About Floreana: On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women―a century apart―converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.

Being on a faraway island can seem like paradise—until it isn’t.

Often in real life (and always in literature) things can go sideways for those who find themselves on a remote island, far removed from their regularly scheduled lives and from society’s expectations. My novel, Floreana, set on the isolated Galápagos island of the same name, is narrated by two women separated by 100 years, whose stories show how being so far away can feel like freedom while often turning out to be anything but.

Both characters—one a Berlin hausfrau who flees to Floreana with her lover, the other a penguin researcher back in the field after a decade away—hope to find an escape on Floreana, only to end up facing the very challenges they’d hoped to outrun: questions about life, love, who they really are, and what their future holds. Whether fleeing to a desert island to start a new life or to save an endangered species, paradise is hard work—especially if you’re carrying your secrets with you.

And in fiction, islands aren’t merely settings but can be characters as well. The island of Floreana is haunting and capricious, seeing would-be settlers come and go while constantly plunging inhabitants into drought, then turning around and providing a tantalizing bounty of tropical fruits and veggies. And, of course, islands are moody; dramatic weather nearly always comes with the territory.

What I love about books set in remote place is that characters are forced to come to terms with themselves—usually when they’re looking to avoid doing just that. As the saying goes, “No matter where you go, there you are.” These 7 books feature tales of how the effects of isolation can lead humans to act in unexpected ways, for better or worse, as well as how it can help them discover who they truly are.

The Dolphin House by Audrey Schulman

In Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House, a young woman flees her Florida home after being sexually harassed at her job for the last time and travels to the island of St. Thomas, where she comes across a man-made sluice leading into a lagoon that holds four wild dolphins. Cora, who is hard of hearing above water, hears very well underwater, and she gets into the water with the dolphins in order to hear them better. The resident scientists, who actually know very little about the dolphins, hire her immediately, and she connects with the animals in ways no one has before, learning about the dolphins, herself, and her place in the world. Inspired by a true story about dolphin research in St. Thomas in the 1960s, this novel portrays sexism, science, and animal intelligence in a beautiful tribute to the natural world.

 

Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith

In Alexis M. Smith’s novel Marrow Island, a devastating earthquake and the oil refinery accident that follows leave the island uninhabitable—or so the inhabitants believe. As it turns out, decades later there is a thriving community of “colonists” living there—but not all is as it appears.  Former islander Lucie Bowen returns to witness an astonishing transformation, and what she finds is both inspiring and devastating. Marrow Island, a book as much about a woman’s attempts to reconnect with her past as it is about the environment, reveals the connections between disasters natural and man-made, between relationships past and present, and how we recover—or do not—from landscapes forever changed.

 

 

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galápagos, which will see its fortieth birthday in 2025, still feels relevant as a story about a small group of people who end up stranded on a (fictional) Galápagos island after a global financial meltdown. Told from the perspective of a descendant of the survivors who is looking back one million years later, this novel reveals how much more difficult life was in the 1980s, when our oversized human brains led to society’s downfall. From our arrogance to our ability to deceive to our great capacity for denial, having a big brain was nothing but trouble. With Vonnegut’s signature wit and wisdom, this is a survival story of the fittest.

 

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

In this stunning novel set at a lighthouse on an isolated point of land, a grieving couple rescue an infant, adrift at sea with her deceased father, and claim her as their own. Still mourning her miscarriages and stillbirth, Isabel convinces her reluctant husband, Tom, that the baby who washed ashore is meant to be theirs. Living in isolation, they can live their uneasy family dream until they return to the mainland when the child is two—and realize their actions didn’t happen in isolation after all.

 

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

This twisty psychological thriller begins in the 1950s with two U.S. Marshals visiting the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on the Alcatraz-like Shutter Island, where the hospital was once a military barracks. The Marshals are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the hospital’s patients, but Teddy Daniels has his own agenda, and the story, addled with suspicion about experiments and psychotropic drugs, gets darker and more sinister along the way. A catastrophic hurricane stranding them on the island adds to the tension of the story, which ends with a spectacular twist.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Being trapped on an island, whether with friends or strangers, makes for a great thriller—like Lucy Foley’s The Guest List. The haunting atmosphere of the secluded Irish setting—a tiny island off the coast, cut off from the mainland, in the midst of a raging storm—makes the location a character in itself, and the bad behavior of the humans keeps the tension rising, especially when one of them turns up dead. The seething jealousies and the luxurious amenities make this a wedding to die for, and it’s pure deadly fun.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Among the most famous of island novels, Lord of the Flies is the poster child for what can go wrong when stranded in total isolation. When seven British schoolboys are stuck on an uninhabited island, order descends into chaos and imagination turns into paranoia—and none of it ends well. This classic novel remains one of the most insightful, if quite terrifying, glimpses into human nature—with the island as the instigator of what we all may be capable of.

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Will you be adding any of these new releases to your TBR? Let us know in the comments below!

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas | May 2 | Goodreads
In the thrilling third novel in the A Court of Thorns & Roses series, Feyre returns to the Spring Court determined to gather information on Tamlin’s manoeuvrings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit and one slip may spell doom not just for her, but her world as well.

Hadriana In All My Dreams by René Depestre | May 2 | Goodreads
Hadriana, a young French woman, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family, but on the morning of the wedding, she drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. After being buried by the town, she is revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.

The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn | May 2 | Goodreads
In England 1815, two travellers from the future arrive in a field, dishevelled and weighed down with hidden money. Rachel and Liam aren’t the first team of time travellers, but their mission is the most audacious yet: meet, befriend, and steal from Jane Austen and obtain an unpublished novel. On their mission, the two face struggles as Rachel fights to reconcile her true self with the constrictions of 19th century society and with their portal home closing, they struggle to leave history as they found it…however heartbreaking that proves.

White Fur by Jardine Libaire | May 30 | Goodreads
Set in the 1980s, Elise Perez meets Jamey Hyde and the attraction is instant. Although they are next-door neighbors, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn’t complete high school, whereas Jamey is a junior at Yale and an heir to a private investment bank fortune. The two soon move to Manhattan in hopes of forging a life together until Jamey’s family intervenes and they are soon fighting not just for their love, but also for their lives.

Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare | May 23 | Goodreads
Emma Carstairs has avenged her parents and she thought she’d be at peace, but she is anything but calm. Torn between her desire for Julian and her desire to protect him from the consequences it bears, she begins dating his brother Mark. Meanwhile, the faerie courts are not silent. The Unseelie King is tired of the Cold Peace, and will no longer concede to the Shadowhunters’ demands. Caught between the demands of faerie and the laws of the Clave, the group must find a way to come together to defend everything they hold dear.

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami | May 9 | Goodreads
Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

The Empire’s Ghost by Isabelle Steiger | May 16 | Goodreads
The empire of Elesthene once spanned a continent, but its rise heralded the death of magic and tore itself apart. Now a new dictator, Imperator Elgar, rises to seize power and recreate the lost empire anew. With each kingdom facing their own issue, everything seems aligned in Elgar’s favour except a group finds an unexpected opportunity to alter the balance of power in the war. Their actions and those of the remaining royals, they may uncover not just a way to defeat Elgar, but also a deeper truth about their world’s lost history.

House of Names by Colm Tóibín | May 18 | Goodreads
A powerful retelling of a classic Greek tragedy of a family at war with itself. The tale sees Agamemnon ordering the sacrifice of his daughter and after her death, he leads his army into battle where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years on, he returns home and finds his murderous action has set the entire family on a path of intimate violence.

Among The Lesser Gods by Margo Catts | May 9 | Goodreads
Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child, to her mother’s abandonment, and now to an unwanted pregnancy, she knows small actions can have terrible consequences. She is soon confronted by reflections of her own troubles wherever she turns. Bit by bit, Elena begins to question her understanding of cause and effect, reexamining the tragedies she’s held on to and the wounds she’s refused to let heal.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins | May 2 | Goodreads
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town and earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl who now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.

No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal | May 2 | Goodreads
Harit, a lonely Indian immigrant in his midforties lives with his mother and in a misguided attempt to keep both himself and his mother sane after the death of his sister, he takes to dressing up in a sari every night to pass himself off as his sister. Meanwhile, Ranjana, also an Indian immigrant in her midforties, has just seen her only child, Prashant, off to college. Worried that her husband has begun an affair, she seeks solace by writing paranormal romances in secret. Ranjana & Harit’s paths soon cross and they begin a strange yet necessary friendship.

Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane | May 9 | Goodreads
Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray, including her marriage. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths.

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