The Month of Her-Stories

Kristin Hannah has a sure winner with The Women. Hannah expertly crafts a heartbreaking, emotional story about love and loss. From a family of “heroes,” Frankie follows her brother to Vietnam feeling she wants to do her part for her country. It is 1965. Frankie comes from a conservative family where she is expected to do the right thing; represent the family, be a good girl, marry – but Frankie wants more. Her experience with the Army Nurse Corps is life changing and Frankie returns a different woman, struggling to find meaning and her place in the world after experiencing so much loss. Hannah writes with compassion for those that served and expertly captures a changing America, examining a group of previously overlooked women; the nurses that braved bullets and more during the Vietnam conflict. Get out your hankies.

The Painter’s Daughters is the dazzling debut by Emily Howes. Peggy Gainsborough feels responsible for her older sister Molly’s well-being. Molly is suffering episodes of increasing mental confusion and Peggy will do anything in her power to protect her sister’s growing madness from probing eyes – even from their parents. Peggy is willing to sacrifice everything – even love – for Molly; only to experience her sister’s ultimate betrayal. Howes’ prose is gorgeous and evocative. You won’t be able to put this book down.  

Iris Yamashita returns to the weird and isolated town of Point Mettier, Alaska in her follow up to City Under One Roof. In Yamashita’s new novel Village in the Dark, Detective Cara is back, still grieving for her son and husband who perished in an accident in the woods. Cara finds herself puzzled as to why a photo of her family is on the phone of a suspected overdose victim. With the help of a cast of quirky characters from her first book, Yamashita draws Cara into a tangled web of deceit as she searches for clues as to what really happened to her family. Was it murder? The story is layered and fast-paced, all drawing to a wild climactic scene in a strange, isolated women-and-children-only community in the woods. Yamashita brings unique voices and locations to this one.

The genius of Tracy Brown is that we like and root for the character Brooklyn, despite her endless selfishness and scorched-earth approach to relationships. Brooklyn, sadly, is the last book from Brown (she died two days after turning in the final draft). The story lives where Brown thrives best, in urban tales of struggling, successful characters loved and loving and betrayed and betraying. Brooklyn is a “church” girl; her father a minister, her mother the first lady where appearances are everything. But for Brooklyn, the lies and hypocrisy of that life eat at her. Thrown out of the house after her secret summer with a drug-dealing lover comes to light, Brooklyn flounders. She has big dreams of running a beauty salon someday, but in the meantime, she’s peddling cocaine and falling in with a crowd that, if messed with, will see her dead. 

Queens of London by Heather Webb is an amusing historical caper set in post WWI London. 

Diamond Annie runs a gang of female thieves. Officer Lilian, one of the city’s first female detectives, is in pursuit of Annie and determined to lock her up. Then there is the runaway, Hira. Having escaped from a tyrannical guardian, the ten-year old is deemed less than because of the color of her skin. The runaway must use her wits when she finds herself caught between Diamond Annie and Lilian. This is a fun and funny romp, where the women get to be the “bad guys” and “good guys”, and where loyalties are tested even if it means bending the law.