Books We Loved, Nov. 2025

One thing about writing is that—surprise!—you have to actually create and edit your text, and if you otherwise have a busy life, it can be hard to find time to do that. Some of us here at Five Directions Press have exciting news about forthcoming books, which we will share over the next few months. But while bringing those new novels to completion, we are replacing our usual monthly list of Books We Loved with this post from the readers’ and writers’ site Shepherd.com, written by C. P. Lesley. These were her three favorites among the 150 or so books she read between October 2024 and the end of September 2025.

And if you don’t know Shepherd but you do love books, it’s well worth a visit. Just click on the link above, and it will take you right there. If you’d rather go straight to the lists of their favorites from 2025, you can find those in the Best Books category.

Elyse Durham, Maya & Natasha (Mariner Books)

As Nazi tanks roll toward Leningrad in August 1941, an unmarried nineteen-year-old ballerina gives birth to twin girls in the soon-to-be besieged city. Bereft of hope, the dancer—once a rising star at the Kirov—slashes her wrists, but her babies survive, rescued by the devoted friend who arrives just too late to save their mother. The friend, too, is a dancer with the Kirov, and her tutelage and self-sacrifice ensure that the girls, Maya and Natasha, become students at the Vaganova Academy after the Siege of Leningrad is broken.

There are two things I love most about this book, which caused me to tear through it in the space of two evenings. First, it starts in a time and place that are almost a trope in historical fiction now (World War II in all its manifestations), then goes in a different direction: to the ballet world of the 1950s and the Cold War. Second, the relationship between the twin sisters, Maya and Natasha, and the unacknowledged burden they face because of their mother's suicide is rich and well developed and utterly compelling.

Rachel Louise Driscoll, The House of Two Sisters (Ballantine)

This thoroughly engrossing tale about the lasting bond between siblings—both human and divine—follows the attempts of Clementine (Clemmie) Attridge, a budding Egyptologist living in 1890s England, to rectify a mistake made by her father that has placed the entire family in jeopardy.

What I particularly love about this book is the author’s ability to take the timeworn image of the mummy’s curse and peel it back, layer by layer, to reveal the true source of the supposed curse: human failings such as arrogance, insensivity, avarice, and more.

In the process, she raises questions that still have present relevance—specifically the theft and destruction of other people’s heritages, especially but not exclusively for personal gain.

Lucy Pick, The Queen’s Companion (Cuidono)

It’s not easy to approach such a well-known character as Eleanor of Aquitaine from a new angle. This follow-up to the author’s debut, Pilgrimage, counterposes Queen Eleanor’s experiences during the Second Crusade to the life of Lady Aude, the half-Armenian daughter of a crusader who has spent the last thirty or so years of her life in Europe but now seeks to return to her birthplace in the Holy Land.

What I love about this book is the unfamiliar setting, brought vividly to life, the relationship between Eleanor and Aude, and the complex character of Aude herself, who alternates among ruthless honesty,  less than admirable behavior,  indomitability, and charm while shining a spotlight on medieval life in all its complexity.