Depending on where you live, this may not affect you, but here in the Mid-Atlantic states January came in with a blast of freezing air. What better time to shut out the world and curl up with an engrossing novel—perhaps one like our first pick that will take you virtually to warmer climes? Here are three books we loved in January 2025 to get you started.
Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen (Dutton, 2025)
Charlotte Cross has built a satisfying career as assistant curator in the Department of Egyptian Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It’s 1978, the museum has just opened the Temple of Dendur and is preparing to become the last US stop for the King Tutankhamun exhibit, and Charlotte at sixty has almost completed her long-planned article on Hathorkare, one of ancient Egypt’s few female pharaohs. Between that and a steady romantic relationship with the playwright Mark Schrader, life looks pretty good.
But if things stopped there, the story would end before it began. Davis nimbly juggles three threads and two narrators: Charlotte in 1978, Charlotte in 1936, and Annie Jenkins in 1978. What connects them, besides a shared interest in Egyptology, is the Cerulean Queen, part of an ancient statue of Hathorkare and the stolen queen of the title.
The theft of the Cerulean Queen and the mystery surrounding it presumably explains the publisher’s decision to describe the book as an Agatha Christie throwback and a heist novel. It is those things, but what drew me in and kept me reading is the rich characterization of both Charlotte and Annie as they struggle, independently and together, to come to terms with their own pasts and plot a sustainable and satisfying future.
You can find out more by listening to my interview with Fiona Davis on the New Books Network.—CPL
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove, 2021)
While some of the early eighteenth-century Irish Magdalen laundries were Protestant, the Catholic laundries survived the longest, right up until the late 1990s. Run by nuns, the laundries took in “fallen” women, many of whom were pregnant, either because dire circumstances had forced them into prostitution or because they had been victims of rape or because, simply, they made mistakes in a time and place where that was unacceptable. These women were separated from their babies and made to work as laundresses and at convent upkeep as well, and while the nuns tried to keep the secrets to their business success under wraps, stories about how these women were brutalized for the privilege of having a roof over their heads did sometimes leak out.
Small Things Like These is an engrossing novel about a man (Bill Furlong) whose own mother would have wound up in one of the laundries had not Mrs. Wilson, the Protestant widow she kept house for, allowed her to raise her bastard son in her home. Married and the father to five thriving daughters when we meet him in 1985, Furlong, who has worked his way up from a coal yard worker to the owner of successful coal delivery company, is appreciative of the fact that Mrs. Wilson had a part to play in his good fortune, and perhaps that is one of the factors that keeps him ever aware that he could lose everything he has. But he doesn’t really comprehend what the alternative might have been for himself or his mother, who was only sixteen when he was born—until Christmas season when he is delivering coal and logs to the local convent.
That glimpse he gets into what convent life is like for the unwed laundresses who live and work there carries the rest of the novel forward. Gossip concerning his subtle push back with the Mother Superior about circumstances there gets out beyond the convent walls, and those in the know within the community drop hints to ensure that Furlong, a man everyone likes and admires, doesn’t get in over his head. But every conversation Furlong has thereafter—and he has plenty of them, due to the nature of his work—seems to expand his awareness just a bit more, not only concerning business at the convent but also regarding his own personal life. A light begins to shine on the small things that have been there all along, in the shadows.
This is an exquisite and mesmerizing little novel. Just as the snow in the story falls with a lightness that nearly belies its steady buildup, Furlong’s understanding of his place in the world grows deeper as he moves through his otherwise predictable life. Author Claire Keegan is an impeccable writer, subtle and unhurried in her task. Small Things Like These is destined to become a holiday classic. (A major motion picture version of the book, staring renowned Irish actor Cillian Murphy, came out in November 2024.)—JS
Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, Mad Honey (Ballantine, 2022)
Through its alternating narrators, Mad Honey invokes the intoxication of first love, explores the restriction of static gender roles, and gives voice to the isolation of abused women.
Mad Honey is a collaboration between two authors. Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote the character of Lily, a senior in high school who falls in love with Asher, and Judy Picoult wrote the character of Asher’s mother, Olivia.
Lily and Olivia both have traumatic pasts. Lily, a talented musician, didn’t fit in at her former school and was belittled by her father; after a suicide attempt her mother moved her across the country for a new start in life. Olivia, who went back to her family’s farm to take over the apiary after a failed marriage, never speaks of the verbal and physical abuse her former spouse, a successful cardiac surgeon, inflicted on her.
Lily and Olivia’s son Asher begin a relationship after Asher’s best friend, Maya, introduces them. Asher, a talented artist and hockey player, is soon captivated by Lily, who is quirky and highly intelligent. This is Lily’s first relationship, and she, too, is entranced by Asher, who seems more mature than the other boys.
Soon, though, the secrets of their mutual pasts begin to emerge and sow conflict, as they both struggle with trusting each other completely. Lily, in particular, has an important disclosure to share with Asher.
Then, after their last fight, Lily shuts Asher out. Asher goes to her house anyway, distraught, and according to him, finds Lily dead at the bottom of the stairs. As a police investigation begins and Asher becomes a suspect, Olivia remembers her own abuse at the hands of her socially respected and charming husband. Was Lily’s death really an accident? If so, how could she, an accomplished fencer, have stumbled down the stairs of her own house? Or could Asher be like his father, even though his mother tried to protect him from that toxic relationship? On the way to the resolution of this mystery, there are a few plot twists and lots of interesting information about beekeeping.—GM
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