Pandemics recur in her stories, as do natural landscapes ravaged by climate change, as do women who are quietly incandescent with rage. –The Atlantic
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Historical
The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak
In The Island of Missing Trees, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal. –Penguin Elif Shafak hardly needs any introduction. Her beautifully designed books can be found everywhere, from airports […]
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Damnation Spring, Ash Robinson
An epic, immersive debut, Damnation Spring is the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life. Thanks to Booknet Canada for the BiblioShare plugin.
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Ark of the Apocalypse, Tobin Marks (Review)
Ark of the Apocalypse by Tobin Marks ISBN: 978-1-63337-237-5 Publisher: Boyle & Dalton Publication date: March 14, 2021 Review by Mary Woodbury Review Tobin Marks’ Ark of the Apocalypse is, in part, a thrilling, page-turning journey into a fictionalized history of our world, with a look-back at some of our […]
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The Old Woman and the River, Ismail Fahd Ismail
The story is about the life-giving powers of women; it is also a story about hope and the possibilities of the human spirit even in the bleakest settings. As it unfolds, the boundary between the real and the fantastical never seems stable. What appears impossible may be possible yet. In […]
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Indie Corner – Jaimee Wriston
Back to the Indie Corner series I’m thrilled to talk with Jaimee Wriston Colbert again. In this Indie Corner, we explore her new novel How Not to Drown (written as Jaimee Wriston). We’ve chatted before at Dragonfly about her books Wild Things and Vanishing Acts. So when I found a […]
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The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma
In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers take advantage of their strict father’s absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his brothers. This prophecy unleashes […]
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The Year Without Summer, Guinevere Glasfurd
Author Guinevere Glasfurd tells Historia how a local news story showed her the way to write her sweeping climate change novel, TheYear Without Summer, which was shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award in 2020. –Historia Mag Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
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Infinite Country, Patricia Engel
Infinite Country is a multi generational family saga about a Colombian family with mixed citizenship status. The story is told through different family members perspectives, time periods, and Andean mythology. The heartache and hope interwoven into this fractured family due to the US’s atrocious immigration policies was so visceral. I […]
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How Beautiful We Were, Imbolo Mbue
“We should have known the end was near.” So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Goodreads Reviews Back to […]
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The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great […]
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Death of a River Guide, Richard Flanagan
Aljaz Cosini is leading a group of tourists on a raft tour down Tasmania’s wild Franklin River when his greatest fear is realized—a tourist falls overboard. An ordinary man with many regrets, Aljaz rises to an uncharacteristic heroism, and offers his own life in trade. Trapped under a rapid and […]
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Betty, Tiffany McDaniel
“A girl comes of age against the knife.” So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence–both from outside the family, and […]
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Crooked Hallelujah, Kelli Jo Ford
Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine–a mixed-blood Cherokee woman– and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels […]
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Dr. Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest, Rebel Girls
From the world of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls comes the historical novel based on the life of Dr. Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist from Kenya. Wangari lives in a magical place in rural Kenya where the soil is rich for planting, the trees abundant, and the […]
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