Books We Loved, Jan. 2026

Here we are, another year of reading behind us, and a new list of books we loved to celebrate the arrival of 2026. Two historical novels—one set in the sixteenth century and the other in the seventeenth—plus one contemporary exploration of a life gone wrong. Should fit nicely in between the making and breaking of those New Year’s resolutions!

Jennifer Ashley, Eloise and the Queen (JA/AG Publishing, 2025)

I love Jennifer Ashley’s Below Stairs mysteries, featuring the Victorian-era housekeeper Kat Holloway, but I was surprised to learn that she’s also started a series called Ladies of Tudor England, contemporary with my own novels and to some extent overlapping, since her first heroine, Eloise Rousel, niece of the real-life Kat Ashley, has a gift for embroidery that some of my characters would appreciate.

Eloise came into the world within two months of Elizabeth, and since Kat Ashley has been Elizabeth’s governess since the princess turned four, the two girls grew up side by side. Of course, their stations in life are quite different, and so are the expectations placed on them, although both face futures not entirely under their control. This novel follows the difficult period in the future queen’s life that separated her brother Edward’s ascension to the throne from Elizabeth’s own.

As fierce supporters of the princess, Eloise and her Aunt Kat to some extent see life at Hatfield House, where Elizabeth spends most of her time during her brother’s and older sister’s reigns, from the inside. But they also have more freedom to travel and concerns of their own. The result is a gripping story that pulled me in from the first page.—CPL

Sandra Freels, Anneke Jans in the New World (She Writes Press, 2026)

This novel about the early days of Dutch colonization in North America appeared on the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York (then Fort Amsterdam) and six months before the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s pure historical fiction, tracing the life of one of the author’s remote ancestors as she leaves the Netherlands under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and settles into her new home.

The struggles of daily life are front and center here, but we also see the gradual expansion of white colonization and the deteriorating relationship between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. The Dutch experience in the New World is certainly not unique, but it has been less explored, which gives this novel a new and interesting take on a familiar story.

You can find out more from my interview with the author on the New Books Network, scheduled for late February.—CPL

Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

Protagonist Corby Ledbetter suffers the consequences of a grave mistake in Wally Lamb’s newest novel, The River Is Waiting.

Corby, a young commercial artist, has lost his job and become a stay-at-home dad for his toddler twins while his beloved wife Emily works to pay the bills. He begins drinking, and taking more anxiety pills than prescribed, as a way of dealing with his lifelong suspicion that he is, at heart, the loser his father always said he was. Ironically, it is his attempt to escape from his bad feelings about himself that results in an accident of epic proportions, one that devastates his family unit. So full of self-hatred is Corby post-accident that he is unable to accept even some light tweaks to the truth that might keep him out of prison. He wants to be punished.

Lamb, ever a master when it comes to probing the emotional depths of his imperfect characters, takes readers right into Corby’s cell with him as he begins his three-year sentence. His first cellmate is only one of many people who have it in for him from the get-go, and for no  apparent reason. But time passes and eventually Corby has a new cellmate and a few friends, and at some point he feels comfortable enough to step out of his circumspect state and call out two correctional officers who are abusing a young prisoner Corby has taken under his wing. Soloman, the victim of the CO brutality, is moved to another facility, but when the two hellbent COs find out that Corby was the one who reported their deplorable behavior, they turn their sights on him. In the midst of the violent payback that follows, Corby must work to remember that neither revenge or self-medication will do anything to support his real goal—gaining both his freedom and forgiveness from the people he has hurt the most.

The hate that exists in the world that we live in today is well represented here, alive and voracious in the hearts of some of Lamb’s characters. It is balanced, but never really alleviated, by the empathy and grace that live in the hearts of some others. This novel is not afraid to look at human suffering straight on. The River is Waiting is heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and illuminating.—JS