Liz

The first book I finished this year—published in Germany in 1951 but recently translated into English by NYRB Classics—does two things at once. It immersed me so deeply in pre-WWII, bourgeois Jewish B... (Liz)

It has all the ingredients for my ideal comfort read: a family tree, a house with a name, and a story that spans at least a century. As one plotline unfolds over two weeks in 1960, tales of earlier ge... (Liz)

I hesitate to use an overworked booksellers’ phrase, but I can’t get around the fact that this 1947 novel epitomizes the “rediscovered gem.” It’s a 170-page story about a woman, a family, and a villag... (Liz)

If the first thing you think when you finish a book is, “How did he do that!?”, you can be sure the author has pulled off something remarkable. I’ve long admired Szalay’s style and enjoyed his previou... (Liz)

New-ish Book of the Week Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi I love oral history and I love speculative fiction so I grabbed... (Liz)

This book reminded me of the 1983 movie, The Big Chill, but with more nuance and an off-beat soundtrack (and an Australian setting). Published just a year later, it’s also about college classmates fro... (Liz)

I don’t often read memoirs but this reissue of two volumes by British writer Storm Jameson falls smack dab in the middle of my current literary sweet spot. Born in the small coastal town of Whitby, Ja... (Liz)

It opens with the typical hook: a missing child. Tom Hargreaves, newbie tabloid hack, takes the bait and is formulating lurid headlines before he even gets to the scene. He plies the suspect’s family... (Liz)

Attention all Anglophile WWII buffs: you do not want to miss McNally Editions’ reissue of this fantastic 1950 novel! It’s the life story of a type of Englishman who—although born on January 1, 1900—re... (Liz)

When I finished this year’s Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song, I felt that I hadn’t simply read it—I had lived it. The story follows Eilish Stack, a middle-aged working mother who’s trying to maintain... (Liz)

I’m discovering that, even more than historical fiction, I love reading stories written during the particular era in which they are set. The combination of the author’s first-hand knowledge and the re... (Liz)

In her assured debut, Winn accomplishes the mission of historical fiction with wide-ranging research, emotional depth, and a dash of derring-do. WWI buffs will recognize details and themes, all presen... (Liz)

I’m fine with all sorts of grim reading material but apocalypse stories are just TOO stressful. That said, if it’s set in an English village and written by the author of The Fortnight in September, I’... (Liz)

This work of historical fiction, set in Quebec in 1697-98, is a quiet charmer. By that time, the early, renowned explorers, fur traders, and missionaries were passing away and their deeds spun into th... (Liz)

While reading O Caledonia, I thought an apt subtitle would be: Portrait of the Spinster as a Young Girl, even though our protagonist is found murdered—at age 16—on the first page. Janet definitely has... (Liz)

I tend to avoid sci-fi, but when I heard that John Wyndham—a grandparent of the genre—had written a novel considered an example of “cozy catastrophe,” well, resistance was futile. Along with the Engli... (Liz)

Here’s the pitch: a soap opera about local government with hints of Middlemarch and Peyton Place. Well. You’d forgive a publisher for taking a pass, but this 1937 novel was an instant bestseller, adap... (Liz)

Within a few paragraphs, I knew I was in good hands. The hands of a writer at the top of her game, exhibiting perfect control without apparent effort. The story is set in late-1960’s London and follow... (Liz)

There’s a literary True Crime wave cresting in 2022 and it is Meta: teeming with books of all types that dissect our long obsession with the genre. Centuries before Penny Dreadfuls were condemned for... (Liz)

Even if you only occasionally visit the crime genre, you’re acquainted with the depressive, philosophical, highly capable but unconventional police detective. But that vast brotherhood springs from a... (Liz)

When it comes to the British Home Front during WWII, the Blitz gets all the attention. As a Blitz-Lit lover myself, I won’t deny its historical dazzle. But having just finished this diary, kept during... (Liz)

I was that weirdo who adored every book I had to read in high school. Now, I’m that weirdo who seeks out the books teenagers in other countries have to read. And that’s how I discovered why Sunset Son... (Liz)

I’ll admit the set-up is not promising even in the best of times: two upper-middle-aged/class friends, one with cancer, the other caring for her. BUT STICK WITH ME! In the highly capable hands of one... (Liz)

Melchor’s English-language debut is a portrait of a Mexican village as unnerving and entrancing as any painting by Bruegel or Bosch. The scene opens on the village's outskirts, its resident Witch foun... (Liz)

These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly... (Liz)

Booksellers geek out devising pithy comparisons that telegraph the feel of one book with the modified title of another. So I gave myself a pat on the back when I realized I had just finished the Hunga... (Liz)

I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the bookstore asking for a type of fiction the Guardian has recently dubbed "Uplit." Not escapist fluff to help forget reality, but books to reassure them... (Liz)

The buzz surrounding this award-winning French author’s first English translation—the saga of a family of pig farmers—always includes a warning along the lines of “You’ll never eat bacon again!” Well,... (Liz)

Who knew that NunLit was a genre with a passionately devoted following? Not me, until I read this unique story about a medieval convent, considered one of its classics. Townsend writes brilliantly abo... (Liz)

Why is laughing-out-loud at the written word so rare that it feels like an unexpected gift when it happens? Well, whatever the reason, this seriously funny coming-of-age story had me LOL-ing so often... (Liz)

While perusing a list of women mystery writers’ favorite mysteries by women, one plot synopsis caught my eye: two girls swap identities while evacuating Edinburgh in 1940. When I looked on Goodreads i... (Liz)

In Nobel Prize winner Alexievich’s latest book to be translated into English we hear from the most unacknowledged of all war veterans—those who experienced it as children. The physical details of thei... (Liz)

For all my fellow Blitz Lit fans out there: have I found a book for you! This thrilling memoir of WWII London is written with such immediacy and attention to detail that I swear I could hear my heartb... (Liz)

You could subtitle this book “Diary of a Madman,” except Dr. Glas is too logical and high-functioning for that. Maybe “Diary of a Sociopath,” but I’ve never come across one so genuinely charming and s... (Liz)

These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly... (Liz)

For many Seattleites, Snowpocalypse 2019 was an enforced staycation requiring the flip side of a “beach read.” And by pure luck (and Haley’s recommendation) I had a copy of The Orphan of Salt Winds on... (Liz)

I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husban... (Liz)

When I first started to read on my own I couldn’t get enough of Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family chapter books, which I recently heard called the “Jewish Little House on the Prairie.” The series f... (Liz)

This one sneaked up on me. It’s the story of two bourgeois families, neighbors in a Northern Italian town, beginning with the deaths of both patriarchs and following the second generation as it comes... (Liz)

I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husban... (Liz)

I’ve become a bit obsessed with English villages. Not that I want to live in one—it just seems the most inviting microcosm through which to read about history happening. Whether over years (Reservoir... (Liz)

As far as time-travel goes, Charlotte takes a minimal leap—she only goes forty years into the past. But since she is living in 1958, today’s reader goes back a nice round century. Details about the Gr... (Liz)

I want to keep on top of our Russian situation but I also need to maintain my mental health. So instead of Masha Gessen’s documentary-type account of post-Soviet life, I picked up her little brother’s... (Liz)

One of my favorite books from last year was the Booker-longlisted Reservoir 13. Although it didn’t win, it was such a phenomenon in Britain that the BBC commissioned McGregor to write a series of comp... (Liz)

The Gallery turned out to be a masterpiece of WWII literature I wasn’t expecting and didn’t know I needed. Burns alternates brief recollections of his travels in the military bureaucracy trailing the... (Liz)

I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the bookstore asking for a type of fiction the Guardian has recently dubbed "Uplit." Not escapist fluff to help forget reality, but books to reassure them... (Liz)

Every so often I feel like reading about rich people in New York. Not just any book—it needs to be a bit sociological (I don't want to ogle, ahem, but to analyze) and if it provides some schadenfreude... (Liz)

Like the real world, the internet contains places just too unpleasant to visit oneself. So I am grateful to intrepid online explorer Angela Nagle for letting me sit in my armchair and be queasily fasc... (Liz)

Elmet by Fiona Mozley (Liz)

A while ago I was calling Turgenev the Russian Jane Austen—now I've discovered that the country has its own Brontë sisters! Like the British writers, the Khvoshchinskaya sisters were poor but educated... (Liz)

The Unwomanly Face of War is time-machine history: it's not concerned with why events happened, it explains what it felt like to live through them. Or as Nobel laureate Alexievich puts it much more Ru... (Liz)

I don't know if it's because the film noir idiom is so familiar or if lit noir (?) is just naturally cinematic, but I didn't so much read In a Lonely Place as I saw and heard it. Hughes's writing is f... (Liz)

Ever since I heard about the big splash The Essex Serpent made last year in Great Britain, I have been anticipating its appearance on our shores. And this wondrous book ended up arriving exactly when... (Liz)

Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels (Liz)

New and Old Books of the Week Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels Russia... (Liz)

New and Old Books of the Week Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels Russia... (Liz)

A few years ago I set myself a project of reading fiction that was written just as Nazism was taking hold in Germany. I wanted to get a sense of how people felt while their world was turning upside do... (Liz)

In his first stab at psychological suspense, poet and novelist Lasdun proves himself a pro. He takes the most basic narrative tools—a vacation home, a love triangle—and with an ear for inner monologue... (Liz)

I was reading this book at the same time images of the little boy injured in the bombing of Aleppo were all over the media. In the same way those few seconds of video crystallized the trauma war infli... (Liz)

Lara Feigel's work of WWII history and literary criticism, The Love-Charm of Bombs, made my personal Top 10 books of 2015. Her latest, The Bitter Taste of Victory, has done it again—but a little bit d... (Liz)

New and Old Books of the Week The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel Lara Feigel's wo... (Liz)

Maybe it has something to do with Seattle's recent hot weather, but I've already found the book I'll be recommending to anyone who comes in to the bookshop looking for an upbeat summer read. It's a re... (Liz)

When The Argonauts came out last year, I was intimidated by Nelson's genre-fluid book about her life with a gender-fluid partner, not wanting to be schooled on a topic about which I'm curious but some... (Liz)

Old Books of the Week The Argonauts and The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson When The Argonauts came out last year, I was intimidated by Nelson's genre-fluid book about her life with a gender-fluid partner,... (Liz)

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was eccentric even by celebrity-author standards, so it's fitting that her imagined life story defies the conventions of typical historical fiction. Instead o... (Liz)

As a former bookish girl who loved to read about other bookish girls, I hereby nominate Joan Skraggs a worthy successor to literary heroines Anne Shirley and Francie Nolan. In her newly acquired diary... (Liz)

You know how sometimes the only thing that will hit the spot is an episode or twelve of Law & Order? Well, these stories, by a lawyer and bestselling author in Germany, satisfy in a similar way. L... (Liz)

With all their magic wonderlands and scary dystopias, I sometimes despair that my kids will ever be interested in actual History. So I'm a little obsessed with Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, a series... (Liz)

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: The Underground Abductor With all their magic wonderlands and scary dystopias, I sometimes despair that my kids will ever be interested in actual History. So I'm a littl... (Liz)

As I was becoming comfortably immersed in high-society, pre-WWI Europe in Bedford's 1956 novel, just republished by NYRB Classics, I began to sense an ominous undercurrent: time seemed to be speeding... (Liz)

In this heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding story of a brother and sister evacuated from London to the countryside during World War II, Bradley's storytelling is pitch-perfect: she reveals Ada's feelings,... (Liz)

I'll read anything Rachel Cusk writes. I've long admired her intelligence and her sure-footed style, and the way she will break the surface of her stories and demand you ponder something big and abstr... (Liz)

I don't know about you, but I always feel like history happens to other people, in other places. And Red Love makes the case that one German family experienced more than its fair share of 20th-century... (Liz)

After their Costa Award-winning Dotter of Her Father's EyesM/em>, Mary and Bryan Talbot have collaborated with Kate Charlesworth for an exhilarating look at the fight for women's suffrage in Britain a... (Liz)