The Photographer’s Wife by Suzanne Joinson

Suzanne Joinson first came onto my radar with A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, a book I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t gotten around to yet. So when The Photographer’s Wife, Joinson’s latest novel came across my desk, I couldn’t pass it up. Set in 1920s Jerusalem and filled with political intrigue, I knew I’d love it from the start.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters may well be one of the most anticipated new novels of this autumn. I know it was high up on my lists of must reads. Waters is known for her beautifully written and well researched historical novels that highlight sapphic relationships. The Paying Guests follows this trend with a love story that crosses class lines in post World War I London.

The Visitors by Sally Beauman

The Visitors by Sally Beauman was one of those books I was dying to read. It is set in 1920s Egypt during the time that Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb. Being a child of the 1970s seeing the King Tut exhibit in Toronto was one of the highlights of my childhood. Put that together with the fact that I have never read anything by Beauman, who I believe is more popular in the UK than in North America, and I was dying to get started.

O, Africa by Andrew Lewis Conn

Yet again, I should have read the blurb more carefully when I picked this book. True, O, Africa by Andrew Lewis Conn is partially set in Africa in the 1920’s, but it was still not what I’d envisioned (ie/ Out of Africa). I should have read the comparisons to Chabon’s Cavalier and Clay and Doctorow’s Ragtime to know that this was not the book for me.