The Indie Next List

“There has been a rash of then-and-now novels recently, but Williams weaves together two time frames so skillfully that the reader doesn’t feel a bit discomfited by the time and narrator-switching in successive chapters. Williams is a skillful storyteller who keeps the reader intrigued by how it will all pan out.”

“Returning to one of his favorite subjects, Alan Furst examines life in Nazi-occupied Paris through a quasi-doppelgänger: Paul Ricard, an accomplished writer of spy fiction. Facing writer’s block, Ricard is presented with an unusual request from a Polish friend to get involved in the Resistance. Together, they manage to make contact with Polish slave laborers (who are actually engineers) in Germany to provide the Resistance — and eventually the English — with technical details and specimens of detonators and torpedoes. In 1942, with Paris gripped by war privations and the terror of the German SS, life was dark, difficult, and exhilarating, and Ricard takes to his assignments as if he had trained for them. Furst is the best writer of espionage fiction today.”

“The Sacrament is a thoughtful, atmospheric, and quietly intense novel about how our choices have effects that must be felt our whole lives, and how we grapple with those consequences. I loved settling in with this novel.”

“The Ship of Dreams recounts the Titanic epic largely from the perspective of six of her first-class passengers, including the naval architect who designed the ship; a movie star; a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and his 17-year-old son, Isidor Strauss, who founded Macy’s Department Store; and Lucy Noël Martha Leslie, the Countess of Rothes. This incisive and engrossing account of the ship’s evolution and tragic loss injects an intelligent light into an event that is as much enshrouded in legend as the Titanic’s remains are in the deep, dark ocean. This story is both a paean to the genius of the age that gave birth to the Titanic and a eulogy for the hubris that doomed her.”

“In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas chooses with her eyes wide open to marry Mr. Collins, the unctuous clergyman who has nothing to recommend him but the ability to provide her with a household of her own. In The Clergyman’s Wife, Molly Greeley pauses to consider the backstory and consequences of this choice. This is a gentle story, notable for the author’s clear, lyrical writing and consideration of the real financial challenges facing women in Jane Austen’s day, as well as her empathy for the characters — especially, and perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Collins — without letting them off the hook for their moral choices. With a light touch, wisdom, and care, Greeley explores questions that provide a richer understanding of history and of our own lives.”

“The German House captured my imagination. The author expertly unfolds the story of Eva Bruhns, a translator for the 1963 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, with such believability that the reader feels complicit in the denial of the past. As she hears testimonies, Eva discovers that anyone can be guilty of some horrific role in the war, however unaware they were of inhumane acts, or however prey to propaganda. The reader’s nausea will build as Eva gets closer to the truth. This historical novel seethes with life and feels authentic at every turn.”

“In Anyone, Charles Soule takes what was so fun about his novel The Oracle Year and perfects it. This takes the high-paced adventure of a spy novel or an action film and pairs it with the thoughtfulness that is found in really good science fiction. Soule puts his characters through unimaginable stressors to make us evaluate our views on race, identity, humanity, and the very existence of the self.”

“This is a fun and engaging read. Don’t let the concept (a role reversal of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) or cute cover fool you. There is a lot more depth to this plot than meets the eye; it’s about being seen and accepting your true self. Jack and Hannah both try to be what they think others want them to be but, because of their deceptions due to job obligations, are actually their natural selves. I can’t wait for book two.”

“Michael Crummey is a master chronicler of isolation, and The Innocents is a perfect example. Following an orphaned brother and sister trying to survive on the coast of Newfoundland, this is a spare and elemental novel about the power of family and the act of survival, even in the harshest circumstances.”

“Singh brings us into the wild side of New Zealand, to a tiny village where the new cop knows everybody by name and really cares about protecting them. Maya has returned to find her old school friends greatly changed — and one may be a serial killer. This thriller is compelling; the characters are fresh and exciting but realistic. The tension builds with every page turned, right up to the finale — wow!”

“The year: 1468. The place: a remote English village. Christopher Fairfax, a young cleric, has come to bury a priest whose interest in old, heretical artifacts may have led to his death. Robert Harris, master of the historical novel, has written a corker — I won’t say anything to spoil the twist!”

“There are very few narratives of the tribulations and deprivations of polar expedition. Ernest Shackleton’s is the most well-known; the Franklin Expedition’s is the most horrific, but we have no survivors to recount it for us. The Greely Expedition of 1881, however, remains largely unknown. Here, Buddy Levy has resurrected the forgotten story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ participation in the First International Polar Year explorations using the recollections and diaries of the participants. That anyone survived is almost incredible; that we have their stories and photographs even more so. Gripping.”

“Author Alice Blanchard begins her first thriller series with a novel about rookie detective Natalie Lockhart. She’s young, she has a past — and who doesn’t in the sleepy little town of Burning Lake, New York? — but she also has a good heart and the need to find out what happened to nine missing transients. What she finds, however, may be worse than murder, and soon involves more than the original missing people. There’s something distinctly evil lurking in the hearts and minds of certain residents of Burning Lake; the question is, can Natalie keep her head above water long enough to learn the truth and bring justice to light? Crime writer Ann Cleeves calls Blanchard’s writing powerful, and I could not agree more!”

“Rarely is a book such an absolute feast—for the senses, for the intellect, and, above all, for the soul. Morgenstern dazzles in her latest novel, an intricately wrought tale populated by lovers, mystery, and sumptuous magic. The Starless Sea is an ode to book lovers everywhere, reanimating the excitement as well as the pure possibility felt when reading books like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I am reminded of the famous C.S. Lewis quote, ‘One day, you’ll be old enough to read fairytales again.’ When that day comes, The Starless Sea will be waiting for you.”

“When a politician’s young wife hires her old school friend as a nanny for her two stepchildren, the main duty will be to keep the twins out of sight and out of trouble. That’s because the kids’ father is a senator and under serious consideration to be the next Secretary of State. But what if the children can’t control themselves? Who is the best person to take care of children who are afflicted with spontaneous combustion? Obviously, a woman with no fear of fire, nothing to lose, and nothing to gain. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this unique novel explores family dynamics, resentment, and retribution, leaving the reader with a new perspective on motherhood and what it means to be loyal to those you love.”

“Joseph Kanon has produced his best effort yet, bringing us along on a mission to the Buenos Aires of 1962 to hunt down a reputedly deceased Nazi concentration camp doctor. With the backdrop of the earlier elaborate capture of Eichmann, this one is a homemade operation reluctantly carried out by the nephew of a camp survivor (the eponymous accomplice) and involving the CIA and Mossad. The Accomplice explores the life of a socialite in Buenos Aires, the conflicting emotions of the target’s daughter and the reluctant spy, the limits of familial loyalty and of trust, and the danger of playing all sides. Emotional zigs and zags leave the reader spellbound as the cat and mouse game closes in on the capture of a detestable unrepentant Nazi.”

“Solomon is perfectly suited to expand the concept of a civilization of merfolk whose origins were born in the violence of pregnant African women sent to the depths from the vessels of white slave traders. The Deep focuses on Yetu, whose role as historian is to be individually burdened with six centuries of memories of all the wajinru (merfolk), and the consequences when she abdicates her responsibility. With shades of Hans Christian Andersen, Ursula Le Guin, and Lois Lowry, plus inimitable explorations of difficult social interrelationships, Solomon’s short tome is, indeed, a deep read.”

“I am in love with Jami Attenberg’s writing, and was gripped by All This Could Be Yours from the opening pages. Everything about the Tuchmans felt so true to me: Alex’s confusion and anger toward the family’s toxic, now-comatose patriarch, Victor; Barbra’s isolation in her later years after a long marriage to a brute; Twyla and Gary’s unwinding secret selves—all of it is so perfectly told and paced. Full of Attenberg’s trademark dry wit and precise, uncomfortable insight into the psychology of family love (and its close cousin, family hate), this novel had me laughing with genuine joy and crying in real sadness at the same time.”

“In the wake the recognition Susannah Callahan received from her memoir "Brain on Fire", in which she wrote about her struggle with an auto-immune disease that briefly stole her sanity, she became a crusader for the awareness of psychiatry's abuses of its patients in recent history and the contemporary anti-psychiatry movement. The author's superb narration of the audio book does justice to her intelligent prose and the stories she tells of many different pseudo-patients, including Callahan herself, who worked to expose the limitations of psychiatry as a branch of medicine.”