Before everything changed, before guilt, loneliness and suffering were daily companions, Jackie Kennedy was a young wife of privilege with impeccable taste and adorable children. A powerful man as her husband rounded out an image of perfection, absent Jack Kennedy's …more frequent dalliances with mistresses. Happy in her married life, the Kennedys of Jack and Jackie were planning a getaway to California but first they were in Dallas on a political trip. It was routine, mundane and partly annoying until ordinary shifted to tragic without warning.

Essayist Joan Didion once remarked: Life changes. It changes in an instant. Upon Jackie Kennedy's hands and in her lap, in an instant, were shards of bone and blood belonging to her beloved husband.

The death of a husband president is without peer. However one episode of horror doesn't a life make. The rest of it, the length and width of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, as told by Stephanie Marie Thornton in And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is entertaining, compelling, heartbreaking, tragic, uplifting and a damned good read. Jackie Kennedy Onassis' life was much bigger than one very bold assassination.

There was the boyfriend she dumped before she began dating Jack Kennedy; she was bored to tears by stockbroker John Husted. There was Jackie's own ambition and love of books, adventure, photography, fashion and design. She didn't just want to be a wife. She wanted to matter creatively. When she fell in love with Jack Kennedy her world changed.

The historical novel Stephanie Marie Thornton penned is a gem. It's the kind of novel you just can't put down but to call it a page turner somehow feels crass. It's much more than that. Thornton gracefully holds the life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis in her hands, exploring the pain of miscarriages and dead babies, infidelity, fear, joy, love and jealousy. Thornton includes details not often reported. Jackie called her father-in- law Poppy Doodle. Jack affectionately called her Kid. She had an intimate relationship with brother-in-law Bobby which felt peculiarly sexual and spiritual in nature.

Thornton though mines the details like a neurosurgeon, carefully inserting the knife in sensitive membranes. She's talented at dramatizing the inner life of women and exposing what Jackie O. desperately wanted hidden, that she loved a man almost more than she loved herself which makes her a sympathetic and familiar woman. As a historical figure, she was protective, restless, sharp, witty, and unafraid to chart a course that had others shaking their head. Beauty is skin deep is an apt description of the woman who lived in the White House for 1,036 days. Beautiful Jackie. (less)

"Actress" is a story of two women: a needy artist, and the daughter who witnesses her diminished fame and confidence. It is a novel of intimacies, inheritance, unrequited longing, and death by paper cuts. A lot of the novel treads on the supposition that actresses are …more unhappy people searching for humanity and love among strangers- and that strangers are desperate to know if actresses are normal people, or not.

The story begins with Norah looking back on her mother's glittery life of stardom and applause. As a child, she was transfixed by Katherine O'Dell's talent, watching her perform on stage. Too young to understand jealousy and loneliness, Norah was oblivious to her mother's secret life. When she digs deeper into the woman her mother turned into she sees a woman much different than the legendary stage performer she admired from afar.

The seventh novel of Irish writer Anne Enright is a compelling character study with a quiet message. Daughters don't really know their mothers. They were absent during the experiences that damaged and changed their mothers. The person they know is the adult and not the curious girl who had change thrust upon her by circumstance and so she adapted. Enright hones in on something very real about powerful mothers and their daughters. There is no choice but to mimic your beautiful mother so you can turn into her as a compliment. Until her mind begins to thin and crack and the fantasy of the good mother dissolves.

Then the daughter has to take a step back, away from the person she thinks her mother is, and who ironically, she has become as well. (less)

Two months after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Nefertiti Austin wrote a letter to her son. Her responsibility as a black mother was to not sugarcoat the world. One day August would be old enough to understand there was a black man in the White House. Then, he …more could read the letter and have appropriate information about the world, with all of its racial and gender biases and microaggressions.

The letter is tenderly included in Nefertiti Austin's memoir, "Motherhood So White". It is a generous book because Austin is a generous writer who navigates her emotions, conflicts, fears and dreams. Black motherhood is no joke. Couple that with single motherhood and adoption, and challenges are everywhere.

Racist narratives of "the good mother" shape Nefertiti Austin's journey through foster care and public adoption, a world that included nine social workers. Quickly she discovers love is important but so is advocacy. Raising a black son without a father, though scary, is met with a myriad of hopeful challenges.

A perfect bedside read for the newly adoptive mother who is nervous about what to do next, Austin is humorous and real. But "Motherhood So White" is also for black women denied social support from a culture that puts emphasis on biological children. Chapter after chapter, Austin defends from a feminist perspective her choice to adopt and raise a black son (and eventually a black daughter). She reminds us it is the raising of children that matters, all those steps that usher babies into toddlers, toddlers into children, and children into graceful adults. (less)