This month: one Brazilian, one Italian, one from the US, and three from the English tradition. All use historical settings to grapple with larger questions of human nature and the societies that shape us. A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens Dickens sets his novel across Paris and London in the years surrounding 1789 […]
Edmond Thornfield’s Atalanta of the Wild follows Atalanta, an Arkadian huntress raised in the mountain wilds, after the father who abandoned her returns seeking forgiveness. Lord Iásios invites her into the royal house of Tegea, where she meets siblings she once believed she would never know. Her bow has made her at home in the
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August turns toward six works that share a single obsession: the moment a soul, a marriage, or a kingdom comes apart under its own weight and what remains once it has. Othello (1603), William Shakespeare Othello, a Moorish general in the service of Venice, newly wed to Desdemona, is dispatched to defend Cyprus when his
Six novels this month—two Brazilian, four from the European tradition—all concerned with what society does to people who fall outside its sanctioned arrangements. Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman (1891), Thomas Hardy Tess Durbeyfield is a farmer’s daughter whose family, learning of a distant, probably fictional connection to the ancient d’Urberville name, sends
A Tale of Paris and Paris: Echoes of Troy, in the Chronicles of Cortona by Edmond Thornfield, follows Lorenzo di Ranieri, a militia sergeant in Cortona, when inquisitors from Perugia arrive to pursue charges of heresy. Lorenzo forms a backstairs circle with Matteo at the Ranieri stable and relies on Costanza Briani to care for
Do you miss stories that feel alive, where the world breathes, where every word has been chosen by a human hand that hesitated, reconsidered, and chose again? Have you grown weary of fiction that tells instead of shows, of worlds that feel thin and formulaic, assembled rather than imagined? In an era when AI-generated content
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Every few months I set aside the novelist’s desk and return to the reader’s chair. These are six books I return to, recommend without hesitation, or simply cannot stop thinking about. They span centuries, continents, and registers—Gothic Louisiana, medieval Cornwall, the towers of Notre-Dame, Revolutionary France, the streets of Salvador da Bahia—but they share the
FEB 2026 Literary Titan Gold Book Award Winner Asterios and the Labyrinth follows Prince Asterios of Knossos as his father dies, political rivals rise against him, foreign powers threaten the island, and love pulls him in directions that the laws of his world barely allow. The story blends palace intrigue, war, prophecy, and a passionate
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Set on the island of Crete during the Minoan Bronze Age some 3,500 years ago, Asterios and the Labyrinth (Mythos of Knossos) by Edmond Thornfield is a tale of gods, kings, heroes, revolts, and magical powers. The Minoans, a wealthy people known for their farming and commerce, experienced some turbulence following the death of King
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There is a particular dishonesty that runs through a great deal of fiction written by and about men, a tendency to grant male characters the external architecture of complexity without the internal substance of it. Men in such novels have ambitions, rivalries, codes of honor, and moments of violence, but their inner lives remain largely
