Sarah Cartell, who grew up in a White Supremacist family controlled by a violent grandfather who preaches hate and violence, learns from books and a kind librarian that there’s another way to see the world.

As the Sami community (Norway) struggles to protect ancestral lands from the building of a damn in 1979, Oslo detective Hans Sorensen arrives in the north of the country to investigate sabotage on a damn.

After finishing her teaching degree in Israel, Leah emigrates to the U.S. for a teaching position that she thinks of as temporary. She ends up staying for 5 decades.

Simone Lerrante is a Belgian orphan whose memory is damaged by the trauma of her father being shot by Nazis and her subsequent escape to England.

In early-seventeenth-century Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany, dangers are plentiful—especially for those of Jewish heritage. Non-Catholics have been expelled from Spain, and the Inquisition has come to Portugal to impose its prohibitions.

Mona’s Eyes (Europa Editions, 2025) is an enchanting debut novel written by art historian Thomas Schlesser. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl living in Paris who briefly loses her vision.

Rose Janowitz is surprised to get a production job with a radio soap opera and stunned to fall in love with the show’s African American leading man.

The Dime Museum is a novel told in stories that span from the 1920s, when Dime Museums were a way for people to gawk at human differences, through 2020, during the ravages of the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Theo Sterling is eleven when his grandfather kidnaps him, just for the afternoon. He learns that his father had shed his Jewish identity, married a very Catholic woman from Mexico, and stopped talking to either of his parents.

Lemai never forgets the humiliation of her teachers and the burning of books during the Cultural Revolution.

The pain of 73-year-old Aurora’s divorce over thirty years before continues to reverberate – she’s eccentric, filled with schemes, and only able to function with help from her daughter.

Based on the true story of a 16th century heiress who is left to die on a deserted island off the coast of what was then called New France (now Canada).

The Anatomy of Exile by Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books 2025) opens in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, when Tamar Abadi’s sister-in-law is killed by what looks like a terrorist attack but turns out to be the tragic end of Hadas’s love affair with a Palestinian poet.

Sisters Nadia and Cass are heirs to a company that builds yachts for the super wealthy, and both are excited about a commission that will introduce them to the huge Asian market.

Today I talked to Chikodili Emelumadu about Dazzling (Harry N. Abrams, 2023).