Dear, Strange Things

Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women by Hannah Rose Thomas (Plough Publishing, 2024). Tears of Gold is a gut punch of a book, a riveting record in pictures and words of women who have survived horrors worse than most of us could imagine. British artist and activist Hannah Rose Thomas was inspired to create the book while working with women and children who had been through captivity by terrorist groups or fled from ethnic cleansing.

The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur Books, 2022). Pity the writer who tries to do something new with the Lindbergh kidnapping case. The stark facts are ingrained in our culture: the nighttime snatching of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr., from his crib in 1932; the frantic search involving the highest levels of law enforcement; the tragic discovery of the child’s body; the conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry (Redhook, 2023). I’m always in a quandary when a new H. G. Parry book comes out. I want to read it as quickly as possible, to get all her wonderful new characters and worlds and scenarios into my brain just as soon as I can. And I want to read it as slowly as possible, to savor every last delicious bit of it like a rich gourmet meal. Parry’s newest novel, The Magician’s Daughter, is no exception to the rule.

Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023). If you look upon rare books and rare bookshops with a sense of awe and reverence, Oliver Darkshire is here to put a stop to that. Darkshire, as he recounts in his new book, Once Upon a Tome, stumbled into the rare book world when he was “young and adrift in London,” searching for a job.

Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay (orig. 1935; reprint by The British Library, 2014). It’s retro week again! Death on the Cherwell caught my eye for a very specific reason: It’s a mystery novel written in 1935 and set in a women’s college at Oxford University. It has all these things in common with one of my all-time favorite books, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. So I couldn’t resist seeing what another author did in the same year with the same genre and the same setting.

Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman (Harper Perennial, 2023). At some point you’ve probably heard or read the Greek myth of Pandora, the woman who rashly opened a box—or possibly a jar—and let loose all the evil in the world. So let me ask you this: If you were a young 18th-century woman who happened to be named Pandora, and you discovered a beautiful and mysterious Greek vase with a lid on it, would you open it? Frankly, I wouldn’t. I’m too chicken.

Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre, translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions, 2022). New York’s Morgan Library and Museum has long been one of my favorite museums (a security guard there practically had to peel me off the glass covering the original manuscript of A Christmas Carol), even before I learned about the amazing woman who helped to build it. So when I found out there was a new novel about her, I couldn’t wait to read it and learn more of her story. It’s quite a story.

Widowland by C. J. Carey (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2022). Suppose Hitler had survived World War II. (That’s a nice cheery thought to start the new year with, isn’t it?) More than that, suppose he’d taken control of Great Britain and turned it into another Nazi state. That’s the premise of C. J. Carey’s Widowland, a dystopian novel set in a very different U.K. from the one we know. Hitler has installed a “Protector” to run the country as a totalitarian nightmare.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2021). “If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.” So says a character in Claire Keegan’s book Small Things Like These, a short book that packs a powerful punch. Her statement captures the timeless dilemma at the story’s heart: What do you do when you see that something is wrong, but saying that it’s wrong could cost you far too much?

Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard (Algonquin Books, 2022). Audiobook read by Sean Rohani. I had every intention of reviewing Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, this week. McEwan has consistently done excellent work, as evidenced by his many awards, honors, and appearances on the bestseller lists, and I’ve long enjoyed his writing. So I couldn’t wait to get hold of Lessons. Unfortunately, when I did, I soon began to feel as if I’d gotten hold of an avalanche.