The Best New Fiction of November 2017

Past Perfect, by Danielle Steele
If you’ve ever wanted to read about a house that’s delightfully haunted, Ms. Steele has you covered. When the Gregory family—Mom, Dad, two teens and a 6-year-old—impulsively leave New York for San Francisco, and move into a tony Pacific Heights mansion, they experience an earthquake that brings them face-to-face with the multi-generational Butterfield family, the home’s initial occupants in 1917. Though separated by 100 years, the two families find much to appreciate in each other, and the magical friendships they form over meals and long evenings promise to provide comfort and solace to the characters as well as Steele’s readers.

In the Midst of Winter, by Isabel Allende
Richard and Lucia, two NYU professors in their early 60s who live in the same building (Richard is the landlord), agree to help Evelyn, a Guatemalan nanny and refugee who shows up on Richard’s doorstep, desperate for help. Thrown together on a winter night in Brooklyn, with an unrelenting snowstorm outside, the trio opens up to one another about their troubled pasts, Lucia’s in Chile during the coup, and Evelyn’s as a victim of gang violence. Allende is known for her powerful characters, intimate prose, and magical realism. Winter highlights a new element in her oeuvre, that of a suspenseful crime thriller.

Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
The countless fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and its recent Hulu adaptation, will want to grab Erdrich’s latest, set in a dystopian world in which pregnant women are criminalized, hunted, and oppressed because the babies they’re carrying appear to be victims of reverse evolution. In fact, time itself seems to be running backwards, and Cedar Hawk Songmaker, born to an Ojibwe mother and raised by progressive adopted parents in Minneapolis, is caught in the middle of extreme circumstances. Bestseller Erdrich, who is half-Ojibwe herself, continues her tradition of writing thoughtful portrayals of Native-American life.

The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg
Three strangers form a bond of family in a heartwarming story that begins with deep, personal losses. The highlight of octogenarian Arthur’s day is eating lunch beside his late wife’s grave. When he meets ostracized teenage girl Maddy, who visits the cemetery to escape bullying at school, they become tentative friends. Then Arthur’s neighbor Lucille, she of the constant invites to join her for a chat and a home-baked treat, whom Arthur has been studiously avoiding, joins the duo. When new difficulties enter Maddy’s life, she turns to Arthur and Lucille, who have come to realize that it’s never too late to enjoy life, and that each of them contributes to the health and happiness of the group as a whole.

The Revolution of Marina M., by Janet Fitch
After two novels that beautifully depict the shiny and sharp contradictions of modern Los Angeles (White Oleander and Paint it Black), beloved author Janet Fitch takes readers to St. Petersburg, Russia, during the Revolution of 1917-1919. Gifted teenage poet Marina was born to a well-off family but empathizes with impoverished artists, exploited workers, and friends who are targeted by the secret police. As a result, she’s abandoned by her parents and forced to navigate the brutal yet invigorating collapse of the old world on her own, using her creativity to survive the chaos. Fans of the irrepressible Astrid in White Oleander should instantly warm to Marina.

Secrets of Cavendon, by Barbara Taylor Bradford
It’s 1949 at the Yorkshire country house of Cavendon Hall, and a new generation of heirs are at the helm. As with her three previous Cavendon novels, readers are privy to the romances, scandals, rivalries, and friendships between the aristocratic Ingham family and their cherished retainers, the Swanns, who have served them for several generations. With World War II in the past, and all of Britain struggling to recover, long-buried secrets of Cavendon threaten to tear apart the Inghams and Swanns for good.

A Darker Sea: Master Commandant Putnam and the War of 1812, by James L. Haley
Haley’s sequel to The Shores of Tripoli finds midshipman Lieutenant-turned-Commander Bliven Putnam once again battling Lord Arthur Kington, this time during the War of 1812, in which the British outman and outgun the Americans. The naval adventure series includes bloodthirsty pirates, deep sea battles, and an extensive look into the period of the Napoleonic Wars, which brought about the near-bankruptcy of the American government. Haley is a speaker and expert historian who brings the past alive with illuminating detail. 

Mrs. Osmond, by John Banville
In the vein of Heathcliff: The Return to Wuthering Heights, by Lin Haire-Sargeant, Osmond is a sequel to Henry James’s most popular work, Portrait of a Lady. It imagines the continuing saga of Isabel Archer, miserably married to the egomaniacal and manipulative Gilbert Osmond. Although Isabel seems to relinquish her freedom in the original text, here she gets a delicious second chance at creating her own narrative.

Displaced, by Stephan Abarbanell
A spy novel depicting the effects and cost of World War II, this debut introduces Lilya Wasserfall, a member of the Palmach army (Jewish underground resistance), who is sent from British-occupied Palestine to the bombed-out streets of Europe to locate a presumed-dead scientist. However, as she searches refugee camps and digs through British Secret Service files, a dangerous figure follows closely behind, determined to find the missing scientist first.

Wonder Valley, by Ivy Pochoda
Back and forth during the years 2006 through 2010, using events both surreal and desperate, criminal and heartbreaking, Pochoda dives deep into locations and elements of Southern California that are often overlooked. In theory we know L.A.’s surrounding cities are not the celebrity-soaked, glittering valleys of the movies, but it’s special and rare to see places such as Skid Row, the Harbor Freeway, and Twentynine Palms given their due. Teenagers stuck in a desert commune, a juvenile delinquent searching for his homeless mother, and a mysterious streaker who seems—to those stuck in traffic observing him—to be free from burdens populate this unique and invigorating book.
What are you excited to read in November?