The Booklover's Library (Hanover Square Press, 2024) has one of the most dramatic openings I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of novels. It’s 1931 in Nottingham, England, and seventeen-year-old Emma, ensconced in her father’s bookshop, is engrossed in her favorite novel, Jane Austen’s Emma, when she realizes the building around her has caught fire. With her father’s help, she stumbles into the street, only to watch him collapse and die as the bookstore implodes. In just a few pages, Emma has lost her sole family member, her home, and her source of income.

By the time we meet her again, eight years later, she has married, too young and unhappily, lost her husband to a car crash, and struggles to support herself and their seven-year-old daughter, Olivia, on her widow’s pension. In 1930s Britain, companies were legally barred from hiring married women or widows with children, so although Emma has barely passed twenty-five and would gladly work, she can’t apply for a job because of the marriage ban. But nor can she pay the rent, no matter how hard she squeezes every shilling. When a chance encounter leads to an opportunity for work at a lending library, Emma takes the plunge and identifies herself as Miss Taylor. Fortunately for her, the person hiring is also a woman, so even when the truth comes out during that first interview, the manager agrees to cover for her.

End of story, one might think, but readers who’ve done the math will already have realized that Emma’s problems have just begun. Three weeks after she starts her training, Hitler invades Poland, and Britain declares war. Nottingham, although not London, has enough factories to make it a likely target, and the city puts pressure on all parents to evacuate their children to the countryside. It’s Emma’s struggles to balance her own need to earn money to support her daughter while ensuring the survival of both her child and herself that make this novel memorable.

Madeline Martin is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance. The Booklover’s Library is her latest novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Steadfast, is due early in 2025.

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