Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

A richly imagined, powerful new novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious.

On a dark midwinter's night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed.

Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless.

Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son's secret liaison, stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson's housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone's. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl's identity can be known.

Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, the beginning of this novel will sweep you away on a powerful current of storytelling, transporting you through worlds both real and imagined, to the triumphant conclusion whose depths will continue to give up their treasures long after the last page is turned.

480 pages (December 2018)

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Title Read-alikes: Sin Eater by Megan Campisi; The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern; The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya; A Tall History of Sugar Curdella Forbes; Orkney by Amy Sackville; The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton; The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian; and Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor.

The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber

The Velveteen Daughter reveals for the first time the true story of two remarkable women: Margery Williams Bianco, the author of one of the most beloved children's books of all time - The Velveteen Rabbit - and her daughter Pamela, a world-renowned child prodigy artist whose fame at one time greatly eclipses her mother's.

But celebrity at such an early age exacts a great toll. Pamela's dreams elude her as she struggles with severe depressions, an overbearing father, an obsessive love affair, and a spectacularly misguided marriage. Throughout, her life raft is her mother.

The glamorous art world of Europe and New York in the early 20th century and a supporting cast of luminaries - Eugene O'Neill and his wife Agnes (Margery's niece), Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Richard Hughes, author of A High Wind in Jamaica - provide a vivid backdrop to the Biancos' story. From the opening pages, the novel will captivate readers with its multifaceted and illuminating observations on art, family, and the consequences of genius touched by madness.

416 pages (July 2017)

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Title Read-alikes: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline; All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich; We Are Water by Wally Lamb; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara; The History of Love by Nicole Krauss; Motherland by Maria Hummel; A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass; The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli; Salt Houses by Hala Alyan; Miss Jane by Brad Watson; and The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adoles-cence of hard labor and servitude?

As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.

Seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.

Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship

278 pages (April 2013)

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Title Read-alikes: Home for Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler; Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate; The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trenow; So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore; Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald; The Lightkeeper's Daughters by Jean Pendziwol; The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman; Father's Day by Simon Van Booy; Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams; The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay; The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman; and The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own.

 

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children, a brilliant new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own.  

Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long ago compromised her dream to be a successful artist, mother and lover. She has instead become the “woman upstairs,” a reliable friend and neighbor always on the fringe of others’ achievements. Then into her life arrives the glamorous and cosmopolitan Shahids—her new student Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale, and his parents: Skandar, a dashing Lebanese professor who has come to Boston for a fellowship at Harvard, and Sirena, an effortlessly alluring Italian artist.

When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies, Nora is drawn deep into the complex world of the Shahid family; she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora’s happiness explodes her boundaries, and she discovers in herself an unprecedented ferocity—one that puts her beliefs and her sense of self at stake.

Told with urgency, intimacy and piercing emotion, this brilliant novel of passion and artistic fulfillment explores the intensity, thrill—and the devastating cost—of embracing an authentic life.

253 pages (April 2013)

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Title Read-alikes: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh; The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt; The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold; The Blue Guitar by John Banvile; Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier; Exhibit Alexandra by Natasha Bell; Luster by Raven Leilani; Indiscretion by Charles Dubow; The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood; Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng; The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine; Life After Life by Kate Atkinson; and The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

 

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

 

552 pages (January 2005)

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Title Read-alikes: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys; Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit; Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli; Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang; All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton; Lovely War by Julie Berry; Ashes by Kathryn Lasky; Malka by Mirjam Pressler; The Love That I Have by James Moloney; The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel; They Went Left by Monica Hesse; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need, Ward is nonetheless embarking on a search of monumental proportions—to rediscover his grandmother, now long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life.

 

Wallace Stegner has said of his epic novel, "It's perfectly clear that if every writer is born to write one story, that's my story." It is a testament to the power of Stegner's prose and vision that Angle of Repose, winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, can be appreciated as America's story as well. Based on the correspondence of the little-known 19th century writer, Mary Hallock Foote, the novel's heroes represent opposing but equally strong strains of the American ideal. 

557 pages. (January 1971)

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Title Read-alikes: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Only Story by Julian Barnes; 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster; A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul; The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich; Three Junes by Julia Glass; The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather; Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich; Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi; and All the Wild That Remains by David Gessner.

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan

A sequel to the bestselling, much-beloved Wish You Were Here, Stewart O'Nan's intimate new novel follows Emily Maxwell, a widow whose grown children have long moved away. She dreams of visits by her grandchildren while mourning the turnover of her quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when her sole companion and sister-in-law Arlene faints at their favorite breakfast buffet, Emily's days change. As she grapples with her new independence, she discovers a hidden strength and realizes that life always offers new possibilities.

Like most older women, Emily is a familiar yet invisible figure, one rarely portrayed so honestly. Her mingled feelings - of pride and regret, joy and sorrow - are gracefully rendered in wholly unexpected ways. Once again making the ordinary and overlooked not merely visible but vital to understanding our own lives, Emily, Alone confirms O'Nan as an American master.

255 pages (March 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: This is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison; My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout; Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan; Tempting Fate by Jane Green; Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf; All Adults Here by Emma Straub; George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl; The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood; Who Asked You? by Terry Mcmillan; Bear Necessity by James Gould-Bourn; Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler; Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason; and Monogamy by Sue Miller.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

From concert violinist Gerald Elias (who has played with the Utah Symphony) comes this debut set in the classical music world about the theft of a priceless violin.

Daniel Jacobus is a blind, reclusive, crotchety violin teacher living in self-imposed exile in rural New England. He spends his time chain-smoking, listening to old LPs, and occasionally taking on new students, whom he berates in the hope that they will flee.

Jacobus is drawn back into the world he left behind when he decides to attend The Grimsley Competition at Carnegie Hall. The young winner of this competition is granted the honor of playing the Piccolino Stradivarius, a uniquely dazzling three-quarter-size violin that has brought misfortune to all who possessed it over the centuries. But the violin is stolen before the winner of the competition has a chance to play it, and Jacobus is the primary suspect.

With the help of his friend and former musical partner, Nathaniel Williams, his new student,Yumi Shinagawa, and several quirky sidekicks, Jacobus sets out to prove his innocence and find the stolen Piccolino Strad. Will he be successful? The quest takes him through the halls of wealth and culture, across continents to Japan, and leads him to a…murder.

306 pages. (August 2009)

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"Devil's Trill Sonata" (Part 1); Tartini, Gerald Elias:

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Devil of Echo Lake by Douglas Wynne; The Lost Concerto by Helaine Mario; Farewell Performance by Tessa Barclay; The Rainaldi Quartet by Paul Adam; The Long Way Home by Louise Penny; The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow; Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey; Rock & Roll Never Forgets by Deborah Grabien; Vengeance by Stuart Kaminsky; The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John; and A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay.