Wicked Characters, Scary Stories

These two novels have in common their satire (of novelists in the first, of influencers in the second) and their devolvement from somewhat humorous irony to gruesomeness.  

The Plot     Jean Hanff Korelitz     (2021)  The character Jacob Bonner’s first novel was moderately successful, but he struggles to come up with a good plot in his subsequent attempts at writing. Then, when he’s teaching in a low-residency MFA program in Vermont, he meets a student who, despite being obnoxious, has a brilliant idea for a plot. A few years later, Bonner learns that the student has died, without ever publishing his novel. The idea seems to be available for the taking, and Bonner takes. There are multiple levels of storytelling in Hanff Korelitz’s account of the results, and she critiques the entire community of writers as she weaves these stories. I guessed the mystery component of this novel well before the ending, but what surprised me was the grisly denouement of Bonner’s theft (or borrowing or appropriating) of that plot. Although I don’t go in for grisliness, by the time I got there it was too late to put this riveting book down. There’s a sequel to The Plot, called The Sequel, which I think I’ll skip, since sociopaths are not my favorite characters.

Everyone is Lying to You     Jo Piazza     (2025)  What starts out as a novel about the phenomenal rise of female social media influencers turns dark pretty fast. Lizzie is a journalist in her thirties who hasn’t seen her college bestie, Bex, in fifteen years. Bex, who now goes by Rebecca, is a trad-wife influencer with six kids and millions of followers, posting from a ranch out West. When Bex offers Lizzie an exclusive interview, Lizzie gets drawn into a complex scenario involving the brutal murder of Bex’s husband, the disappearance of Bex and her kids, and the intrigues of other mommy-influencers. I couldn’t help but compare this novel to Caro Claire Burke’s 2026 phenomenon, Yesteryear (reviewed here), which has more pointed mockery of influencers but fewer scenes of brutality. Both Burke and Piazza position themselves as critics of the trad-wife lifestyle, the monetization of which by influencers often hides the cruelty behind the cameras.

Three Novels Set in Ireland

The Keeper     Tana French     (2026)  With this novel, Tana French concludes her trilogy of mysteries set in the west country of Ireland—the previous novels are The Searcher and The Hunter, reviewed here. Former Chicago cop Cal Hooper is now well settled in his retirement cottage near the fictional village of Ardnakelty. He’s engaged to a local widow, Lena Dunne, and he crafts wooden furniture alongside an impoverished teenager, Trey Reddy, whom he’s taken under his wing. He doesn’t want to get involved in any more crimes. But when a young woman goes missing, he’s drawn into the search for her and then into the web of deceits that surround her. Gossip in rural Ireland is corrosive, and it can be manipulated either for evil ends or with good intentions, depending on who is doing the manipulating. As usual, French’s descriptive passages soar, thanks to her deep roots in the Irish landscape, both physical and emotional. You can feel the rain in the dim November days; you can sense the looming presence of the nearby mountains. People in 21st-century Ireland are well-connected to the Internet and keep abreast of global trends. Yet they also possess a relationship with each other and with the very soil under their feet that connects them to past centuries, to past millennia. Read this trilogy in order and savor every page.

 The Lace Makers of Glenmara     Heather Barbieri     (2009)  Within a couple of months, Kate Robinson has lost her mother and has been deserted by her long-term boyfriend. She decides to start over, leaving her freelance fashion-design work in Seattle for a backpacking tour of Ireland, the home of her ancestors. She happens to land in the fictional village of Glenmara and is taken in by a group of women who hand-craft lace—crocheted lace, bobbined lace, appliqued lace, all sorts of lace. Although Kate had planned to travel on to see the sights, she’s pulled into the fabric of Glenmara, and her stay leads to life changes both for her and for the Irish villagers. This book selection from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood turned out to be an easy one-day read, with charming descriptions of the west coast of Ireland.

Home Stretch     Graham Norton     (2020)  In 1987 rural Ireland, a terrible single-car accident occurs, leaving three of the six passengers in the car dead and another paralyzed. Connor, one of the unharmed survivors, can’t stand the shame of having been the driver of the car. He takes off for Liverpool and then London, working as a laborer and deliberately losing touch with his family. He finally ends up in New York, drinking too much and finding his identity as a gay man. Through a chance encounter at a bar (“It’s a small gay world,” says one character), Connor reconnects with the people he left in Ireland, where repercussions of that car accident are still felt decades later. This novel is not so much a mystery—leading to a revelation about what really happened in that car crash—as it is an exploration of the power of family and of the changing attitudes toward homosexuality. For my review of Graham Norton’s novel Holding (2017) click here, and of his Frankie (2025) click here.  

Nonfiction on Health Topics

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection     John Green     (2025)  John Green guides readers through the sad history of tuberculosis (TB), which has been killing people all over the world for millennia. His narrative is made poignant by accounts of individual cases, especially that of a young man from Sierra Leone, Henry Reider. Today, TB is almost always curable if it is diagnosed early in the infection and if drugs specific to the TB variant are available. However, due to the rapacity of pharmaceutical companies and the inaction of wealthy nations, TB is still killing more than a million people every year. Green is a global advocate for policies that could eliminate TB, and this book is his powerful call to action. (Green is also the author of the 2021 bestseller The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, and several other titles.)   

The Cycle:  Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD     Shalene Gupta     (2024)  If you’ve never heard of PMDD, you’re not alone. I’ve been a women’s health advocate for decades, and it was a new one for me. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), characterized by intense physical and mental symptoms, that millions of women around the world suffer from without correct diagnosis and treatment. For years, Shalene Gupta was one of these women. Thanks to her research and doggedness, she finally found answers—and an effective medication—at the age of 32. In The Cycle, she weaves her own story in as she recounts the historical stigma around menstruation and reports on the many interviews she conducted with those seeking answers to PMDD, both sufferers and physicians. Gupta’s extensive footnotes to the medical literature reflect her credentials as a respected  journalist. Her personal revelations about her symptoms and about her diagnosis journey are specific and searing, giving her book an exceptional authenticity. (Disclosure:  Shalene Gupta is a family friend, but she had no previous knowledge of this review.) 

Men Facing a Crisis: Two Novels

Alan Opts Out     Courtney Maum     (2026)  Rampant consumerism is the target of the satire in this fast-paced contemporary novel. The titular Alan is a highly successful East Coast advertising executive. Through an odd turn of events, he comes to see the emptiness of the product-based lifestyle that his family espouses, and he moves into the playhouse in the back yard of his huge house. Meanwhile, Vivian, Alan’s wife, is seeking admittance to an exclusive women’s club, going in the opposite direction from Alan. The couple’s two daughters have their own idiosyncrasies—one has the ability to speak in the languages of animals, for example. The premise here is clever, and the denouement is devastating. For another over-the-top satire of the current American scene, see my review of Yesteryear, here. 

The Things We Never Say     Elizabeth Strout     (2026)  The central character in this novel is Artie Dam, a beloved high-school history teacher in his late fifties, who ponders the ages-old question “Do humans have free will?” Although Artie is outwardly cheerful and optimistic, readers come to see his inner sadness, as he faces several challenges in his family life and in his work life. The contemporary setting of this novel doesn’t shy away from the current political climate—one reviewer has called it a “Blue State book” because of Artie’s clear voting preferences. This is not my favorite of Elizabeth Strout’s novels (for a rundown of them, click here), but any writing by Strout is better than about 80% of the books on the bestseller lists. Her character development is especially strong.

Mysteries by Spencer-Fleming

Julia Spencer-Fleming’s excellent series of mystery thrillers, featuring Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne, really must be read in chronological order, starting with In the Bleak Midwinter, from 2002. Here’s an excerpt from my review of that book:

“The character Clare Fergusson served as a combat helicopter pilot in the Army but finds her true vocation as an Episcopal priest . . . Clare is in bad shape emotionally from her military service. Russ, who is also a veteran, has his own demons. The electricity between these two is crackling from their very first meeting. And did I mention that Russ is married? . . . I confess that the crimes that occur in the Clare/Russ Series are not the main attraction for me. There are violent scenes that I have to glide past, particularly when they involve fresh human blood on snow banks. I’ve read this series primarily for the interactions of Clare and Russ and for the Episcopal humor . . . The setting is depicted generously and with elegant detail, helping readers feel the biting cold winds of a blizzard, the treacherous slippage of tires on ice-slicked roads.”

The ninth and tenth offerings in the series do not disappoint. I challenge readers to put down either of these books in the last 50 pages:

Hid from Our Eyes     Julia Spencer-Fleming     (2020)  Spencer-Fleming takes each of her book titles from a well-known hymn in the Episcopal tradition, which is fitting, given Clare Fergusson’s occupation as a priest in a fictional small town in upstate New York. In Hid from Our Eyes, Rev Clare and Russ Van Alstyne, the town’s chief of police, put their considerable intelligences together to solve three murders, two of which are decades-old cold cases. Even the most astute of mystery readers is unlikely to guess the ending of this twisty one, which features Spencer-Fleming’s rapid-fire dialogue and beautifully drawn characters.

At Midnight Comes the Cry     Julia Spencer-Fleming     (2025)  This title is taken from an Advent hymn, and the story is, appropriately, set in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In the busy holiday season, Clare and Russ are drawn into confrontation with a white supremacist militia that operates in the nearby Adirondack Mountains. Complicating matters is the fact that local police officer Hadley Knox is worried that her former-maybe-not-former boyfriend, Kevin Flynn, has disappeared into those mountains. State forest ranger Paul Terrance is introduced in this book, and he’s a welcome addition to the cast of characters, bringing the perspective of a Native American to the rugged landscape where the shocking story plays out.

Unconventional Contemporary Women

Whether in Nebraska or New York, you can find women who defy stereotypes.

Cherry Baby     Rainbow Rowell     (2026)  First, the title. Cherry is a plus-sized woman in her thirties who lives in Omaha. Baby is the name of a character that her husband, Tom, invented in a webcomic that went viral and is being made into a movie in Hollywood. Baby bears a remarkable resemblance to Cherry—hence, marital discord. Cherry and Tom separate, planning to divorce, and Cherry starts dating Russ, an old college crush of hers. Will she start a new life with Russ? Will she reunite with Tom? That’s the basic premise of the novel, but there’s much more. The novelist explores many aspects of body positivity, including through explicit sex scenes. The culture of Nebraska versus the culture of California is in the background, as are Cherry’s disagreements with her fundamentalist Christian family. It’s a roller-coaster ride, engaging and witty. (For my review of Rowell’s 2011 novel, Attachments, click here and scroll down.)

Go Gentle     Maria Semple     (2026)  Adora Hazzard is a fiftyish philosopher who specializes in ancient Greek Stoicism, and like a good Stoic, she tries to control her emotional reaction to the uncontrollable events around her. But she is nonetheless a pretty wild woman, getting herself involved in an unexpected romance and in an international art heist. Readers dash around New York City with the manic Adora in novelist Semple’s trademark fashion (exemplified in the 2016 Today Will Be Different, reviewed here). Semple excels in probing parent-child relationships, women’s midlife angst, and the pretentiousness of the ultra-wealthy. The hilarious one-liners in the dialogue come fast and furious in Go Gentle’s first-person narration, which makes sense when we learn, in a lengthy flashback, that Adora was once a Hollywood comedy writer. The title of this novel is a reference to Dylan Thomas’s poem that advises against passive acquiescence to mortality, and Adora certainly doesn’t acquiesce.

Two Bestsellers

From—where else?—the New York Times bestseller lists.

The Land and Its People     David Sedaris     (2026)  The 28 essays in this latest collection from David Sedaris, his sixteenth, are products of the craft he’s been honing for decades, so they’re tip-top. The theme in this volume tends to be friendship, with stories about people Sedaris knew in his younger days, about his siblings, and about people he’s met while traveling (on lecture tours or on vacation). I had read several of the essays in the magazines where they were previously published, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of them—it allowed me to notice more details. As usual, Sedaris is clever, witty, insightful, and sometimes vulgar. For a more complete assessment of his talents, see my lengthy review here. One sentence from that review:  “Sedaris blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, taking scenes from real life, amplifying them, and surrounding them with extraordinary contextualizations.”

Yesteryear     Caro Claire Burke     (2026)  The satire is over-the-top in this highly addictive debut novel. First-person narrator Natalie Heller Mills is a wealthy tradwife social media influencer with millions of followers. “Yesteryear” is the name of the Idaho farm where she and her cowboy-adjacent husband raise a passel of kids who drink raw milk. Although Natalie couches her story in the godly language of her evangelical upbringing, her narcissism and cattiness are quite apparent. And although she appears online to be managing her household and her sourdough bread and her posts all on her own, the farm actually has a large hidden crew of workers. Then one day Natalie wakes up to find herself in a hardscrabble life on a mid-19th-century homestead, with a husband and family sort of like—but not quite the same as—her 21st-century husband and family. I kept reading for hours to find out what was going on. Was it time travel or a bad dream or a reality television show or revenge of the universe for Natalie’s exploitations? Novelist Burke searingly lampoons MAGA supporters without ever calling them that, but she also spoofs East Coast elites (at Harvard, no less) with exaggerated portrayals. The action moves along quickly, and the ending is a zinger, in this recommended read.

Around the World

Two novels about families, one set in Australia and one in London and Florence.

A Far-Flung Life     ML Stedman     (2026)  The sunsets can be gorgeous, but daily living can be austere on a sheep station at the edge of the desert in Western Australia, especially back in 1958, when this novel opens. The MacBrides have toughed it out for generations—and built a good family life—when a terrible accident sends them spiraling into despair. Stedman documents the repercussions up through the new millennium. Like Stedman’s previous novel set in Australia, The Light Between Oceans (reviewed here), this one tips somewhat toward melodrama, with odd coincidences and misunderstandings driving the plot. But the characters are convincing and the story is propulsive. Keep the internet handy to look up some of that Aussie vocabulary and then enjoy the ride.   

Still Life     Sarah Winman     (2021)  In this 450-page love letter to Florence, Italy, Sarah Winman evokes that city’s Renaissance past, especially art in all forms. And she shows how love between people can be manifest in many forms. Ulysses Temper, a British soldier in World War II, is central to the ensemble cast of family and friends who move through much of the twentieth century (1944-1979, plus a long flashback to 1901), crossing repeatedly from London to Florence and back. There’s some magic realism (a highly verbose parrot, a series of successful wagers based on dreams) as well as the appearance of the novelist EM Forster in his youth. The opening dialogue segment is somewhat bewildering, but get past that to relish this novel. I’ve also reviewed Winman’s novel Tin Man here.

Novels about Survival

From Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) to the movie The Martian (2015), tales of survival against all odds have long fascinated me.

Isola     Allegra Goodman     (2025)  Allegra Goodman’s Isola provides a new twist on the survival trope, with the character of Marguerite de la Rocque, who is abandoned on a rocky island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in the sixteenth century. (“Isola” means “island” in Italian and can also be interpreted as “I sola,” or “I, alone.”) The novel is a fictionalized first-person account of the historical Marguerite, an orphaned French noblewoman who travels with her guardian on a ship bound for a remote and dangerous colony in Canada. The guardian, angered when Marguerite falls in love with a subordinate of his, devises a cruel punishment. The narrative lead-up to the voyage is slow but necessary to a full understanding of Marguerite’s developing strength of will and of her guardian’s personality and motives. The chapters in which the novelist describes Marguerite’s two years on the island will carry you away to a wild and unforgiving terrain. 

Tilt     Emma Pattee     (2025)  When the present-day Pacific Northwest is hit by a massive earthquake, Annie is inside the Portland, Oregon, IKEA store, shopping for a crib, because her baby is due in three weeks. Somehow, Annie has to get out of the store and walk miles through scenes of massive destruction to try to find her husband and get to their apartment. Longtime readers of this blog know that I review very few novels about apocalyptic events, but I stuck with this one because the story propelled me from page to page. Annie meets people who are incredibly kind and people who are incredibly cruel, and she stays brave as she tries to find water and food and information. She talks to her unborn child (whom she calls “Bean”) and recalls past events of her life with Dom, her husband. I read Tilt in one sitting and recommend it—if you can handle the apocalypse.

Nonfiction: Gardening and Cooking

Two of my favorite pastimes are featured in this post.

Winterland: Create a Beautiful Garden for Every Season     Cathy Rees     photos by Lisa Looke     (2021)  Author Rees has a pleasant conversational tone as she advises about how to arrange gardens for wintertime beauty. In the five sections of the book (Design, Contrast, Embellish, Care, and Share) she offers many clever and practical approaches, accompanied by photos. I especially liked her ideas on layering of plants, on sculptural pruning, and on working with the sunlight and shadows of winter. This isn’t necessarily a book to purchase but rather one to check out from your local library and page through—especially in the warm seasons, when the ground is thawed and you can implement changes that you can appreciate when the snow falls.

The Sheet Pan:  150+ Easy, Creative Meals from Your Most Versatile Pan     America’s Test Kitchen     (2025)  Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about cooking with a sheet pan can be found in this lavishly illustrated guidebook. As a mostly vegetarian cook, I just skimmed over the chapters on meats, but I put many sticky notes in the chapters that feature sandwiches, vegetable mains, breakfast, sides, and snacks. Recipe examples: White Bean and Sun-Dried Tomato Patties; Lavash Flatbreads with Romesco, Tomatoes, and Spinach; Roasted Tofu and Sweet Potato Bowls; Roasted Vegetables and Lentils with Feta and Herb Oil; Everyday French Toast; One Big Pancake; Elote; Spiced Nuts. All these and many more savory and sweet dishes can be made on a sheet pan! I found particularly helpful the book’s introductory section, titled “The Sheet Pan Advantage,” which takes the reader through all the necessary techniques for sheet-pan success. America’s Test Kitchen is a solidly reliable source for cooking advice, and this volume is a winner.

Two Mystery Novels

Fire Must Burn     Allison Montclair     (2026)  In this eighth entry in the Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery Series, the inimitable Iris (Sparks) and Gwen (Bainbridge) are back at the murder game, even though their actual occupation is running a marriage bureau in post-World-War-II London. This time Iris, a former British spy, is dragooned into helping her former spy boss on a tough case that requires subterfuge with clients of the marriage bureau. At the end of every Montclair novel I don’t want to let go of these fantastic characters, in spite of the post-war rationing and the bombed out buildings and the British patriarchy that they have to endure. Iris and Gwen are the best models for women heading into the second half of the twentieth century. I recommend reading this series from the beginning, and my reviews of several previous titles are here.

History Lessons     Zoe B Wallbrook     (2025)  This debut novel is billed as a mystery, and the lead character, Daphne Ouverture, does indeed get entangled in solving the murder of a colleague of hers at Harrison University, an elite (fictional) institution in the (fictional) small city of Calliope. But in addition to producing a reasonable mystery, novelist Wallbrook also sends up academic politics most blisteringly, and she even dips into the romance genre with a love-at-first-sight subplot. As I read, I noticed that the setting seemed uncannily similar to Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan, where I used to work. Some poking around on the internet revealed that Zoe B Wallbrook is a pseudonym for Kira Thurman, who is a real live associate professor at UM. This discovery provided me opportunities for decoding beyond the basic story, observing how Wallbrook/Thurman disguised UM. And if Kira is as endearing as the character Daphne, she’d be fun to bump into around town.

Lightweight Reads

Nothing wrong with fiction that is minimally challenging! These two novels don’t rise to the level of Great Literature, but they’re entertaining.

A Forty Year Kiss     Nickolas Butler     (2025)  In Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, we first meet Charlie sitting on a barstool, waiting nervously for the arrival of Vivian, his ex-wife, whom he has not seen for forty years. Charlie is an alcoholic—not one who gets dead drunk but one who can’t stay away from liquor. At age 64, he has retired and is renovating a farm in Wisconsin that he’s inherited. He tells Vivian that he’s changed the wild ways of his youth and wants to reunite. Vivian, meanwhile, has been leading a hardscrabble life, taking care of her grandkids for her daughter, who is a single mother. Vivian is somewhat skeptical of Charlie, and their on-again-off-again re-romancing forms the basis of the novel. It’s a fairly slender thread on which to hang a plot, but Butler makes it work, with Charlie and Vivian both gradually unveiling their secrets. Oh, and the book starts and ends with a kiss. Aside from being set in the Midwest, this novel is quite unlike Butler’s two previous novels that I’ve reviewed, The Hearts of Men and Little Faith.

Hedge     Jane Delury     (2023)  In 2012, middle-aged Maud takes a short-term job researching and restoring the gardens on a large estate in the Hudson Valley in New York. She was already seriously considering divorcing her husband (who has remained at their home in California), when she meets a co-worker, archeologist Gabriel. Sparks fly. Maud’s two daughters finish the school year and join her in New York, causing sparks of a different kind to fly. The novelist chronicles Maud’s family life over the next three years, with unexpected health challenges and the waxing and waning of relationships. I checked this book out of my local library because Maud is a garden historian—a person trained to reconstruct landscapes from the past. There are some fun gardening components of this novel, but the main themes are (1) people are imperfect and (2) life is messy.  See also my review of The Balcony, Delury’s 2018 book of linked stories, here.

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.

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!