January 1, 2023
From Benedict and Murray, the New York Times best-selling authors of the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian, The First Ladies assays the relationship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, whose parents were once enslaved. In theNew York Times best-selling Harmel's The Paris Daughter, Elise must go into hiding when the Germans occupy Paris during World War II and entrusts her young daughter to friend Juliette--their two girls are close--only to discover at war's end that Juliette has vanished and only one girl (but which one?) survived a bombing. In lates 1700s India, 17-year-old Abbas works under French clockmaker Lucien du Leze to create a massive tiger automaton for Tipu Sultan (called the Tiger of Mysore), then returns to apprentice with du Leze in France and eventually heads to England to rescue his tiger, which British forces treated as Loot; James'sThe Tusk That Did the Damage was a San Francisco Chronicle best book. Wandering through devastated post-World War II France, Asher finds sanctuary (but hides his Jewish identity) at The Glass Ch�teau, where glass is being manufactured to replace the shattered windows of postwar France's cathedrals: award-winning journalist/novelist Kiernan was inspired by the life of Marc Chagall. In the New York Times best-selling See's Lady Tan's Circle of Women, Yunxian is trained by her physician grandmother in 15th-century China and works with a young midwife, but an arranged marriage threatens to confine her to a life of wifely subordination. Following Tsukiyama's much-praised The Color of Air, The Brightest Star reimagines the life of Anna May Wong, the only Asian American woman to achieve fame in Hollywood's early days. In the New York Times best-selling Williams's The Beach at Summerly, caretaker's daughter Emilia Winthrop is thrilled when charismatic role model Olive Rainsford arrives at Winthrop Island's Summerly estate in 1946, then is thrown into turmoil when she learns that someone at Summerly is transmitting secrets to the Soviets.
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Starred review from April 17, 2023
James (The Tusk That Did the Damage) returns with a spectacular tale of creativity and colonialism drawing on the “Tippoo’s Tiger” automaton displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1794 Mysore, India, teenager Abbas carves intricate mechanical toys at his father’s furniture shop. After Mysore’s ruler, Tipu Sultan, learns of Abbas’s talents, he orders Abbas to help French inventor and clockmaker Lucien du Leze craft Mysore’s first automaton. Their “fantastical curiosity,” as Tipu calls the life-size wooden tiger capable of sound and movement, pleases the court. While under du Leze’s tutelage, Abbas meets Jehanne Martine, the biracial daughter of Tipu’s French armorer. Du Leze, Jehanne, and her father sail to France in 1799, and Abbas stays behind to tend his ailing father. His hopes to follow them are dashed by Britain’s bloody conquest of Mysore, and by the time he arrives in Rouen in 1805 to take up the apprenticeship he’s been promised, du Leze is dead. He reunites with Jehanne, who tells him the British have shipped the mechanical tiger to England with other looted artifacts. Abbas proposes an audacious plan to reclaim the object, believing its public display could make them rich and give them the chance to make their mark on history. There’s an unceasing exuberance to the prose, and James’s descriptions are endlessly witty (du Leze’s outfit for the tiger’s unveiling, an Afghani tunic and a shawl from Kashmir, is “an atlas of textiles”). Rarely is a novel so dense with painful themes also such fun. At once swashbuckling and searing, this is a marvelous achievement.
Starred review from June 1, 2023
An expert Indian woodworker gets a front-row seat to 18th- and 19th-century imperialism. Abbas, the hero of James' lively and symbolically rich third novel, is a poor 17-year-old artisan in Mysore in 1794 when he's recruited by Tipu Sultan, the local ruler, to apprentice with Lucien Du Leze, a French clockmaker. Together they are charged with making an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. The experience hones his carving skills, but just as importantly it introduces him to an intercontinental power play: Tipu, aka the Tiger of Mysore, is attempting to fend off an incursion by the British East India Company by appealing for French support by any means necessary, including the automaton. But with France roiled in the aftermath of its own revolution, Mysore falls in 1799, prompting Abbas to escape to France, where he connects with Lucien's daughter, Jehanne. Together, they plot to recover the automaton, which is in the hands of Lady Selwyn, widow of a British soldier who served in India. From Abbas' first meeting with Lucien to his and Jehanne's negotiations with Selwyn, James trains her descriptions on the ways Indians are displaced and diminished by imperialists and the ways they have to contort themselves to adjust to society. (Selwyn's high-mannered butler, an Indian man named Rum, exemplifies the psychic costs of force-feeding oneself another culture's protocols.) But though the intensity of James' critique is clear, her prose is fleet and rich in ironic humor. "I am here because you were there," Rum thinks, encapsulating the perverse logic and cruelty of his circumstance. The automaton of the novel actually exists, James explains in a note; her novel, as the title hints, is an engaging reminder that today's museum pieces are often functions of forgotten exploitation and theft. A smart, sharp tale, as well crafted as the object at its center.
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Starred review from June 1, 2023
James follows The Tusk That Did the Damage (2015) with a rich, sprawling, picaresque historical novel about the apprenticeship of Abbas, an Indian woodworker, to Lucien Du Leze, a dissipated French clockmaker tasked with creating an automaton for India's lateeighteenth-century ruler, Tipu Sultan. The automaton, a Rube Goldberg-like sculpted wooden contraption of cogs, wheels, bellows, and chutes, is encased in an elaborately carved likeness of a tiger eating a man. This gruesome but gorgeous wonder of artistry and engineering brings them a modicum of fame and comfort, but British forces soon topple Tipu's regime and Tipu's tiger vanishes. Du Leze escapes back to France, but Abbas is less fortunate and spends years as an indentured seaman on British warships. Only his dream of being reunited with his mentor, honing his craft, and seeing the enchanting Jehanne, Du Leze's ward, keeps Abbas alive. When Abbas and Jehanne finally reconnect, their shared mission of rescuing and restoring Tipu's tiger launches them on a farcical escapade that sparkles with sharp wit and subtle longing. From the tyrannical opulence of Tipu's palace to the fading glory of a British country manor, James weaves a lustrous tale of intrigue and survival, cunning and romance.
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