Love is the only lifeline.
“A love story balancing historical sweep with high erotic tension.”
—New York Times Book Review
Praise for Amanda
“A historical romance of a grand, old-fashioned and very British variety, with hints of L.P. Hartley, D.H. Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh–an impressive feat for an American author writing many decades after them… Compelling and ultimately convincing, which is one of the most difficult things a love story can be.”–Mary Marge Locker, The New York Times Book Review
★ “In 1926 England, two people–a young woman desperate to avoid her former lover and that former lover, equally desperate to find her–struggle with despair and spiritual doubt… Cross tackles such small issues as faith, the Easter Rebellion, and British classism… That Cross’ voice–some combination of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen–comes from a contemporary American writer is hard to believe. Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“It’s an intoxicating drama about two damaged individuals finding love in post-World War I England… Cross impresses with original descriptions and deft examinations of the agony and ecstasy of love. This is a book that appeals to hearts and minds.”–Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“At once as a mysterious romance, a psychological portrait of two fractured protagonists, and an utterly convincing, inside-out look at an England navigating the heat and the shadows of The Great War… A propellent, engaging, complex work of literature that inhabits, rather than uses, its time period. Amanda, like history itself, is truly original.”–D.
Novels
Amanda
England in the 1920s is a nation in turmoil, its foundations shaken by the Great War and the collapse of genteel Edwardian society. The streets are haunted by shell-shocked men, runaways, mutilated veterans, damned poets, and revolutionaries. Marion has fled Galway for Oxford after her elopement with a violent man ended violently. In the City of Dreaming Spires, where the cobbled streets, barely lit pubs, and underground book presses hum with restless energy, she meets Jamie, a damaged soul like her who is struggling to recover from his experiences at the front. He alone sees her scars. She alone knows his secret name. Their love is wild, dangerous, and absolute. Everything, it seems, is at stake.
Grievous
Set in 1931 at St. Stephen’s Academy, a boys’ boarding school in Yorkshire, Grievous focuses on teacher John Grieves (nicknamed Grievous) and his student Gray Riding. Gray begins a secret correspondence with John’s 13-year-old goddaughter, Cordelia, while John is in love with her mother. The action—at the Academy and across England and the Continent—includes love, betrayal, illness, grief, Quakers, morphine, theater, and second chances.
Wilberforce
England, 1926. At St. Stephen’s Academy, the students are on the verge of revolt. While the younger boys plot an insurrection, the older ones are preoccupied with sneaking out-of-bounds, thrashing each other, tearing each other’s clothes off—or some combination of the three. Morgan Wilberforce, for one, can’t take it any longer.
Wilberforce is an indelible portrait of a young man caught between lust and cruelty, grief and God, frustrated love and abject longing.
Essays
- I Kissed the Rod – discussing Ernest Raymond’s Tell England in The Paris Review
- Em-Dashes for dialogue, why + how
- Fags and Faggots, history of these words
- A Playlist for Grievous
- A Playlist for Wilberforce
- Writers Read
Conversations
- Poetry and Music, on the Critical Readings podcast
- Slipping Into Imaginary Worlds, with Lian Hearn
- In the Footsteps of the Inklings, with Carol and Philip Zaleski in LA Review of Books
- Let Go the Reins, craft with Jessie Chaffee
- Work-in-Progress, discussing Grievous with Leslie Pietrzyk
- Books and Boarding Schools, a Christmas chat on The Living Church podcast