> HISTORICAL FICTION
Machine Without Horses By Helen Humphreys HarperCollins, 288 pages, $29.99
In 2001, The New York Times ran an obituary for Megan Boyd, an 86-yearold Scottish woman who had spent 60 years of her life tying fishing flies. Reading the piece, anyone would be intrigued. Here was a woman who was at the top of an extremely niche field, who’d won fans all over the world, including Prince Charles, and whose sole hobby was Scottish dancing. An eccentric who worked around the clock and defied the norms of her time, dressing every day in a man’s shirt and tie, she was awarded the British Empire Medal but declined to go and meet the Queen since, as she told the monarch, she had nobody to look after her dog that day. Acclaimed Kingston, Ont., author Helen Humphreys read that same obituary, and it has now inspired one of the best — and most wonderfully experimental — historical fiction titles of the year. Humphreys spends the first half of Machine Without
Horses, named for a Scottish dance, mulling over the creative process as she gets to know Boyd, and the second half reimagining her life in a small village, in a cottage that had no electricity until 1985. Humphreys, who has previously won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, is an extraordinary writer.
AWell-Behaved Woman: ANovel of the Vanderbilts By Therese Anne Fowler St. Martin’s Press, 400 pages, $34.99
Another article inspired the latest outing from New York Times bestselling author Therese Anne Fowler. After reading a piece about a young Gloria Vanderbilt — fashion designer and mother to Anderson Cooper — and the famed custody battle between her aunt and her mother in 1934, the North Carolina writer “jumped down the Vanderbilt family rabbit hole.” Fowler became fascinated with family matriarch, socialite and suffragette Alva Vanderbilt Belmont — Gloria’s great-aunt — who was often portrayed in the press in brutal and sexist terms. Fowler saw echoes of that same narrative in the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton and set out to take a closer look at the historical figure’s life. The result is an expertly crafted, detail-rich novel that’s now in development for TV by Sony Pictures. There’s a reason this appeared on many of the fall’s most anticipated reading lists.
The Fallen Architect By Charles Belfoure Sourcebooks, 336 pages, $25.99
Charles Belfoure, author of The Paris
Architect, is back with another period page-turner. The Maryland writer is also a trained architect, and he draws on that wealth of experience again here in this delightfully intriguing novel, set in England in the early 1900s. When the Britannia Empire theatre’s balcony collapses — taking the lives of more than a dozen people — its architect, Douglas Layton, is dubbed “The Butcher of the West End” in the press. He is sent to prison, losing his social standing, his aristocratic wife, his son and his dream home. After being released, Layton plays detective, attempting to discover the truth about the tragedy that robbed him of all he held dear.
Miss Marley: The Untold Story of Jacob Marley’s Sister By Vanessa Lafaye HQ, 112 pages, $16.99
Early in 2018, a week after it was announced that she’d signed a deal for
Miss Marley — a prequel to A Christmas Carol told from the perspective of Jacob Marley’s sister — Vanessa Lafaye passed away from cancer. The Florida-born, U.K.-based author had chronicled her experiences living with the disease on the widely read blog Living While Dying, and fans were heartbroken. Just days before her death at age 54, she’d made a date to see her friend, Rebecca Mascull, and talk about Miss Marley. The appointment was, sadly, never kept. Mascull was a member of the same writing group Lafaye belonged to, The Prime Writers, all of whom had started publishing after the age of 40. A fellow Charles Dickens fan, Mascull agreed to complete her friend’s novella, and the result is this vividly written offshoot of the classic holiday tale, brimming with heart and humanity. A sweet legacy to leave behind.