Velton (The Image of Her) spins an alluring story based on the historical Hungarian “blood countess” Erzsébet Báthory, who was accused in the 17th century of murdering hundreds of girls. In 1610, 15-year-old orphan Boróka goes to work for the countess at Č achtice Castle. Boróka, who was raised by a doctor and taught to read, but otherwise has no skills, is assigned to work in the laundry house. She befriends her seamstress roommate, Suzanna, who grows resentful when Boróka is picked to serve as a model for the countess’s portrait. According to Suzanna, the countess tortures the house’s servant girls in their quarters. Boróka chalks Suzanna’s accusations up to superstition, though her curiosity is piqued enough to snoop around the countess’s belongings, where she finds a journal describing how another noblewoman gave birth to an illegitimate daughter when she was 13. When the countess is charged with murdering hundreds of servants based on scant evidence, Boróka remains loyal. Revelations about the connections between Boróka, the countess, and the woman mentioned in the diary are unsurprising, but Velton’s riveting narrative vividly evokes the misogyny and paranoia of the era’s witch trials. Historical fiction fans will find plenty to enjoy. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Kilroy’s gut-wrenching latest (after The Devil I Know) finds a mother, Soldier, recounting to her son, Sailor, the first few years of his life. The action moves fluidly between past and present, mimicking the out-of-time nature of early motherhood, and the immersive prose veers from lyrical (“The world rotated beneath us and we were the world”) to brutal (when Sailor was whining at six months old, Soldier screamed at him to “Shut the fuck up”). Soldier also expresses resentment toward men, including her husband, for never having to go through childbirth (“Tell me, men: when were you last split open from the inside?”). At times it can be difficult to distinguish between what actually happened and Soldier’s dark fantasies, such as her plan to abandon Sailor as an infant—but the novel builds to a gorgeous closing soliloquy, in which Soldier lays bare the confounding and heartbreaking reality of mothering. This is worth seeking out. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

The uneven 11th entry in Lock’s American Novels series (after The Ice Harp) opens as the lucrative sugar trade draws the U.S. into Cuba’s battle for independence from Spain. It’s 1897 and aspiring artist Oliver Fischer, a student at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, attempts to create a photographic replica of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur L’herbe, a scandalous depiction of nude women and clothed men sitting outdoors, for his final project. He stages the scene in what he thinks is a secluded rural location but one of his naked models, fleeing a wasp, interrupts a riverside baptism. Newspaper reports of the incident get Oliver expelled from the academy and disinherited by his banker father, and he winds his way into a caricaturist job at a newspaper just before America declares war on Spain. Oliver is then sent to Key West to illustrate the run-up to the invasion, where he has a brief encounter with reporter Stephen Crane. Lock successfully mimics Crane’s impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America, but Oliver’s aimlessness makes for a disjointed narrative. Lock has made better use of his strengths in previous installments. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mayne debuts with the underwhelming story of an awkward middle school teacher in Australia whose repressed childhood memories come roaring to the surface. Lenny Marks, 37, generally sticks to herself, though she bonds with her grocer Ned and her elderly neighbor Maureen. One day, Lenny drops in for a visit and finds Maureen unconscious on the floor. The sight triggers flashes of a traumatic childhood event, and Lenny begins to piece together that the scar on her thigh came from her alcoholic stepfather Fergus. The complete details of the incident come out later, after calls from a prison parole board reveal Fergus is incarcerated and that he victimized Lenny, which adds a sense of foreboding and sets the stage for a climactic showdown. Mayne convinces in her depiction of Lenny’s anxious inner life, though a romantic subplot is devoid of chemistry, and a couple left-field twists contort the story rather than enhance it. This doesn’t quite come together. Agent: Elaine Spencer, Knight Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Dunlay impresses with her multilayered character-driven debut about a Texas woman who lands in hot water after she marries a State Department employee at the height of the Cold War. The narrative begins in 1969 Rome, where Teddy Huntley Carlyle Shepard is about to be questioned by investigators for reasons unknown to the reader. From there, Teddy’s story unfurls in flashbacks, starting with her first date with future husband David Shepard earlier in the year, whose unspecified job involves “encouraging economic cooperation” between the U.S. and Europe. David is now in Milan, and the night before the interrogation, Teddy attended a Fourth of July party at the American ambassador’s residence. The dress she wore is stained with blood, and she worries that news of what happened there—the details of which come out much later—will cause an international scandal (“My name will be in everyone’s mouths, crunched and swallowed between the crushed ice and maraschino cherries of their juleps and Manhattans”). Teddy hints at secrets she’s kept from David, including her romance with a Russian named Yevgeny Larin, whom she last saw in 1963, and considers herself a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Early on, Teddy is portrayed as a superficial person, but her hidden depths come to light in the novel’s satisfying climax. This is a winner. Agent: Katie Greenstreet, Paper Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

In poet Regel’s alluring debut novel (after the collection Oliver Reed) a London art school graduate takes a job at a feminist archive and stumbles on a mystery buried in the collection. Nicola Long is captivated by the letters of ceramicist Donna Dreeman, who compulsively wrote to her friend Susan Baddeley with accounts of lovers and minor scandals in the 1970s and ’80s. Nicola is also struck by the similarities between Donna and herself—they’re both potters and were born near the same place in Nottingham. The letters allude to “something very close to dread,” and Nicola’s librarian boss, Marcella, tells her Donna died many years ago by suicide. After Nicola tracks down the secretive Susan, with whom Donna was plainly obsessed, she pores over the archive in search of clues about the roots of Donna’s malaise and the true nature of Donna and Susan’s relationship. Regel evokes her protagonist’s thrumming self-recognition as she reads the letters (“This was exactly how she felt. The thrill pulled a thread across her chest; Nicola wasn’t just overhearing, she was being overheard!”). The result is a distinctive story of female friendship. Agent: Harriet Moore, David Higham Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

This rip-roaring western from Barry (Night Boat to Tangier) chronicless an opium-smoking Irishman’s misadventures. The story begins in 1891 Butte, Mont., where Tom Rourke seeks ways to satisfy his reckless nature. He fancies himself a poet and balladeer, and to pay for his booze and dope, he writes letters to prospective brides on behalf of illiterate men. He also spends a lot of time admiring himself in saloon mirrors (“He wore the felt slouch hat at a wistful angle and the refer jacket of mossgreen tweed and a black canvas shirt and in his eyes dimly gleaming the lyric poetry of an early grave and he was satisfied with the inspection”). After he meets Polly Gallagher, a mail-order bride from Chicago, the two trade lines of poetry and begin a passionate and chaotic affair. They burn down a boardinghouse, rob the safe, steal a horse, and head west across Montana to Idaho, with a posse in pursuit and tragedy in tow. The action is rendered in crisp and gritty prose, and the sensual descriptions of Tom and Polly’s lovemaking are gloriously over-the-top. The pleasure never lets up in Barry’s masterful novel. Agent: Lucy Luck, C&W. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Johnson debuts with a deeply satisfying multigenerational saga of a Black family. Evelyn was brought up in 1940s Atlanta with the expecation that she succeed. As a young mother and widow in the 1970s, her success in academia comes at the expense of her daughter, Charlotte, who only feels her mother’s coldness and resentment. When Evelyn erupts at the news of 18-year-old Charlotte’s unexpected pregnancy in 1974, she flees home and builds a new life in rural Tennessee. Charlotte struggles with alcoholism and the effects of assorted bad decisions, which have an acidic effect on her daughter, Corinna, who doesn’t feel accepted by her mother. Searching for love, Corinna has a brief relationship with a high school football star and becomes pregnant at 17. She vows to provide her daughter, Camille, with the love she yearned for as a girl, but soon becomes overwhelmed and makes the difficult decision to send Camille to Evelyn, who is now a professor at Howard University. Johnson brings new life to the age-old theme of a family’s cyclical dysfunction, and the narrative is packed with stunning self-reflections, such as Charlotte’s reason for naming her daughter after the song “Corrina, Corrina” (“It had always made her sad, like looking at this baby”). This is a revelation. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

McCann (All Different Kinds of Free) delivers an engrossing family drama stacked with secrets and regrets. In 1990 Phoenix, Ariz., community college student April Parson comes across a news article about a 35-year-old cold case that’s been reopened in Bitter Rapids, Minn., her father’s hometown. She shows the article to her father, Frank, and points out how the quilt wrapped around the body in the accompanying photo resembles one in a 1950s photo of him as a child with his mother, Evelyn. When Evelyn learns about these developments, she insists they return to Bitter Rapids, saying only that she wants to “set the record straight.” During the family’s trip to Minnesota, flashbacks to the 1950s reveal family secrets: Evelyn, who was widowed during WWII, had an abusive second husband, Art Specht; Frank had a baby brother, Denny; and Frank and Denny were once rescued from drowning by a Black Ojibwe convict named Maakade Carpenter, who was out on work detail. More revelations ensue about the relationship between Maakade and Evelyn, Art’s sexuality, Denny’s fate, and the identity of the body in the newspaper photo. The plot moves briskly, and the author adds in rich historical context, with references to Indian boarding schools and the Lavender Scare. There’s plenty here to hold readers’ attention. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Pitts (The Last Thing You Surrender) returns with the page-turning story of a family caught up in the turmoil of the 1960s civil rights movement. Adam Simon, a college student from New York City, arrives in Selma, Ala., to participate in the Selma to Montgomery march unbeknownst to his parents, Thelma, a Black attorney, and George, a white minister. After Adam is badly beaten by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he winds up in the hospital and out of touch with his parents. His mother enlists her brother, Luther Hayes, with whom she witnessed their parents’ lynching 40 years earlier, to find him. When Luther unexpectedly encounters the man responsible for their parents’ killings, who happens to be residing in the same senior home as George’s father, he falls off the wagon, and his drunken antics bring more trouble to the family. The novel’s strength lies in Pitts’s atmospheric rendering of 1965 Alabama replete with scenes of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders marching with a “great procession” past the “shy, solemn” gaze of children and the “flinty” young Black men who show up to support them. Historical fiction fans ought to snatch this up. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink