Family Stories through the Years

The authors of these three recent novels follow the complexities of family life over several decades.  

Real Americans     Rachel Khong     (2024)  What starts out seeming to be a lightweight first-person account of an unlikely romance between two twenty-somethings turns into a searing exploration of the ethical boundaries of research in human genetics. This novel unfolds in three parts: Lily Chen narrates her relationship with Matthew Allen in late-1990s New York City; Lily’s son, Nick, recounts his life in Seattle and New Haven, starting in 2021; and May, Lily’s mother, takes us back to 1960s China as she tells her life story in the year 2030 in San Francisco. Who are the “real Americans”? May emigrated to the United States as a young adult but carries the burden of her past life in China. Lily was born in the United States, but as an Asian American woman she often feels stereotyped. Nick is half Chinese but looks more Caucasian. And Matthew’s family . . . well, how do they fit into the American system of capitalism? There are many secrets to untangle. For another take on immigrant experiences, see my reviews of the novels of Weike Wang.

The Names     Florence Knapp      (2025)  When Cora Atkin is registering the birth of her newborn son in 1987 England, she vacillates among three names:  Bear (her older daughter’s pick), Julian (her own favorite), and Gordon (the choice, and namesake, of her tyrannical husband). What follows in this novel is an exploration of how the three choices would play out in the life of that son and of the entire family. The author follows each thread every seven years, through the year 2022, and each of Cora’s name choices has vastly different repercussions. (Be warned:  There are scenes of violent domestic abuse by Cora’s husband.) The central conceit here—that seemingly small decisions can have major long-term implications—keeps the reader turning those pages. For a similar narrative approach, in a much longer novel, check out Paul Auster’s 4321, reviewed here.

 Lake Effect     Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney     (2026)  In a prologue, the novelist describes how a character brings copies of Alex Comfort’s 1977 bestseller The Joy Of Sex to her book club gathering. This is a clear signal that the ensuing plot is going to involve people whose sexual needs are not being met. Yes, middle-aged Nina Larkin and Finn Finnegan are, for different reasons, desperate for intimacy, and their families happen to live across the street from each other in Rochester, New York. Lake Effect traces the consequences of their actions from 1977 out to the 1990s, and, incidentally, follows the decline of Rochester’s major industries. I thought that the last few chapters trailed off without an adequate wrap up, but most of this family drama was well wrought and credible.  

Historical Novels, 18th and 20th Century

The Frozen River     Ariel Lawhon     (2023)  In 1789 Maine, midwife and healer Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body of a man pulled from the frozen Kennebec River. How did he die? How does his death touch her own large family? And how does it relate to Ballard’s recent report to authorities of the rape of one of her clients? This book can be read primarily as a murder mystery, with the culprit not revealed until the very end. But it’s also a fictionalized account of six months in the life of Midwife Ballard, a historical figure who left a daily diary that covered decades. Ballard’s surviving writings provided the novelist a valuable glimpse into life in colonial America, particularly with respect to the perils of childbirth and the place of women in that society. Although I found the tirades against the patriarchy by the fictional Ballard occasionally anachronistic, her principled stance against injustice is inspiring. She lived only a century after the Salem witch trials, so her profession was not without risk. And don’t miss the very minor side-plot in which Paul Revere rides to the rescue! 

33 Place Brugmann     Alice Austen     (2025)  In the small apartment building at 33 Place Brugmann, in 1939 Brussels, the lives of fourteen inhabitants interlock with each other. Their placid upper-middle class existence changes radically when the occupying Nazis arrive in May of 1940. Pay attention to the small details in the early chapters of this smart novel, because many of those bits play out later, as the characters struggle for survival under an authoritarian regime rife with corruption and brutality. Some of the beautifully drawn characters will prove to be truly selfless and heroic. But which ones? The author actually lived at this address in Brussels for several years, so her descriptions are vivid and convincing. I found that some elements of 33 Place Brugmann reminded me of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, reviewed here.

Three Novels by Reliable Authors

Evensong     Stewart O’Nan     (2025)  This is the fourth book in which the novelist’s Pittsburgh-dwelling character Emily Maxwell has appeared, and for this appearance she’s part of an ensemble cast. Emily belongs to the Humpty Dumpty Club, a group of elderly women who help their circle of friends with the day-to-day challenges of aging—think rides to medical appointments and delivery of food packages. As I wrote in my review of 2019’s Henry, Himself (Henry being Emily’s late husband), “Somehow, novelist O’Nan is able to turn everyday events into drama that drives his narrative in a highly effective way. I haven’t yet figured out how he does this. It could be the naturalistic dialogue.” (Click here for my full post.) There’s no thrilling climax to the story in Evensong. Rather, there’s a placid and highly believable documentation of human kindness. The other two books in which you can learn more about Emily are Wish You Were Here (2002) and Emily, Alone (2011).

The Winds from Further West Alexander McCall Smith (2024) I’ve long been a devotee of three of McCall Smith’s book series:  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (reviewed here), 44 Scotland Street (reviewed here), and The Sunday Philosophy Club (reviewed here). McCall Smith also publishes stand-alone novels, of which The Winds from Further West is one. In this book, Dr Neil Anderson is a thirty-something medical researcher in Edinburgh, and he’s a very nice guy. He unexpectedly gets into a messy academic controversy when a comment that he makes is misinterpreted by a student. At the same time, his relationship with his girlfriend ends. In frustration and sadness, he retreats to the island of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, to get his head straightened out. Mull is isolated and bucolic, with kindly inhabitants, and the retreat is successful. Like all of McCall Smith’s fiction, this book is low-key, focusing on the characters’ internal decision making as they weigh the right and wrong of situations. (Makes sense, since McCall Smith is a retired professor of medical ethics and law.) I did wonder if the emphasis on the unfair accusations of Neil’s student indicates that the author harbors right-wing opposition to “wokeism.” No—McCall Smith is a member of a center-left political party in Scotland, and throughout his fiction he espouses support for social welfare programs and environmental protections. Maybe he himself had a run-in with a student somewhere along the way!

Father of the Rain     Lily King (2010)  The character of Daley Amory recounts her relationship with her alcoholic and abusive father, starting at her eleventh birthday, when her parents are about to get divorced. Daley’s parents represent two different worldviews, which, historically, were colliding as the story begins in 1970s Massachusetts. Her father is a conservative, patriarchal, racist country-club member. Her mother is not. Over a period of about thirty years, Daley, who adores both her parents, repeatedly tries and fails to remove herself from her father’s destructive orbit. Lily King excels at portrayals of families in crisis, especially through dialogue, as noted in my previous posts about her writing. See my recent spotlight post on this author here.

Journeys

The novels reviewed below both involve a journey, one of the great tropes of literature for thousands of years, whether you call it a pilgrimage or a voyage or an expedition or a flight or a road trip.

I Cheerfully Refuse     Leif Enger     (2024)  In a dystopian near-future version of far northern Minnesota, Rainy and his wife, Lark, try to escape the notice of an autocratic American government by being far off the beaten track. Although society has basically collapsed, Lark does own a second-hand bookstore, and the written word is a threat to autocracies. After a series of tragedies, Rainy sets off, with his bass guitar, in a rickety sailboat, across the turbulent and unpredictable Lake Superior. He endures many hardships and is often thrown off course by the damaged people he meets at numerous ports of call. This is a scary book, prescient in that it was written before the second Trump presidency. I heard echoes of The Odyssey, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Don Quixote. Dystopia is not my jam, but I kept reading because of Leif Enger’s stylistic excellence. Enger’s novels are all set at least partially in Minnesota, his home state, and all are written in first-person narration, which conveys truthfulness and immediacy. See my reviews of two of his previous novels, Virgil Wander and Peace Like a River. And for another Lake Superior tale, by Peter Geye, click here.

The Rest of Our Lives     Ben Markovits    (2025)  Years ago, Tom Layward vowed that he would leave his wife, Amy, when their younger child turned eighteen. (He couldn’t forgive Amy for an affair that she had.) When he drops off their daughter at her freshman dorm in Pittsburgh, he decides to drive west rather than return to his home in New York. He stops in South Bend to visit his brother, in Denver to see a friend who’s having legal problems, and in Las Vegas to look up a girlfriend from his college days. He finally runs out of road in Los Angeles, where his son is in graduate school. Along the way, Tom reflects on his marriage and on his legal career, both of which are in serious trouble. I thought that this story, told in first person, might be getting too meandering, but then the last 29 pages of the novel pull together hints from the previous 200 pages and wallop the reader. Markovits asks us all to consider, What about the rest of your life?

20th-Century Families

Fiction set in the twentieth century may seem too close to the present day to qualify as “historical,” so perhaps it’s better to categorize these novels as “family sagas.” Following characters for decades allows an author to demonstrate their reactions to many life challenges.

Buckeye     Patrick Ryan     (2025)  Sweeping across many decades of the twentieth century, this engaging novel recounts the lives of two couples—Cal and Becky Jenkins and Felix and Margaret Salt—who become linked by a fateful encounter at the end of World War II. The novelist moves the action along briskly while still lingering on everyday details that flesh out the scenes. The setting is a fictional town in northwest Ohio, an area where I was born and where I still have many relatives, and it rings true. One theme that pervades the narrative is the lasting trauma of war:  the mustard gas that a World War I veteran remembers, the loneliness and grief of wives whose husbands are fighting in World War II, the senseless slaughter of the Vietnam War. One national reviewer of Buckeye called it “old fashioned.” Yup. I loved it.

Bug Hollow     Michelle Huneven     (2025)  In 272 pages, this fast-paced story takes readers through forty-plus years in the lives of the Samuelson family. (And that page count includes a rather odd excursion into the life of “an old family friend,” Mrs Wright.) The sudden accidental death of one of the Samuelsons affects the members of the family in different ways—alcoholism, an extramarital affair, an unexpected adoption. Author Huneven develops her characters deftly, showing how they remain resilient despite the inevitable unhappinesses of their lives. A bonus is the portrayal of the culture of southern California through the decades.

Author Spotlight: Lily King

The American author Lily King writes about human emotions with great sensitivity. Here are brief reviews of four of her books—three novels and a collection of short stories—that I recommend.

Heart the Lover      Lily King     (2025)  In Part I of this novel, a young woman, a senior at an unnamed university somewhere in the eastern United States, befriends two brilliant male students, Sam and Yash, who nickname her “Jordan.” Her intellectual life is ignited—and her ambition to become a writer is fueled—by her many conversations with these two. Jordan’s romantic entanglement with Sam and Yash in turn is another matter. Parts II and III of the novel skip many years into the woman’s future, where the consequences of her decisions back in college are played out in very sad scenes. On the last page of the novel, there is one surprising line that links this story to King’s novel Writers and Lovers.  (I didn’t understand the title until the section of the novel that describes a card game that one of the characters invents: “Heart the Lover” is the king of hearts card. You can download instructions for this game at the author’s website.)

Writers and Lovers    Lily King     (2020)  Casey, a 31-year-old server at a restaurant in Harvard Square, is a woman with authorial ambitions. She lives frugally and spends every spare moment writing a novel. She also meets some pretty wacky boyfriends. As a former server myself, I loved the restaurant scenes.

Five Tuesdays in Winter     Lily King     (2021)  I usually prefer the expansiveness of the novel format, but each of these ten stories creates a believable universe of characters and life experiences. Settings range from New England to the North Sea, from the 1960s to the present.

The English Teacher     Lily King     (2005)  In 1979, Vida Avery is an extraordinarily talented member of the staff of a private school in New England and the single mother of 15-year-old Peter. She is also very troubled woman. As the novel opens, Vida is marrying Tom Belou, a widower with three children of his own. In a spare 242 pages, the novelist probes deeply into the dynamics of life in a blended family, but those adjustments pale beside the exploration of Vida’s deteriorating mental health. Do read this one, and prepare yourself for an unexpected denouement.   

Police Procedurals

The mystery novel universe holds many sub-genres, prominent among which is the police procedural. In these novels, the action unfolds with law enforcement officers identifying and then arresting the perpetrator(s) of a murder. Forensic experts will examine the crime scene, a pathologist will perform an autopsy, and a team of detectives will gather evidence and interrogate witnesses. I find that these novels can sometimes be dry reading as the case grinds on, with dead ends and incorrect investigative speculation. And the officers are restricted in their actions by the legal regulations governing their profession.

The best authors of police procedurals enliven their stories with (a) lush or (b) bleak settings, as well as with peeks into the private lives of the clever cops. Ann Cleeves excels at the police procedural, and two of her many British mystery series have become popular multi-episode television programs: The Shetland Series and The Vera Stanhope Series. A few months ago, I reviewed the first title in Cleeves’ Two River Series, starring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. This series is set on the wild north coast of Devon, in southwest England, where two rivers flow into the Atlantic. Here’s a recap of my initial post, followed by additional reviews of the two subsequent titles in the series. To fully appreciate these mysteries, it’s helpful to read them in the order in which they were written.

The Long Call     Ann Cleeves     (2019)  Matthew Venn has recently moved to Devon to take a new police job, but he’s conflicted about being back in the area where he grew up, in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect that he’s long been estranged from. When a man is found stabbed to death on a Devon beach, Matthew heads the investigation, following leads linked to an arts complex that also houses a day center for developmentally disabled adults. Complicating matters, Matthew’s husband founded and now runs this arts complex. The plot has plenty of twists, and all the detectives on the case come alive on the page. Matthew, in particular, will steal your heart with his sensitivity and kindness and inner brokenness. He’s also a damn fine investigator. (This is the only book in The Two River Series that has been brought to the screen so far, on BritBox.)

The Heron’s Cry     Ann Cleeves     (2021)  The second entry in the Two Rivers Series takes readers once again to the coast of Devon, this time during an exceptionally hot summer. A respected physician is found dead, with a large shard of glass from a broken vase in his neck. The vase was made by his own daughter, who is a professional glassblower. Matthew Venn and his team follow the clues that, once again, swirl around the local artists’ community that Matthew’s husband, Jonathan, is part of.  Cleeves excels in presenting her characters’ flaws in addition to their strengths, as they struggle with red herrings in the case. Themes here include revenge, depression, and childhood trauma.  

The Raging Storm     Ann Cleeves     (2023)  Jem Rosco is a local ne’er-do-well who made good in adulthood as a world-renowned sailor and explorer. He returns to the fictional rural town of Greystone, arousing much curiosity when he tells people at the pub that he’s waiting for a special visitor. A couple of weeks later, his body is found in a dinghy anchored off the Devon coast. The murder case has the investigating team interviewing dozens of residents, some of whom are members of the religious sect that Matthew Venn left decades previously. This novel gives readers further insights into the lives of detectives Jen Rafferty (divorced mother of two teens; sharp, intuitive) and Ross May (very devoted to his wife; smart but arrogant). Matthew’s husband, Jonathan, enters the narrative when he inadvertently helps the investigation. The blustery weather of autumn on the Devon coast features prominently in this third mystery of the Two Rivers Series, and the solution of the case really surprised me.  

Two by Tana French

The Searcher     Tana French     (2020)  I’ve known for many years that Tana French writes highly regarded mysteries set in Ireland, but, from online summaries, I’ve figured that her books were too violent for my taste. I finally decided to try The Searcher; I resolved that I’d send it back to the library after a few chapters if it got too intense. Well, I ended up reading all 451 pages in one day. Cal Hooper is an American who’s moved to the west of Ireland, seeking a peaceful place for an early retirement after 25 years with the Chicago police. He’s also trying to put behind him the recent painful dissolution of his marriage. As he scrapes mildewed wallpaper from the walls of the run-down Irish cottage that he bought, he meets a local kid, Trey Reddy, whose older brother has gone missing. Cal really doesn’t want to get involved, but he’s drawn into a tangled web of local crime. The novelist weaves a tantalizing tale but also has a way with descriptions of the Irish landscape, Irish weather, and Irish pub life that rings true and pulls the reader right in. (I lived in Ireland for a year, way back when, so there’s also the nostalgia for me.) Tana French checks all the boxes for mystery lovers.  

The Hunter     Tana French     (2024)  If you liked The Searcher, be sure to follow up with The Hunter. This mystery novel continues the story of Cal Hooper and Trey Reddy, drawing on the backstory of the previous novel. It’s set once again in the west of Ireland, two years later. Cal has developed a furniture repair business and now has an Irish girlfriend, Lena Dunne, who comes to play an important role in the plot. Trey’s loser father, Johnny, who left his family years before, has returned, bringing an English buddy and a wild scheme about mining for gold in the nearby mountains. Much to Cal’s consternation, Trey gets caught up in the scam, as the characters follow paths and clues up and down the mountainside. The dialog in this novel is somewhat bawdier than that in The Searcher, but men at a pub in an Irish village likely do talk like that as they taunt each other and circulate the latest gossip. (I had to look up a couple of dialect words—“yoke,” for example, means “thing-a-ma-jig.”) Since this novel clocks in at 467 pages, set aside time to read it within a short time span, so that you can keep all the threads straight!

Author Spotlight: Richard Osman

The British author Richard Osman burst onto the mystery book scene in 2020 with The Thursday Murder Club, the first title in what would become a bestselling series. The video production of this novel, now streaming on Netflix, was able to nab big-name stars, who are very well cast: Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, and Pierce Brosnan. Osman’s narrative adapts well to the screen, since it’s heavy on snappy, clever dialogue.

There are four sequels to The Thursday Murder Club novel, and throughout the series, various romances provide side interest. Osman, who is in his fifties, is somehow able to enter the minds of characters who are a generation older than he is. Be warned: you must read all the Thursday Murder Club novels in order; after the first book, Osman doesn’t provide much background to his characters. (A standalone Osman mystery, reviewed below, seems poised to develop into another series.)

How did it all start? As I noted several months ago in my review of The Thursday Murder Club, Osman sets his septuagenarian characters in a posh retirement community, Coopers Chase, in present-day England. Meeting every Thursday to discuss long-abandoned local cold cases are the four leads: a firebrand retired union organizer (Ron), a thoughtful psychiatrist (Ibrahim), a fearless ex-spy (Elizabeth), and a cautious former nurse (Joyce). Each of them is a hoot. When a contractor who has worked on the site where they live is found murdered, the Murder Club jumps into the not-at-all-cold investigation, to the chagrin of the police. The narrative starts out slowly but then rapidly picks up the pace, for a rollicking, witty murder investigation.

In the next book, The Man Who Died Twice (2021), three characters who were introduced in the first book become sort of honorary members of the Murder Club. Bogdan is a construction worker with a shady side but a heart of gold. Donna is an ambitious police constable who has figured out how clever those Coopers Chase retirees are. And Chris, Donna’s boss, is a sad-sack DCI who might finally be finding love. The plot in this novel, suitably complex, involves jewel thieves, the Mafia, Elizabeth’s ex-husband, and MI-6, the British foreign intelligence agency. There are numerous violent murders, but I wouldn’t call the book scary.

In The Bullet That Missed (2022), the Murder Club is examining a decade-old case in which a woman, Bethany Waites, was presumed dead even though her body was never found. The woman was a television journalist, so the Murder Club members find themselves angling to interview various British television personalities. (Note that author Richard Osman is himself a popular British television producer and presenter, so this is his bailiwick.) The club members also have to contend with serious threats against Elizabeth, related to her career with MI-6. Hmmm, is international money laundering somehow linked to the death of Bethany Waites?

The Last Devil To Die (2023) begins with the Murder Club grieving the death of an antiques dealer who is an old friend of Elizabeth’s husband, Stephen. This entry into the Thursday Murder Club series takes readers more deeply into Elizabeth’s marriage, even as the crew contends with powerful drug-smuggling cartels. There’s also an amusing sub-plot about online fraud aimed at the elderly. The body count surrounding the Murder Club activities is, again, quite high, but the tone of this novel remains like the previous ones: cozy, with amateur sleuths and mostly off-stage deaths. Osman doesn’t shy away from including in his story the infirmities of old age, and his treatment of a character with dementia is honest and moving.

As The Impossible Fortune (2025) opens, Joyce is planning the wedding of her only child, Joanna. At the wedding reception, the best man, Nick, confides to Elizabeth that someone has threatened to kill him. The next day, Nick disappears, and the Murder Club is off and running, to solve a mystery that goes deep into the intricacies of cryptocurrency. As usual, each member of the club has a part to play in the solution.

And now for the standalone novel from Richard Osman. We Solve Murders (2024) introduces the characters of Amy Wheeler and her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler. I wouldn’t classify this one as a cozy mystery; it’s rather a thriller that travels the globe, from Britain’s New Forest to the South Carolina coast, from Dubai to Dublin. Amy works as a bodyguard for an international private security firm. Steve is a retired cop who wants nothing more than to pet his cat and take part in a weekly quiz night at the local pub in rural Britain. But when three clients of Amy’s firm are murdered and Amy herself is attacked, she and Steve take off on whirlwind flights to get to the bottom of the crimes. The plot only works because Steve and Amy are able to fly on private jets thanks to wealthy Rosie D’Antonio, a famous author of murder mysteries, whom Amy has been assigned to protect. Rosie is an adventure-seeker, so she tags along and helps with the investigation. I guessed some of the plot, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the story, since Osman’s lively dialogue again drives the narrative.

Starring Lake Superior

November 2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of a very famous freighter in Lake Superior, which is the largest and most northerly of the Great Lakes. Recent nonfiction books about the tragedy include Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy by Thomas M. Nelson and Jerald Podair, and John U Bacon’s bestselling The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I’ve read excerpts from both these titles, and I recommend them to readers who want all the human-interest details and all the speculation about how the sinking could have been averted. Of course, with this anniversary, there’s also been a revival of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic 1976 folk-rock ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which can be heard here.

I offer below a review of a historical novel set on Lake Superior long before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, with all her crew, on November 10, 1975.

A Lesser Light     Peter Geye     (2025)  I’ve driven and walked for many miles along the shores of Lake Superior, which is more like an inland sea than a lake, with brooding waters and ferocious waves. Lake Superior is this novel’s central character, dictating life and death. The year is 1910, and Theobald Sauer arrives on the south shore of the lake, east of Duluth, Minnesota, to take the post of master lighthouse keeper at a new lighthouse. With him is his bride, Willa, forced into the marriage by financial circumstances and totally unsuited to be Theo’s spouse. Although both Theo and Willa are highly educated, Theo trades in conspiracy theories and religiosity, while Willa looks to science for guidance. Rounding out the cast of characters living near the remote lighthouse are a girl who has “second sight,” her fisherman uncle, the assistant lighthouse keepers and their wives—and wolves. Lots of wolves. The narrative moves very, very slowly, so I’ll admit right here that I skimmed some of the chapters between pages 300 and 400. Still, the novelist’s prose is radiant and his characters, especially that lake, are convincing.  

Mysteries by Prolific Authors

Some authors of mystery novels really churn those titles out.  Here are reviews of novels by two women who are beloved by followers of the genre.

Murder Takes a Vacation     Laura Lippman     (2025)  The mystery writer Laura Lippman takes one of the minor characters from a previous novel and makes her the star of this one. Mrs Muriel Blossom is a widow who has been providing daycare for her daughter’s children for several years. Suddenly, the daughter and son-in-law relocate their family to Japan for work, and they do not invite Mrs Blossom to join them. Mrs Blossom’s sadness at this turn of events is mitigated when she finds a lottery ticket in a parking lot and learns that she’s won a large fortune. She books a cruise on the Seine, with stops in Paris, and that’s when the plot gets twisty. Why do several men take a special interest in a 68-year-old woman who wears unfashionable clothes? Might it be that she has unknowingly been drawn into the heist of a major work of art? I guessed pieces of this mystery, but the full unfolding in the final chapters was a surprise. This is a light read, with appealing characters and several fun excursions around Paris.

The Long Call     Ann Cleeves     (2019)  Author Ann Cleeves is well known for two series of mysteries that became popular multi-episode television programs, currently streaming on BritBox:  The Shetland Series (with Jimmy Perez) and The Vera Stanhope Series. Back in 2019, Cleeves launched The Two River Series with The Long Call, introducing detective Matthew Venn and set on the wild and gorgeous north coast of Devon, in southwest England. Matthew has recently moved back to this area to take a new police job, but he’s conflicted about being near where he grew up, in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect that he’s long been estranged from. When a man is found stabbed to death on a Devon beach, Matthew heads the investigation, following leads linked to an arts complex that also houses a day center for developmentally disabled adults. Complicating matters, Matthew’s husband founded and now runs this arts complex. The plot has plenty of twists and red herrings, and all the detectives on the case come alive on the page. Matthew, in particular, will steal your heart with his sensitivity and kindness and inner brokenness. He’s also a damn fine investigator. This is the only book in The Two River Series that has been brought to the screen, also on BritBox.

Biographies of Women

The Rebel Romanov:  Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had     Helen Rappaport     (2025) 

I’ve been fascinated by the Romanov dynasty ever since I read Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra in 1967, so I hopped on this title by the eminent historian Helen Rappaport. Juliane (Julie) of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was a teenage German princess when, in 1795, Empress Catherine the Great summoned her and her two sisters to St Peterburg to audition to be the wife of her grandson Constantin, who was third in line for the throne of Russia. Rappaport follows Julie’s unconventional life, as she married Constantin, discovered that he was a mentally unstable brute, and fled back to western Europe, boldly creating the life she wanted. Julie’s story is meticulously documented from original letters and documents of the period, and the photo section of this biography is especially rich.

Here are brief recaps of a couple of my other reviews of biographies of women:

Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas    Donna M. Lucey     (2017)

If you like Gilded Age gossip, this is a multi-biography that you may want to read. I thought it would be focused primarily John Singer Sargent’s relationship with four of his female subjects, whose portraits are widely known and reproduced:  Elsie Palmer, Sally Fairchild, Elizabeth Chanler, and Isabella Stewart Gardner. (That’s Elizabeth Chanler on the cover of the book.) Sargent painted portraits of these wealthy American women between 1888 and 1922, but in fact his contact with them outside his professional role was fairly limited. So . . . what this book does offer is a view into the excesses that the upper classes indulged in during a period of American industrial expansion and political corruption. My favorite section was the one on Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose private art collection became the famed art museum in Boston that bears her name.

Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth        Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer     (2015)

This dual biography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) and Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980) reveals many family secrets. Alice, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, lived in the White House in her youth and became the celebrated “Princess Alice.” Eleanor was Theodore’s niece, who married her distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt and herself moved into the White House as First Lady during his presidency. Although Alice and Eleanor played together as children and saw each other socially throughout their lives, they differed radically in their political beliefs and in their personalities. Alice was a Republican, flamboyant, sharp-tongued, and dedicated to influencing the course of history through back-door methods. Eleanor was a Democrat, introverted and slower to speak, but she was a reliable sounding board for FDR on many issues, and she found a strong public voice in advocating for civil rights nationally and human rights internationally. Though the biographers veer into cattiness occasionally, Hissing Cousins is a lively addition to the history of the American Century. Alice and Eleanor are presented as flawed but brilliant women who made their marks in the halls of power.  

Two (Very Different) Mysteries

Marble Hall Murders     Anthony Horowitz     (2025)  Author Horowitz can really churn out the devilishly complicated metafictional mysteries! This one is closely linked to two of his previous mysteries, Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, that also starred the character Susan Ryeland. You’ll be able to follow the plot of Marble Hall Murders more easily if you first read those previous books. (See my full review of Magpie Murders here.) In Marble Hall Murders, Susan, now a freelance book editor in London, is engaged by a publishing firm to work with Eliot Crace, an heir of a wealthy literary family. Eliot is writing a continuation novel, following up on a popular mystery series by a fictional author who died in Magpie Murders. Chunks of Eliot’s mystery story are inserted into the story of the interaction of Susan and Eliot, who are, of course, fictional characters themselves. The layers of narrative are so complex that I read this 579-page book in two days so that I could remember all the plot connections. The writing in a Horowitz mystery is clever and flowing and sophisticated. At the end of each book, I always marvel at how all the pieces fit together. This title is a must-read for all mystery fans. And don’t miss the excellent screen adaptations of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders starring Lesley Manville, on PBS. (My reviews of other Horowitz mysteries are here and here and here.) 

Mansion Beach     Meg Mitchell Moore     (2025)  The vibe here is definitely “Beach Read” or “Chick Lit,” but an underlying mystery kept me turning the pages. On Block Island, a resort spot off the coast of Rhode Island, someone has drowned, and the identity of the victim is not revealed until very late in the narrative. Main characters: Nicola (young woman who’s left her boyfriend and her law practice for a summer internship on the island); Juliana (tech entrepreneur on the brink of mega-wealth); and Taylor (old-money wife of Nicola’s cousin David). There’s a lot of not-so-subtle poking of the ultra-wealthy and of men who use and then discard women. As the novelist writes (page 306), “It’s a story of money, yes . . . new money, and old money, wealth and class, and the difference between the two. It’s a love story too, of course, which means it’s also a tragedy, which many love stories are.”

Novels in Translation

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop     Satoshi Yagisawa     translated from the Japanese by Eric Ozawa    (2010/2023)  In contemporary Tokyo, Takako is a 25-year-old whose boyfriend announces, out of the blue, that he’s marrying someone else. Since the (ex)-boyfriend and his new fiancée both also work at Takako’s office, she can’t bear to see them and resigns. Her uncle, somewhat estranged from the family, invites Takako to live in a room above his second-hand bookshop, offering her room and board in exchange for some part-time help. And so begins Takako’s introduction to the world of books, especially fiction. She becomes entangled both in literature and in the lives of her uncle, his customers, and the patrons of a nearby coffee shop. This sweet story is set mostly in the Jinbōchō area of Tokyo, which has the largest concentration of book stores in the world. Read it in one sitting and feel better about the world. (The sequel, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop [2011/2024], picks up the characters a few years later. It’s more discursive and less plot-driven.) 

The Café with No Name     Robert Seethaler     translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire     (2023/2025)  This unusual little novel gives readers a snapshot of working-class life in Vienna in the 1960s and 1970s. The main character is Robert Simon, a loner who does odd jobs around the city until he has the chance to open a small café. (His establishment is not a coffee shop but rather a sort of pub, selling beer, wine, soft drinks, pickles, and “bread with drippings.”) The patrons who pass through all have stories of their own, connecting them in different ways to the café and to its kindly proprietor. They are a varied lot:  factory workers, market vendors, a wrestler, elderly retirees. Don’t expect an overarching plot—just enjoy the characters, who are portrayed with sensitivity and a sense of humor. And always in the background is Vienna, still recovering from World War II, but nonetheless that magical city on the Danube. 

Revisiting an Old Friend

The Forsyte Saga  John Galsworthy  (1922)    

More than a hundred years ago, John Galsworthy gathered three of his novels (The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let) plus two short stories into a volume called The Forsyte Saga. The collection was still going strong in the 1960s, when I first read it. Now, coming up in 2026, PBS plans to air the most recent of many screen adaptations of the story. What is the staying power of Galsworthy’s most famous fiction? To answer this question, I recently re-read all 850 pages of The Forsyte Saga, in an Oxford World’s Classics edition from 2008.

First off, in The Man of Property, Galsworthy hammers hard on the destructive aspects of capitalism—specifically the devotion to the accumulation of wealth and to the development of real estate. He frames his economic views in a tragic love story, in which the main protagonist, Soames Forsyte, loses the love of his life, his wife Irene, because he treats her as property. Yup, that was a spoiler, but hold on. I’m not going to encourage you to read this part of the trilogy unless you’d love the anti-capitalism aspects. The Man of Property was written in 1906 and set in the London of the 1880s, so it’s permeated with a kind of nostalgia and spends too many chapters in stuffy Victorian drawing rooms. It also has numerous archaic local references that I can’t imagine I understood when I read it as a high-school student.

In between The Man of Property and the next novel, In Chancery, Galsworthy places a short story called “Indian Summer of a Forsyte.” This is a delightful interlude, in which an aged uncle of Soames, Old Jolyon Forsyte, befriends Irene, now Soames’ estranged wife. Through an odd twist, Old Jolyon is living in the magnificent house that Soames commissioned for Irene but that Soames and Irene never occupied together. The natural setting of this house, outside of London, is entrancing, and Galsworthy’s descriptions recall the best of nineteenth-century nature poetry. Even if you don’t read the rest of the saga, I recommend this short story to you.

The second novel of the saga, In Chancery, is thus named because it deals with two divorces, which in Britain have to be processed by the Court of Chancery. This component of the saga was written in 1920 and set around the turn the twentieth century, as Soames and his sister Winifred both seek to be freed from their spouses. After Soames fails to reconcile with Irene, he becomes obsessed with divorcing her and remarrying so that he can produce an heir to whom he can leave all the money that he’s accumulated. (Winifred’s spouse, meanwhile, is a wastrel and a lout.) Divorce was not an easy legal process in Britain at this time, usually involving proof of adultery, and it carried considerable social stigma. Galsworthy gets into the heads of his characters in a way that’s very modern, and he explores all the complex emotions of marriage, family, and inheritance. Do read this part of the saga.

The third novel, To Let, written in 1921, is set in 1920. Soames’ daughter, Fleur Forsyte, the product of his second marriage, is now in her late teens. She falls in love with her cousin, Jon Forsyte, who is the product of the union of Soames’ ex-wife, Irene, and a cousin of Soames. Got all that? Obviously, the families on both sides are opposed to the match of Fleur and Jon, and the novel goes on at length in an agonizing back-and-forth as the lovers try to navigate extremely difficult feelings. Seriously, skip this one, as well as the short story called “Awakening,” which precedes the third novel.

In summary, the parts of The Forsyte Saga that I advise you to read are the short story “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” and the novel In Chancery. You might consider reading The Man of Property also. Try to get an edition, like the Oxford World’s Classics one, that provides a family tree of all the Forsytes, so that you can keep the characters straight.

Finally, an anecdote. When I was a freshman in college, I had a meeting with my advisor during which he asked what my favorite novels were. I mentioned The Forsyte Saga, and he guffawed, much to my humiliation. He considered Galsworthy hopelessly old fashioned and steered me toward authors such as Joyce and Hemingway. More than a half century later, I feel somewhat justified that PBS is returning to Galsworthy!

A Fun Little Book

My friend Tom Annesley has a new book out, available on Amazon.

Beer and the Nobel Prize:  Curious Tales of the Nobel Prizes and the People Who Won Them     Thomas M Annesley     (2025) 

Recipients of the Nobel Prize may seem like unapproachable geniuses—indeed, they all had to be extraordinary to be admitted to this highly selective club. But Thomas Annesley’s entertaining book reveals to readers the human side of numerous Nobel winners, with behind-the-scenes stories about their hobbies, musical interests, reactions to the award, and (of course) favorite alcoholic beverages. Annesley, himself a retired science researcher, has assembled data from around the world, sometimes getting in touch with the Nobel laureates themselves or with their surviving relatives. He describes many of the demands of the research process, as well as its quirks, in non-technical language, with dozens of photos that enliven the text.

Author Spotlight: Amor Towles

In 2011, Amor Towles debuted as a novelist with Rules of Civility, set in 1930s Manhattan, where a love triangle plays out against a backdrop of jazz clubs and boarding houses, with considerable alcohol. Towles’s impeccable character development is already on display here, and his examination of the power of wealthy New Yorkers is even more meaningful today. Take note of the character Evelyn (Eve) Ross, whose life story will be continued in subsequent fiction by Towles, reviewed below.

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In 2016, Towles had phenomenal success with his next historical novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, which in 2024 was made into a television mini-series, now on streaming services. Here’s an abridged recap of my 2017 review of this blockbuster work of fiction:

Amor Towles’s fictional foray into Moscow’s elegant Metropol Hotel in the years from 1922 to 1954, A Gentleman in Moscow, is captivating on many levels. Towles posits that high-level Communist Party officials still wined and dined themselves and foreign dignitaries, right through the Depression of the 1930s, and that ordinary Soviet citizens found small bits of happiness despite privations and surveillance. Some people displayed great courage in adversity. Towles’s portrait of the fictional Count Alexander Rostov gives us a glimpse into what might have happened to one of the ousted aristocrats in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The story:  In 1922, the erudite and cultured young Count Rostov is sentenced to permanent house arrest in the Metropol Hotel, just off Red Square in Moscow. This is not exile to Siberia, but if Rostov walks out the door of the hotel, he will be shot. The Count, relegated to a tiny attic room, approaches his predicament with the utmost composure. Since his own family members are all dead, he gradually fashions himself a family from the employees and guests of the Metropol. While chaos and war unfold outside the Metropol, all is grace and style inside. Count Rostov is, to me, a Russian version of Lord Peter Wimsey, from the 1930s British mystery novels of Dorothy L. Sayers. Yes, he can be snobbish at times, but he’s generous, principled, and unwaveringly loyal to his friends.

As the years of Rostov’s life tick by, Towles tosses off details about the Metropol in one witty scene after another. Pay close attention to the most minuscule of these details, which Towles is constructing carefully as he builds toward the denouement of his novel. You can easily get pulled into enjoyment of individual episodes, as friends arrive to visit Rostov, a famous actress becomes his lover, and a young girl takes him behind the scenes to secret places in the enormous hotel. Rostov comes to know every cranny of the hotel intimately, and this knowledge will serve him well as the plot whirls to a conclusion in the final hundred pages of this 462-page book.

“Sophisticated” does not begin to do justice to Towles’s writing style. Here he is describing a clock: “Suddenly, that long-strided watchman of the minutes caught up with his bowlegged brother at the top of the dial. As the two embraced, the spring’s within the clock’s casing loosened, the wheels spun, and the miniature hammer fell, setting off the first of those dulcet tones that signaled the arrival of noon.” (32)

I guessed some but not all of the elements of the caper that caps the plot of A Gentleman in Moscow. The surprises were highly enjoyable.

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Fans of A Gentleman in Moscow will find much of the same verve and strong character development in Towles’s 2021 offering, The Lincoln Highway. Two teenage brothers set out on the roads and rails of the United States in 1954, searching for the mother who abandoned them, and they have many adventures on their forced detours. I found this novel less satisfying than A Gentleman in Moscow, primarily because of the meandering plot segments (admittedly common in such picaresque tales) and the somewhat weak ending. But The Lincoln Highway is still entertaining.  

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The most recent publication by Towles is Table for Two, in which he has gathered six of his short stories, plus a 200-page novella. The short stories are delightful vignettes, playing on happenstance and on human greed, set variously in contemporary New York City and in the waning days of czarist Russia. The novella included in this volume, Eve in Hollywood, is a smoky noir that stars Evelyn Ross, one of Towles’s spunky, brilliant characters. Evelyn/Eve was a third of the love triangle in Towles’s Rules of Civility, reviewed above, and the novella picks up her life where that novel left off. Her complex story builds to a shocking conclusion, at which readers may exclaim, “So that’s how it all fits together!” Towles writes classy, clever lines and holds total mastery over his plot.

Historical Fiction Grab Bag

In this post you’ll find reviews of two historical novels—one set in fifteenth-century England and one in early twentieth-century England.

The Pretender     Jo Harkin     (2025)  The provocative premise of this novel is based on historical fact. In the 1480s, one of claimants to the throne of the new English king, Henry VII, was a fair-haired boy, probably named Lambert Simnel. He was championed by the Yorkist faction, who saw the Tudor Henry VII as a usurper. Jo Harkin spins out her story from the viewpoint of this pretender, who was coached in languages and in courtly manners before the Yorkists launched a military campaign against Henry. Since history tells us that Henry VII reigned until 1509, we know in advance that Simnel never became king, but because of his youth he was not executed for his part in the plot. It’s fascinating to follow Harkin’s fictionalized Simnel as he matures from naïve boy to hard-nosed spy in a period of political turmoil and frequent assassinations. I did have some quibbles with the author, however. The random way that she tosses in medieval words and faux-medieval words is distracting. And she has the pretender learning to read Ovid and Horace fluently in less than a year of Latin tutoring. Really? I also doubt that everyone in the fifteenth century was quite as potty-mouthed as Harkin presents them.* Be warned that The Pretender is not only very violent—which is to be expected—but also very bawdy. And if you decide to commit to the 476 pages of this novel, let the names of the many members of the warring royal families just wash over you.  

The Eights     Joanna Miller     (2025)  In 1920, Oxford University began admitting women to its degree-granting programs, and the fictional characters in this novel are four members of that first class of female students. Lodged on Corridor 8 of St Hugh’s College at the university, they call themselves “The Eights.” Beatrice is the daughter of a woman well-known in the suffragist movement in Britain; she’s now seeking her own path by studying politics, philosophy, and economics. Otto (short for Ottoline), a brilliant mathematician, was a socialite before World War I but was traumatized by her volunteer work during the war. Marianne, the daughter of a clergyman, is a scholarship student in English with many secrets. Dora never wanted to attend university but feels compelled to take the place of her brother and her fiancé, both of whom died in the war. The narrative here starts slowly but soon becomes engrossing, as the four women become friends and support each other in a daunting male-dominated environment. Don’t miss the helpful materials at the back of the book, including a glossary and a historical timeline.

* My credentials for these statements: a PhD dissertation on fifteenth-century literature and a stint as an associate editor at the Middle English Dictionary.

London, Right after WW II

Here are two fictional takes on the post-war period in Britain. First, a novel actually written in that period, by the inimitable Barbara Pym, a greatly underrated author. Second, a recently published historical mystery set right after World War II, from a series that is one of my favorites. The similarity of the titles is a bonus! 

Excellent Women     Barbara Pym     (1952)   The novelist’s careful and exacting style and first-rate dialog are at the center of this quiet novel, which focuses on Mildred Lathbury, an introverted single woman in her thirties. The usual post-war difficulties (rationing, bombed-out buildings) are in the background as Mildred goes through her days, working part-time at a social relief agency. She gets herself involved in the domestic dramas of those around her—the neighbors in her building of flats, the members of her local Anglican church, the clergy of that church. Often this involvement, which is unintentional and irritating to her, is quite comical. Mildred is definitely one of the “excellent women” of the title: the unsung females who make the tea at the church bazaar, who defer to men, who sublimate any sexual desires. This is a book to read if you need to calm your nerves after perusing the headlines in 2025.  

An Excellent Thing in a Woman     Allison Montclair     (2025)  Spoiler alert:  You may want to start with #1 in this mystery series, The Right Sort of Man, reviewed here.

Ringing in at #8 in the Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery Series, this novel, with its title taken from a line in Shakespeare’s King Lear, maintains the high standards of the previous seven. Iris Sparks (retired WW II British spy) and Gwen Bainbridge (war widow with a young son) are once again matching up couples at their London marriage bureau. It’s 1947, and the BBC has ventured into the brand new medium of television, with live broadcasts from Alexandra Palace. Salvatore (“Sally”) Danielli, a friend of Iris from both her university and spying years, is working as a TV stage manager when a body is found in the props room. Iris is determined to clear Sally’s name—as is Gwen, who is Sally’s new girlfriend. What I love about reading these mysteries:  the London ambience, the romances behind the murder scenes, the sparkling dialog, the friendship between Iris and Gwen, and the struggles of everyone in 1947 Britain to come to terms with the many personal devastations of the war.