Archives de catégorie : Women’s Fiction

THE WAYS WE HIDE de Kristina McMorris

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold On A Monday―over a million copies sold!―comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.

THE WAYS WE HIDE
by Kristina McMorris
Sourcebooks, September 2022

As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan’s Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she’s the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.
Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn’t foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one’s past.
Inspired by stunning true accounts, THE WAYS WE HIDE is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight―on the battlefields and within ourselves―and the courage found in unexpected places.

Kristina McMorris is a New York Times bestselling author of two novellas and six novels, including the runaway bestseller Sold on a Monday. Initially inspired by her grandparents’ WWII courtship letters, her works of fiction have garnered more than twenty national literary awards. Prior to her writing career, she owned a wedding-and-event planning company until she had far surpassed her limit of YMCA and chicken dances. She also worked as a weekly TV-show host for Warner Bros. and an ABC affiliate, beginning at age nine with an Emmy Award-winning program. A graduate of Pepperdine University, she lives near Portland, Oregon, where (ironically) she’s entirely deficient of a green thumb and doesn’t own a single umbrella.

SERPENT’S CRESCENT de Vivian de Klerk

Vivian de Klerk’s sharp observations and brilliantly acerbic satirical wit make this multi-layered novel at once horrifying, shocking and poignant – and very, very funny.

SERPENT’S CRESCENT
by Vivian de Klerk
‎Picador Africa, APril 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

In the small rural town of Qonda, South Africa, the power and water supplies are unreliable, property prices are down, and citizens are slowly suffocating in the acrid smoke from the municipal dump. Recently retired English teacher Megan Merton has lived here all her life, most of it at No. 8 Serpent Crescent. So who better than this self-styled pillar of society to shine a spotlight on the decline and dysfunction, not to mention the dubious activities, past and present, of many of her neighbours. Nefarious deeds and bad behaviour deserve harsh treatment and appropriate retribution, if not consignment to one of Dante’s fiendish nine circles of hell. At least that’s what Megan believes – in fact she’s been taking matters into her own hands, unnoticed, for years. And now she has decided to write it all down, to shake all of the skeletons loose, and rejoice in the inventive punishments she devised and personally delivered to the wicked.
Then her neighbour Elizabeth Cardew, a lecturer in Classical Studies, suffers a stroke and Megan is entrusted with the keys to No. 9. While Elizabeth begins a long recovery at the local care facility, Megan relishes the chance to snoop. Curious as to ‘what a stroke victim looks like’, she decides to visit and see for herself. A bond develops between the two women – one a cold and calculating sociopath, the other a courageous and lonely academic – something that takes both of them by surprise.

Vivian de Klerk was born in 1954 in Grahamstown, South Africa. She served as Professor of Linguistics at Rhodes University, where she spent 24 years as an academic, devoted to teaching and research, and then 7 years as Dean of Students. She has published numerous scholarly articles and 2 academic books during that time, but now she is having fun, enjoying herself, indulging in writing pure fiction. Her debut novel, Not to Mention was awarded the Gerald Kraak writing grant.

THE APOTHECARY’S GARDEN de Jeanette Lynes

An enchanting and spirited historical novel about the language of flowers and the supernatural power of love.

THE APOTHECARY’S GARDEN
by Jeanette Lynes
HarperCollins Canada, June 2022

Belleville 1860: Lavender Fitch is a twenty-eightyear-old spinster, whose station in life is diminished after the death of her father, the local apothecary. Her only inheritance is the family house along with its extensive gardens. To make ends meet, Lavender resorts to selling flowers at the local market.
Then, one day, a glamorous couple step off the train at the railway station. The lady is famed Spirit Medium, Allegra Trout, who casts a spell over the town with her striking beauty and otherworldly charms. Her handsome but disfigured assistant, Robert, singles out Lavender and buys her entire cart of flowers.
The arrival of the legendary Medium is well-timed. Lavender has been searching for a secret cache of money and requires Allegra’s help to contact her dead mother for clues to its hidden location. As the town’s anticipation for Allegra’s final show begins to mount, so do Lavender’s questions. Will the spirits make contact, or is Allegra a fraud? Is Robert really Allegra’s brother, or is something else going on? Will Robert and Lavender’s relationship continue to blossom or collapse under the weight of deception? Will Lavender find the money left by her mother or be forced from her home and beloved garden?

Jeanette Lynes is the author of seven collections of poetry and two novels. Her first, The Factory Voice (2009), was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Jeanette directs the MFA in Writing program at the University of Saskatchewan. 

NO TWO PERSONS d’Erica Bauermeister

A story-in-stories about a debut novel and the people whose lives it touches, by NYT bestselling author of The Scent Keeper Erica Bauermeister.

NO TWO PERSONS
by Erica Bauermeister
St. Martin’s Press, May 2023
(via Writers House)

In NO TWO PERSONS, Erica Bauermeister imagines the life of a novel sprung from the heart of a young woman named Alice, who loses her beloved brother too young. The novel Alice writes in tribute to him finds its way to a wide-ranging cast of characters: a literary agent and her assistant, an angry artist, a freediver, a movie intimacy coordinator, a homeless teenager, an exiled actor, an infatuated bookseller, and the caretaker of a ghost town. Together, their luminous and interconnected stories reveal how books can change us in the most unexpected of ways, connecting us not only to our own truths, but to our shared humanity.

Erica Bauermeister is the New York Times bestselling author of House Lessons, The Scent Keeper, The School of Essential Ingredients, Joy for Beginners, and The Lost Art of Mixing. She is also the co-author of non-fiction works, 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Washington, and has taught there and at Antioch University.

PANDORA d’Anita Abriel

Based on historical research and inspired by the lives of the women living in New York during the American Gilded Age, PANDORA is perfect for fans of the TV blockbusters The Gilded Age and Bridgerton.

PANDORA
by Anita Abriel
Lake Union, Spring 2023
(via Writers House)

In early 1920s New York, during the height of the Victorian Gilded Age, when fortunes were made and most young women dreamt of the most eligible bachelor, Pandora Carmichael dreams of becoming a fashion designer and achieving the independency forbidden to women of the time. Her main impediment is that she does not belong to the right family.
Pandora begins a journey of love and ambition that takes her from the rolling hills of Hyde Park, New York to 1920s Manhattan.

Anita Abriel was born in Sydney, Australia. She received a BA in English literature with a minor in creative writing from Bard College. She is the internationally bestselling author of The Light After the War and Lana’s War.