Just when I thought fiction about World War II had grown stale, I came across Joanna Quinn’s marvelous historical novel.
It opens on a family estate in the English countryside in the aftermath of World War I. The three finely drawn main characters—precocious, determined half-siblings—are basically raising themselves. They share a love of literature and spend their time putting on plays for their friends, family, and neighbors.
As they grow into young adulthood, they are confronted with the brutality of World War II, and each makes a choice about how to help their country.
Quinn deploys lush language to create evocative settings and compelling storylines and has managed to cast a fresh look on the era that says much about how people are affected by war—and by love.
'A tour de force' Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
This is the story of an old English manor house by the sea, with crumbling chimneys, draping ivy and a library full of dusty hardbacks. It's the story of the three children who grow up there, and the adventures they create for themselves while the grown-ups entertain endless party guests.
This is the story of a whale that washes up on a beach, whose bones are claimed by a twelve-year-old girl with big ambitions and an even bigger imagination. An unwanted orphan who…
I’ve been a huge fan of Paulette Jiles since her Civil War novel, Enemy Women, which is one of my favorites of all time.
Her quiet yet powerful writing style likely stems from her poetry background, and it serves her well as she has crafted some of the finest Western stories in recent decades—her News of the World is also excellent.
In this, Jiles’s most recent novel, the main character recovers from a severe wound sustained near the end of the Civil War and returns home to find that his beloved sister and her family have been murdered. Chenneville then sets out on a solitary trip into the West to track down their killer and mete out his own justice. I especially liked the unexpected ending.
Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post-Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.
Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John's beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.
Moustakis makes a stunning debut in this spare but beautiful story of a young Korean War veteran and a risk-taking young woman who meet in Anchorage, Alaska, and decide to marry and take up homesteading.
The setting and time period are perfect for exploring the possibilities and limits of love between two people who have strong personalities yet respect each other enough to stay together and try to understand what they need.
I admired how delicately Moustakis infused this tale of a determined romance with events of the time: the aftermath of a war many Americans were uncertain about and Alaska on the cusp of statehood. I’m really looking forward to her next novel.
From NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE and FLANNERY O'CONNOR AWARD WINNER Melinda Moustakis, a debut novel set in Alaska, about the turbulent marriage of two unlikely homesteaders
“A beautiful novel, quiet as a snowfall, warm as a glowing wood stove…Admirers of Marilynne Robinson and Alice Munro are bound to appreciate.” ―NPR
“Spare and exquisite, tough and lovely. The sentences build on themselves, becoming expansive and staggering in their sweep.” ―The New York Times Book Review
Anchorage, 1956. When Marie and Lawrence first lock eyes at the Moose Lodge, they are immediately drawn together. But when they decide to…
This is the first full-length biography of this mid-twentieth-century multi-faceted star, one that also charts the broad sweep of changes in women’s lives during the twentieth century, and to have popular music, movies, and television shows as its backdrops. The glitter of country music, the glamour of Hollywood, and the grit of the early television industry are all covered. It is the first book to draw from never-before-seen sources at the newly-opened Roy Rogers-Dale Evans collections at the Autry Museum of the American West. One of the central tensions of Dale’s life revolved around chasing the elusive work/family balance, making her story instantly relatable to women today.
