A few times a year I write about books that for some reason did not get the attention they deserved. I base that conclusion on the fact that I haven’t seen many posts about them on social media or reviews in established book review publications. In a few cases, a book gained traction for a while and then disappeared. Time has passed and there’s a good chance readers aren’t aware of these worthwhile books. I don’t often write about bestsellers or buzz books because they’re being covered by countless other people and publications, chosen by celebrity book clubs, or are simply the latest in a successful series.
Here are five gripping books published between 2016 and 2024 and set in New Zealand, Jamaica, Jordan, Yorkshire, and the forests of the Pacific Northwest. I hope you give some of them a try. If you do, let me know what you think!
The Axeman’s Carnival – Catherine Chidgey (Europa Editions)
Marnie, a young wife on a farm in New Zealand, rescues a baby magpie and decides to raise it, against the wishes of her domineering husband, Rob. The magpie, named Tama, learns to talk. Mostly he repeats words and phrases, often to hilarious effect. But soon Tama learns about the human world and observes everything that is taking place in the house and on the farm. Oh yeah, and he narrates the story.
On paper it sounds dubious, right? But in the hands of Catherine Chidgey it works brilliantly. The young couple’s farm and marriage are in trouble, but when Marnie posts some videos of Tama talking on social media, they go viral, and soon Tama is a global pop culture sensation. A social media expert advises them how to monetize Tama’s videos, which Marnie sees as a way to save the farm and take some pressure off Rob and their marriage. But Rob hates Tama and the attention for reasons that will be obvious.
Through Tama’s deadpan (and occasionally foulmouthed) observations, Chidgey examines the dark side of a marriage, rural life, the brave new world of social media fame, and the impact of a wild animal being raised by humans. You won’t be able to put this book down. When you finish it, you’ll want to read Chidgey’s previous books, Pet and Remote Sympathy, and her 2025 novel, The Book of Guilt.
The Child Finder – Rene Denfeld (Harper Perennial)
A snowbound calm pervades this story of Naomi, a private investigator who specializes in locating missing children. Three years earlier, five-year-old Madison Culver disappeared on a trip to choose a Christmas tree in the snowy forests of Oregon. When the official investigation fails to find Madison, her desperate parents turn to Naomi.
While this may sound like the plot of a genre mystery novel, Denfeld’s gifts turn it into something much more. Naomi’s involving search for Madison is also an exploration of her own past, which has one unanswered question: What happened to her in the time before her memories begin with running across a field at night, to be rescued by migrant workers and adopted by an older, single woman?
The Child Finder is told in dual narratives. One follows Naomi’s search (and its profound effect on her own inchoate memories) and the other depicts Madison’s unusual strategy for coping with her dire situation. Denfeld weaves the two strands tighter and tighter in a manner that put me in mind of both The Lovely Bones and The Silence of the Lambs.
The central question in The Child Finder concerns whether those who are lost can be found, and if so, how. Madison is lost to her parents and the outside world. And the lost child of Naomi’s past remains shrouded in dreamlike memory and self-protective denial. While Naomi seeks “the snow child” Madison, two men – one from her adoptive upbringing and the other from her investigation – attempt to “find” her. But so long as she is lost to herself, she can’t be found by others.
Here Comes the Sun — Nicole Dennis-Benn (Liveright)
Here Comes the Sun succeeds both as a page-turner of a story and a fearless character study of four women struggling to make sense of their lives in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Dennis-Benn takes us behind the sun, sand, and sea to explore the lives of the people who live in the real Montego Bay but work in the fantasy world that tourists inhabit for their brief stay in Jamaica. The protagonist, Margot, works in one of the resorts owned by an aristocratic white family. Strikingly beautiful and willfully charming, Margot is a workaholic determined to save enough money to send her younger sister, Thandi, to a good private school and then on to college and medical school so that she will not have to spend her life working in Montego Bay.
But Margot’s regular job is not sufficient for her purposes. She has a side hustle that she does her best to keep from her co-workers. It’s clear that Margot is broken but not why. What has led her to pay this high price to facilitate Thandi’s escape? Margot has more than one secret, though. And 16-year-old Thandi, though a dedicated student who wants to please her big sister and mother by becoming a doctor, eventually discovers that she has dreams and desires of her own.
Here Comes the Sun weaves a complex series of personal and cultural conflicts into a coherent whole that makes for absorbing reading. Everyone has a secret, or a secret self, and these secrets are tested by the challenges of a changing economy in the face of climate change and corporate greed and by personal circumstances and actions that shock the unsuspecting.
The River Within– Karen Powell (Europa Editions)
Set in the village of Starome in North Yorkshire mostly during the mid-1950s, The River Within examines the fraught relationships among characters from different levels of the British class system. Like any good mystery, it grabs you from the start, when Alexander Richmond and his friends, siblings Lennie (Helena) and Thomas Fairweather, discover a body in the river that runs through the Richmond estate. It is Danny Masters, a friend from their childhood and Lennie’s classmate. When Danny is pulled from the river, the question is whether his death was an accident, a suicide, or murder. As we get to know these characters and several more, all three possibilities remain plausible.
Powell tells the story through the alternating perspectives of Lennie, Danny, and Alexander’s mother Venetia, and the plot moves back and forth in time from the 1930s to 1956. The charismatic Angus Richmond and his dutiful younger brother James are the scions of a fading family, whose Richmond Hall is expansive but slowly crumbling. Venetia comes from a middle-class family but adapts well to life among the landed gentry. Lennie and Thomas’s father, Peter, is the private secretary to Angus, and the Fairweathers live in a cottage on the estate.
While to an outsider life on the Richmond estate appears to be proceeding smoothly as Britain recovers from the war, the estate turns out to be a hothouse of secrets and mysteries suitable to the setting of the North Yorkshire moors that we know well from classic Gothic novels. The River Within is an absorbing novel that probes the always rich subjects of love, loss, jealousy, reputation, family dysfunction, and class.
The Confusion of Languages – Siobhan Fallon (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Siobhan Fallon made a big impression with her debut story collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone (2011), about the experience of military wives living at Fort Hood, Texas, and the men who leave for Iraq and later return in a range of challenging mental and physical states. The Confusion of Languages is set in Jordan during the Arab Spring uprising in May 2011. It’s the story of two American women whose military husbands work at the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Cassie and Dan have been in Jordan for a while and are asked to serve as mentors to a newly arrived newlyweds Margaret and Creighton. Cassie has mixed feelings about mentoring Margaret, but she soon decides that a new friend, with a baby in tow, would be a good thing so far from home.
Cassie’s efforts to guide Margaret through her transition to life in Jordan and to teach her about Jordanian culture, especially expectations regarding male-female interactions, are often met with stubborn resistance and Margaret’s determination to do things her way, without concern for Jordanian and Muslim customs. Margaret is certain that her warmth, kindness, and American “can do” approach will be sufficient in every situation. But she is mistaken.
After a minor car accident, Margaret is required to go to the police station, so Cassie babysits for her. But Margaret fails to return. Fallon tells the story of Margaret’s disappearance through Cassie’s first-person narrative over the afternoon and evening of her disappearance and Margaret’s journal, which Cassie discovers. Cassie soon learns that Margaret has a secret that could change everything. The Confusion of Languages is equal parts thriller, cultural exploration, and character study. It’s a thought-provoking exploration of the ramifications of misunderstandings with Jordanians and the characters’ good intentions gone awry.
READ HER LIKE AN OPEN BOOK 