghue, which is inspired by a true story. On Oct. 22, 1895, Mado Pelletier boards the express from Granville to Paris with a homemade bomb in tow. Born into poverty, she’s furious over the plight of the working class, which is made all the more plain to her by the arrangement of the train’s carriages: first-class passengers are placed at the center of the train to cushion the blow in the event of a crash. (“This train is a moving image of the unfairness of the long con of life,” she thinks.) Three members of Parliament are riding in first class, and Mado hopes that by assassinating them, she will send a message to the ruling class. But as the locomotive speeds toward Paris, Mado meets her fellow passengers and questions whether she can follow through with her plan. Through shifting points of view—including that of the train engine itself—Donoghue establishes an intricate web of human relationships as the narrative speeds toward an unexpected yet plausible finale. Along the way, she offers detailed commentary on the railway’s cynical exploitation of its workers, enriching the themes raised by Mado’s critique.

Jenoff (Code Name Sapphire) delivers an artful parallel narrative of an Englishwoman’s investigation into her friend’s death during WWII, when they both volunteered for the Red Cross in Germany, and a Jewish woman interned in Paris by the Nazis. In 1953, Louise Burns finds a necklace with a heart pendant in a secondhand shop in Henley-on-Thames, and recognizes it as the one acquired by her friend Franny in Germany shortly before she was fatally struck by a car. Louise has always suspected Franny’s death was somehow related to the necklace, and after tracing it back to Lévitan, a Paris department store, she travels to France, hoping to track down the necklace’s most recent owner. Jenoff alternates Louise’s sleuthing with the story of Helaine Weil, a young Jewish woman who defies her parents to marry a musician and winds up imprisoned at Lévitan after the Nazis convert the store to a work camp. As Louise learns of Lévitan’s dark history, she uncovers shocking details about the necklace and about Helaine, who gave Franny the necklace before being taken prisoner. Jenoff offers a piercing depiction of Jewish life in Paris under German occupation, and keeps the pages turning with an intriguing mystery. Fans of WWII fiction will be riveted.

The beliefs of two young German women set them on a harrowing collision course under Nazi reign.Hannah Kaufman, a member of a Jewish family from Munich that had initially sought refuge in Prague, remains there with her beloved grandfather as the rest of their family travels to safety in Palestine. Instead of having the family reunion they long for, Hannah and her Opa find themselves among the thousands transported to the Theresienstadt camp. Although touted by the Nazi propaganda machine as a model settlement for Jews, the camp in fact subjected its inmates to constant peril, abasement, and surveillance. At the same time Hannah struggles for survival and meaningful resistance, Hilde Kramer-Bischoff, her childhood best friend and a German national, strives to advance her faltering career within the Third Reich. She is childless, a war widow, and still searching for her place in the world after a lifetime of perceived rejection and abandonment. Her efforts at rising within the same propaganda operation that obscured the true nature of life at Theresienstadt result in an unanticipated reunion with her former friend as well as an opportunity for both women to act on behalf of the causes they believe in. Coburn’s extensively researched narrative conveys the full horror of conditions at the camp while highlighting the artistic and cultural accomplishments of the camp’s population. Hilde’s infatuation with life and advancement within the German war machine is portrayed, believably, as a case study of personal ambition and blind allegiance to a national movement. Family ties, religious belief, and the sustaining power of the arts in the face of oppression are explored in a story of human values tested under the most horrific of circumstances. An unvarnished portrait of ugliness, bravery, and banal self-interest.