This second batch of November titles begins with one I’m particularly keen to read. John Tottenham’s Service sees John working as a bookseller in Los Angeles having failed at journalism and writing fiction. Now in his late forties, he’s dismayed at working in something he considers beneath him, irritated by his privileged customers’ demands, out […] The post Books to Look Out For in November 2025: Part Two appeared first on A Life in Books.| A Life in Books
For readers or moviegoers who know The Cider House Rules, a familiar character reappears in QUEEN ESTHER—John Irving’s sixteenth novel. Dr. Wilbur Larch is younger than you remember him, and the unadopted orphans at St. Cloud’s are a different cast of characters—a Viennese-born Jew, Esther Nacht, among them. Like The Cider House Rules, QUEEN ESTHER is a historical novel with a political theme. Anti-Semitism shapes Esther’s life, not only in Vienna. Esther’s story is fated to inter...| John Irving