> HISTORICAL FICTION

The Certainties By Aislinn Hunter Knopf Canada, 248 pages, $29.95

Award-winning Vancouver novelist Aislinn Hunter’s latest outing is a study in despair — and in the exquisite, heartbreaking beauty of being alive. Set in 1940, in the shadow of the Second World War, it follows three refugees, intellectuals who’ve crossed the Pyrenees into a Spanish town, where their travel documents are seized. Over 48 hours, as they await their fate in a hotel, one of these migrants, a professor, glimpses a small child, Pia, to whom he narrates his inner life, and whom the novel revisits as an adult in the1980s. “The Certainties” is a story of loss, both personal and political, shot through with the ordinary wonders of life: the sea, the fresh market olives, the everyday gestures of human kindness. The book is dedicated to Hunter’s late husband, who recently passed away. That grief no doubt contributes to the haunted feel of this story. And to its emotional core: love.

The Book of Lost Names By Kristin Harmel Gallery Books, 400 pages, $24.99

International bestselling author Kristin Harmel (“The Winemaker’s Wife”) is back with another page-turner, set between America and Europe. The story follows an elderly Florida librarian, Eva Traube Abrams, as she embarks on a cross-continental adventure to retrieve a treasured religious tome lost in the

Second World War, “The Book of Lost Names.” As her memories of the war surface, we learn of the special significance of the book, of the people from the past she shared it with, of the harrowing losses that followed it — and the history that she’s spent a lifetime suppressing. A celebration of the power of books to give hope and healing, this lovely tale offers hope in troubled times.

Hamnet and Judith By Maggie O’Farrell Knopf Canada, 384 pages, $24.95

The acclaimed Irish-born novelist Maggie O’Farrell is known for penning the most literary of fiction. And she does not disappoint with this stunning — though sorrowful — outing. “Hamnet and Judith” visits the England of the 1500s and delves into the domestic life of William Shakespeare. The famed playwright and his wife had twins, one of whom, a son named Hamnet, died at age 11 (and perhaps inspired Shakespeare’s greatest work, “Hamlet”). This novel dives into that loss, and into the marriage and family that survived it.

Tara Henley is a writer and radio producer in

Toronto.