Sybil's List: December 2023

As centuries pass, occupants of a small house in Massachusetts provide a kaleidoscopic view of American history and the vicissitudes of human lives.

A prosperous, respected Irish family begins to fall apart when financial troubles escalate and long-held secrets are revealed.

Two wives of American officials in Vietnam perform misguided charity while unaware of our country’s catastrophic military policy.

Three days in the lives of one Brooklyn family, three years apart—before, during and after Covid— reveal the cracks in domestic harmony, the toll exacted on loved ones and the possibility of healing.
 

Isolated during the pandemic, a New York novelist finds mental clarity and the resumption of social communication when she is asked to caretake a parrot.

 

Three generations of women—the wife, daughter, and granddaughter of a semi famous Irish poet—explore the aftermath of his decision to abandon the family.
 

With the help of spiritual mentors, a courageous Black woman endures a brutal death march in the era before the Civil War.

 

Harrowing events during the Civil War bring a young wife and mother to a pioneering mental hospital in West Virginia, where a miraculous coincidence occurs.
 

A trial contesting an outrageous claim by an imposter to the estate of an English aristocrat beguiles Victorian England, and reveals class and social divisions.
 

Narrative panache and dark humor vitalize this story of a mixed Black and Jewish community in Pennsylvania during Prohibition.

 

What it takes for a Black man to succeed in 1970s Harlem requires some shaky deals.


 

Another wise and witty chronicle of small-town life where characters first met in Nobody’s Fool continue their lives.

 

Confined by the pandemic to the family cherry orchard in northern Michigan, three sisters try to elicit the details of their mother’s youthful romance with a famous actor.
 

The Palestinian writer ‘s novel is a resounding picture of the tensions between Jewish residents of Haifa and Palestinians in the West Bank.

 

A murder and a scandal in Penang, Malaya—plus visits from Somerset Maugham and Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen—are seen through the eyes of a woman married to a British official.

In the dystopian near future, when an environmental catastrophe has killed most agriculture on earth, a young chef works at a secretive food research community.

The panoramic life of a man who is present at many pivotal historical events during the early 1800s as he pursues his multiple careers on several continents.

An adolescent love affair at boarding school between a real British woman, Ann Lister, who came out as gay during the 19th century, and her adoring fictional friend.

Beginning after a World War I battle in France where an English soldier lies wounded, this poetic novel follows him and his family across four generations of love and war.

During the tumultuous years after the Civil War, a veteran soldier embarks on a grueling trip to avenge the murder of his beloved sister.
 

A librarian who is unmoored by retirement and plagued by memories of the wife who ran away finds social kinship at a neighborhood senior center.

In these 12 short stories, British writer Hadley’s literary dexterity connects small events in everyday lives with insights that mark a character’s psychological watershed.

Nine short stories convey the lives of characters who are both natives of Rome and foreigners who have settled there.
 

The accepted history of our country is incomplete without an understanding of how government policy toward Indigenous people is inescapably entwined.

The failings of our mental health system are dramatized in this deeply felt account of how a brilliant young man’s schizophrenia led to tragedy.
 

A Black man who worked secretly with a white abolitionist coined the descriptive term “underground railroad.”
 

A new look at the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 reveals how the city was politically changed in its aftermath.

 

A collection of the British author’s nonfiction pieces provides another memorable treasury of her literary contributions.
 

Fresh and exciting research provides new insights into the relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
 

A collection of Lepore’s historical and political essays shows the range of her penetrating analysis.
 

The youngest of 12 children raised by Black sharecroppers became the president of Smith College and later, of Harvard.

A former Harvard president describes her commitment to fighting for educational equality.
 

Eating and reading have a symbiotic relationship in literary critic Garner’s delightful memoir.