The Missing Pages” by Alyson Richman is a perfect title for a novel about love, loss, and those who adore books. Bibliophiles are smitten by the scent of paper and ink; they love to sit in the peaceful silence of libraries and peruse vast selections of books; they love to meet other bibliophiles and talk books. And sometimes, as in this beautifully narrated story, they fall in love. There is much loss in these pages, but there is also much love.
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There are so many reasons to recommend “Other People’s Houses” by Clare Mackintosh; when a mystery features characters who are so likable and relatable that their situation and relationships become equally as important as the actual mystery, you know it’s going to be a winner. And on top of that, jumping in to read the third book in the series without having read the first two books did not feel as if anything was missing.
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A novel is at the heart of “The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes,” the lost story being a book that one of the main characters, Eva Fuentes, wrote; but this heartfelt story is really about many things. In it, author Chanel Cleeton creates three main characters who live at different times but all of whom share a deep, abiding love of books.
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When I read my first Katherine Center romcom, I realized that her novels are so much more than “just” about romance and falling in love, and her latest book, “The Love Haters,” exemplifies that concept perfectly. It’s certainly about two people falling in love, but it’s also about love in general—the not romantic kind—and it’s about learning to love ourselves. At times, especially in our picture-perfect social media culture, we feel that everything needs to be perfect, and how many of us are perfect?
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In Poppy Alexander’s newest sweet, British, small-town romance, “The Battle of the Bookshops,” she makes no pretense about its Romeo and Juliet bones. The main characters, Roman Montbeau and Julia Capelthorne, are from families who have been feuding for centuries. The Montbeaus have come out ahead and live in wealth and splendor that the Capelthornes can only dream of.
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In “The Art of a Lie,” Laura Shepherd-Robinson takes us back to London in 1749, when women had few rights, and the clever ones learned to use their wits to survive. We meet Hannah Cole a few weeks after the murder of her husband, Jonas. The confectionary shop that had been in her family for generations is struggling now that suppliers have learned a woman is running the shop. They are overcharging her, and she’s not sure how long she’ll be able to stay in business.
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The famous, the wealthy, and the not-so-wealthy all come together on Winthrop Island each summer in Beatriz William’s new novel, “Under the Stars.” For those who read “Husbands & Lovers,” a few characters will be familiar, but no matter, readers will be touched by this story about three women, all of whom end up at Winthrop Island, hoping that their lives will change for the better.
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Readers loved the alternate world Sarah Beth Durst created in “The Spellshop,” and in her new novel, “The Enchanted Greenhouse,” she takes us back to that charming, magic-filled world where flying cats roam and miniature dragons pollinate huge sunflowers in magical greenhouses. In the first book, we learned of Terlu Perna, a lonely librarian who broke the law when she created a sentient plant to keep her company in her solitary life among the stacks of magical spell books. She was sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue forever.
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Rachel Howzell Hall is an accomplished author, and her newest novel, “Fog and Fury,” is the start of her first series, aptly called “Haven Thriller.” The setting is an idyllic California coastal town which some people are aiming to turn into a posh tourist destination and which has the nickname “Mayberry by the Sea.” But things are not as harmonious and peaceful as the movers and shakers in town would have people believe.
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In many ways, Mary Alice Monroe’s “Where the Rivers Merge” is an ode to the ACE Basin, a place in South Carolina where three rivers join. The main character, Eliza Rivers, shows us the beauty of this place as we learn about her life growing up at Mayfield, a large property that belonged to her father’s family.
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In a sweet novel filled with flowers, magic, and everlasting love, J. C. Cervantes takes us to Mexico, to the magical hacienda “la Casa de las Flores,” where a family of women have woven their magic for generations using the enchanted flowers they grow on their beautiful flower farm. “The Anatomy of Magic,” focuses on Lily Estrada, weaver of memory magic. Each of the women in the Estrada family wields her own kind of floral magic.
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“The Story She Left Behind” is filled with characters who have experienced a rollercoaster of emotions and life events. It’s about women and creativity and living a life differently from those around us, and being ostracized for those choices. Patti Callahan Henry presents loss in many of its varieties: abandonment, death, divorce. In Henry’s capable hands, the story of a daughter searching for her mother is beautiful, made more lovely by the choice of two idyllic settings. The main character Clara is raised in South Carolina on the coast near Savannah. Her early days are spent fishing, searching for oysters, playing imaginary games with her creative, clever, doting mother. It’s a perfect childhood until the night in 1927 when her mother disappears.
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