Skip to main content
Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford
The Edge of Lost  by Kristina McMorris
The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner
Honor  by Thrity Umrigar
The Four Humors by Mina Seçkin
Red Thread of Fate by Lyn Liao Butler
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?  by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Immigration is always a timely topic in books and film, but never more than today with the world so easily accessible by planes, trains, and automobiles (and ships.) More importantly, as we reexamine our ethnic and cultural identities in the United States and worldwide, we ask ourselves: who are we and where did we come from? What makes us unique but also the same as everyone else? Can we learn to belong? 

These very questions propelled me to write my upcoming novel releasing in February, The Next Ship Home, a novel of Ellis Island. I explore both the corruption at Ellis Island in 1902 and the bustling, modern streets of New York City that are undergoing enormous change as immigration swelled, all through the eyes of a young Italian immigrant and her newfound ally and friend, a first-generation German American woman who works at the immigration center. Their friendship sparks a journey of change as they learn about each other, and as they come to harbor a secret that will change their fate and the lives of the immigrants that come after them.

There are some other excellent historical novels that delve into the topic of immigration or immigrant life from different angles, as well as some contemporary novels releasing this winter in my list below. 

For historical novels, check out:

Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World’s Fair feels like a gift. But only once he’s there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off, a healthy boy “to a good home.” Against a rich backdrop of post-Victorian vice, suffrage and celebration, Love and Other Consolation Prizes is an enchanting tale about innocence and devotion in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale.


The Edge of Lost  by Kristina McMorris

The Edge of Lost  by Kristina McMorris

On a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter, one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island, has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl’s whereabouts, and that both of their lives depend on the search’s outcome. Almost two decades earlier and thousands of miles away, a young boy named Shanley Keagan ekes out a living as an aspiring vaudevillian in Dublin pubs. Talented and shrewd, Shan dreams of shedding his dingy existence and finding his real father in America. The chance finally comes to cross the Atlantic, but when tragedy strikes, Shan must summon all his ingenuity to forge a new life in a volatile and foreign world.


The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa, aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. Elise meets a fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.


Honor  by Thrity Umrigar

Honor  by Thrity Umrigar

A few contemporary novels I’m looking forward to reading that are releasing this winter include:

Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena, a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man, Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to balance the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her. Releases Jan, 2022.


The Four Humors by Mina Seçkin

The Four Humors by Mina Seçkin

Twenty-year-old Sibel thought she had concrete plans for the summer. She would care for her grandmother in Istanbul, visit her father’s grave and study for the MCAT. Instead, she finds herself watching Turkish soap operas and self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine. Also on Sibel’s mind are her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey, her energetic but distraught younger sister and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret. Delving into her family’s history, the narrative weaves through periods of political unrest in Turkey, from military coups to the Gezi Park protests. Told with pathos and humor, Sibel’s search for strange and unusual cures is disrupted as she begins to see how she might heal herself through the care of others, including her own family and its long-fractured relationships. Releases Nov, 2021.


Red Thread of Fate by Lyn Liao Butler

Red Thread of Fate by Lyn Liao Butler

Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn’t seen since the child was an infant. Overwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened. As Tam begins to unravel the events of Tony and Mia’s past in China, she discovers the true meaning of love and the threads that bind her to the family she is fated to have. Releases in Feb, 2022.

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?  by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?  by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life … well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right. Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date For Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself? This is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think, and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours. Releases in Jan, 2022


Heather Webb

Heather Webb is the USA Today and international bestselling author of ten historical novels, including her most recent Queens of LondonThe Next Ship Home, and Strangers in the Night. In 2015, Rodin’s Lover was a Goodreads Top Pick, and in 2018, Last Christmas in Paris won the Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. Meet Me in Monaco was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Goldsboro RNA award in the UK, as well as the 2019 Digital Book World’s Fiction prize. Three Words for Goodbye was a Prima Magazine’s 2022 Book of the Year. To date, Heather’s books have been translated to seventeen languages. She lives in New England with her family and two mischievous cats.

Leave a Reply