I went into April eyeing five titles. My May list is shorter but I'm just as excited for the books that are on it. The only downside is that my local library doesn't have any of these titles, so I'm going to have to find other ways of tracking them down.
All the Glimmering Stars is set more recently than most of the historical novels I read, but I am making the exception for the subject matter which feels both important and unique in my reading history.
This Strange Eventful History is also new material for me but here again, I'm excited at the prospect of characters from a place I've not read a million times over.
The Aziola's Cry is not new material for me and I'd be lying if I said my first thought on seeing it wasn't Mary Shelley (2017). That said, I feel novels can often say more than films and I can't wait to see what Shaw does with the material.
Release Date: May 7, 2024Inspired by a true story, two teens kidnapped by an African warlord find salvation through love in a powerful and healing historical novel from the #1 bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley.Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army.In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence’s upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she’s pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony’s war.At the lowest points of their lives, certain they’ll never go home, Anthony and Florence meet by chance, fall in love, and begin to dream of surviving their captivity. They devote their lives to helping their fellow child soldiers escape bondage and return to their families and redemption by following the stars.By turns tender, shocking, moving, desperate, and ultimately triumphant, Florence and Anthony’s story is an epic drama of humanity, a life-affirming tale, and an experience readers will never forget.Featuring an afterword by Anthony and Florence Opoka.
Biographical Fiction ✧ Cultural Fiction ✧ 20th Century
Release Date: May 7, 2024
Love, tragedy, and the pursuit of literary greatness intertwine in a tumultuous journey that defies societal norms and tests the resilience of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In the year 1814, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, a gifted teenager born into a family of literary brilliance, falls deeply in love with the youthful rebel, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Defying societal conventions, they embark on a daring escapade, accompanied by Mary's step-sister Claire, leaving behind their respective families and Percy's wife and children. However, their journey proves to be far from an idyllic romance, for it is fraught with tumultuous challenges.
In their quest for freedom and expression, Mary and Percy immerse themselves in experimental notions of free love and join forces with the enigmatic and infamous Lord Byron. Amidst these thrilling encounters and adventures, the young lovers are confronted by heart-wrenching tragedies that test their resilience and resolve.
Driven to elude the strict laws of England, which threaten to separate them from their own children, Mary and Shelley embark on a nomadic existence, wandering through the captivating landscapes of Italy while constantly evading their haunting past. As their circumstances become increasingly dire, their shared passion for writing emerges as the sole lifeline that binds them together. Through their literary endeavors, they become each other's guiding force, ultimately crafting timeless masterpieces that will etch their names into the annals of literary history.
Biographical Fiction ✧ Literary Fiction ✧ 19th Century
This Strange Eventful HistoryRelease Date: May 14, 2024
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.
Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force…one of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li).
Family Saga ✧ Literary Fiction ✧ 20th Century