ARRIVALS

You probably had your fill of relatives last month. This month you can read about someone else’s in these new and upcoming novels.

Noah’s Wife, Lindsay Starck

Noah, a handsome young minister, and his wife, a photographer, have been married five years (it was raining when they met and it was raining on their wedding day) when he is assigned a new congregation in a town where it has been raining for as long as anyone can remember. This capable retelling of a familiar story is a first novel by a North Carolina writer.

Worlds of Ink and Shadow, Lena Coakley

What an inventive idea: a biographical fantasy about the early lives of the Brontë children, sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne and brother Bramwell. Growing up in a rural Yorkshire parsonage, the children created imaginary kingdoms. In Coakley’s retelling, the children disappear from their dreary domestic surroundings and have thrilling and intriguing adventures in these worlds of their imagination.

The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisalo, translated by Lola Rogers

Sinisalo is a leading practitioner of “Finnish weird,” a subset of speculative fiction usually written by women and involving dystopian societies. Her latest is set in the Eusistocratic Republic of Finland. A breeding program has created a species of submissive women, called eloi or femiwomen, designed for sex and procreation (old-style women are sterilized).