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 Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

A magical debut novel for readers of Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman's myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice.

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind - she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles nearer, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed - this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

322 pages (January 2017)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M. H. Boroson; The Bone Mother by David Demchuk; The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow; Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente; A Discovery of Witches by Deborah E. Harkness; The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern; The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst; Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo; Lady of the Horses by Judith Tarr; Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik; The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty; The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab; and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment; a triumphant and beautifully executed recasting of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam's role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel's younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he'd care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn't known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

282 pages (June 2012)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman; Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift; The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; Someone by Alice McDermott; This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper; The Lost Family by Jenna Blum; One Day in December by Josie Silver; American Stranger by David Plante; Eternal Life by Dara Horn; Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead; The Possibilities by Kaui Hart Hemmings ; The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg; and The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesy.

The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest by Kathryn Johnson

The Gentleman Poet, author Kathryn Johnson’s novel of love, danger, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is a wonderful story that imagines a series of astonishing events that just might have inspired the immortal Bard to pen his magical tale. Told from the point of view of a young servant girl who strikes up a friendship with the not yet famous playwright when they are shipwrecked in the Bermudas, The Gentleman Poet gives a delightful new spin on Shakespearean lore reminiscent of the Academy Award-winning film, Shakespeare in Love.

En route to the Americas in 1609, Elizabeth Persons, a young servant girl, sees her blinding headache as an ominous sign. Sure enough, a hurricane during the final leg of their journey tosses the ill-fated Sea Venture and its one hundred and fifty passengers and crew onto the dreaded shores of the Bermudas, the rumored home of evil spirits and dangerous natives. In the months that pass—time marked by grave hardship, mutiny, adventure, danger . . . and a blossoming love between Elizabeth and the wrecked ship's young cook—she despairs of their ever being rescued. But she finds hope and strength in a remarkable new friendship, forming a fast bond with the Sea Venture's historian, a poet traveling under the name of William Strachey. But Will is more than he seems. To many back home in England, he is known by a different name: Shakespeare. And he sees in their great shared travails the makings of a magical, truly transcendent work of theater.

319 pages (September 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato; Even in Paradise by Elizabeth Nunez; A Place in His Heart by Rebecca Demarino; The Mark of the King by Jocelyn Green; The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow; A Ship for the King by Richard Woodman; Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding; Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson; John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk; The Photograph by Penelope Lively; and Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante.