New England authors have embraced blending real locations and histories with fictional tales for a slate of novels released this season. Members of the New Hampshire Writer’s Project had these suggestions of books that readers should check out.
T.R. Monaghan of Pelham heads just over the border to Lowell, Mass., with Sweet, Sweet Jayne to be released on Sept. 1. Set in 1971, 15-year-old Jayne Ranney finds herself adrift after many setbacks: her father’s accidental death, her brother’s incarceration, and her mother’s abuse and neglect. But hope for a stable future emerges when Jayne is hired as a runner for the city’s preeminent bookmaker, Galen “‘the Greek” Stathakis.
Massachusetts author Ursula Wong will be releasing the fourth book of her “Amber War” series in late November, Black Amber. In her book, a pipeline under the Baltic Sea has made Europe dependent on Russian gas, but Russian petro-bullying threatens to make Europe weak and NATO ineffective. There is a cyber terrorist plot to stop the pipeline, and Vit Partenkas of Lithuanian think-tank Baltic Watch must decide whether to support them and let Europe fall into an energy dark-age, or expose them and risk retaliation that may lead to war.
A Stranger on Ghost Beach, a new book by Michelle Tangen of Gonic, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co.
The publisher’s synopsis of Tangen’s novel is: “Twelve years ago, Corey Banks lost his girlfriend and nine other classmates during their high school senior class field trip. Now a police detective in his Maine hometown, he is still haunted by his memories of Julie. When two high school girls fail to return home from a shopping trip, Corey and his partner are assigned to the case. With the anniversary of Julie’s passing approaching, the disappearance weighs heavy on Corey’s mind, bringing back painful memories of that fateful day. But this new case might just hold a link to his past – and, quite possibly, the key to his future.”
Christine Duffy Zerillo of Concord pulls from history in Still Here, to be released on Oct. 1. It is a sweeping tale of two strong women, Mary Rowlandson, a colonial minister’s wife captured in an Indian raid on Lancaster, Mass., during King Philip’s War in 1676, and her captor, Sachem Weetamoo of the Pocasset Wampanoags. the novel is based on Rowlandson’s own captivity narrative written in 1682, The Sovereignity and Goodness of God. It reveals how their independence, strength and spirituality supported and divided these two enemies through loss of home, friends, and family as their cultures collided in the deadliest war of its time.