A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

That September 2, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe.

Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser Bruguera, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile.

When opportunity to seek refuge in Chile arises, they take it, boarding a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to the promised 'long petal of sea and wine and snow' over the seas. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world.

A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.

318 pages (January 2020)

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Title Read-alikes: In the Night of Time by Antonia Molina Muñoz; Guernica by Dave Boling; The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste; The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War by Serge Pey; Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales; The Wrong Blood by Manuel de Lope; Love and Ruin by Paula McLain; Exit West by Mohsin Hamid; Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman; The Dutch House by Ann Patchett; The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See; Afterlife by Julia Alvarez; The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich and The Separate Rose by Pablo Neruda.

We Are All Made of Stars by Rowan Coleman

A dedicated nurse, Stella finds comfort at the hospice where she works the late shift, especially since her husband returned from Afghanistan—cold, distant, and shattered by painful memories he refuses to share. The hospice at night is another world, where the dying receive closure by creating the letters that Stella helps them write. The pages are filled with love and humor, sometimes regret, and, occasionally, even instructions for a perplexed husband on how to run appliances. There’s one rule: The letters are mailed only after the patient has passed.

Suddenly Stella is faced with a dilemma: A woman under her care, Grace, has written a confession to the son she abandoned many years before. The letter clearly needs to be read before Grace dies. But if Stella mails it now, she breaks the rule—and risks tampering not only with Grace’s wishes but also with fate.

Navigating passion and grief, loyalty and loss, and a marriage threatened by silence and secrets, Stella discovers that letters hold a special power: granting solace, saving memories, nurturing relationships. As the words endure, love redeems.

342 pages. (July 2016)

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Title Read-alikes: And Again by Jessica Chiarella; Me Before You by Jojo Moyes; The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey; Bearing the Body by Ehud Havazelet; The Mother's Promise by Sally Hepworth; Nora Webster by Colm Toibin; Tempting Fate by Jane Green; On Second Thought by Kristan Higgins; A Walk Along the Beach by Debbie Macomber; Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt; and Ned's Circus of Marvels by Justin Fisher.

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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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 American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

Be careful what you wish for.

 

Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

Witty, moving, and brilliantly entertaining, The American Heiress marks the debut of a glorious storyteller who brings a fresh new spirit to the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James.

468 pages (August 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: That Churchill Woman by Stephanie Barron; The American Duchess by Karen Harper; Decorum by Kaaren Christopherson; Belgravia by Julian Fellowes; Never Seduce a Scoundrel by Sabrina Jeffries; Temptation's Darling by Johanna Lindsey; The Perfect Lover by Stephanie Laurens; The Naked Duke by Sally MacKenzie; Duchess in Love by Eloisa James; The Maze at Windermere by Gregory Blake Smith; Victoria by Daisy Goodwin; The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki; and The Woman Before Wallis: a novel of Windsors, Vanderbilts, and royal scandal by Bryn Turnbull.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young

The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.

From the day in 1907 that eleven-year-old Riley Purefoy meets Nadine Waveney, daughter of a well-known orchestral conductor, he takes in the difference between their two families: his, working-class; hers, "posh" and artistic. Just a few years later, romance and these differences erupt simultaneously with the war in Europe. In a fit of fury and boyish pride, Riley enlists in the army and finds himself involved in the transformative nightmare of the twentieth century.

While Riley and his commanding officer, Peter Locke, fight for their country and their survival in the trenches of Flanders, Peter's lovely and naive wife, Julia, and his cousin Rose eagerly await his return. But the sullen, distant man who arrives home on leave is not the Peter they knew. Worried that her husband is slipping away, Julia is left alone with her fears when Rose joins the nursing corps to work with a pioneering plastic surgeon treating wounded and disfigured soldiers.

Only eighteen at the outbreak of the war, Nadine and Riley want to make promises to each other—but how can they when their future is out of their hands? Youthful passion is on their side, but then their loyalty is tested by terrible injury, and even more so by the necessarily imperfect rehabilitation that follows.

Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.

330 pages (May 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: Atonement by Ian McEwan; The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason; The First of July by Elizabeth Speller; The Absolutist by John Boyne; Life Class by Pat Barker; The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P. S. Duffy; The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear; Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden; and Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.