Tatiana de Rosnay’s SARAH’S KEY takes the story of a ten year old French girl, and the American journalist excavating her case, to dramatize the unthinkably massive betrayal of 76000 Jewish men, women and children by French citizens and authorities in 1942.

With a plot like clockwork and clear, vivid prose, de Rosnay makes history indelible. Through spare details and deep feeling she conjures the bond between siblings, the casual cruelty of a concierge, and Parisians who profited from properties vacated by the round-up, and the Vichy-pleasing French police who exceeded even Nazi expectations. With a seamless dual timeline, the book’s momentum doesn’t let up.

Alison Weir’s INNOCENT TRAITOR contains a betrayal a page, culminating in the execution of Lady Jane Grey for treason. This was the first work of fiction from the popular historian, and her deep research is beautifully distilled through a fantastic constellation of characters. 

Weir leaves the gate and keeps the pace with such assurance, we are delighted by the storytelling even as we are outraged by accelerating events.  The poisoning of a King, switching of a body, heresies, rape, endless scheming and the unnecessary death of a sixteen year old girl at the will of her cousin.

“Let us being with two girls at a dance” O’Farrell’s command is enthralling from the start. Maggie O’Farrell’s fourth novel, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX is a masterpiece of gothic wrongdoing told in cool, elegant prose. The intimate, ruthless, unthinkably vast wrong done by a sister is set against the wider history of women betrayed by their parents – imprisoned in institutions for life for a moment of adolescent disobedience, sexual activity, or not fitting in.  

Though the novel is infested with betrayal, rape, hypocrisy, infidelity, theft, and terrible derelictions of trust, there are plenty of moments of wry comedy and no hint of over-kill. The novel’s ultimate betrayal, that perfectly patient revenge, is stunning.

A LIFE OF JESUS by Shusaku Endo was a revelation to me. The great Japanese novelist conjures the historical figure with a simplicity that feels preternaturally vivid. The story is rooted in a landscape described with incredible sensory immediacy – the desert, Judean villages, town of Nazareth, Galilea and Garden of Gethsemane are so real you’ll feel you’ve visited. 

Endo comments on his story in progress – without cost to suspense – with lightly worn scholarship and conversational analysis. He doesn’t shrink from miracles or contradictions – and riffs pleasantly, convincingly, on the resurrection itself.  

Mark Twain considered JOAN OF ARC the best of all his books (as well as the one he liked the most) but that is not the consensus, and it’s not so known as the rest.   Twain spent twelve years preparing and two years writing the book, while “the others needed no preparation and got none”. His immersion in the archives and the time he spent researching in France, retrieving the young woman from the myth, and giving her voice and life, is rewarded all the way. 

The  ridiculous narrator gives a convincingly intimate picture of Joan and her phenomenal encounters and adventures, but Twain’s inimitable playfulness, the irony and absurdity, don’t make her betrayal by the King, Cauchon, all those ministers and religious figures, the same country she’d saved, less devastating.