8 Must-Reads for Your Next Book Binge

BEFORE THE WAR (St. Martin’s Press) by Fay Weldon

Set in London in the 1920s and 30s, the 34^th novel from award-winning British author Fay Weldon takes us into the heart of a family nearly as dysfunctional as the times they live in.

Still waters run deep indeed. The much anticipated “griplit” thriller from the writer of the staggeringly successful Girl On a Train, is set in a small British town with a dark history, involving several women, including a teenager, who died mysteriously in the river. When single mother Nel throws herself off a cliff and drowns, her death sets in motion a series of events that dredge up dangerous and long submerged secrets of the past.

Based on a true story, this timely and politically sensitive novel tells the story of a Chinese boy’s search for his mother, an undocumented immigrant in New York, after she leaves for work one day and disappears without a trace. The Leavers, Lisa Ko’s debut, is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

I FOUND YOU (Atria Books) by Lisa Jewell

Two decades of secrets, a lonely single mother, a missing husband and a man with no memory are at the heart of this dark and very British thriller from the author of The Girls in the Garden.

NEW BOY (Penguin) by Tracy Chevalier

Shakespeare’s Othello, with its enduring themes of racism, love, betrayal and repentance, gets a modern spin in Tracy Chevalier’s new novel, set in a 1970s grade school in suburban Washington DC. New Boy, a story about friends who are torn apart by jealousy and bullying, is the latest volume of the Hogarth series in which the Bard’s plays are reimagined by contemporary authors.

THE ROME AFFAIR (Macmillan) by Karen Swan

This is one for your beach bag. From Globe and Mail bestselling author Karen Swan, this delicious, multi-generational tale is about a young British woman living a year of la dolce vita in Rome who is hired to write the memoir of a 70-something ultra-wealthy socialite with a shocking secret.

This new biography tells the story, for the first time, of 223 French women resisters who were rounded up from Gestapo detention camps and sent to Auschwitz. These women were from all walks of life – teachers, students, chemists, writers, housewives, and even a singer at the Paris Opera. They not only distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and subversive newspapers, but hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, and transported weapons — and for this, most of them paid the ultimate price. The book draws on interviews with survivors and their families, German, French, and Polish archives and documents held by Second World War resistance organizations.

It caused something of an uproar when Eleanor Roosevelt announced she was writing her first book It’s Up to the Women. After all, in 1933, women rarely spoke in public, had barely begun voting and held few public offices. Yet we’re more than glad she took pen to paper, and more than once. Her wise advice, whether its advocating for women to take a leading role in society, civil rights or sharing recipes for budget-friendly, home-cooked meals, are as relevant as if they were written today.

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