Hello,

Our latest Editor's Choice pick is sure to delight historical fiction lovers and fans of literary history alike: Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors tells a richly imagined story of author W. Somerset Maugham's 1921 trip to the island of Penang in Malaysia and of British colonial society at the time.

We also have new titles for members to request, a reading list of books about mid-life, an interview with LaVosha Payne-Prescott of the Sistas Are Reading Book Club, and current and upcoming online discussions.

With best wishes,

The BookBrowse Team

Set on the island of Penang, Malaysia, in the early years of the twentieth century, the novel directs the reader with grace and humor to the contradictions lurking beneath the ice of Victorian convention in British high-colonial society. This may sound familiar to readers of the English writer W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), who, fittingly, shows up as one of this novel's main characters, but Twan Eng introduces a contemporary, nuanced take on the psychological complexity of the period.

In writing The House of Doors, Twan Eng effectively reverse engineers the work of the real-life Maugham, using his book of short stories The Casuarina Tree to envision a context within which the author might have been sparked to create his fiction. ...continued

"Sun Yat-sen," our "beyond the book" article accompanying The House of Doors, is available for you to read along with the review.

This issue of The BookBrowse Review contains reviews and "beyond the book" articles for 14 titles, including Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson, Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman.

We also bring you a selection of the best author interviews of 2023, more than 50 previews of upcoming releases and multiple other features.

Also for members! This month's First Impressions and Book Club books are now available to request. Offer closes end of Saturday, November 4.

Books are provided free of charge to BookBrowse members resident in the U.S. with the understanding that they'll do their best to either write a short review or take part in an online discussion forum (depending on whether the book is assigned for First Impressions or the Book Club). Members who choose to take part generally receive a book about every three months; and as we prioritize by when somebody last was sent a book, new members are always assigned.

When it comes to books about those in middle age, the particular topics that emerge often have to do with aging itself and a growing understanding of the limits of human existence. Middle age can also be a time of reflecting on the past, of questioning, from a more mature perspective, the choices one made long ago, and the current cycles and habits those decisions have established.

All of this makes for philosophically rich considerations that many authors turn into literary gold, as evidenced by this list we’ve compiled of books about people in middle age from recent years. ...continued

LaVosha Payne-Prescott, President of the Sistas Are Reading Book Club in New Jersey, talks with BookBrowse about her group.

The group started in September 1998, and so recently celebrated 25 years of friendship and fundraising and, of course, discussing books!

Discussions are open to all, so please join us! If you would like to receive a message when a particular discussion opens, you can sign up for a one-time notification.

BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.

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