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The New Novel by Winslow Homer, 1877. I feel like we

Welcome to Five Books For, a newsletter for people who love great stories. I’m so happy you’re here.

This month, I thought we’d take a look at one of my favourite corners of the literary world: the trilogy. There’s something so satisfying about three perfect books. I sometimes find that standalone novels can leave you wishing you had just a little more time with the characters, while a sprawling series can feel like quite the commitment before you’ve even turned the first page. A trilogy sits happily inbetween - long enough for you to become completely immersed in another world, but without the length of a full series.

Happily, that makes them ideal summer reading. Whether you’re packing a suitcase, enjoying long evenings in the garden or simply hoping to carve out a little more reading time than usual, a trilogy offers the chance to settle into a story properly without wondering if you’ll still be reading it this time next year.

This month’s selection ranges from Spanish crime and Russian folklore to historical fiction, fantasy and contemporary family drama, but they all have one thing in common: they create worlds you’ll want to spend a little longer in. As ever, I hope you find something great to read here.

This month over at Global Comment, I watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the movie adaptation of the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. You can read more about it here.

This month’s edition of Late To The Movies explores how Technicolor changed the way that Hollywood told stories, making them more expressive. Click here to read more.

Okay, onto this month’s recommendations!

Translated by Nick Caistor

“You could say her mind has plenty of horsepower, but Antonia’s head isn’t a sports car engine. You could say it’s capable of many data processing cycles, but Antonia’s mind isn’t a computer. Antonia’s mind is more like a jungle, a jungle full of monkeys leaping at full speed from limb to limb.”

So what’s it about? This is a fast, glossy, thrilling sprint through Spain, where the stakes are high and the people solving the crimes are even more complicated than the crimes themselves. At the centre of it all is Antonia Scott, an exceptionally gifted investigator who is no longer on active duty after her abilities and her mental health become tightly entangled. She’s not a conventional detective, nor is she especially interested in being dragged back into the world.

The world arrives anyway, in the form of Jon Gutiérrez, a Basque police officer with more instinct than polish, who is tasked with bringing Antonia back into service. Together they form an uneasy partnership inside a secret European programme designed to handle crimes that sit just beyond the reach of ordinary policing. What follows is a trilogy that moves from one case to another, each escalating in scale and psychological intensity, while slowly revealing a hidden architecture of power, manipulation, and long-buried personal histories.

Across the three books, the story broadens from one individual investigation, into something more interconnected and conspiratorial, without ever veering into the ridiculous.

What’s great about it? The pace here is non-stop; Gómez-Jurado writes like he is slightly impatient with your need to breathe. Chapters are short, scenes snap forward, and there is a constant sense that something has just happened off-stage that you will need to catch up with. It’s easy to fall into the rhythm and accidentally emerge three hours later slightly - and happily - dazed, wondering where the time went. If you love the kind of books that keep you up at night for ‘just one more chapter’, these are a great pick.

The relationship between Antonia and Jon gives the trilogy its emotional spine. It’s not sentimental; they irritate each other, rely on each other, and gradually settle into something that feels less like conventional investigative partnership and more like reluctant trust forged under pressure. The writing is also refreshingly unique and engaging; while the trilogy may tick all the best crime thriller boxes, there’s nothing formulaic about Gomez-Jurado’s voice, which really adds to the pleasure of the books.

More generally, there’s also a pleasing refusal to keep things tidy. These are books that lean into moral ambiguity, institutional secrecy, and the idea that competence can be both a gift and a burden.

Give it a try if: you love thrillers which are definitely not run of the mill; you love books with intriguing mysteries which widen outwards; you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes; you love books set in Spain; you like unconventional female protagonists and great characterisation.

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”

So what’s it about? The Bear and the Nightingale begins in a remote mediaeval Russian village where the boundary between the everyday and the mythic world is at its thinnest. At its heart is Vasya, a girl born into a household that is slowly turning away from the old ways, in which household spirits are still honoured and feared in equal measure. As she grows, she becomes increasingly aware that the world around her is not only shaped by human belief, but also by forces that depend on being remembered.

The arrival of a new priest in the village shifts everything. Old protections are dismissed as superstition, and the rituals that once kept darker forces at bay begin to fall away. Vasya, however, can still see what others cannot, and this places her in a position that is both powerful and deeply isolating. The trilogy follows her as she tries to understand what she is, and what it means to belong to a world that is gradually forgetting the very things that keep it intact.

As the story unfolds across the series, the focus moves from village life into a wider struggle between competing belief systems, political pressure, and the question of what happens when myth stops being metaphorical. As a series, it’s as much concerned with cultural transition as it is about anything overtly magical.

What’s great about it? The atmosphere is the real triumph here. Arden writes cold like it is a living thing - not just snow and frost, but a presence that presses in on people and shapes their decisions. The landscape is not backdrop; it is an active participant in the story. You can almost hear the silence in it, which is more unnerving than noise would be.

What makes it particularly compelling is the way folklore is treated not as decoration, but as infrastructure. The spirits of the house, the forest, and the winter itself feel embedded in daily life in a way that is both intimate and slightly unsettling. It gives the story a texture that is rare in fantasy - grounded, tactile, and oddly believable even when it is at its most mythic.

There is also a quietly engaging emotional pull in Vasya’s story, which is less about sudden transformation and more about endurance and clarity. Seeing her trying to hold together conflicting worlds that are both trying to define her and finding her own path through the dangers she faces is the great pleasure of this trilogy. The result is a story that feels slower and more contemplative than a typical fantasy epic, but no less intense for it.

Give it a try if: you love books which have a fantasy element to them; you love stories about magic; you love fairytales; you love great heroines; you like stories about women who forge their own path; you love stories set in Russia; you love historical fiction; you feel like reading something set in snowy climes.

“Maybe when she realized that he was never going to come and rescue her, she did what all strong women do. She found a way to save herself.”

So what’s it about? Big Stone Gap is set in a small coal-mining town in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and may well have something to say about it too. At the centre is Ave Maria Mulligan, a woman in her late thirties who has built a life that is steady, useful, and quietly unremarkable on the surface - pharmacist, friend, fixer of small crises; the kind of person who holds a community together.

When an unexpected piece of personal history surfaces, Ave Maria is forced into a re-evaluation of the life she thought she had already settled into. What follows across the trilogy is less a conventional plot-driven arc and more a widening of her world - emotionally, geographically, and in terms of possibility. The story moves through relationships, family histories, and long-buried truths that gently refuse to stay buried once things starts shifting.

As the series continues, the focus broadens beyond one woman’s life into a fuller portrait of a marriage and a town in transition. The town of Big Stone Gap itself becomes a kind of character: resilient, nosy, affectionate, and occasionally stubbornly resistant to change. The trilogy tracks what happens when personal reinvention collides with communal expectation, and the ways in which we sometimes underestimate ourselves.

What’s great about it? This trilogy is such a pleasure to read. Trigiani writes with warmth that never slips into sentimentality, and she has a sharp eye for the small absurdities of everyday life. There is humour threaded through everything, often dry and gently observational, which makes even the emotionally heavier moments feel grounded rather than overwrought.

Ave Maria is also a quietly satisfying protagonist, because she’s not built on dramatic reinvention or sudden transformation. Instead, her journey feels more like an accumulation - of understanding, of confidence, of permission to want more than she previously allowed herself. It’s a very human kind of growth, which makes it extra satisfying to read.

There is also something deeply comforting about the setting. Big Stone Gap itself is drawn with affection but not idealisation; it is neither romanticised poverty nor glossy small-town fantasy. It feels lived in, complicated, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately loyal. The trilogy works best when you settle into that world rather than rush through it - these are books that are less about plot urgency and more about emotional residence. Interestingly, Big Stone Gap is in fact a real town, and Trigiani’s birthplace, which adds an extra dimension to the experience of reading about it.

Give it a try if: you love books with brilliant female characters; you love books about marriage; you love stories about families and community; you love books with a strong sense of place; you’re looking for something gentle and moving.

“The idea hovered and shivered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.”

So what’s it about? Northern Lights, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, is set in a world that looks familiar at first glance, but quickly reveals itself to be slightly askew in ways that matter. Humans here have externalised souls in the form of dæmons - animal companions that are inseparable from their person and reflect their inner life. At the centre of the story is Lyra Belacqua, a fiercely curious girl growing up in an academic environment where truth is officially studied, but not always comfortably handled.

When children begin to disappear under mysterious circumstances, Lyra is drawn into a much larger conflict involving powerful institutions, secret research, and competing visions of authority. What begins as a search for missing children expands into a journey that stretches across regions, social classes, and eventually worlds. Along the way, she encounters allies, enemies, and forces that don’t fit neatly into any moral category she has been taught to recognise.

As the trilogy develops across The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, the scope broadens from personal adventure into something far more philosophical. It becomes a story about knowledge and control - particularly religious control - and about what it means to grow up in a universe where authority is always trying to define the limits of what can be known, and the cost of resisting that definition.

What’s great about it? One of the most striking things about this trilogy is how confidently it treats its own ideas. It might be a children’s fantasy adventure on the surface, but underneath it is engaged with big, sometimes uncomfortable questions about consciousness, power, and belief. Most brilliantly, it never feels like it is simplifying those ideas for the sake of younger readers, which is part of why it works so well for adults too.

The world-building is unusually coherent and emotionally grounded. The dæmons are not just a clever concept - they fundamentally reshape how relationships, identity, and vulnerability work in this universe. That single idea ripples outward into everything else, giving even relatively ordinary scenes a quiet strangeness that lingers.

And then there is Lyra herself, who carries the trilogy with a combination of impulsiveness, intelligence, and stubborn moral instinct. Lyra isn’t an idealised heroine, but rather someone learning to navigate complexity without losing her sense of right and wrong. The result is a trilogy that feels both expansive and intimate - a rare combination where the scale keeps growing, but the emotional centre never gets lost.

Give it a try if: you love children’s literature; you love books which take ideas seriously; you love stories of adventure; you love books which have a touch of the fantastical about them; you love strories where we see the protagonist grow up.

“Either we choose to stay alive, or we give up. And if it's living we choose, then we do whatever it takes.”

So what’s it about? The Wolf Den is set in Pompeii, but not the postcard version of it. This is the city seen from its margins - through the lives of enslaved women working in a brothel known as the Wolf Den. At the centre is Amara, a former physician’s daughter who has been sold into slavery and forced to navigate a world where survival depends on reading people quickly and trusting almost no one.

The first book establishes the brutal structure of Amara’s new reality: ownership, control, and the constant negotiation of small freedoms inside a system designed to erase them. As the trilogy progresses through The House with the Golden Door and The Temple of Fortuna, the story expands beyond the brothel into wider Pompeian society, showing how deeply embedded exploitation is within everyday life - socially, economically, and politically.

Without giving anything away, the trilogy traces Amara’s long, uneven path through captivity, resistance, and the fragile pursuit of agency in a world that continually tries to redefine what she is allowed to be. It is as much about systems of power as it is about one woman’s endurance within them, and how identity survives - or doesn’t - under sustained pressure.

What’s great about it? This is historical fiction with a strong moral spine, but which never flattens the complexity of the world it’s depicting. Pompeii feels vividly real, not as a backdrop but as a functioning society with all its contradictions intact. The detail is immersive without becoming decorative, which keeps the focus on people rather than spectacle. It’s fascinating to see the ancient world brought alive so vividly.

Amara’s character arc is also carefully handled. This is not a story of sudden liberation or neatly resolved transformation. It’s more about the slow process of strategy, experience and small acts of resistance that may or may not amount to anything in the long run. Amara is a great lead character - smart, sometimes abrasive and definitely flawed. Some of the qualities we might find less appealing nowadays are actually the very things she needs to survive. Harper is great at making her journey feel grounded, even when the circumstances are extreme.

What really sets the trilogy apart is its refusal to romanticise either survival or rebellion. It is emotionally direct, sometimes uncomfortable, and often quietly angry in a way that feels controlled rather than performative. The result is a series that is absorbing not because it offers escape, but because it insists on attention.

Give it a try if: you love books with strong and complex female characters; you love books set in the ancient world; you love historical fiction; you often wonder about the ordinary lives of normal people in historical times; you love books about friendship.

I hope you found something good to read here. As ever, I’d love to hear if you’ve read and loved (or even hated) any of the books here, and which ones you’d add to the list. You can reply directly to this email or leave a comment by clicking the button below.

Five Trilogies For Summer Reading

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