Joan MacKenzie: Recommends Red Traitor and What Comes After

Red Traitor by Owen Matthews: set during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 this concerns Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin who is employed by the KGB and given the job of rooting out a purported traitor in the highest levels of Russian intelligence – and as he goes about that work starts to hear whispers about a military action – four submarine with nuclear weapons on board are steaming towards Cuba to set up a blockade, and each of the commanders has the sole power to make decision about whether to deploy those weapons – even while being completely isolated and out of range of communications. The recreation of the conversations and events of that time are really compelling – great historical fiction. Owen Matthews wrote a book a couple of years ago called Black Sun which I also loved – and which had the same central character. What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins: After the shocking death of two teenage boys tears apart a community in the Pacific Northwest, a mysterious pregnant girl emerges out of the woods and into the lives of those same boys’ families—a moving and hopeful novel about forgiveness and human connection, and the making of families.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.