Today in Bookish and Literary History, January 25

 1904 Riders to the Sea by John Millington Synge - Ireland

Set on the rugged Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland, Riders to the Sea tells the haunting story of a mother’s unrelenting grief and enduring strength in the face of relentless tragedy.

2002 Any Human Heart by William Boyd - UK

Any Human Heart is William's Boyd's classic, bestselling novel Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart. Any Human Heart will be enjoyed by readers of Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel, as well as lovers of the finest British and historical fiction around the world. 'Astonishing, touching, extremely funny. A brilliant evocation of a past era and an immensely readable story' Sunday Telegraph 'Superb, wonderful, enjoyable' Guardian 'A terrific journey through the twentieth century. Thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable' Jeremy Paxman

2022 Manywhere: Stories by Morgan Thomas - US

The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’s shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, whatever the cost. As Thomas’s subjects trace deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery.

• FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE
• THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ART SIEDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
• THE 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY PRIZE FOR TRANSGENDER FICTION
• THE 2023 PUBLISHING TRIANGLE EDMUND WHITE AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION

2022 Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka - US

In the tradition of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life—from the bestselling author of Girl in Snow.

• Edgar AwardWinner, 2023

2022 Devil House by John Darnielle - US

From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.

2022 Violeta by Isabel Allende - Chile/US

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

2022 Maybe It's Me Essays: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman by Eileen Pollack - US

Eileen is too smart for the third grade, but when she gets a chance to be skipped ahead, she fails the test. The clownish school psychologist tries to gain her trust with an offer of Oreos, but she refuses. After all, he is a stranger and might try to poison her! This is the start of the author’s love-hate relationship with the rules as they were laid out for a girl in the 1960s and as they persist in some form today. As she ascends through a physics degree at Yale that dashes her hopes for love and romance, to a post-graduate summer that leaves her “peed on, shot at, and kidnapped,” to a marriage of supposed equals in which she is expected to do all the housework, child-rearing, and bill paying and make sure the Roto-Rooter guy arrives on time, Pollack shares with poignant humor the trials of being smart and female in a world in which women are rarely appreciated for both their bodies and their minds. Maybe It’s Me is a question all women have asked themselves. But Pollack’s message will resonate with readers of all genders as a story of the very human search for connection, love, acceptance, and self-respect. The author of the groundbreaking memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, Pollack proves that even in her sixties, wiser and more bruised but no less hilarious, she is still very much in the game.

2022 Defenestrate by Renee Branum - US

An exuberant, wildly inventive debut about a young woman fascinated by her ancestors' legendary "falling curse" and trying to keep her own family from falling apart.

2022 Perpetual West by Mesha Maren - US

The riveting new novel by the acclaimed author of Sugar Run, Perpetual West is a brilliant and evocative story of borders—between countries, between lovers, and between facets of the self.

2024 Wild Houses by Colin Barrett - Ireland/CAN

The riotous, raucous and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times) Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry

• Longlisted for the Booker Prize