Anne of Manhattan: A Novel

Anne of Manhattan: A Novel (2021) by Brina Starler is an adaptation of L.M. Montgomery's novel Anne of the Island, the third book in the Anne of Green Gables series. This romance novel and coming-of-age story is 336 pages in length, and it is a modern re-imagining of the classic tale. 

In Starler's retelling, Anne Shirley is a graduate student working towards her master’s degree in education at Redmond College in Manhattan. When Anne's old rival Gilbert Blythe transfers to Redmond from Berkeley, Anne must come to terms with her feelings towards him.


Here is the description of the book from HarperCollins Publishers:

L. M. Montgomery’s classic tale, Anne of Green Gables, gets a romantic, charming, and hilarious modern adaptation, set in New York City.

After an idyllic girlhood in Avonlea, Long Island, Anne has packed up her trunk, said goodbye to her foster parents, Marilla and Matthew, and moved to the isle of Manhattan for grad school. Together with her best friend, Diana Barry, she’s ready to take on the world and find her voice as a writer.

When her long-time archrival Gilbert Blythe shows up at Redmond College for their final year, Anne gets the shock of her life. Gil has been in California for the last five years—since he kissed her during a beach bonfire, and she ghosted him. Now the handsome brunette is flashing his dimples at her like he hasn’t a care in the world and she isn’t buying it.

Paired with the same professor for their thesis, the two former competitors come to a grudging peace that turns into something so much deeper...and sexier than either intended. But when Gil seemingly betrays her to get ahead, Anne realizes she was right all along—she should never have trusted Gilbert Blythe.

While Gil must prove to Anne that they’re meant to be together, she must come to terms with her old fears if she wants a happily-ever-after with the boy she’s always (secretly) loved.

Reviews

"Full of warmth—and heat!—Anne of Manhattan is a blast for fans of the original Anne books. What fun to recognize “our” Anne, with all her quirks and passions, in this story of a thoroughly modern woman."
—Jenny Holiday, author of A Prince for Christmas

"If you grew up reading Anne of Green Gables, you won't want to miss Brina Starler's Anne of Manhattan, a contemporary retelling of the classic love story…. Starler brings in many of the high points of the original series, and she delivers the snap and spark between Anne and Gilbert — as well as his slow burn love for Anne. Like the original, this isn't a story of two people falling in love, it's about two people realizing they've been in love the whole damn time."
—Maya Rodale, NPR (full review)

"This is a sweet update to a classic story with an Anne Shirley fans will recognize and a Gilbert Blythe as dreamy as ever."
—Publishers Weekly (full review)

ISBN-13: 9780063020740


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Book cover of Anne of Manhattan: A Novel.

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Created June 18, 2021. Last updated September 18, 2025.
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Marilla Before Anne

Marilla Before Anne by Louise Michalos was published in May 2021 by Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press. This work of historical fiction extends the world of Anne of Green Gables to tell the story of Marilla Cuthbert's early life. What was Marilla like before Anne Shirley entered the picture?

Louise Michalos set out to answer this question in her own way. Michalos was born in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia and raised in Halifax. Her mother was raised in a lighthouse, and her father, like L.M. Montgomery, was raised in a house that served as the local post office. She has knowledge and awareness of the community ties in the Maritimes, and wanted to explore Marilla's backstory with an authentic voice.

Here is the description of the book from Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press:

A heart-rending work of historical fiction telling the story of Marilla Cuthbert, long before Anne came to Green Gables farm.

Marilla Cuthbert was fifty-two years old when the plucky red-headed Anne Shirley came to live with her and her brother, Matthew, at Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island. A seemingly cold and dour spinster, her heart eventually softens to the loveable orphan girl. But for over a century readers have wondered, who was Marilla before Anne?

In Louise Michalos’s remarkable debut novel, readers are introduced to a spirited eighteen-year-old Marilla Cuthbert—a girl not unlike Anne herself—who is desperately in love, and whose whole life is spread before her. But when a moment of defiance brings life-changing consequences, a new Marilla begins to take shape, one who would learn to bear tragedy like a birthright, and loss as an inevitability, and who would hold steadfast to the secrets that could shatter the lives of everyone around her.

Weaving its way from Marilla’s early life in Avonlea to her coming-of-age in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and back, Marilla Before Anne is the story readers of Anne of Green Gables have longed for. Told with a refreshingly original East Coast voice, this exquisite, heartbreaking work of historical fiction takes readers on a journey back in time, to the Green Gables where Marilla Cuthbert lived, loved, and learned, long before Anne.

Reviews

"Beloved characters live in our minds. For those who think they know Marilla Cuthbert, Louise Michalos creates a heart-rending and imaginative fantasy of who our Marilla might have been."
—Lesley Crewe, author of The Spoon Stealer

"Taking us back to Marilla's passionate youth, this book is part old-style romance, part history, with complicated heroes, heroines, and villains. It plays fast and loose with the Marilla and Matthew who may already live inside readers' heads―those willing to take that leap are in for a galloping ride."
—Liz Rosenberg, author of House of Dreams: A Biography of L. M. Montgomery

Image credit:
Book cover of Marilla Before Anne.

Reference:
Author spotlight: Louise Michalos. Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Retrieved from: https://writers.ns.ca/author-spotlights/author-spotlight-louise-michalos/.

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Created June 10, 2021. Last updated October 23, 2024.
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Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables

Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables is a biography of the celebrated writer who translated Anne of Green Gables to Japanese for the first time. Eri Muraoka wrote this biography of her grandmother, entitled An no Yurikago Muraoka Hanako no Shogai, which was published in Japanese in 2008. In 2014, the biography became the subject of a popular six-month television series on NHK, Japan's public television station. In 2021, Hanako Muraoka's biography was translated to English by Cathy Hirano and published as Anne's Cradle.

The biography tells the story of Hanako Muraoka's compelling life and work, and it describes the dangers she faced in bringing L.M. Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables to Japanese readers.

Here is the description of the book from Nimbus Publishing:

The bestselling biography of renowned Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables is available in English for the first time. The name Hanako Muraoka is revered in Japan. Her Japanese translation of L. M. Montgomery’s beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables, Akage no An (Redhaired Anne) was the catalyst for the book’s massive and enduring popularity in Japan. A book that has since spawned countless interpretations, from manga to a long-running television series, and has remained on Japanese curriculum for half a century. For the first time, the bestselling biography of Hanako Muraoka written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka, and translated by the award-winning Cathy Hirano (The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up), is available in English.

Born into an impoverished family of tea merchants in rural Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Hanako Muraoka’s fortunes change dramatically when she is offered a place at an illustrious girls’ school in Tokyo founded by the Methodist Church of Canada. Nurtured by the Canadian missionaries who teach her, she falls in love with English poetry and literature. This love of the written word develops into a passion for writing and translating children’s literature that sustains Hanako through devastating personal tragedies and the tumult of the twentieth century.

In 1941, after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hanako abruptly resigns from her role of reading children’s news over the radio — for which she is known and loved throughout Japan as “Radio Auntie”. Branded as “enemies”, the peace-loving missionaries who nurtured Hanako in her youth and with whom she later worked have been forced to leave the country. But Hanako finds solace in a gift received from a Canadian friend: a copy of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Although it is a book from an “enemy nation”, the story of Anne Shirley brings back vivid memories of precious friends in distant lands, giving Hanako courage and hope for the future. Amidst the wail of air-raid sirens, she begins translating her copy into Japanese in 1943, fully aware that she risks imprisonment and even death if caught. Although she completes the majority of the work by the end of the war, it is only much later that a publisher decides to take a chance on a Canadian author previously unknown in Japan, unwittingly launching a cross-cultural literary legacy that continues to this day.

Anne’s Cradle tells the complex and captivating story of a woman who risked her freedom and devoted her life to bringing quality children’s literature to her people during a period of tumultuous change in Japan. Through the gift of Hanako Muraoka’s translations, generations of Japanese readers have fallen in love with a plucky redhead from Prince Edward Island.

ISBN-13: 9781771089241

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Book cover of Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables.

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Created June 8, 2021. Last updated November 18, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com