Hey Everyone,
After a couple of depressing years in which almost every recently published book written by women that I purchased included some kind of trans pandering, I've been on wave of luck (is the tide turning?) and thought I'd share some blessedly tra-free recent fiction, and invite you all to share some of your own.
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn: my favorite, a twisty house murder mystery with multiple women's stories set in DC during the paranoia of the McCarthy era. Recipes included.
Weyward by Emilia Hart: three generations of wise women/witches persecuted in various ways in different eras. Really enjoyed it though a fair amount of domestic violence.
Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin: a psychological thriller that kept me turning pages.
Mania by Lionel Shriver: okay, I admit this obliquely references TRAs by being a glorious satire of the entire goalpost moving, double speak insanity, only using intelligence instead of sex as the subject of their mania.
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke: odd, dreamlike fantasy from author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: published in Polish in 2009 but translated into English in 2018, another unique and thought-provoking murder mystery.
Also going to plug my two favorite series: the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden (starts with the Bear and the Nightingale) and the Strike series by Robert Galbraith aka JKR.
The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods
The Hanging of Hettie Gale, Tess Burness
Spinning Silver, Naomi Novak
The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters
Thanks for the suggestions!