Sebastian Faulks has bound together five distinct but thematically related stories spanning 200 years in "A Possible Life" (Henry Holt, 287 pages, $25). It is a trail famously blazed by David Mitchell in 2004 with "Cloud Atlas." But Mr. Faulks made his bones in historical fiction, with the Great War novel "Birdsong" (1993), and has a talent for briskly immersing the reader in the rhythms and images of the past. "A Possible Life" tracks the fortunes of a British soldier coordinating with the French Resistance in World War II; a Dickensian child raised in a workhouse in England in 1859; a devoutly religious nanny and charwoman in 1820s France; and a Joni Mitchell-like folk singer in the 1970s.
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