In Kris Waldherr’s "Unnatural Creatures", Victor Frankenstein’s family splinters apart amid war and revolution. In late eighteenth-century Geneva, Caroline, the mother of Victor Frankenstein, adores her family, both biological and... Read More

In "Loving the Dead and Gone", Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s multivoiced novel, the death of a young man provokes women in a rural North Carolina town to revisit their unmet longings. Clayton is puzzled by his wife Berta Mae’s contentions... Read More

Lars Mytting’s epic, enchanting historical novel "The Reindeer Hunters" ushers a remote Norwegian village into the modern age. In the twenty years since Butangen’s stave church was removed and Astrid Hekne died giving birth to twins,... Read More

Memory and traumas interfere with romantic love in Martha Anne Toll’s historical novel "Three Muses". John, an American psychoanalyst, is in Paris when he is handed a ticket to see a performance of Boris Yanakov’s masterpiece "Three... Read More

A Black woman rebels against racism and class, finding her voice, in Kimberly Garrett Brown’s novel Cora’s Kitchen. In 1928, Cora James is an aspiring writer who works as a librarian in New York. She is aware of the privileged... Read More

Two outcasts from a troubled Rwandan village try to save their country in Scholastique Mukasonga’s novel "Kibogo". In the 1940s and 1950s, Rwanda faced numerous tragedies, including drought, famine, war, and continuing repression by... Read More

Ernesto Mestre-Reed’s historical novel is set in Cuba in the late 1990s, where a displaced young man learns the limits of family, trust, and community. Rafa is an orphan. He moves to Havana, where Cecilia, a restaurant owner, becomes... Read More

Jennifer L. Wright’s intelligent and arresting historical novel focuses on two girls who witness the atomic bomb test in New Mexico. In 1944, the US Army claims Olive’s family ranch through eminent domain. Against her will, she’s... Read More