Oh, what a novel! It just pulled me in and wouldn't let go.

Before you read this book, know two important things:
1. Clear your schedule! Once you start reading, it will be really (really!) hard to stop. Yes, it's THAT good.
2. When you finish it, you will have a whopping book hangover.

Magnificently written by Ariel Lawhon, this is page-turning historical fiction wrapped around a murder mystery. It takes place from November 1789 to April 1790 in the small village of Hallowell, Maine during a particularly frigid, icy, and stormy winter. Martha Ballard is a 54-year-old midwife and healer, lovingly married to Ephraim, and mother of six (mostly) grown children. One night in late November after a town dance (called a "frolic"), Joshua Burgess is found dead in the mostly frozen Kennebac River. It takes seven men to haul him out. But this isn't a man who drowned. He has distinct rope burns on his neck, indicating a hanging, as well as bruises and broken bones, indicating a beating.

The plot thickens. The dead man, along with Joseph North, one of the leading and most powerful citizens of the town, are together accused of brutally raping the minister's wife, Rebecca Foster, who becomes pregnant with the baby of one of the rapists. Was Burgess's murder connected to the rape? Outspoken, fearless Martha is determined to solve this mystery and seek justice for the victims even at great risk to herself and her family.

The novel is not only a riveting whodunit with smart twists and turns, but also a brilliant story about life in these difficult times early in our country's history. I was completely captivated reading this imaginative tale with colorful characters, a bit of love and romance, and magnificent storytelling.

Be sure to read the "Author's Note" at the end, as it describes in detail what is and isn't historical fact in this novel. I was quite surprised at how much of it is true. But don't read the "Author's Note" until you have finished the book, as it's filled with story spoilers.

Bonus: Quotations from Shakespeare's plays run throughout the novel, and many of them are the best ones—the ones that so eloquently insult and defame. Read them and laugh!

This book should come with a warning! Beware reading it in public places because you will be laughing out loud—repeatedly—and you risk getting the same wary looks from strangers that author A.J. Jacobs endured for the year he decided to live biblically. That is, he lived his life, both in his actions and physical appearance, following the Bible as literally as possible.

For quite a few years now, part of my daily spiritual discipline is to read one chapter of the Hebrew Scriptures and one chapter of the New Testament. I get to the end and start over. I'm now on my fourth reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and tenth of the New Testament, and I thought it would be fun to reread this book now that I better understand what Jacobs was trying to do.

Here's the dichotomy of "The Year of Living Biblically": It's both hilarious and spiritually moving—at the same time.

Having grown up a secular Jew—no synagogue, no sabbath dinners, no bar mitzvah—Jacobs decided to read the Bible cover to cover and then try to live out its rules, regulations, and dictums as closely as possible. There are 613 Jewish commandments found mostly in the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Jacobs calls himself agnostic, and he was curious as to whether living the Bible's rules would make him more spiritual and turn him into a believer as he was obeying the Ten Commandments, loving his neighbor, and tithing his income.

Unlike most people who believe the Bible literally, Jacobs's goal was not to pick and choose what to do, but to do it all, including stoning an adulterer, keeping the Sabbath, not wearing clothes of mixed fibers, blowing the shofar on the first of the month, visiting a (real) Samaritan, and playing a 10-string lyre. Yes, some of it is farfetched and attention-getting and a lot of it is sarcastic (but never snarky), but almost all of it is enlightening as he tries to live a life where the ultra-religious customs of Abraham's day clash directly with the mores of the secular 21st century.

He split the quest into two parts. He devoted eight months of the year to the Old Testament, and four months to the New Testament, which included consulting with and interviewing experts, including rabbis, ministers, priests, and scholars of all persuasions—from ultra-conservative to liberal. He ponders big questions, such as how can the Bible be so wise as well as so barbaric? And he considers the seemingly impossible, such as how to make an animal sacrifice on the streets of New York City in 2007, how to become a shepherd, and how to best eat locusts. (He succeeds with all three!)

To look the part, he grew his beard, which became an unruly bird's nest (no trimming allowed!), wore only white clothing, strapped a paper with the Ten Commandments to his forehead every day and adorned his clothes with tassels—all following ancient Jewish law. Then he went about his business in New York, including his day job as a writer for Esquire magazine.

The funniest parts of the book are the reactions he gets from strangers, friends, and family, but no one is funnier in this book than his beleaguered wife, Julie, who must put up with so much!

And then this happens: Jacobs unexpectedly becomes closer to God, discovering the wisdom and poetry of the Bible, finding solace in prayer and meditation, and immersing himself in the mystery of God and the universe. Is he still an agnostic in the end? You'll have to read the book to find out.

With stilted, almost awkward writing, a thin plot, and one-dimensional characters, this dark and sorrowful book by Wenyan Lu is a disappointment because it has the potential to be so much more.

Taking place in modern-day China but in a remote, rural village that hangs on to the old customs, this is the story of a middle-aged woman who is never named. None of the characters is named except for a few who are given nicknames. The woman is married to a man she refers to as "the husband," and they have one grown daughter, who lives in Shanghai. It is a loveless marriage, bordering on abusive. The husband is unemployed. She works as a funeral cryer. It is her job to lead the mourners in crying. Meanwhile, she suspects her husband, who spends his time playing mahjong, of having an affair with a woman named Hotpot, while she herself is making eyes at the local barber. Because of her job as a funeral cryer, she is thought to bring bad luck and to smell of the dead. She experiences discrimination from others' superstitions about death—so much so that she is refused admittance to her father's nursing home and is ostracized by those in the village.

The underlying theme of the book is death and dying—our fears, anxieties, and trepidations. Being surrounded by death weighs on the woman, and eventually she decides to live a better life. Even though the novel was leading up to this all along, her change of heart is quite sudden, so it feels forced and implausible.

The writing style is characterized by short, jarring sentences and abrupt paragraph changes, while the dialogue is stilted and boring and often doesn't serve to move the story forward, focusing on the mundane aspects of life.

Jack the Ripper, a brutal, evil, psychotic murderer who stalked the foggy nighttime streets of London's East End slums in 1888 is the stuff of legend. He was never caught and still hasn't been identified more than 135 years later. And the women he killed? Oh, they were just prostitutes, most would say. That too, is a myth.

Who were these unfortunate women? There were at least five, possibly more. The five "canonical" murders ("canonical" meaning recognized or authoritative in this case) took place in September and November 1888, and this prodigiously researched book by Hallie Rubenhold does what history has ignored until now: Elucidates these women's stories as daughters, wives, and mothers and gives them names and faces and lives.

The introduction, which is titled "A Tale of Two Cities," explains what life was like in London in 1887 when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee—50 years wearing the crown—and what life was like in the underbelly of the city, namely in the notorious slums of the East End. It is in the introduction that author Hallie Rubenhold describes the grisly murders of the women, all of whom were killed in their sleep. And that is all we hear about the ghoulish killings. The rest of the book focuses on the lives and loves, the joys and sufferings of the five women.

Their names are Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.

Find out fascinating facts:
• Only one of the women was a prostitute (Mary Jane Kelly, who was murdered in November, while all the others were murdered in September), but all of them were alcoholics and all either had failed marriages or no marriage. All were on their own without a husband, a dangerous and precarious hardship in this age. There is no hard evidence that the first four of them were prostitutes; the police made that assumption when their bodies were found in a dark yard or street. Find out what it was like to live their lives as single women without male protection.

• Because the police were so convinced the women were prostitutes, the entire investigation was slanted that way and absolutely tainted. Worse, they ignored the one thing the five homicides did have in common!

• Find out how the focus of the murder investigations became a moral inquiry to the women's lives.

• Learn about the horrific reality of what it meant to live in the East End, especially Whitechapel, the most notorious and sordid of the London slums and where all the Jack the Ripper murders occurred. It was here that an entire family might inhabit one eight-foot by eight-foot room that was infested with vermin along with broken windows and damp walls. Outside there were stagnant pools of disease-breeding water, slicks of sewage, and rubbish-filled roads.

• Find out what it was like to be a woman, especially an unmarried woman, at a time when women had no voice, few rights, and just by being poor they would be labeled lazy and degenerate—or worse. This is how history has viewed these five murder victims, which is almost as great a crime as that committed by Jack the Ripper.

Bonus: Be sure to read the final chapter titled "Just Prostitutes" for the author's impassioned and eloquent opinions as to why the victims were labeled as prostitutes and how the story of Jack the Ripper is a narrative of a killer's deep and abiding hatred of women.

My heart broke for these five women and the tragedies that led them to Whitechapel with lives so precarious that they had no idea where they would eat next or sleep that night. This is an important and fascinating fact-filled entry into the myths of Jack the Ripper and his unfortunate victims.

I read a lot of short story collections, and it's rare that almost all the stories in the collection are excellent. This is one of those rare collections. Each of the 10 stories has a compelling plot, characters that seem real, and just the right amount of tension or conflict to keep the reader interested.

My favorites (and it was hard to choose!):
• "Creature": This is the story of a 14-year-old girl whose parents are in a messy divorce. She takes a two-week job as a mother's helper for two children ages four and two while they visit their grandmother in a posh Massachusetts mansion. All is well until the grandmother's married son appears, and then some confusing things happen to Carol. (The ending is perfect!)

• "Five Tuesdays in Winter": This is a love story taking place in a bookstore between Mitchell, a curmudgeonly, taciturn divorced man in his 40s and Kate, a younger woman in her 30s. Mitchell's extraverted 12-year-old daughter, Paula, is a wonderful foil between Mitchell and Kate. It's brilliant.

• "When in Dordogne": Ed and Grant, two college students spend the summer with a young teenage boy while his somewhat emotionally-detached parents travel to Dordogne, France in the hopes of alleviating his father's clinical depression. It's an eye-opening adventure for the boy, including a first kiss with a special girl.

Some of the stories are just delightful to read, while others are emotionally searing. Relationships are complicated. Love isn't always easy. A few of the stories are dark and one is somewhat violent, but they all offer a greater meaning and important life lessons. Each one is a gem written in prose that demands to be savored.

Quirky and whimsical. Peculiar and absurd. Is there a genre for eccentric literature? That's the best way to describe this highly imaginative novel by Annie Hartnett that almost gave me whiplash with the many sudden shifts, changes, twists, and turns of the characters and the plot. Readers, fasten your seatbelt!

This is the story of Emma Starling, who grew up in the very small town of Everton, New Hampshire. Her 68-year-old father, Clive, is a poetry professor at the local Meriden College and wears his gray hair in a braided ponytail, sports numerous tattoos (some of which he inked himself), and drives a motorcycle with a sidecar. Her mother, Ingrid, is 16 years younger than her husband and is a librarian at Meriden College, president of the Everton Historical Society, and the sole caretaker of a local historical mansion and its extensive grounds; she is Clive's fourth wife, and the first to bear him children. Emma's younger brother, Auggie, is a recovering drug addict, who lives at home without a job or real purpose.

When the book opens, Emma, 22, is returning home for Thanksgiving from Los Angeles where she attended college and is supposedly in medical school. On her way from the airport in her rental car, she picks up a hitchhiker—a big white dog she names Moses. Her father is dying from a mysterious brain disease that causes hallucinations, forgetfulness, and tremors. He was recently fired from his job when he hallucinated dozens of cats crawling around his classroom and in his panic inappropriately touched one of his female students. Clive hallucinates a lot, mostly animals but also the ghost of naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes, the real-life Doctor Doolittle of New Hampshire, who gives Clive some weird ideas of what to do with his last months on Earth, including helping him order a pet fox from Russia that he names Rasputin.

In addition to having to face her father's final illness, Emma has a big secret that she needs to confess to her parents: Although she was admitted to medical school at UCLA, she got scared and never showed up. Emma was pushed into being a doctor because ever since her birth, the townspeople have believed she has magic healing hands—something the town called "The Charm," but what is also known as charismata iamaton. Meanwhile, Clive is obsessed with finding Crystal Nash, Emma's best friend from high school, who is a heroin addict and has seemingly disappeared. Or is she dead?

Auggie's drug habit, which began with legitimately prescribed opioids for a high school football injury and turned into a heroin addiction, is mirrored many times over in this little town. Emma gets a job as a long-term substitute teacher at the elementary school because the teacher is on leave as her husband, the local used car salesman, is on trial for dealing drugs. There are only eight children in the fifth-grade class, but there should be nine: One of the little girls recently died of leukemia. And, of course, just to add something else to this complicated plot, Emma is falling hard for the former high school hunk who is now a biology teacher at the school.

And there is more! Included in this small New England town is an enclosed, private park of 26,000 acres that is populated by a wide variety of animals, most of which are not native to New Hampshire. It was fenced in 135 years ago by a 19th century robber baron as his grand retirement project. Several anonymous millionaires now own and vacation inside the park, commuting in and out to their hunting cabins by private helicopter.

Here's the quirkiest feature of all: The omniscient narrators of the book—much like a Greek chorus—are the dead people in the town's Maple Street Cemetery.

Whew! See what I mean about literary whiplash? But I give author Annie Hartnett big kudos for making this absurd roller coaster of a book come to a complete and safe stop by ensuring that the loose ends and weird wanderings all fit together in a most fun and enjoyable way. The ending is perfect!

This is a highly imaginative novel with colorful characters and a tragic/comic storyline that borders on hectic it's so busy, but it's always delightful with underlying messages and wisdom about the angst of guilt and shame, the pain and loneliness of grief, and the value of life and love.

More than anything, it is a love letter to animals—from frogs to foxes and bears to boars. Highly recommended!

Bonus: Do read the author's note at the end to find out what (surprisingly!) is true in this novel that apparently is all in the author's imagination.

This book is brilliant...and brutal. It's a magnificent gay love story wrapped around horrific, shuddering violence. It is deeply profound with a storyline that is heartbreaking, tragic, and difficult to read. And I couldn't put it down.

Masterfully written by Booker Prize-winner Douglas Stuart, this is the story of Mungo Hamilton, a 15-year-old Protestant boy living in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland, who comes from nothing. No money, little love, and lots of uncertainty and instability. His mother, Mo-Maw, is an alcoholic who takes up with men and moves in with them, temporarily abandoning her three teenage children. Mungo's older brother, Hamish, is the father of a baby with his 15-year-old girlfriend and alternates living at home and in his girlfriend's mother's flat. He is a gang leader, callously sadistic, and has physically and psychologically brutalized Mungo for years, often forcing him to participate in his bloody and brutal gang fights. Jodie, Mungo's older sister, is the only constant in his life. She is smart, she loves Mungo, and she cares for him like a mother even though she is only a year older than Mungo.

Mungo has grown up without friends, but one day he meets James Jamieson, a Catholic boy his own age with his own heartbreaking story to tell. James raises pigeons in a shanty-like doocot (dovecote) as a way to escape his otherwise bleak life. The two become friends—well, more than friends. And for the first time ever, Mungo is happy. But their love must be a deeply guarded secret, not only because they are gay but also because one is Catholic and one is Protestant.   

This tightly nuanced novel has two distinct storylines adeptly woven into each other. One tells the story of Mungo's life in the low-income housing tenements on the wrong side of Glasgow while the other tells of a weekend fishing trip his mother arranges for him to take with two of her creepy acquaintances from Alcoholics Anonymous, both of whom were recently released from prison for sex crimes. Mungo is gay, and while he has come to privately accept this, his mother thinks this fishing weekend will make a man of him. But things go terribly, shockingly, irreversibly wrong, turning what had been up to that point a coming-of-age/love story into a violent thriller.

Bonus: Do read Douglas Stuart's short essay, "The Birdmen of Glasgow" at the end of the book that was first published in Literary Hub in April 2022. It's a fascinating look at growing up in the east end of Glasgow (the setting of the book) and the "doo men" who raised pigeons in doocots all over the edges of the housing tenements.

One note: The novel's dialogue is in vernacular Scottish, and most of it was easy to figure out—even though I had never seen these words before. That said, when I couldn't decipher/translate a word, the Kindle dictionary/Wikipedia helped and failing that, Google came to the rescue.

And a warning: Violence permeates this novel, and it is graphic. Just know that before you choose to read this book.

This book truly is a literary triumph. With vivid, colorful characters and a bold, multilayered storyline that doesn't shy from the truth, this is a remarkable and compelling novel that seared my heart and soul. It is a terribly sad and elegiac book that is emotionally devastating in places, so read with caution.

I will confess right from the get-go that Lauren Groff is one of my favorite authors. If she writes it, I read it. That said, while I am in awe of the literary power of this book, it is not for everyone.

There is no plot. There is only one character, and she doesn't have a name other than "Girl," although she is sometimes called Lamentations Callat, Wench, or Zed. Much of the narrative reads and feels like a fever dream. And the ending is sad…so very, very sad.

It's the early 1600s. Girl, who is about 16 or 17 years old, flees in the middle of a frigid winter night from an early colonial American settlement, probably Jamestown. Everyone is starving. People are dying of hunger and disease. She steals the boots of a boy who died of smallpox and swipes her mistress's heavy cloak. Into a sack she packs a pewter cup, a flint, a knife, a hatchet, and two lice-infested brown coverlets. And off she goes, running as fast as she can in the hopes she can escape before they come looking for her. She knows they will come searching, and if they find her, it will be a violent end. So she must get away—fast. Because what she did is not forgivable.

Girl survives by her wits, battling nature from winter's cold to wild beasts, battling herself and her body's need for food, water, warmth, and rest, and battling man, including one who tries to stone her to death. Taking place over a few weeks, the novel is the story of her flight and survival through the wilderness as she tries to walk to Canada (without any real idea of where she is going), as well as numerous flashbacks to her life in England and her life in the colonial settlement. Until she was four years old, she was in an orphanage/poorhouse in England when she was purchased by a family needing a servant. The mistress treats her kindly, adopting her as a kind of pet, but the teenage son abuses her horribly. The mistress is widowed, and her second husband, a minister, takes the family to the New World against their wishes.

Deftly written in a way that makes prose seem like poetry, this is a book to be savored and reread. It is not suspenseful, it is not a page-turner, but it is captivating and almost seductive. I felt Girl's fear, her body's cold, her hunger, her determination, and her courage. I felt like I was out there in the dark forests with her as she trudged north, as she slowly reveals her secrets to the reader.

This novel is an inspired tribute to the power of the individual to choose a life that is different from the community, to forge a path that no one else has taken, to live a new life. Lauren Groff has written what I can only describe as a daring literary achievement.

This is a profound, extraordinary work of literary fiction, but it's not easy to read for two reasons. First, it is written in a kind of stream of consciousness that flits from one thought to another and then back again. Second, the subject matter—Irish Catholic priests sexually abusing young boys and girls—is abhorrent, but a vitally important tale to tell.

Masterfully written by Sebastian Barry, this book, which was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, tells the life story of Thomas Kettle. We meet Tom at age 66 in the 1990s as he is settling into a lovely retirement flat attached to a Victorian castle overlooking a busy harbor in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin. Tom has retired after working for decades as a garda (police officer). He is a widower; he and his beloved wife, June, had two children. Winnie studied to be an attorney, and Joe became a doctor and moved to a remote part of New Mexico to care for the indigenous population there.

Tom and June were both orphans, growing up without parents or siblings and knowing nothing of their birth origins. They have one other awful thing in common: Both were sexually abused by priests serving their orphanages, and it is this destructive, depressive legacy they both carry into adulthood and their marriage.

One night, about nine months after Tom has moved into his little flat, two men knock on his door. They are with the police department and have come seeking his expert assistance on a 30-year-old unsolved cold case. A priest had been brutally murdered in the 1960s, and the police are hoping modern-day forensics might help solve it. This crime catapults Tom back into time, dredging up all sorts of memories he thought he had buried. But what is real? What is imagined? And what is dreamed?

This is a book about aging, memory, and the meaning of life. The phrase "old God's time" means a period beyond memory, and this is such a perfect title for the book as Tom ventures ominously into his own old God's time and place. Oh, this is a dark and desolate tale, but it is so brilliantly written that I was smitten with the words, the language, and the meaning.

Just be aware: The descriptions of priest-abuse of very young children are quite graphic and extremely disturbing, but essential to the story.

This book is a hybrid: part memoir, part feminist manifesto, part meditation, and part romantic advice. It's a bit of everything!

Written by the brilliant novelist Isabel Allende, this short nonfiction book primarily examines the role of women in society, as well as offering powerful, but concise, life lessons. And for the most part, it's excellent. That said, there are times, especially in the last third of the book, that the text rambles and is a bit disjointed.

Allende's take on feminism is slightly different than so many others I have read. She is by her own definition a romantic feminist. Married three times, including the last time in her 70s, she is a woman who believes in romantic love and how it enriches her life. The life lessons in the book are wide-ranging, including her candid thoughts not only romance, but also sex, aging, motherhood, the patriarchy, family, and the power of female friendship.

And this may make curious men want to read this book: Isabel Allende reveals what women want the most. And it's exactly right!

This riveting story of tragedy, heroism, and the power of redemption is magnificent storytelling about a dark time in our nation's history.

Written by Rachel Beanland, this is a fictionalized account of the true story of the horrific fire that destroyed the only theater in Richmond, Virginia on December 26, 1811 with more than 600 men, women, and children inside—dozens of whom were trapped and perished in the flames and smoke.

Ingeniously plotted, it is told from the point of view of four different people:
• Sally Henry Campbell: Now a young widow, the daughter of Patrick Henry attends the play with her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Archie and Margaret Campbell, sitting in a third-floor box along with about a dozen other people.

• Jack Gibson: A 14-year-old working backstage, whose actions cause the deadly fire.

• Cecily Patterson: A young slave who accompanied her mistress to the play but sat in the gallery with the other slaves and freed Blacks. She escapes the fire but realizes that if her master and mistress assume she has died, this is her chance to run away to the north.

• Gilbert Hunt: A middle-aged slave and blacksmith who is a giant of a man—in body and heart. When he hears about the fire, he races to the site and heroically saves about a dozen women by catching them as they jump out the windows.

The story is plotted daily from the night of the fire on Thursday, December 26 to Sunday, December 29, following historical events through the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the four characters. As officials try to discern the cause of the fire, the theater company tries to cover it up, blaming it on a nonexistent slave rebellion, which in turn creates mayhem for the local slave population.

Meanwhile, Sally comes to a startling conclusion about why so many of the 72 people who died that night were women, and Cecily's plans to run away may be thwarted as she involves her family with potentially deadly consequences for them. Gilbert Hunt is lauded as a hero, but his cruel master is disgusted and appalled at the adulation and takes it out on Gilbert. Jack is tormented between supporting the lies started by the theater company about the slave rebellion causing the fire and confessing his own guilt in the matter.

This is historical fiction at its finest! The plot is riveting, and the writing is superb. Each chapter focuses on one of the four characters, and it doesn't take long for those chapters to end in cliffhangers, making this one of those unputdownable books.

Bonus: Do read the fascinating Author's Note at the end as it details many facts about the fire and its aftermath years later.

Oh, this book is a little treasure. It made me smile and it made me tear up (a lot!), but most of all, it touched my heart. If you love cats, reading, and libraries—or any one of those—this is a must-read.

Written by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter, this is the astonishing and heartwarming story of a fluffy orange cat named Dewey Readmore Books. Vicky Myron was the director of the Spencer (Iowa) Public Library, and on a frigidly cold morning in January 1988, she found an 8-week-old kitten someone had stuffed into the library after-hours book return box. After a bath, warm blankets, cuddles, and food, the kitten was transformed from a gray, shivering mass to a fluffy orange kitten that captured everyone's heart. It was decided that they would keep the kitten, and its home would be the library.

This book is the story of Dewey, a cat with an outsized personality whose goal in life was to greet everyone who came into the library and then make each person fall in love with him. The individual stories of Dewey's antics are precious, especially how he deals with disabled children, lonely seniors, staid businessmen in fussy suits, and feisty children.

As much as this book is about Dewey, it is also about the author's unlikely and difficult path to library work, the challenges facing all libraries, especially small-town libraries, and the difficulties endured by Heartland communities that have traditionally relied on family farms as their economic driver. Most of all, it is a tender love letter to libraries and their vital importance to the health and welfare of communities.

Bonus: The book is filled with pithy life advice all based on how Dewey acts towards people and makes them feel. Here is my favorite:
"Find your place. Be happy with what you have. Treat everyone well. Live a good life. It isn't about material things; it's about love. And you can never anticipate love."

This is a delightful, almost magical book I will long remember.

If Sallie Kincaid, the 19-year-old lead character in this roller coaster of a book by Jeannette Walls were real, we would be singing ballads written about her. What a character! What a book!

Taking place primarily in the early 1920s in the poor, rural Virginia area of East Appalachia where the scars of World War I are still being felt by those who served, this is the story of Sallie Kincaid—a Tomboy with a capital "T"—and her outsized, powerful, and wealthy father Henry Edward Kincaid, who is known to everyone (even his daughter) as the Duke. (In Sallie's eyes, the Duke "hung the moon and scattered the stars," hence the title of the book.) The Duke has led quite a checkered life with four wives—the first of whom he divorced and second of whom he murdered (and got away with it)—and three children.

Sallie is the middle child, the daughter of the murdered wife, but she is so much like the Duke that he loves and adores her. Still, she has a rough life, being banished from the household at age eight only to return at age 17. Even though he holds no elected office, the Duke absolutely controls Claiborne County, Virginia with his numerous and often shady business dealings and political connections. When it's Sallie's turn at the helm, she is faced with a deadly family feud between the Kincaids and the Bonds, as well as the new laws of prohibition that turn the county's prolific whiskey business, dominated by the Black citizens, into a dangerous bootlegging operation with Sallie in charge.

The magic of the novel is in Sallie's introspective thoughts and conflicts. As she expertly wields a Remington-22 rifle that she bought for $3 as a child and plots ways to strike the Bond family, she is also considering the moral and ethical implications of everything she and others do. All of this becomes quite complicated, considering the life she is leading.

Just a note: I never saw it while I was reading the novel, but in the acknowledgements, author Jeannette Walls says the story was loosely inspired by England's King Henry VIII—his life and his many wives. And yes! The connection is brilliant. The Duke's first name is even "Henry." Clearly, Sallie Kincaid is the double of Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of the beheaded Anne Boleyn.

This book is a winner for two reasons: Sallie is one of the best book characters I have ever encountered, and the plot never lets up with surprise and tragic twists at every turn. Strap on your seat belt because this is a raucous literary ride!

Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors, and I simply devoured this book that gave delightful and tragic insights into his life—so much so that this could double as a book titled "My Writing Life" or simply "My Life." While he does discuss some of his favorite books, the emphasis is not only on how books influenced his life and his novels, but also on how the people who introduced him to those books changed the trajectory of who he was and would become.

All of this begins with his mother, Peg Conroy, wife of Col. Donald Conroy, the Marine fighter pilot who had a bad habit of beating her up, as well as frequently raising his fists to his children, especially Pat. But mother and son found solace in books. Pat's descriptions of the impact his mother had on his reading life—from taking him to the library to reading "Gone with the Wind" every year—is one of the best love letters to a mother that I have ever read.

Also in the limelight is Mr. Gene Norris, Pat's high school English teacher, who arguably had the greatest influence on Pat's love of literature and decision to become a novelist. Theirs was a lifelong friendship that ended only when Mr. Norris died.

Several of the chapters are salutes to his favorite novelists and the special books they wrote that deeply affected him, especially "Look Homeward, Angel," by Thomas Wolfe and "War and Peace," by Leo Tolstoy.

Pat Conroy's verbose and often flowery writing style is on full display in this book, and we find out why he writes this way and which writer influenced him to do so. (Well, that was a surprise to me!)

If you're a Pat Conroy fan, this is a must-read as a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the wizard of Southern novels to find out how he pushes all those buttons and makes the magic happen.

(Although we share the same surname, Pat Conroy and I are not kin, as they say in South Carolina. Too bad!)

Oh, what a devilishly creepy, hauntingly scary Gothic ghost story that had me shivering in fright (and delight!).

But one important word of caution: Do not read this book after dark. And most especially, do not read this book just before falling asleep or you will have nightmares.

Masterfully written by Chris Bohjalian, this is the story of Chip Linton, a competent and confident regional airline pilot whose plane one August day collides with a flock of geese. The plane loses both engines. With 48 people on board, Captain Linton ditches the crippled jet in Lake Champlain in Vermont, all the while remembering the "Miracle on the Hudson" when Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger did the same thing in the Hudson River with no loss of life. Linton isn't as fortunate. While he survives along with eight others, he is never the same man, haunted with memories of what might have been and forever grieving the loss of those 39 lives. His loving wife, Emily, decides it's time for a change, so the couple, along with their twin 10-year-old daughters, Hallie and Garnet, move from tony West Chester, Pennsylvania to a century-old house in an isolated part of New Hampshire's White Mountains. But the house is haunted and seems to be harboring strange secrets and horrors. For one thing, there is a mysterious door in the basement that is sealed shut with 39 bolts—the same number as those who died on Chip's plane. What is behind that door? Meanwhile, the local women who befriend Emily call themselves "herbalists," but they are more like a coven of witches with their bizarre names and odd potions, teas, and tinctures. Most alarming of all, these women seem to have a nefarious aspiration regarding the Linton family. There is evil inherent in this quaint New England village, and it is terrifying.

And the ending? It's a sucker-punch to the gut that left me almost breathless, screaming "Noooooooooooo!"

With three distinct plotlines that merge into one petrifying tale, this is an ideal book for those who enjoy a good, scary read, especially on a chilly autumn day. (Not night…no, no, no. Do not read this at night! You have been warned.)

This is an exceptional, imaginative, and emotionally searing novel about the dangers of prejudice, the impact of hate, the wounds of injustice, and the small victims whose lives are never the same.

Brilliantly written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble, this is the story of third-grader Kit Crockett. It's the 1950s, deep in the South, near the Arkansas River. Kit's father is a descendant of Davy Crockett, and her mother, who died two years earlier, was a Cherokee Indian. Kit and her grieving father live deep in the country. She spends her time reading Nancy Drew mysteries, tending to the garden, and waiting for the Tuesday morning visit from the bookmobile. She and her father are both incredibly lonely and unable to reach out to each other. One day as Kit is going to the bayou to fish for their dinner, she sees that someone has moved into a nearby cabin that was once occupied by her Uncle Joe. That someone turns out to be Bella, a beautiful and mysterious young woman. She and Kit become fast friends. Although Kit is unaware of it, Bella is a prostitute, entertaining two men in her small home. And then one day, Bella is murdered and somehow Kit's dad is in jail. After living with the local evangelical preacher and his wife, Kit is shipped off—against her will—to a Christian boarding school that feels more like a prison than a school as she is treated with disdain and indoctrinated with Christian instruction she resents. When Kit gets in trouble and is sent to the office, the most horrific thing happens.

Here is the genius of this book: While the summary I wrote above is linear, the book is meant to be Kit's journal that she writes (now in sixth grade) while confined in the school/prison and the timeline jumps all over the place. Instead of being confusing, it becomes a fascinating and gripping tale told with insight and introspection about the injustice of Kit's life being stolen from her. As adults, we know things about Kit's experiences that she is unable to understand as a child, and that is even more heartbreaking.

I only have one criticism: The ending is abrupt, but that is probably the point. It forces the reader to use a bit of imagination to continue the story.

This is excellent storytelling, transporting the reader to another time and place.

This is an introspective, accomplished, and brilliantly observed collection of 10 short stories by Patricia Engel that all have one thing in common: There is another world—a faraway world—that the characters in each of the stories yearn for, remember, or are escaping. Today's world can be gritty and grueling. But the faraway world? That is the place of hopes and dreams even if it doesn't exist.

Unusually for short story collections, every single one is excellent. I can't even choose my favorites to highlight below because each one was better than the one before. Each one has characters that are richly and deeply depicted. Each one has a plot that kept me turning the pages. And each one either filled me with joy or broke my heart—or both.

The setting for most of the stories is in Colombia or Cuba with a few in New York. (There is a lot of Spanish in the book, so I found the Kindle translate feature quite helpful.)

Here are four to highlight that shows the diversity of the stories, but I could have chosen all of them:
• "Aida": Aida and Salma are identical twins living with their often-bickering parents in a small town near New York City. They are very close. One day, Aida disappears…and no one can find her. Did she run away or was she abducted? How her family comes together and eventually falls apart during the time she is missing is heartbreaking.

• "The Book of Saints": A young Colombian woman meets online a twice-divorced and much older American man, who convinces her to leave her impoverished life and become his wife. After the wedding in Colombia, she moves to New York, but her life is nothing like she imagined.

• "Ramiro": Ramiro is just another slum kid from the worst part of Colombia, and after he commits several crimes, he is sentenced to work in a Roman Catholic church under the watchful eye of Padre Andrade. But Ramiro does something atrocious, and he is headed for big trouble until the priest does something that is very surprising.

• " Libélula": This is the story of two Colombian women living in New York. One is wealthy and privileged. The other is poor and is hired as the fulltime maid and eventual nanny. The husband works long hours and is bored with his wife, who is unable to get pregnant. And then one night, he comes into the maid's bedroom…

This is an extraordinary and imaginative collection of short stories about the joys and brutality of life. I highly recommend it.

This literary historical novel has just about everything to keep the pages turning. At the heart of this book by Sara Collins is a sensational murder mystery swathed in betrayal, jealousy, forbidden sex, drug addiction, the evils of slavery, and the privilege and entitlement of the British upper class.

The book opens in April 1826 with Frannie Langton imprisoned in the notorious Newgate Prison in London, awaiting trial at the Old Bailey Criminal Court for the double murder of her employers, George and Marguerite Benham. They were discovered one night stabbed to death in their London home. He was in his library. She was in her bed. And lying next to Marguerite sound asleep and covered in her mistress's blood was Frannie, who quickly became dubbed by the broadsheets as The Mulatta Murderess. Frannie has no memory of what happened, so she sits in prison writing her life story to her attorney.

But back up a bit. After this prologue, the novel switches to 1812 on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica that is owned by John Langton and powered with the muscle and sweat of slaves. One of those slaves is Frannie, a house girl whose father is the master, and who teaches her to read and write as an experiment to see how much Blacks can learn. Meanwhile, Langton and a crony are up to no good in the estate's old coach-house, and they drag Frannie into their devious and sadistic experiments to "prove" the differences between the races. After a devastating fire, Langton and Frannie flee to London where he gives Frannie to George Benham in exchange for what he hopes will be assistance publishing his lifelong research. Benham is also working on the same type of dubious and horrifying research. England has outlawed slavery, so Frannie is supposedly free, although where else could she go? Benham threatens her with a destitute life on the streets if she doesn't tell him everything Langton was doing, while Marguerite chooses Frannie as her personal lady's maid. But there is more than dressing and cleaning going on in this room, as the two discover a forbidden love that thrills them both. And then one day, it all comes to an abrupt and cruel end…until Benham makes a request of Frannie that is despicable and shocking. Hours later, the Benhams are dead.

Who is the murderer? That revelation gave me the shivers!

This literary novel is also wrapped around two classics, "Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe and "Candide," by Voltaire. Plot points and imagery from both are woven throughout this imaginative, gritty, and compelling story of how the upper classes oppress and subjugate the lower classes, especially those of color.

Frannie may have no power, no status, no wealth, and nothing to call her own, but she has a powerful and impressive voice that no one can silence and that is what illuminates this book.

Wow! What a book! This is a stunning, page-turner about daring, courageous women made of inner steel who, against all odds, successfully spied on the Germans in World War I…until they were caught. This is a pressure-cooker of a novel that just builds and builds and builds until the explosive ending.

Written by Kate Quinn, this is a historical fiction-ChickLit combo that is unputdownable. OK, the early chapters are a little slow to get going, but this is where the story foundations are laid, so it's all essential. Just keep reading.

The story is told in two timelines that eventually merge:
• It's May 1915, and 22-year-old Evelyn Gardiner of London is recruited to join an elite network of women spies in France: The Alice Network. After training, she moves to Lille where she gets a job as a waitress at a posh restaurant run by a war profiteer/traitor who caters to the German generals and their high-level staff. Eve, whose code name is Marguerite, assumes a whole new personality of an innocent and somewhat stupid French country girl, never letting on that she is fluent in English and German. As she is pouring wine and clearing plates, she listens to the conversations, which sometimes include war plans. All is going amazingly well until the nefarious owner of the restaurant, René Bordelon, decides to take Marguerite as his lover. How can she refuse?

• It's May 1947, and Charlotte St. Clair, nicknamed Charlie, is a 19-year-old Bennington College student who falls apart emotionally after her brother's suicide following his return from World War II. No longer caring about anything, she takes a series of lovers—all sordid backseat trysts with many different fraternity boys—and soon enough finds herself pregnant and unable to name the father. Not that that would matter since she was never in love with any of them. Her wealthy parents are appalled, outraged, and determine to rid her of her Little Problem with a discreet mother-daughter trip to a clinic in Vevey, Switzerland. They sail to Southampton where Charlie makes a break from her unsuspecting mother, determined to find out what happened to her beloved French cousin Rose, who was a refugee during the war. Three years earlier, her letters suddenly ceased, and still no one in the family knows what happened or seems to have any inclination to find out. But Charlie has a London address of a woman who may know something. That woman is Eve. And when Charlie knocks on Eve's door late one rainy night and is met with a crazed, drunken woman pointing a loaded Lugar pistol at her face, life changes irrevocably for both. Added to this duo is Mr. Finn Kilgore, a Scottish ex-convict whom Eve has hired to serve as her chauffeur and cook. (The description of his one-pan Scottish breakfast will make you head to your kitchen to replicate it!)

The plot in both timelines is riveting with each chapter ending in a page-turning cliffhanger. But the timeline chapters alternate, so you must wait to find out what happens. This is tricky storytelling. In the hands of a less talented author, the reader could be confused, bored, or just stop caring, but the opposite happens in Kate Quinn's hands. Instead, I devoured this book—anxiously wanting to find out what happens, but also not wanting it to end.

The novel is based on fact. While Eve, Charlie, and Finn are fictional, the bones of the story are all based on real people and real events. Do read the Author's Note at the end to find out what is fact and what is fiction. So much of this book is (surprisingly) true! You'll learn a lot of World War I history just by reading it.

Do know this: There are several scenes of torture and brutality that I found difficult to read and could be impossible for some to handle. They are not gratuitous and are essential to the story, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Simmering with tension and populated with vibrant and distinctive characters, this is a richly imagined novel that is packed with historical details. Highly recommended.

I had such high hopes for this novel, since Elizabeth Strout, who is one of my favorite authors, wrote sterling praise for the book jacket. Quite simply, it's a mediocre book with a flat storyline that drags out a predictable tale way too long.

Written by Maxine Clair, this is the story of October Brown, a young, unmarried Black woman who finds herself pregnant. The book begins in 1950 and includes plenty of flashbacks to October's troubled childhood when her father murdered her mother in the bedroom of their Cleveland, Ohio home while their daughters washed the dinner dishes in the kitchen downstairs. October, who was 5 then, and her sister, Vergie, 9, move to Chillicothe to live with their mother's two maiden sisters, Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude. October bears plenty of wounds from that horrific day. She grows up to go to a teacher's college and gets a job teaching third grade in Wyandotte County, Kansas where she lives in a respectable boarding house with her friend, Cora, but when October falls in love with a married man, she loses all sense of her highly-prized respectability. And then she is pregnant. Feeling vulnerable and lost after the baby's birth, she gives him to Vergie and her husband, Gene, who are unable to have children of their own. The rest of the book deals with how October and Vergie handle this potentially explosive situation and the lifelong repercussions they both endure.

Unfortunately, far too much of the text deals with the emotions and psychological consequences of October's poor life decisions, which instead of being smartly introspective and thoughtful, comes off as whining, handwringing prose. Over and over and over. Add to that a superficial, out-of-left-field, soap-opera ending, and I closed the book rolling my eyes.