As we head into fall, several of the September novels that were on my list last time I did this have already been published and covered elsewhere on this blog. Check my previous posts for Andrew Varga’s The Mongol Ascension (Aug. 30), Cynthia Reeves’s The Last Whaler (Sept. 6), and Madeline Martin’s The Booklover’s Library (Sep. 13) for more information on those titles. As for what’s left on my bookshelf (I assure you it contains many more novels than this short list!), read on. One or two have already been published, but most are releasing between now and the Winter Solstice—hard to believe that’s just a few months away!
Suzanne Allain, The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right (Berkley, Dec. 2024)
Although, as I’ve repeatedly noted, I don’t read a lot of historical romance these days—and even less contemporary romance—what could be a better fit as we approach Christmas than a light-hearted Regency that takes a classic Georgette Heyer plot (mistaken identity) and gives it a modern twist (a heroine of less than aristocratic social origins)? Arabella Grant agrees to impersonate her cousin Lady Isabelle (Issie) with the noblest intentions: Issie much prefers reading in her bedchamber to tackling the London ton, with its strict and judgmental standards. But when Arabella falls for an earl, and he—convinced she is the eligible Lady Isabelle—falls for her, love and truth collide. I’ll be interviewing Suzanne Allain for the New Books Network in early December.
Monica Chenault-Kilgore, The Jewel of the Blues (Graydon House, Nov. 2024)
The cover says it all: 1920s, the Jazz Age, and an aspiring young singer whose gifts must overcome the unforgiving rules of the world she lives in and the effects of poverty if she’s to succeed—Lucille Love’s dream appears to be on the brink of fulfillment despite the obstacles when a family secret surfaces and threatens her years of struggle, first on Broadway, then in a traveling band. I’ll be talking with Monica Chenault-Kilgore on New Books in Historical Fiction as well, sometime in November.
Christina Dodd, A Daughter of Fair Verona (Berkley, 2024)
The daughter of fair Verona is Rosie, who, as she herself puts it, is “the daughter of Romeo and Juliet. Yes, that Romeo and Juliet.” Almost twenty and the eldest of a large family, Rosie is hell-bent on avoiding the various husbands her family sends her way, and she mostly succeeds until Duke Stephano, who has already buried three previous wives, forces Romeo’s hand.
Backed into a corner, Rosie reluctantly agrees to marry Duke Stephano, but at her betrothal ball he shows up dead in the garden, and half of Verona suspects Rosie of killing him. I had actually postponed any potential podcast interview until next year, because I already had a full slate. But I had such a blast when I read it, I knew I had to talk with the author right away. You can hear the results of our conversation very soon.
Vanessa Kelly, Murder in Highbury (Kensington, Oct. 2024)
Another literary spinoff, for lack of a better word, but also an extremely entertaining one. Re-imaginings of Jane Austen’s novels are a dime a dozen, but most focus either on the various characters in Pride and Prejudice or Austen herself. This mystery reconnects with Emma Knightley and her husband, George, as they adjust to married life in the small town of Highbury. She finds the wife of the vicar, who has never quite given up his determination to marry Emma, dead in the church one morning. She summons her husband, who is the local magistrate, and in turn he sends for the village constable and a doctor. These last two men immediately settle on a simple conclusion, but Emma—and, once she persuades him, George—are not so sure. Amid a cast of characters both familiar and new, Emma and George conduct their own investigation, and the results are both involving and delightful. I’ll be talking with Vanessa Kelly in October.
Mimi Matthews, The Muse of Maiden Lane (Berkley, Nov. 2024)
This, a historical romance by an author whose previous Victorian novels I’ve enjoyed, completes the author’s Belles of London series, which has followed a quartet of friends who refer to themselves as the Four Horsewomen or the Four Furies (knowing that mythologically there were only three of the latter). Stella Hobhouse, the daughter and sister of a clergyman, has had several “unsuccessful” seasons in London—meaning that she hasn’t found a husband—possibly because her hair turned gray when she was only sixteen. But Teddy Hayes, an aspiring painter whose ambitions are only slightly hampered by an attack of scarlet fever that has left him confined to a wheelchair, sees in her coloring the appearance of a goddess or a muse; he can’t wait to paint her portrait. And when Stella’s brother and new sister-in-law give her an ultimatum that sends her back to London determined to choose her own path to happiness, it seems that Teddy just might get his chance. Mimi Matthews has agreed to answer my questions, so I will be featuring her here in a few weeks.
Alyson Richman, The Time Keepers (Union Square and Co., Oct. 2024)
I know I’m dating myself here, but even though stories set during the Vietnam War technically qualify as historical fiction, I can’t quite make myself believe it. I was too young to remember the beginning of the war, but its later years and its ending formed a backdrop to my teens and early twenties. That said, this exploration of the war and its after-effects from three different perspectives—a lance corporal whose critical injury separates him from those he loves; an aunt and nephew, refugees who are the sole survivors of their Vietnamese family; and an immigrant from Ireland who, living in Bellegrove, NY, with her husband and their two daughters, helps the others and comes to terms with her own tragic past—is wonderfully compassionate and haunting, well worth your time. I’d love to talk to this author, too, but she was the latest to cross my path and I simply can’t fit her in. Fortunately, she has agreed to a written Q&A, so you can expect to learn more about her book here in October or November.
Elif Shafak, Rivers in the Sky (Knopf, 2024)
It’s hard to encapsulate this sweeping novel in a paragraph. It exists in four different time spaces: ancient Nineveh (briefly, but all the other streams lead back here); Victorian London and the Middle East in the same period; Turkey and Iraq (Kurdistan) in 2014; and London again in 2018. It has three main narrators: Arthur, a child born into extreme poverty along the shore of the Thames River, who through grit and smart use of his extraordinary memory turns himself into a specialist on ancient Nineveh, especially the Epic of Gilgamesh; Narin, a young Yazidi girl whose baptism is interrupted by various calamities, including an assault by ISIS; and Zaleekah, a hydrologist who has just left her husband to settle in a rented houseboat along the same stretch of the Thames where Arthur was born. What ties them together—besides the Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains the oldest version of the story that became Noah and his ark—is water. Water as the embodiment of memory, water as the essence of life, and water as it comes under attack from modern industry and climate change.
Comments