How did it get to be almost Thanksgiving already? Seems like just yesterday that the kids were heading back to school. But here we are, pumpkin spice aromas wherever you turn, trick or treating already behind us, and the winter holidays approaching fast. So how better to enjoy the season than in the company of a good book or two? Here is our November list of books we loved to get you started.
Natalie Brianne, The Pennington Perplexity (Searose Press, 2024)
The Constantine Capers series has one of the most interesting premises I’ve encountered in a historical mystery—and as I noted last month, I read a lot of historical mysteries. Set in Victorian London, beginning in 1888, it focuses on Byron Constantine, an agent for Scotland Yard who suffered an as-yet-unspecified accident four years before the first novel opens, when he was twenty-three years old.
As a result, he has developed a specific type of amnesia that causes his memory to reset every time he falls asleep for longer than a short nap. Each morning, when he awakens, he has to reorient himself by reading the entries he writes in his journal each day, but even to do that, he has to leave notes around the house reminding himself to find and peruse the journal.
Despite his memory problems, Byron is working on a case for Scotland Yard when he runs into Samira (Mira) Blayse, a gifted artist who lost her parents eighteen years before in what has been portrayed as a tragic accident. Mira has her doubts, but no one will believe that her parents’ death might not have been natural, and certainly no Victorian policeman will hand over eighteen-year-old case records to an unknown young woman. When she learns that Byron is a private detective, she seeks him out, hoping he can help her solve the mystery of her parents’ death. Instead, he becomes convinced that she has answered his ad for a secretary to assist him with his memory problems. And the game, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, is afoot.
I found the case, with its many twists and turns, well developed and satisfying. Even Mira’s insistence on throwing herself into deadly situations is offset by the reality that Byron depends on her artist’s eye and her ability to recall the answers they obtain. But it’s the relationship between the two mains, especially the challenge that Mira faces knowing that however close she and Byron become in the course of one day, he will have forgotten her the next, that makes this series—dare I say it?—memorable.—CPL
Sebastian Junger, My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife (Simon and Schuster, 2024)
An episode involving a pancreatic aneurism is central to Sebastian Junger’s newest book, In My Time of Dying, but it is not the only close call he describes. This nonfiction hybrid (part memoir, part scientific investigation) starts with a surfing accident Junger experienced when he was in his twenties, and it moves on from there to talk about additional brushes with death, his own and those of others.
Because Junger is a master of detail and pace—beginning with his best-selling The Perfect Storm in 1998—his various descriptions of death and near death events are terrifying. His personal accounts include particulars about what he was thinking—during his surfing accident he found his awareness obsessively focused on the fact that he’d left his parents’ summer house sink full of dirty dishes—what the people around him are saying and doing and more. It is during the main event, the one with the aneurism, that Junger has a true near death experience. He is in the surgical bay, surrounded by medical professionals desperately searching for the source of the rupture that is pumping volumes of blood into his stomach, when he sees his deceased father. “It’s okay,” his father says. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” The doctors, meanwhile, are considering slicing open his torso, moving organs around until they find the culprit rupture.
Junger doesn’t accept his father’s invitation to cross over, but he can’t forget it either. An atheist with great respect for science, he is compelled post op to explore the probability of his father’s visit being a real event. Before dying, his father, a physicist of the practical persuasion, would himself have said, No, can’t happen, son. But it did happen, and Junger’s research takes him not only through a mountain of reports on near death experiences in every time from every corner and culture in the world but also on a journey into quantum theory.
Great minds make incredible discoveries, and when they prove their theories to be reliable, we have new facts. For no other reason, the book is a gem because it provides a rigorous update on what we know and don’t know about the afterlife. But beyond that, Junger is a brilliant writer and his insights are as keen here as they have been before.—JS
Julia Park Tracey, Silence (Sibylline Press, 2024)
The book, set in the Puritan era of American history, is the story of a young woman prophetically named Silence, sentenced to a year of absolute silence for crying out against God after losing both husband and baby. In the narrow, cruel world of the Separatists, women have neither rights nor voice but can be punished with flogging, stocks, public humiliation, fines, and even a year of silence, for daring to speak contrary to the orthodoxy of the Church. Silence gives voice to her inner thoughts as she struggles through the horrors of the year while her enemies rejoice. A kindly doctor from Boston learns of her plight and treats her, gently, prescribing herbs and long walks. As Silence begins to heal, both physically and emotionally, she’s subjected to one last, potentially fatal torment. Dire as the description of this story is, it’s a wonderful read. Grounded solidly in excellent research, the book offers the redemption of Silence’s battered soul, and promises her contentment as the book comes to a natural close.—CHL
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