NY: Viking, 1999.
A few avid fellow readers have been urging this book on me for some time (we often start conversations with “What? You haven’t read that yet?!”) but I’ve just now gotten around to it. I wish I hadn’t waited.
Sidebottom, Harry. Lion of the Sun.
(Warrior of Rome, Book 3) NY: Overlook Press, 2010.
I take my history seriously so it’s always nice to find a writer of historical novels who cares enough about his craft to include another thirty-odd pages of commentary, context, discussion of original sources, and glossary at the back.
Nakamura, Fuminori. The Thief.
NY: Soho Press, 2012.
I kind of have a thing about contemporary Japanese fiction. I don’t know why, really, but books by people like Ryu Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Natsuo Kirino, and Mitsuo Kakuta, who are very different from each other in style and subject matter, nevertheless appeal to me on a number of levels.
Walter, Jess. Citizen Vince.
NY: HarperCollins, 2005.
“Vince Camden” isn’t his real name but he’s gotten used to it, just like he’s come to enjoy the donut-baking job in Spokane that the federal witness protection people put him into in October 1980. His life could be much worse.
Lurie, Alison. Truth and Consequences.
NY: Viking, 2005.
Lurie is a first-rate storyteller, and has been for fifty years now, though her oeuvre isn’t huge. You take a stroll with her around a college campus in upstate New York, and she tells you things about the academics she knows, and their families, and before you know it, you’re caught up in their lives and relationships.
Renault, Mary. The Last of the Wine.
NY: Random House, 1956.
This was the first of Renault’s historical novels set in the classical Greek world, and it’s still arguably her best, encompassing life in Athens and in the Aegean during the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War.
Renault, Mary. The King Must Die.
NY: Pantheon, 1958.
I first got hooked on history, and therefore on historical fiction, as a highly imaginative and rather geeky kid living in Europe in the ‘50s. Anywhere we went, I could look around and see buildings and street scenes that were ancient before the United States was even invented, and it affected me on a deep level.
Smith, Jennifer E. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.
NY: Little, Brown, 2012.
Seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan of Connecticut is not having a good day. Being very reluctantly packed off to London by her mother to act as a bridesmaid in her father’s second wedding, she misses her flight at JFK by four minutes.
Rankin, Ian. Tooth and Nail.
NY: St. Martin, 1992.
Detective Inspector John Rebus of the Borders and Lothian Police (i.e., Edinburgh) is as thorough a Scot as you can find, but in this quite mature third novel in the series he has to go and deal with those foreigners down in London, and it’s not a pleasant experience for him.
King, Stephen. The Running Man.
NY: Signet, 1982.
Early in his career, King, the modern master of suspense and horror fiction, felt the need for an alter ego through whom he could tell stories of a content and in a style he didn’t feel comfortable doing under his own name, and so he created “Richard Bachman.”
