November international fiction: Six new novels to relax with as festivities continue

All information sourced from publishers.

The Man Who Read Books, Rachid Benzine, translated from the French by Sam Taylor

One morning, during a ceasefire in Gaza, a young photographer wanders far from his hotel and into the narrow alleys of the city. Roaming aimlessly, he stumbles across an old man, surrounded by stacks of books. As the photographer raises his camera, the bookseller asks him to listen to his story first. “For isn’t there a story behind every gaze? The story of a life. Sometimes of an entire nation.”

The story that unfolds encompasses exile and imprisonment, resistance and political disillusionment, the joy of watching your children grow up and the tragedies that tear your loved ones from you. They say that when an old man dies a library burns. Day after day, the photographer returns. Year after year, Nabil shares the books that helped him understand and, in some cases, survive these events – from the Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Mourid Barghouti to Gabriel García Márquez, Frantz Fanon and Ernest Hemingway.

The Man Who Read Books is a magnificent modern story of the power of words against barbarism, of books as bastions of resistance against the loss of empathy, of literature as a means of sustenance during our darkest hours.

The Squatters, Saba Brelvi

Surrey is a quiet, affluent area just outside of London, replete with tree-lined streets, great schools, and friendly neighbours. Though she and her husband embody second-generation immigrant success, Dalia Waheed has never quite felt like she belongs.

While volunteering at a local nonprofit called Refugee Resettlement, Dalia meets the very pregnant Hajira and her husband, who are seeking asylum in the UK. In Hajira, Dalia feels a kinship she can’t quite explain. So, when Hajira asks for help finding an alternative to their grim government housing, Dalia knows she will not ignore her plea. Helping another mother secure a safer place to live seems less like charity than duty.

But what begins as a simple act of compassion quickly spirals into something far more treacherous. Soon, Dalia finds herself engulfed in a political firestorm that forces her to confront what she's truly willing to risk – for her ideals, her family, and for a woman who has already lost everything.

Revenge Plot, Stephane Wrobel

All Arnie Tenderton wants is to be a published author. For years he’s been trying to write the perfect novel. Finally, he’s done it.

Now he just needs a literary agent. Arnie wants the best. He wants Claudia. And he just so happens to know where she is spending Christmas: in a remote house in the Catskills mountains.

Claudia is no stranger to Arnie. She’s rejected him once before, but he’s confident she’s going to want to read this book.

Because this one is about her. And it will expose the very secret she has been trying to keep hidden.

This story could be the making of him, or the ending of her…

Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone, Dana Renee Green

Renie has always done what’s expected of her. At 39, she’s a devoted wife, a mother of seven, and the kind of woman who puts everyone else first. But just weeks after giving birth to her youngest child, Renie is diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and given three months to live.

She begins a journal for her children, a way to leave behind the pieces of herself she won’t be there to give. As Renie fills these pages, she starts to see her life clearly – for the first time. The years of sacrifice. The dreams deferred. The woman she never fully allowed herself to be. And with that clarity comes the bold, urgent decision to live on her own terms.

From the Library of Jurgen Leitner, Premee Mohamed and Jonathan Sims

Fear comes before the fall.

In the winding, perilous corridors of Jurgen Leitner’s private library, you never know what you’ll find. A starving cookbook. An ancient scroll that casts cool, predatory breezes. A cloth-bound hardback that compels you to DIG, DIG, DIG, DIG.

Free, these books are more than simply unnerving – they’re deadly. But the library keeps their dangers in check and their would-be readers safe.

Or so Leitner claims.

For two of his employees, the risks are worth it. Hugh Franklin, research assistant, has finally found a place he belongs, where his skill in translation is valued, even if his employer is a bit odd. Sebastian Everett, acquisition specialist, can indulge his arcane ambitions, even if it means pretending to care about Leitner’s mission.

Though their tenures at the library were years apart, Hugh and Sebastian’s stories unfold in parallel, and their footsteps echo down the same eerie aisles, caught in a web spun long before either ever heard the name “Jurgen Leitner.”

Will they find a way out… or will the library consume them before it’s too late?

Murder on the Royal Crescent, Harriet F Townson

On a frosty day in December 1936, librarian and part-time detective Dora Wildwood is summoned to Bath. She has no idea what will unfold but she is glad to go; recent events have left her longing to disappear.

Arriving on the world-famous Royal Crescent, Dora quickly learns of Daisy Palmer, whose unsolved murder looms large over the Georgian city. Daisy’s fiancé, Lord Frank Meroe, lives on as an eccentric recluse, his house full of clutter and abandoned treasures, as labyrinthine as it is magnificent.

Then, on the 20th anniversary of Daisy’s death, murder is committed once more. As Christmas trees are lit and carol singers gather, Dora is drawn into a tangle of feuding families, suspicious antiquarian dealings and a conspicuous silence from everyone involved. For in the city of Jane Austen, loyalties run deep… and dangerously so.

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