Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War

edited by Anne Boston

Lord Jim at Home

by Dinah Brooke

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

by Jonathan Freedland

The Light Years (Cazalet Chronicles #1)

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Marking Time (Cazalet Chronicles #2)

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Confusion (Cazalet Chronicles #3)

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Casting Off (Cazalet Chronicles #4)

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Broken House: Growing Up Under Hitler

by Horst Krüger

Prophet Song

by Paul Lynch

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 the life she knew while a newly-elected Fascist regime cracks down, an insurgency intensifies, and civil war brings Ireland to collapse. Although billed as political dystopia, similar situations have happened before—are happening now—all over the world. Lynch said that he wanted to create a work of “radical empathy” and as Eilish moves through stages of disorientation, anxiety, terror, and grief, his poetic style evokes the physicality of her emotions, compelling you to share them and join her journey. Warning: this book demands an intrepid reader. The trip is harrowing but rewards you with keen insight into humanity and history and maybe even the resolve to help make it never have to happen again.

Ex-Wife

by Ursula Parrott

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 reader’s hindsight makes for a richly layered literary treat. This best-seller was published mere months before the stock market crash of ‘29 and Parrott’s contemporaries no doubt commiserated with the characters’ disillusionment with a mostly theoretical sexual freedom. But as our heroine Patricia learns that endings are also beginnings, I found this unexpectedly moving novel more hopeful than wistful. I also realized that while the 1950s may have spawned “teenagers”, Flappers were the first women to experience a life stage that we now gratefully take for granted: young singlehood. So put on Rhapsody in Blue, mix yourself a gin fizz or four, and soak up the spirit of twenty-somethings in 1920’s NYC.

High Street

by J.M. Richards and Eric Ravilious

The Hopkins Manuscript

by R.C. Sherriff

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’ll give it a go! When Sherriff wrote this “cosy catastrophe” in 1939, with war looming, it reflected the anxieties of its readers. But an intriguing foreword (do not skip!) sets the groundwork for something more far-reaching. The literary device also defuses any unbearable dread. You know the worst has happened and can relax and enjoy what follows: the titular manuscript, in which Edward Hopkins records his experiences from the time he learns of the moon’s imminent collision with the earth until he can no longer hold a pen. He’s a bit of a pompous fool and an amateur poultry breeder, all of which provide regular doses of humor to take the edge off his eerie tale. But in the end, his apprehension of the Cataclysm and its repercussions transforms him into an endearing and enduring Everyman. It's the first book that I know will be in my top 10 books of 2023.

In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

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 presented seamlessly and in powerful ways: the carnage of the Somme seen through the eyes of a German machine-gunner, reproduced newspaper lists of the dead that the reader scans just as anxious civilians did. The heart of the novel is the relationship between two students as one follows the other from boarding school to the trenches. Winn conjures the intensity of teenagers in love and war, yet she knows that—like the soldiers who had periodic rests away from the front—readers need to recuperate too. An interlude set in an officers’ prison camp provides respite by showcasing her humor and storytelling panache. I can’t think of a better introduction (especially for Gen Z—now the same age as the soldiers) to what was once called the War to End All Wars. And I can’t wait to see what Winn does next!