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Song of the Seafolk by Marjorie A. Penrose

When a storm capsizes their fishing boat, Annabel and her father are rescued by mermaids, which forever connects their family to the denizens of that underwater world. As the children and their parents learn more about the merfolk who surround their island, they find themselves recruited into a quest to find a missing mermaid treasure, all while trying to keep the peace in complicated underwater family feuds. Annabel and her family must work together to navigate these new dangers, as the bonds between them might be the only thing that saves the underwater world from falling into war.

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Cardinal's Map by Dorothy Cannes

Miranda Zimmer, a nihilistic grad student, gets a summer job serving as secretary for John Cardinal, a reclusive old man who has not left his New York estate in decades. Miranda helps Cardinal to compile his magnum opus, an intricate portal fantasy about a man's quest to save a kingdom and find his long-lost love. Miranda becomes enchanted by the story--especially the intricate map of the world that Cardinal has been drawing for years-- and the man, whose zeal for the world gives her a new appreciation for life. Yet Miranda starts to suspect that for Cardinal, this book is not fiction--it's memory. Whether it's madness or metaphor, Cardinal is writing this tale as the chronicle of his life, the map meant to help him reconnect with the woman he once lost. Is Cardinal mourning his wife or planning a rescue? Can Miranda keep him grounded in the here-and-now, or is he doomed to be lost in the wilderness of his past?

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The Wings of Hermes by Elizabeth Tern

Oxford don Joseph Quill prefers to remain safely ensconced in his books, but when he is called upon to authenticate a supposed piece of ancient Greek statuary, he suddenly finds himself at the center of a deadly web of intrigue that involves murder, theft, and letters that threaten vengeance from the gods of Greece themselves. Multiple shadowy parties are willing to kill for this statue, and if Quill doesn't uncover them soon, he may just be the next victim ushered into the afterlife.

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Mercator Must Walk the Plank by E.G. Delaford

After reading a few too many tales of high seas adventure, Victorian gentleman John Quackenbush is inspired to purchase a ship and go in search of treasure. His ship is a wreck, his crew is inept, and he's not exactly sure how one reads a map, but the intrepid traveler remains undaunted, even as they battle storms, shipwrecks, and pirates, and often find themselves sailing in entirely the wrong ocean. After they rescue a sensible young woman from a shipwreck, she takes it upon herself to rein in the captain's flights of fancy and get them all safely home, but the Quack is not so easily controlled. He will have his adventure, and those on the ship can either join in the quest--or walk the plank.

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Book Rec: The Autumn Queen's Promise

The Autumn Queen's Promise by Rose Rennow is a lovely little historical fiction book about what happens when the fairy queen of Autumn wanders into a farming village in 18th-century New England. She's an aloof, heartless figure who thinks humans are beneath her, but she finds herself charmed by the smile of a lost two-year-old child and unexpectedly decides to help the child to get home. Then she suddenly finds herself unable to get home, and stuck among people who either disbelieve her claims that she's queen in a supernatural land or fear those claims enough to want to run her off. But she slowly, reluctantly winds up integrating into the community and becoming enchanted with the world of humanity--and is then forced to act as their defender when her people come out to attack what they see as her kidnappers.

This book is such a lovely mix of little historical details and supernatural lore, and the Autumn Queen's character arc is beautifully done. The family and community she stays with are charming while still being realistic--and the same can be said for the Autumn world and its denizens. Everything is approached with realism that doesn't fall prey to either sentiment or cynicism, and it makes for a wonderfully clear-eyed book with some nice nuggets of wisdom sprinkled among the story.

Clearly, this is a book that's best experienced in the autumn--the covers always reflect an autumn atmosphere, and I'll always associate it with September school library sessions--but it's readable any time of year, and I think you'd very much enjoy it.

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Book Rec: The Queens of Wintermoon

You need to read The Queens of Wintermoon by Jessica Wagner. Fair warning: it's a brick. Its style is rambling and the prose veers toward purple. But if you have the patience and the stamina for it, it's worth the effort.

The story is a sprawling exploration of the cultural and political dynamics of Wintermoon which, as the name implies, is a moon that exists in a nearly-perpetual winter, and the culture is vaguely Imperial Russian in flavor. There are dozens of subplots, but the main story revolves around the four daughters of a low-ranking family. The three elders--Ksenia, Polina, and Vitalia--secure marriages with the lords of three high noble houses--Raven, Eagle, and Falcon--while the youngest, Inessa, marries an impoverished woodsman. All four of them wind up in unexpected situations--Ksenia is ignored in a tight-knit family structure and has to secretly prove her usefulness, Polina becomes her husband's right hand as he pushes for reforms, and Vitalia has to fight to retain power for her infant son when her husband dies less than a year into her marriage. Inessa lives a happy, simple life, until she learns that her husband may actually be the emperor of all Wintermoon.

While all this drama is unfolding, mysterious objects are falling from the heavens. Many are mangled lumps of metal, but some of them appear to be intact machines that do astounding things and/or generate vast amounts of power, and the political drama is magnified tenfold by the race for different houses to claim these sources of power for themselves. Some characters accomplish great deeds, some do monstrous things, and before the end of the (very long) book, the society of Wintermoon is changed in profound ways.

This is a book that you read first for the atmosphere. The writing style, while it takes a bit of getting used to, immerses you into the vast and strange world of Wintermoon. The worldbuilding can be a bit handwavey, but the atmosphere pulls you along so well that the inconsistencies don't matter much. Wintermoon's surface provides vivid wintery images that Wagner is happy to spend a bit of purple prose on, and there's an underground world that's even more fascinating. Vast fields and orchards and farms exist beneath the surface, as well as vibrant cities, all lit and warmed by mysterious power sources, and it's wonderful to explore. Some of the images have been imprinted on my brain ever since I first read the book years ago.

But I can't forget the characters. There are hundreds of them, and admittedly most of them can tangle into a jumble of names, but the four main sisters and their husbands remain vivid in my mind. Observant Ksenia, headstrong Polina, strong and cunning and oh-so-fragile Vitalia, and loyal, sweet Inessa who can make the world move around her--these sisters are all so different, but even when they wind up on opposite sides in a many-faceted political rivalry, they're still sisters, with all the love and rivalry that suggests; their personalities and complicated dynamics are what kept me turning the pages of this intimidating book. Their husbands are equally vivid, all flawed and complicated, but intriguing partners to these four vibrant women. (Ksenia and her husband are a beautifully painful OTP, as are Inessa and her secret-keeping husband).

If any of this sounds at all interesting to you, find a copy of the book and settle down under a blanket for a long winter trek. As intimidating as this book can be, it's worth every one of the 800+ pages.

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Book Rec: Alfred Quicke Mystery Series

Alfred Quicke is the star of a long-running mystery series by Glorya M. Hayers, and he's an absolute delight of a detective--one of the prototypical idle-rich amateurs with a quirky charm of his own.

The early books in the series were written when L.D. Melbray was still publishing, and it shows--the books are a bit too derivative of Hopeley in plot and character dynamics. But Hayers finds her voice in the fourth book--and it's a comedic one. A typical Quicke mystery is sunny and light-hearted, taking place on a country estate or in a picturesque locale, where Quicke is roped into solving a mystery--sometimes a murder, but usually something like finding lost jewels or missing pets or tracking down someone's betrothed. It then spirals out of control as Quicke runs into multiple characters who all have competing zany schemes that intersect with the mystery and make the investigation more complicated. As quirky as Quicke can be--he's a fastidious dresser, overly dramatic, and there's a running joke about his many ridiculous areas of expertise that conveniently come in handy during his investigations--he's often the one sane man trying to navigate a book full of crazier characters. These aren't parodies--they're valid mysteries in their own right, and aren't trying to mock any particular mystery tropes or other works--but they are at their best when they're at their most farcical.

The work that best matches the tone of your comp title is the twelfth in the series, Bright Folly, set upon a Coregean country estate. Quicke is charged with tracking down the stolen jewels of his hostess, and teams up with Evlina Milvane, an actress who has crossed paths with Quicke before. She's been known to engage in a bit of jewel thievery for the sake of her friends, but she's always a good-hearted schemer rather than a true villain, and she and Quicke have long shown signs of chemistry. In this book, she becomes a full-on love interest and investigative partner, and the mystery and the love story intersect in amusing, satisfying, and highly-complicated ways. A lot of fans (mostly the female ones) consider it their favorite book in the series, and though there are a few moments that are more impactful if you've experienced their relationship in the previous books, it's a good starting point if you want to see Quicke at his best (and to understand the partnership that will sustain the remaining five books in the series).

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Song of the Seafolk by Marjorie A. Penrose is a standalone children’s fantasy from 1954 that not exactly obscure, but definitely deserves to be better-known than it is.

It’s set on an island in the northern Atlantic, and centers around Annabel Norris, twelve years old, who’s out on a fishing expedition with her father. When a storm capsizes their boat, they’re rescued by mermaids, and the rest of the story is about their continued interactions with the people of this underwater world. It’s a very gentle, atmospheric story, almost more like magical realism than pure fantasy, where the interactions with merfolk are just as grounded and ordinary and awe-inspiring as the more mundane wonders of home and family.

Annabel and her father have the most active interactions with the merfolk, mediating some complicated undersea family feuds about missing treasure that spill over onto the land, but one of the things that I love about this story is that  even the quieter stay-at-home members of the family have a vital impact on the story. Some of their simple interactions with the merfolk who swim up the rivers provide a bridge between the two cultures that helps to resolve some of the conflicts (and provide some of the most sparkling moments of the book).

In general, the family interactions here are are fantastic. This is a fantastical world where no one is hiding secrets from anyone else, where the parents are loving and supportive even when the children are the ones who happen to be tasked with some genre-appropriate adventuring, and the siblings (there are five Norris children) have a strong bond even when they feel like throwing each other into the ocean. The merfolk have just as strong family ties (the worldbuilding of that aspect in particular is fantastic) and that shared love of home and family that drives the conflicts while also providing a bridge of understanding between the two cultures. There’s also a subtle but strong spiritual thread that provides some added depth (the story does some lovely things with the idea of the merfolk as “fishers of men”) and gives the story a lot of its staying power.

I can’t say much more without diving into spoilers--this is a story that should be experienced as a gently unfolding exploration of this new world. The strength of this story is in its specificity, its love of the tiniest details of a person, plot, or place. Penrose is better known for her poetry, and it shows; her prose flows like music and her love of the Atlantic seascape drips off the page. If you can, find an edition that includes the original illustrations; there’s one on almost every page, taking up a corner or winding through the margins, providing glimpses that deepen the world of the story. I’ve seen it said that this would make an excellent Ghibli film--and it would--but those illustrations provide all the visual image I’ll ever need of this book. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to seek it out, and if you have read it, then you know as well as I do that this book is worth multiple rereads.