Hello fellow fictionaires.

Some new offerings from the Book Expo pile caught my attention but not all of them were obvious choices. One tries to judiciously deal out the titles with heavy expectations placed upon them by the publishing world just because they may not pan out. The first book I picked out had the intriguing title of The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows - a northern Californian aunt & niece team who have extensive literary backgrounds but are hardly well known in this part of the world. I initially picked it up to compare it with Helen Humphrey's Coventry, another title taking place in the British isles during WWII. A fellow bookseller also heartily recommended the Guernsey title, so I decided, why not?

What a little gem of a book! The story is told in a series of continuous letters between a young author, Juliet Ashton, her publisher, Sidney Stark & his sister, Sophie who is Juliet's best friend. Juliet has published a not so successful biography of Anne Bronte & has supplemented her meager royalties by writing a series of lighthearted articles on the trials & tribulations of life during wartime from a hapless civilian's point of view entitled Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. These articles were designed to be a one-off project to help boost morale during all the rationing, blackouts, air-raids & assorted deprivations & well-founded fears of the early war years. Her publisher collects these articles & publishes them in a book which garners substantial commercial success - compared to her Anne Bronte biography anyways. While deciding what literary project to pursue next, she receives a letter from an inhabitant of the Guernsey Islands. He explains he is a member of the Guernsey Island Literary & Potato Peel Society & that he has read a book of essays by Charles Lamb that at one time belonged to Julia's library. He then asks her if he can recommend a bookstore in London where he can order other titles by Charles Lamb since this book lifted his spirits durring the German occupation.

So begins the correspondence to other members of this bookclub that was formed during the German occupation of the islands begun in 1940 & lasting right up to near the end of the war - a fact I was totally ignorant of. The narrative the authors weave through the correspondence between the various Guernsey islanders, Julia & her publishing world provide a very entertaining view of an isolated part of the WWII experience - an experience that Julia decides must be researched & told.

I won't go into all the colourful characters that populate this novel but suffice to say there are many & the plot is a blend of Jane Austen & Irene Nemirovsky. I know, the Jane Austen connection has been done to death recently, but truthfully, the epistolary narrative that is developed here is beautifully rendered & exposes a little known piece of history that is as remarkable in the telling as it is in capturing the essence of a protracted occupation these island inhabitants could not possibly have imagined would have gone on as long as it did. Oh yeah, it also celebrates the unexpected pleasures & serendipty of reading that would warm even the most jaded & cynical of booksellers.

Helen Humphrey's Coventry relates the bombing of this car manufacturing town & it's famous cathedral in November of 1940. In some respects she re-visits some of the same ground she travelled in historically, in her earlier novel, The Lost Garden but only in the sense that it took place in Britain during WWII .

In her latest, Harriet, a woman volunteers her services to be a fire-watcher on the eve of the Coventry bombing, after an older gentleman who lives in her building is unable to make his shift. She joins her partner, a young man named Jeremy at the Coventry Cathedral & witnesses the bombing & it's horrific aftermath. They volunteer to help the wounded & dying throughout the night & following day & end up being separated. Harriet & Jeremy unknowingly share a friendship/ relationship with a woman from Harriet's earliest days in Coventry when she first arrived there with her new husband in 1914. Humphries is a master of shading love's demands & expectations with it's loss in a manner that is a model of concision while communicating deep emotional resonance. No one writes a tale quite like her on this emotional terrain. Sarah Water's Night Watch covered similar material a few years ago but I don't believe it was anywhere near as successful a story, from purely a reader's point of view.

Judge for yourself but both these new titles would be great book club selections to compare & discuss.