PenguinReaders' Group
 

Author Book Choices

Karen Maitland

We asked our Featured Author, Karen Maitland, author of Company of Liars, to recommend three books to our readers.

The Slave

The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer

A passionate story of forbidden love between a Jewish man and a Polish woman, set in seventeenth century Poland. It is time riddled with superstition and witchcraft and I love the way this master storyteller weaves all kinds of folklore into his story. It reads almost like an ancient folktale and yet the theme of ‘love battling against prejudice and racial hatred’ means it could easily be taking place today.

The History of Love

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Don’t be put off by the title, this is not a soppy romance, but the incredibly moving story of an old man dreaming of the lost love that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book, and about a teenage girl who is trying to find a cure for her mother’s loneliness. The novel is written in a fascinating structure of diary entries, short chapters and even diagrams, but if like me you love books, this really proves the power and passion of the written word and how a book can carry a message of love across generations and continents.

The Church of Dead Girls

The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns

I love psychological crime thrillers and this is one of the best. As three girls are snatched and their clothes returned washed and ironed, suspicion falls on different members of the community, bringing old animosities to the fore. The novel shows how different groups in this crucible turn viciously on one another in times of crisis. It is shudder-inducing right down to the final chilling sentence. Not one for the squeamish, but an excellent study of human behaviour, with a very compelling first person narrator.