Saunders's strange, fascinating novel involves griping, sniping characters in limbo between life and death near the start of the Civil War, often in denial about their circumstances, with Abraham Lincoln's young son Willie at the center of a struggle for control of his soul. “Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous

Book two of the series continues to be playful, mischievous, wonderfully detailed about Victorian life, and full of supernatural...

I love an intersection of historical fiction and mystery, two genres I love. Some of the books listed here also have supernatural elements.