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Casanova and the Faceless Woman
by Olivier Barde-Cabuçon
Paris, 1759. The monarchy is disintegrating, the king is a pedophile, the king’s mistress wields her influence, the clergy schemes, many conspiracies are afoot, and a woman is found murdered…and with no face. The witness: the infamous seducer Casanova, who’s fled Venice and insinuated himself into Parisian society. The detective: Volnay, the Investigator of Strange and Unexplained Deaths. The threats: powerful interests who do not hesitate to kill when threatened. The complication: a beautiful Italian woman who puts her faith in science. Casanova and the Faceless Woman is the first in an award-winning historical detective series to be translated into English. Rich in atmosphere and historical detail, pulsating with danger, it exists somewhere between Alexandre Dumas and Patrick Susskind (Perfume).

New Passengers
by Tine Høeg
The idea of an entire book written as a series of short text messages would be irritating, but the Danish author Tine Høeg imbues each line with a dry wit, insight, and feeling. The form is a perfect match for this story of a young woman just out of school, starting a teaching job, and embarking on an affair with a man she meets on the train.

Family and Borghesia
by Natalia Ginzburg
Thanks to the good people at NYRB Classics I have discovered great writers who have fallen into undeserved near-obscurity. I have the greatest affection for Natalia Ginzburg, the mid-20th century Italian author and her unaffected, unsentimental novellas of ordinary life. Family follows an extended group of friends and relations over many years, through seemingly uneventful periods and jolting change, and in its 60-odd pages manages to convey entire lives lived. In Borghesia, a woman adopts a series of Siamese cats to ward off loneliness, but the cats have ideas of their own, and life will come at you no matter how you plan for it.