The summer Chloe Davis was twelve, six girls went missing in her rural Louisiana community.

Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book--or any historical fiction/fantasy series you love?

If you like books like this, you might also like the books on my Greedy Reading List Six Magical Fairy

This historical fiction story in two timelines introduces the little-known real-life figure of librarian I love a book about scrappy librarians , and Janet Skeslien Charles's historical fiction novel Miss Morgan's

Six More Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays), and I hope the ideas here (and those to come) will help you I mentioned the music-focused book Music Is History in an earlier book gift list this season and included

Allision Epstein shapes Charles Dickens's greedy criminal mastermind Jacob Fagin into a character with a rich backstory, showing him to be a man shaped by personal and societal circumstances in mid-1800s London and imagining his efforts to teach thievery to his wards as valuable survival instincts that allow for a desperate survival. Men and women pass by in the street, shadows that avert their gaze and adjust their paths. Maybe they don’t hear him. Maybe they do. Just as his survival depends on hiding his tears until it’s safe to drop them, maybe theirs depends on not taking any grief that isn’t their responsibility. Children have been orphaned before today. More will be orphaned tomorrow. It’s only to him that the pain feels unprecedented. In Allison Epstein's version of mid-nineteenth-century Dickensian London, the traditional villain of Jacob Fagin acquires a rich backstory. Jacob has been scrabbling for existence since he was a young boy. When his father was murdered as a thief in the Jewish quarter, the family's situation became increasingly desperate. His beloved mother Leah kept her son fed and supplied with books, and she worked relentlessly at menial jobs to keep them afloat--until her own untimely demise from disease. Now Jacob's options for survival are limited, and he begins to train as a pickpocket, soon eclipsing his teacher and the other thieves in the area, beginning to be known as Fagin--and gradually, driven by a measure of empathy, taking in and training young people who are also fighting for a chance in a tough world. I haven't read Oliver Twist in many years, yet Fagin has remained ingrained in my head as a selfish, greedy, detestable character. In the Dickens novel, he sings, " In this life, one thing counts / In the bank, large amounts / I'm afraid these don't grow on trees, / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two, boys, / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two." Epstein's textured story imagines what shaped the figure of Fagin into a ringleader of young thieves in that place and time: personal tragedy, societal and class prejudices and limitations, and a strength of will alongside the need to eke out a living. She reworks his gleeful thievery from Dickens's original story, instead showing his emotional connection to other colorful characters living hand-to-mouth in the same slum; his acting through reluctant necessity in training and putting a roof over the heads of young boys who have no other options; and the poverty, strong will, and lack of options that drove him. In Fagin the Thief , Oliver Twist is a minor character (and an irritating, careless, selfish one who might be the undoing of them all). Fagin's motivations and character development inspire empathy for Dickens's traditionally wily, cutthroat, notorious exploiter of young children. Epstein's writing is lovely, and she skillfully evokes details of the place and time, exposes Victorian London's stark class contrasts, and presents the filthy rabbit warren of streets, alleys, and squares flanking the polluted Thames where the band of thieves scrape by, care for each other, sometimes betray one another, and live their complicated lives. More from this Author Allison Epstein is also the author of A Tip for the Hangman and Let the Dead Bury the Dead . You might also be interested in these Bossy reads that are also set in the 1800s.

I loved his gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six I mentioned Life After Life in the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life And for more summer reads, see the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism

Kline deftly exposes the raw truths of tough situations in her character-driven historical fiction. emergences of hope with a richly drawn Australian backdrop--while laying bare the country's often-painful history

If you like books with cold settings, you might like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Books

Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith's beautiful memoir about divorce and life; Go As a River, Shelley Read's debut historical fiction set in mid-century rural Colorado; Illuminations, Mary Sharratt's historical fiction about a of Go As a River. 05 Illuminations by Mary Sharratt Sharratt's carefully researched, richly detailed historical Mary Sharratt offers an exhaustively researched, fascinating historical fiction account of the life of Mary Sharratt also wrote Revelations, historical fiction about the life of Margery of Kempe, a mother

If you enjoy retellings, you might also like some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Magical

and living in Ireland, Saoirse ; and I'm reading Anna Quindlen's novel about friendship and family history Sure that it's an error, Polly digs into her family history to make sure she is who she has always thought

This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and revenge. I loved each time period and the evolution of each strong female character. Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth. Schwab's lesbian vampire tale spans centuries, beginning in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada as a young woman named Maria makes choices to shield her from being a man's pawn and vessel for children until her death--then enters into a future she never could have imagined. In 1827 London, naive young Charlotte lives a sheltered, lovely pastoral life, until an indiscretion results in her banishment to London society. There she encounters an intriguing widow with promises of freedom with deep repercussions. And in 2019 Boston, Alice is trying to break out of her shell at college, and a one-night stand feels like a daring start. But the evening leaves her forever changed, and she's bent on finding answers--and revenge. She reaches out and runs her fingers through the ash. Knows she should feel horrified. But as she rises to her feet, all she feels is hungry. I loved that the women of each time insist upon creating situations in which they have autonomy and agency. For some, this means becoming a vampire and escaping men's foolishness, cruelty, or simply male-dominated societal control. Within the female-focused vampirism of the story, women demand even more from their lives, refusing to be limited by other women, by expectations, or by fear. They create their own versions of freedom, however unorthodox they may be. I enjoyed spending time in each time period. The storyline threading the three timelines together is deliciously intriguing, and a character that was initially a wilting flower finds her strength, her purpose, and her desire for vengeance, all of which is satisfying to witness. The pacing didn't flag, and this was a fast 535-page read. More Love for V. E. Schwab Schwab is also the author of The Fragile Threads of Power , Vengeful , and the wonderful Invisible Life of Addie LaRue , as well as the Shades of Magic series. (The first two books in that series are A Darker Shade of Magic  and A Gathering of Shadows , each of which I gave four Bossy stars. You can check out my review of book 3, A Conjuring of Light , here .)

You might also like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Books with Cold, Wintry Settings to Read

We Meet on Vacation, Christina Lauren's Soulmate Equation, or the books on the Greedy Reading List Six

Philippa Gregory is the author of forty novels, including more than thirty historical fiction works.

World War II historical fiction, a tough female protagonist, a mission of uncovering war criminals in #historicalfiction, #WWII, #spy, #missgrahamscoldwarcookbook 03 The Silent Companions Elsie thought she #historicalfiction, #mysterysuspense, #gothic, #dualstoryline, #silentcompanions What are you reading One spooky suspense story, one World War II historical fiction title, and one combination: a spooky historical

Gideon the Ninth was also mentioned in my Greedy Reading List Six More Postapocalyptic and Dystopian

This short novel explores an alternate-history, near-future, post-war San Francisco in which robots come I love a science-fiction story in which elements of humanity are explored, I love an alternate-history

Sara Donati's historical fiction includes nods to Outlander and The Last of the Mohicans, considers the Regardless of its true origins, Into the Wilderness did scratch the itch of reading a combination of historical also the author of the wonderful book The Gilded Hour as well as Where the Light Enters and ten other historical

Davies's slim, luminous, heartbreaking novel sets a story of isolation and human connection against the brutal removal of impoverished citizens from the land in mid-19th century Scotland. He found himself wishing he could go back and start again and do everything differently. But time was the worst thing; time, it seemed to him now, was the only thing you couldn't change; whatever you did, it kept coming. Davies sets her slim, stark, beautiful, and heartrending story Clear  against the backdrop of the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, in which impoverished citizens were driven off their land. John Ferguson, a minister in need of funds for his new church accepts the job (against the advice of his wife) of evicting Ivar, the sole inhabitant of a remote island off the northern coast of Scotland in 1843. A series of events leads from disaster to recovery, to connection and secrets, to a surprising set of revelations. After a terrible fall on the cliffs of the island, John Ferguson wakes to find himself being tended by a gentle giant in Ivar. Specifically, he is knitting red replacement sleeves for John's ruined coat. The men have no common language, and John, at first fearful of his vulnerability, then overtaken with cowardice, does not attempt to explain why he is present on the island. Instead, John attempts to learn and document Ivar's language and to learn about the island, dreading the day the boat returns to pick him up--and, unbeknownst to Ivar, permanently remove him from the only home he has ever known. The men develop a tender, heartwarming friendship separate from class, background, intellect, and societal expectations. John, at a distance from worries about his congregation and the future of Presbyterianism, as well as from his kind wife, sinks into Ivar's daily rhythm of working on the land, caring for animals, and finding wonder in nature. I have the cliffs and the skerries and the birds. I have the white bill and the round bill and the peaked hill. I have the clear spring water and the rich good pasture that covers the tilted top of the island like a blanket. I have the old black cow and the sweet grass that grows between the rocks, I have my great chair and my sturdy house. I have my spinning wheel and I have the teapot and I have Pegi, and now, amazingly, I have John Ferguson too. This is a slim book that is beautifully balanced between the tension of John's secret, Ivar's misplaced trust (and of the looming time when explanations will be forced) and the paused push of the outside world's pressures, as weather and basic human needs take precedence. Time passes as though in a vacuum, and the men's need for human connection overshadows all else. By the time John's wife appears--fresh from a rough sea journey, inspired to travel by a sense that John was in danger--the resolution feels heartbreaking, heartwarming, and utterly surprising in its generosity and departure from societal norms. I listened to Clear as an audiobook. More about Carys Davies Carys Davies is also the author of the novels West  and The Mission House , as well as two collections of short stories,  Some New Ambush  and  The Redemption of Galen Pike .

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Molly Aitken's historical fiction novel set in 13th-century Ireland 01 Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken Molly Aitken's historical fiction Bright I Burn is based on the true

Bridie is a strong female protagonist, and Things In Jars offers solid historical fiction details of Another book I really liked recently was A Curious Beginning, and it shares some of these elements of historical #mysterysuspense, #gothicnoir, #ghosts, #femaledetective, #historicalfiction, #mermaids, #fourstarbookreview

If you like books about witches, you might like some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully

woman while stumbling into her iconic lifetime role as Princess Leia; The Invisible Woman, World War II historical independent, defiant, appealingly strong young women split by time; Hour of the Witch, Chris Bohjalian's historical book, please see The Princess Diarist. 02 The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck The Invisible Woman is historical Great Circle. 04 Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian Hour of the Witch is a thoroughly researched historical If you like stories about witches, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully

loved last year's gritty, character-driven mystery-thriller Blacktop Wasteland so much that it made my Six

I love Jiles's richly imagined Civil War-era historical fiction, and I'm in for her other books. This is the kind of richly imagined historical fiction I adore, and I'm in for each of Paulette Jiles's This is the third Paulette Jiles Civil War-era historical fiction book I've read.

You can find my review of Blake Crouch's Recursion (mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Six Riveting

of essential projects—the creation of Central Park, the founding of the Met Museum and the Natural History

Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice, abuse and horrors, terrible fear, and the very real threat of death at the hands of openly, willfully cruel white men. We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness. Elwood Curtis is a promising young man in 1960s Tallahassee. But when he hitchhikes with the wrong guy to his first day of scholarship university classes, he's unfairly sent to a boys' reform school, The Nickel Academy. The "Nickel Boys" endure endless injustices, abuse, and horrors, including the looming threat of being "disappeared" out back, never to be heard from again. But as naive as it may be, Elwood persists in pursuing justice and clinging to the moral high road just like his idol Martin Luther King, Jr., and he is unwavering in his ideals regardless of the dangers. His best friend Turner is more savvy, careful, and jaded, while loyal to Elwood. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things. In the midst of becoming pawns in the crooked trading away of the school's supplies to line the pockets of the corrupt men in charge, Elwood and Turner form a friendship that has repercussions for the rest of their lives. The Nickel Academy is based on a real-life reform school that, horrifyingly, abused boys for 111 years. The Nickel Boys doesn't shy away from infuriating, relentless, insidious, damaging, often deadly racial injustice and cruelties. I felt a little manipulated regarding the "twist" Whitehead introduces late in the book, but the living out of an identity and living into an envisioned future is a powerful element. I listened to The Nickel Boys  as an audiobook. For more fiction and nonfiction books about race Colson Whitehead is also the author of The Underground Railroad . For other titles that center around race, please check out the books at this link . For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here .

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm listening to Donna Jones Alward's historical fiction debut focused around

Hidden Valley Road is the true story of a family with twelve children, six of whom are ultimately diagnosed One by one, six siblings develop mental illness.

Isola , based upon the story of a real-life sixteenth-century woman, shifts between details of a life of moneyed ease and an abandonment on an unforgiving, uninhabited island after our main protagonist falls in love with the wrong person. Marguerite is heir to a fortune, but after she is orphaned, she grows into a young lady while her guardian Roberval squanders her inheritance. The unfolding of this continued theft and this absurd man's greedy, gratuitous mishandling of funds--which he legally pursues as a male distantly related to her, ugh--was enough to make my blood boil, but things deteriorate much further from there. As Marguerite enters into her early teens, she begins to fear that her cousin views her as a creepy match for himself. At the very least it becomes clear that he will pay no dowry in order to make another match for her. Instead, in a somewhat shocking turn of events, he forces her to sail with him to New France. But on the way, Marguerite falls for her guardian's servant. When their relationship is discovered, Roberval cruelly punishes them by abandoning them on an uninhabited island to perish. Marguerite, once a privileged, protected child of wealth and opportunity, must learn to survive in the wild. Chapters are preceded by tips from Anne of France to her daughter (from Lessons for My Daughter ) urging constant preservation of reputation, exuding modesty, maintaining a paralyzing fear of making errors, and striving for perfection in the form of delicacy and beauty. These prescribed behaviors suggest a goal of women's disappearing into the background, serving as beautiful, silent, ghostlike creatures. The highly controlled, minutiae-filled advice contrasts more and more starkly with Marguerite's desperate situation on the island and her necessary rejection of even the most basic societal expectations for her status (wearing shoes, using utensils, living a life without work, not developing freckles in the sun, and not dirtying her hands, much less killing, skinning, and processing animals) in order to cling to life. Her slowly deteriorating social and financial standing early in the book gives way to a fascinating, unforgiving stretch of life lived on the rocky island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, bounded in part by Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Labrador Peninsula. As Marguerite taps into her inner strength, she builds a resolve to get home again. But if she is saved and delivered safely back, where will she make her home? How will she secure a future for herself? If her guardian is living, how will she remain safe from him? After a harsh winter, her guardian's ships sail by again, but veer away after spying her. But Marguerite won't give up hope. Now she knows she can see her way through any adversity. I was fascinated by each aspect of this tale, and Goodman transported me into the details and (often infuriating) dynamics of life at the time. Isola  is inspired by the story of the real-life sixteenth-century heroine, Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval. I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book! I first read Allegra Goodman's work 25 years ago, when I enjoyed her novel Kaaterskill Falls . Since then she has published many more novels, including Sam . I received a prepublication edition of Isola courtesy of Random House and NetGalley.

There Are Rivers in the Sky weaves together three stories set in three timelines, featuring disparate characters, to explore interconnectedness, the power of water, echoing tragedies, and the timelessness of the written word. Water remembers. It is humans who forget. In 1840 in London, young Arthur lives near the sewage-filled River Thames, desperate to escape poverty and his abusive household. In 2014 Turkey, ten-year-old Narin is living near the Tigris and is affected by a disorder that will cause her to go permanently deaf. And in 2018 London, Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames when she and her husband break up, but she can't shake her thoughts of suicide. There Are Rivers   in the Sky traces the stories of these three disparate characters living alongside rivers in three different times, interconnected by a single drop of water and "the Epic of Gilgamesh," an ancient poem that may have the power to change each of their lives. Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop. Shafak uses the life-giving--and at times, through flood or pollution, life-taking--waters of the Tigris and the Thames to help shape this story in three timelines. Through Zaleekah's 2018-set story we explore climate change, pollution, and the consequences of abusing natural resources, as well as the questionable morality of private or museum ownership of other cultures' precious artifacts. Yet the river is a backdrop to her reimagined future, her newfound inner strength and search for love, and her renewed hope in life. Narin's story, aside from modern modes of travel and communication, feels like a tragedy pulled from deep in the past--and, in fact, it is said that the Yazidi people have been endlessly beaten down and massacred over and over again since ancient times. In a shockingly speedy escalation of force, Isis brings centuries-old hatred to trap and murder innocent Yazidis, eradicating communities in relentless genocide. And clever Arthur slowly pulls himself out of a London slum by lucking into an apprenticeship at a printing shop with nurturing mentors. His curiosity about antiquities leads him to the British Museum and, eventually, a key role in deciphering tablets, then a formative trip to the Middle East and Nineveh, which will be the source of his one true love and also his undoing. Shafak makes what could have been an unwieldy or disjointed-feeling set of complex situations into a tragically beautiful intertwined novel that shines a light on weighty issues at three points in space and time. I was haunted by this and fascinated as well. I received a prepublication edition of There Are Rivers in the Sky  courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley. I'd love to hear your bossy thoughts about this book. Elif Shafak also wrote the lovely The Island of Missing Trees . Shafak is a British-Turkish author of seventeen books, including eleven novels.

They're from other times in history. protagonist's focus in her work is Commander Graham Gore (a character based upon a real figure from history Their common disjointedness brings them together, and the mashup of personalities and histories was fantastic

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The Goddess of Warsaw, Lisa Barr's dual-timeline historical fiction 01 The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr In Lisa Barr's newest historical fiction, The Goddess of Warsaw

Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's surprisingly believable entrée into body snatching, a forbidden love, and serial killers, and I was in for it all. I've heard comparisons drawn between A. Rae Dunlap's The Resurrectionist  and Caleb Carr's The Alienist , a suspenseful novel about the evolution of forensic science that I adored reading years ago, and while the books are quite different, I can appreciate the favorable association. Dunlap's debut novel is dark, twisty, gothic, and it's set in 19th-century Scotland as fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers Burke and Hare are terrorizing Edinburgh. James Willoughby is a na ï ve young medical student whose family fortunes have taken a negative turn, leaving him with a passion for studying medicine but no resources to pursue schooling. He becomes drawn into the underworld of body snatching when he seeks paid work to fund his studies--and begins to understand (and assist with) the process of obtaining cadavers for his surgery study. Ultimately, terrifyingly, his activities lead him to run into the cadaver-producing killers Burke and Hare. Dunlap does a wonderful job of bringing a spooky, fascinating underworld of Edinburgh to life, while also exploring the burgeoning surgery and medical school experience, and, against all odds, building the somewhat-reasonable-feeling case for James's horror-turned-acceptance on the subject of mining graveyards for bodies to study. At the center of the story there's a hesitant friendship, then a meaningful, playful, and poignant relationship between James and his "handler" (which is affected by the complication of societal intolerance for gay relationships in this period), plus the mystery of the disappearances of community characters, and an elaborate, amateur, exciting group attempt to catch Burke and Hare. I love Dunlap's writing and the way the author crafted this story. I'm definitely in for reading this author's future books! I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book! I read this title, published in December, courtesy of NetGalley and Kensington Books. For Bossy reviews of more books set in Scotland, please check out the titles at this link .

Shirley Jackson wrote six novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs, and the

Their settlement is on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, and they hunt and gather in with her parents' researcher friends, her family helps try to save and further the exhibits of human history Nonie and her group carry a book holding precious history, and on their journey they encounter various

you're interested in immigrant stories, you might want to check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six

camper daughter of the owners has disappeared, God of the Woods ; and I'm listening to Joy Callaway's historical 03 What the Mountains Remember by Joy Callaway I love a North-Carolina-set story, and Joy Callaway's historical

I listed the Queen's Thief series in the Greedy Reading List Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series,

This book is listed in the upcoming Greedy Reading List Six Book Club Books I Loved Last Year, to be

This book was listed in the Greedy Reading List Six More Great Fiction Titles I Loved This Year.

This is historical fiction that begins in 1950s Tehran, where young Ellie lives in opulence with her

For other light fiction books I've enjoyed, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories

Makepeace spy mystery, The Trap ; I'm listening to Miss Morgan's Book Brigade , Janet Skeslien Charles's historical Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles I love a book about scrappy librarians , and Janet Skeslien Charles's historical

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Emma Donoghue's newest historical fiction, Learned by Heart, set series, One of Us Is Back; and I'm listening to Niall Howell's debut, Only Pretty Damned, which is noir historical Pretty Damned by Niall Howell I'm listening to Niall Howell's debut, Only Pretty Damned, which is noir historical

If you're in the mood for more light fiction, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Go as a River, historical fiction from Shelley Read; I'm listening version of Mary Otis's Burst, a story about a mother and daughter; and I'm reading Mary Sharratt's historical Mary Sharratt offers an exhaustively researched, fascinating historical fiction account of the life of