Hi historical fiction fans!
I hope your reading is off to a good start in the new year! I’m still not quite used to the idea that it isn’t 2022 anymore, but I’m excited to have a clean slate to restart my reading with new goals and new releases. Let’s talk about a few new releases you might be interested in and some other book recommendations, shall we?
Bookish Goods
Terrarium Charm Velvet Bookmark from Wreath Coven
I’m obsessed with this bookmark. Green velvet? Check. Terrarium charms? Check. A dark academia plant-lover aesthetic? Check. Give it to me. $12+.
New Releases
The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre by Natasha Lester (January 10, 2023)
After her PR prowess brings her to the attention of the United States government, Alix St Pierre is recruited as a spy to try to turn a Nazi who might be willing to help the Allies. Years later, Alix is living in Paris and working for the soon-to-be-launched House of Christian Dior when an old face from the war returns and threatens to destroy the future she is working so hard for. Can she right the wrongs of the past even as she tries to forget them?
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (January 10, 2023)
In the Canadian town of Dunmore at the end of the Underground Railroad, a slave hunter is shot dead. As the woman who shot him refuses to flee, a young reporter is brought in to take down her testimony before she can be condemned for her crime. But the old woman isn’t interested in a confession. Instead she offers a trade: a story for a story. And the truth these stories unearth reveals the inextricably linked histories of Black and Indigenous people in the land that is now called North America.
For a more comprehensive list, check out our New Books newsletter!
Riot Recommendations
I’ve been thinking a lot about historical fiction set in cold climates recently (see: my last newsletter from December) and nothing encapsulated living in the coldest of climates more than Inuit historical fiction. Experience what it’s like growing up in the Arctic with these Inuit historical fiction books.
Sanaaq: An Inuit Novel by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, translated by Bernard Saladin d’Anglure
In the mid-nineteenth century, Inuit society was changed forever by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people. Sanaaq tells that story through the eyes of one outspoken Inuk woman and her daughter in their semi-nomadic community in northern Quebec. But their way of live, carefully balancing their needs with the harsh landscape around them, is threatened the encroaching missionaries and their battle to convert Inuit souls.
Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman
In Life Among the Qallunaat, Mini Aodla Freeman tells her story as an Inuk woman growing up in the 1940s before her training as a nurse and then moving to Ottawa to work as a translator for the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Though it’s technically a memoir, it’s a beautifully rendered account of the changes taking place in Inuit communities of the 40s and 50s that serves an important place alongside similar fictionalized accounts.