Janet Somerville

Jan 12, 2025 | thespec.com | Janet Somerville

The New InternationalsDavid Wright FaladéAtlantic Monthly Press, 304 pages, $43.50It’s 1947 in postwar Paris, and the city continues to suffer as it recovers from the Nazi occupation. Yet, there is hope among its young residents, including those from France’s colonies and the American GIs who flock to the city and who understand that there must be pain to effect real change.

Dec 8, 2024 | orangeville.com | Janet Somerville

Sourcebooks Landmark, 400 pages, $26.99California blueblood Julia McWilliams, too tall to enlist, volunteers for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) and clerks for its director, Gen. “Wild Bill” Donovan, in Washington in 1942. Receiving top security clearance and trusted by her co-workers and her boss, Julia is sent to the remote front lines of Ceylon in 1944 and China in 1945, where she becomes chief of the OSS Registry, serving all intelligence branches.

Dec 8, 2024 | thespec.com | Janet Somerville

Sourcebooks Landmark, 400 pages, $26.99California blueblood Julia McWilliams, too tall to enlist, volunteers for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) and clerks for its director, Gen. “Wild Bill” Donovan, in Washington in 1942. Receiving top security clearance and trusted by her co-workers and her boss, Julia is sent to the remote front lines of Ceylon in 1944 and China in 1945, where she becomes chief of the OSS Registry, serving all intelligence branches.

Nov 24, 2024 | orangeville.com | Janet Somerville

Algonquin Books, 304 pages, $38Fall 1892: Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, his feminist wife Constance and one of their young sons, Cyril, holiday in the Norfolk countryside in the company of Oscar’s bossy mother Lady Wilde (who seems much like Lady Bracknell) and newlywed friends. Though the couple clearly adore each other and are matched intellectually, one of Oscar’s poetic protégés, Lord Alfred Douglas, alights and dismantles their idyll.

Oct 6, 2024 | theifp.ca | Janet Somerville

William Morrow Paperbacks, 384 pages, $23.99Though international bestselling novelists Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann never met, this clever dual narrative — featuring a fictional Manhattan editor who introduces the two — shows how marvellous that pairing could have been and how plausible it would have seemed. Both women dare to write frankly about sex at a time when they are publicly lambasted and even denounced by feminists, including Gloria Steinem.