When I picked up Cherie Priest's I Am Princess X, it was on the advice of a trusted bookseller for a (then) thirteen-year-old friend of mine. Then an older reading friend raved about it too. At last, I picked it up, and was pleased to find it was my first
Having stories narrated by - or assembled via - a number of voices is a popular way of world-building. Each of the following books plays with this technique, allowing different perspectives to combine and create a more credible space for readers to inhabit. Just as in Meg Wolitzer's The Position, the matriarch
Christopher Marlowe's story begins and ends with a brawl, in the hands of Michelle Butler Hallett. Goose Lane Editions, 2016 This Marlowe focuses on the final months of the playwright's life, with his death registered as May 30, 1593. His patron, Thomas Walsingham, openly supported his plays and verses,
This isn't necessarily a story that you will know. Penguin Books, 1993 And nor are you expected to. "We all know how history comes down to us, which stories, which versions tend to be passed on." But here, in Free Enterprise, in a novel, we might find another
If you recognize Mary Dyer as being one of the Boston Martyrs, you will expect Beth Powning's tale to be a harrowing one. To some extent, this is the case. Knopf - Penguin Random House, 2015 But even if the historical record considers the most remarkable aspect of Mary
