“What saves this book, in addition to the passages of Ash’s powerful voice, are the characters. They are all original, fully imagined human beings, likable in different ways.”
“Lauren Denton unfurls a mystery by reconciling a buried past with a modern-day story set in a town with vibrant characters brimming with Southern charm.”
Wry, sly, and nicely dry, Kate Atkinson’s 13th outing is stuffed with runaway waifs, toffs, female pickpockets, “merry maid” hostesses, bent coppers, murdered girls, a melancholy detective, an intr
“Debut author Bobby Finger wields crisp, bright language in succinct, ample prose to reveal secrets deliberately hidden from the norms of social order. . . .
“Brilliantly conceived. . . . There are court intrigues, whispered rumors, a clever subplot about the power of painting, what it reveals as well as what it hides . . .
To understand and appreciate this novel, you need to move past any aversion you might have to the idea of female killers. Women as paid assassins, murderers for hire . . .
“McCall Smith is an author who sees his characters and their world, fully and tenderly. And that makes for a book that is as comforting to sink into as well-worn armchair.”
Louisa Treger opens her historical novel about the life of intrepid reporter Nellie Bly in 1887 as she arrives on Blackwell Island, home of the notorious women’s insane asylum.
C. J. Carey’s novel, Widowland, couldn’t be more chilling—or dystopian—given the frightening political landscape confronting women in America and elsewhere.
It is April 1943, and World War II is raging throughout Europe. In Washington, D.C., Ava Harper is working as a librarian at a job she loves in the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress.
