Tales of extinct eras have populated my reading list for the last few months. That might say something about my longing for the world as it was before the pandemic. Maybe I’ve just been in a romantic sort of mood this winter. Without further ado, these are my favourite new books so far this winter.
The Last Debutantes, Georgie Blalock
The Last Debutantes was a bright spot in a world on the brink of war. And no, I’m not talking about the situation on the European continent today, although it does feel eerily similar. I’m talking about the debutante ball of 1939, which was overshadowed by the rising tide of Naziism.
It was into this world that Valerie de Vere Cole made her debut. As the niece of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, she should make a splashy entrance into society. But she’s bitterly frightened that she’ll have her newfound social status ripped away if any of the elderly matrons discover where she came from. As a certain doddery guest at Downton Abbey might say, it’s a rather jolly read. Tea parties and balls in a world blithely unaware of the death and destruction still to come. Everything gleams, and yet the whole setup is so fragile, with war threatening to destroy everything that still shines bright.
The Last Grand Duchess, Bryn Turnbull
So many authors have rewritten the story of Russia’s imperial family, there’s now a genre of pseudo-history where one girl always escapes the bullets in the cellar of the House of Special Purpose. Clearly, the Romanovs continue to fascinate even a century after their demise. But Bryn Turnbull’s new novel breaks free of that trend. She gives credence to Grand Duchess Olga’s short but not without purpose-filled life, and does it in a beautiful, almost lyrical way.
The story alternates between dazzling court life, the horrors of the field hospitals, and the aftermath of the revolution. From the Romanovs’ tercentenary ball at the Winter Palace to tea and parlour games with naval officers in aunt Olga’s Saint Petersburg drawing-room, Turnbull brings imperial Russia blazoning to life, only to strip its glitter methodically away as war and winter set in. Sweet, shy Olga Nikolaevna trades her silk gowns for a nurse’s habit. And though she’s too frail for the surgical ward, her gentle soul is just what the convalescing soldiers need. Particularly Georgian infantryman Mitya.
I love that Turnbull didn’t focus on what if. In The Last Grand Duchess, she writes about the life Olga lived, not the life she could have lived. It’s a gorgeous tale of a bygone era where grand duchesses danced the Russian winter nights away and though the year is young, quite possibly the best book of 2022 so far.
The Christie Affair, Nina de Gramont
I love that Agatha Christie, the queen bee of mystery, actually disappeared for 11 days and left the world scrambling to find her. She abandoned her car by the river and checked into a hotel for some R&R while her husband Archie, who recently announced that he was leaving her for his much younger mistress, sweated bullets under police interrogation.
Marie Benedict wrote about the author’s disappearance in The Mystery of Mrs Christie last year. But Nina de Gramont’s version of events puts a whole new spin on the torrid affair. Writing through the eyes of the other woman—Nan O’Dea, she has concocted a tale that not only explains the disappearance but explores Nan’s motives to kill another woman. It involves an Irish convent, a lecherous priest, an acclaimed writer of murder mysteries, and a pair of star-crossed young lovers. It’s a delicious concept.
The Diamond Eye, Kate Quinn
Quiet, bookish Mila is a grad student and single mother. When Germany invades the motherland in 1941, she enlists and quickly makes a name for herself as a skilled sniper. Reeling from loss on the front line, she hardly registers when news of her three-hundredth kill makes her a national heroine. Whisked away to Washington, D.C. she befriends the first lady and finds herself caught in a deadly duel with another sharpshooter lurking in the shadows. One who’s determined to make her a patsy in a plot to assassinate FDR.
It’s impossible to be left disappointed by Kate Quinn. When The Huntress came out three years ago, I thought her leading lady was smashing. I cackled so much over razor blade-wielding Nina Markova’s antics, and The Diamond Eye‘s Mila Pavlichenko similarly left me awestruck. In typical fashion, I hooted all the way to the finish line. This is a stunner of a novel about a truly remarkable woman. My favourite takeaway? If a woman absolutely must have a man by her side, it had better be one who will re-type her dissertation when she gets her only copy soaked with the blood of her enemies.