1917
9 books
- You settle into Isak’s stubborn work of turning wilderness into a farm, and the book’s slow, earthy rhythm makes ordinary labor feel almost mythic. It’s austere and sometimes oddly cold, but rewarding if you can spend time with a man who trusts soil more than society.
- A quiet one: Roger Gale, a widower in a New York changing faster than he can follow, trying to understand his three grown daughters, who each answer the modern world differently. It moves slowly and tenderly, more about aging and family love than plot, so bring patience.
- Holmes is older here, and it shows in the best way; you get him faking a fatal illness in The Dying Detective and, in the title story, coaxed out of beekeeping retirement as war looms. It's a bit wistful, which suits him more than you'd expect.
- Wallace at his breeziest here: Kate runs a whole gang of hardened crooks by being smarter than everyone in the room, and watching Scotland Yard's Michael Pretherston fall for the woman he's meant to catch is half the fun. Light, fast, cheerfully implausible, and it knows it.
- Sinclair sends a rich kid undercover into a Colorado coal camp, and watching Hal learn what a company town actually does to people, right up to a mine disaster handled with pure corporate cold blood, still lands. It's a message novel, angry and blunt, but the anger is earned.
- If you liked the Scarlet Pimpernel, this one takes you to Nantes during the Terror, where Carrier's drownings make the stakes genuinely grim, and Percy stays offstage longer than you'd want. The revenge plot against Yvonne is pure melodrama, but it's melodrama done with real conviction.
- Helen McGill is pushing forty, tired of baking for her ungrateful brother, so she buys a horse-drawn book wagon from a funny little redheaded man and just goes. Short, cheerful, and sweet without being sappy, perfect for an afternoon when you need one.
- Early Wodehouse, so the jokes come fast and the plot gets gloriously silly: Jimmy Crocker ends up having to impersonate himself, which is harder than it sounds. If you like farce built with watchmaker precision, and one truly horrible child named Ogden, this is a happy afternoon.
- Kennaston is a middle-aged novelist who dreams his way into his own romances chasing a woman he can never quite touch, and Cabell keeps winking at you the whole time (the punchline of the sigil is worth it alone). Slow, ornate, ironic; lovely if that's your mood.