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.

There is so much about our everyday lives that we not only take for granted, but also rarely (or never?) even think about. How do the blueberries for your morning oatmeal get into your bowl? How does your cross-country flight take off and land safely? And what happens to your trash after it's hauled away?

Author Jeanne Marie Laskas takes us behind the scenes, profiling various "hidden" jobs that make our lives easier, safer, and tastier. The best part of the book is the connections Laskas makes with the people who work these jobs, transforming an invisible occupation into one that breathes, lives, and has a family. It's an inside-out look at America.

Nine "hidden worlds" are profiled, including these seven:
• Go deep underground in the Hopedale coal mine in Cadiz, Ohio where you'll find out what it's really like to mine coal that will be used for electricity. Oh, and be prepared to laugh. These coalminers have a fabulous sense of humor.

• Join migrants—some with documentation, some without—who harvest wild blueberries in August in Maine. Find out what their lives are like, why they don't trust anyone, and where they will go next. If it weren't for these hard workers, we wouldn't have apples, oranges, peaches, or blueberries because they would just fall off the trees and bushes and rot.

• NFL players may make a bajillion dollars a year, but the cheerleaders barely make gas money and gameday expenses. Spend some time with several Ben-Gals, cheerleaders for the Cincinnati Bengals, to find out why they are so passionate about cheering.

• Take a visit to the air traffic control tower, arguably the heart of LaGuardia Airport in New York. Find out what it's like to manage a screenful of planes and keep your cool. Bonus: Meet the man who was on duty the day Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger ditched his U.S. Airways Airbus in the Hudson River with no loss of life.

• Bundle up and travel to "The Slope," a manmade island on the shores of Alaska's North Slope where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline begins. The men who work here (and they are all men) are drilling for oil while living far from civilization with temperatures well below zero in near total darkness in winter. Find out why they love it so much.

• Hop in the cab of a long-distance trucker and go for a ride on I-80 from Cleveland, Ohio to Walcott, Iowa. This trucker doesn't fit the stereotype. She is a 35-year-old black woman who once kept herself awake at 3 a.m. by driving topless up I-71. Bonus: She kept the other (male) truckers awake, too! Oh, the stories she has to tell.

• Ever wonder what happens to all those paper plates, plastic bags, egg cartons, half-eaten hamburgers, and last week's leftovers? Take a visit to Puente Hills Landfill near Los Angeles. You won't believe what happens to your trash!

Best of all, the writing is superb. Laskas has a knack for asking the right questions and giving us the answers in language that is so readable and interesting, you'll forget this is nonfiction. Even though the book was published in 2012, it is still relevant and remarkable today and, most of all, spellbinding. I highly recommend it.

There are two kinds of readers: Those who finish every book they start—no matter what. After all, you never know what wonderful surprise awaits if you don't slog your way through it. And then there are those who say life is too short for a boring book. I am, for better or worse, in the first group. In the case of this book, I finished it so you don't have to start it!

This book about Belle da Costa Greene (aka Belle Marion Greener) is a hybrid between historical fiction and biography; it fails because it is neither.

It is billed as a novel, but there is no plot. Events trudge along but there is no dramatic story arc that we all expect in a novel, even historical fiction. If it were a straight-up biography, it would not be so insipid, trying to be something it is not. But it's a novel with imagined conversations and feelings that just come off as banal and even trite. The result? It's a boring 350-page book. The suspense, the drama, the magic that keep readers turning pages just isn't there. It's flat. And what is there is a glorified (made-up) soap opera. Yawn.

Written by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, this is the true story of Belle da Costa Greene, who served in the early 1900s as the personal librarian for J.P. Morgan at his Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. It was Greene, working in a man's world, who was responsible for filling this library with priceless books—from rare illuminated medieval manuscripts to the Le Morte Darthur printed by Caxton in 1485, as well as original scores by Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin and prints and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance artists.

But Greene harbored a big (big!) secret: She was Black and passed as White. As a Black woman, she would never have been hired for this position. She, her mother, three sisters, and one brother moved from Washington, D.C. to New York City where her mother, Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener, decided the best way for them to live was to deny who they were and pass as white. They changed their last name to Greene. Her father, Richard Theodore Greener, the first Black student and graduate of Harvard who was light enough to pass as well, was so angry with this decision that he left the family. To account for her slightly darker skin, Belle changed her middle name to da Costa and created a fake story about a Portuguese grandmother. And it worked. After years in the job, Belle was declared the most successful career woman in the world.

All this is true. Benedict and Murray conducted extensive research to write this novel, but since Greene was never "outed" in her life, never married, although she did have lovers, and devoted her existence to work, there isn't a flashy or remarkable storyline with which to work. It wasn't until 1999—nearly 50 years after Greene died—that a biographer revealed her true identity.

I am being generous with three stars, which I am only giving because of the prodigious and impressive amount of research that went into the book. Unfortunately, this hybrid of historical fiction and biography just doesn't succeed. Skip it.

This is a monumental and original family saga that is like nothing I have ever read. It is richly imaginative and packs an emotional wallop.

Taking place in Kerala, a state in South India on the Malabar Coast, it spans nearly 80 years and is brutally realistic. This isn't a sweetsie-lovey story. It's about life. Real life. And it hurts the reader sometimes! Children die, loved ones die by suicide, people are killed in somewhat brutal and violent ways, and several suffer debilitating injuries. It's a tough read because I was emotionally connected with the characters and then wham! They die or suffer. But that is the ultimate premise of this book: Finding the meaning in suffering.

Magnificently written by physician and bestselling author Abraham Verghese, this epic multigenerational novel begins in 1900 and ends in 1977, centering on the character of Big Ammachi. She is 12 years old when her father dies, leaving her mother destitute. In a desperate move, this little girl is hurriedly married off to a 40-year-old widower and father of a 2-year-old boy, who lives Kerala, a long day's journey away. She is nicknamed Big Ammachi (Big Mother) by Jojo, the little boy, and the name sticks as she grows up to become the matriarch of a large family living on the 500-acre estate of Parambil. As she soon discovers, this family has a curse, "the Condition," as they call it, that takes the life of someone every generation.

In addition, there are parallel stories that at first are seemingly unrelated. The most intriguing one is that of Digby Kilgour, a surgeon from Glasgow, Scotland, who joins the Indian Medical Service in Madras. His is also a story of joy and tragedy that eventually—surprisingly and explosively—connects with the family in Parambil, although it is a long and circuitous journey to that end.

In addition to a compelling, ever-evolving, and multilayered plot inhabited by bold and vivid characters, this is a profound work of literature that speaks eloquently and poignantly about one family's place on Earth—how they love, how they argue, how they do good, how they do evil, how they worship God, and how they make the world a better place by just inhabiting it. As you can probably tell from the title, the imagery and symbolism of water and specifically how the covenant of water links all human beings is brilliant.

This is also a love letter to medicine—to dedicated physicians, to the scientists who make the medical discoveries, to the hardworking nurses, and especially to all those who give their life to care for the sick.

Bonus: Even though it's told only in words, you'll get a tour of South India that is so vibrant and so realistic that when I Googled photos of the area, it appeared very much like it did in my imagination. The land is so much a part of the novel that it is almost a character of its own. This is truly a magical place with beautiful beaches, elaborate canals, and picturesque mountains filled with monkeys, elephants, snakes, birds, and tigers.

Two pieces of advice to make reading this 700 page book easier:
• There are dozens of characters in this novel, and even the Kindle X-ray feature is not that helpful. Go to the author's website and download the character list. Print it if you're reading the paper version of the book. If you're reading it on Kindle, I advise you to use the "send to Kindle" feature. I had this document right next to the book, so it was easy to search for or find the character. It doesn't take long before you'll know who everyone is.

• There are quite a few words in the novel in Malayalam, the official language of Kerala. In most cases, it's easy to figure out the meaning based on the context of the sentence, but I kept my phone nearby so I could Google words I couldn't decipher.

This book is terrifying. It is the stuff of nightmares. And it's such an extraordinary and important history book that it should be required reading for everyone.

When you think of the Ku Klux Klan, you likely think of the deep South. Think again. This is the story of what happened in the early 1920s in Indiana, the quintessential flag-waving, apple-pie center of America's Heartland, which had more sworn Klansmen than any other state and three times as many as Georgia.

Lawmakers, from the governor on down, as well as police officers, industry leaders, newspaper editors, and even ministers were all Klansmen and under the control of the KKK and specifically the Indiana Grand Dragon, David C. Stephenson, a grifter, psychopath, and charismatic conman from Texas. Their hate-filled, horrific activities extended not only to Blacks, but also Jews and Roman Catholics.

While Stephenson was the public face of Klan "values"—most notably abstention from alcohol and protection of the sanctity of women—he was something quite different in private. While leading Indiana citizens kowtowed to him, Stephenson had a sexual secret: He enjoyed raping and torturing women through cannibalistic sex where he would chew their skin, almost trying to eat them alive. None of his victims ever reported the crime. After all, almost every cop, prosecutor, and judge in the state were part of the Klan and under Stephenson's iron fist. Where would they find justice?

Written by Timothy Egan, this is the story of Stephenson's sadistic reign of terror in Indiana from 1921 to 1925. He thought he was the reincarnation of Napolean, hoodwinked everyone, telling lies about his life that he uttered so often that he even believed them. He was an expert at planting fake news—from whispered suggestions to outright lies—that soon were treated as the truth. With the enthusiastic backing of the Republican party, Stephenson built a white-sheeted organization of hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers who pledged to support white supremacy. If you weren't part of the KKK, then you were an outsider and not to be trusted. He even formed KKK organizations for women and children. Stephenson had plans to close the borders to immigrants, and he had his eye on the White House. Just think what he could do as president or manipulating someone else who served as his puppet in the Oval Office.

But then, quite suddenly, the all-powerful Grand Dragon was stopped cold by a 28-year-old woman named Madge Oberholtzer. A college graduate, schoolteacher, and member of Pi Beta Phi sorority, Oberholtzer was Stephenson's last victim of cannibalistic sex, rape, and torture. In the middle of the two-day excruciating experience when Stephenson kidnapped her, Madge tried to commit suicide by ingesting a poison, but it was a very slow-acting poison. She died 29 days later from a combination of the injuries inflicted by Stephenson and the poison. That was enough time for her to tell her tale of horror to her parents, her best friend, her physician, and her family's attorney as they surrounded her deathbed. It was Madge—well, the ghost of Madge—who brought down D.C. Stephenson when no one else could. It was Madge who exposed the Klan and its Grand Dragon for what they really were.

Oh, what a chilling and compelling tale this is! While Egan is a born storyteller, he is also a prodigious researcher, turning this sordid bit of history into a page-turning thriller.

A small warning: Many of the details in this book are gruesome and graphic. You'll need a tough stomach to read these parts.

This is a remarkable and powerful story that is also a really good read, but the best description of all comes straight from author Xochitl Gonzalez: It's a big, weird novel.

It is a novel about a lot of things: Puerto Rican politics, political corruption, the close-knit diaspora of Puerto Rican communities in New York City, and a bit of Puerto Rican history. But more than all that, this is a very human novel—a story about breaking free from social restraints and family expectations and fully realizing your dreams…of becoming who you were meant to be.

This is the story of Olga Acevedo and her brother Prieto Acevedo. It's the summer of 2017, and the two are part of a large and loving Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn. Still, their lives are grounded in a deep and abiding heartache. They were abandoned by their mother, Blanca, when Olga was 12 and Prieto was 15 when she left the country to follow a fringe figure to fight as a revolutionary for an independent Puerto Rico, while their father left them for drugs, becoming a heroin addict who eventually died of AIDS.

Ivy League graduate Olga, now 41, is the wildly successful owner of an upscale wedding planning business, while Prieto, who is recently divorced with a young daughter he adores, is the U.S. congressman for their Brooklyn district. Olga may plan gorgeous weddings for New York's upper crust, but she has no love life of her own beyond meaningless sex with a series of men she never allows to get emotionally close. And Prieto may be a political wunderkind, but he is being blackmailed as he harbors a personal secret that he is terrified could erupt in a devastating, personal scandal at any time.

Just as Olga meets a wonderful and loving man named Matteo who may change her life in ways she never imagined, Prieto is so consumed with his own secrets that he shuts out those who love him most, especially Olga. It is Matteo who forces Olga to examine all the secrets and lies that have consumed her family's past and present. But Olga and Prieto can no longer hide in the emotional armor they have erected around themselves because Blanca comes roaring back in their lives days after Puerto Rico is consumed by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. What their mother asks of each of them after all these years of separation is astonishing in an eye-popping horrifying way, and their reaction to her is equally astonishing in an eye-popping gratifying way. (Oh, this is good!) That said, the ending is a bit unsettling…and maybe a portent of things to come.

I so enjoy reading books about cultures that are not my own because I learn so much. And because this is a novel with a compelling story and vivid characters, I seemingly became part of that culture while I was immersed in the pages of the book. That is the magic of reading. It allows us to embrace an empathy and understanding we wouldn't otherwise have.

In a word: Hilarious!

This is a witty, snarky, and comical skewering of modern-day college English departments, many of which are suffering from a lack of allocated funding from their universities as the number of English majors declines in favor of STEM majors. If you were an English major or have taught English at the collegiate level, treat yourself to this book, the first in a trilogy.

Written by Julie Schumacher, it is an epistolary novel, which I have to say made me reluctant to read it. I was so wrong to be concerned. The entire book is a series of letters of recommendation written over one year—September 2009 to August 2010—by the disgruntled and cantankerous Jason T. Fitger, a professor of creative writing and English at the fictional Payne University located somewhere in the Midwest. A second-tier school, but a first-rate story.

Schumacher is incredibly creative in carrying a novel plot (well, sort of a plot) throughout these letters, which range from recommendations for graduate school and retreat-style writing seminars to such employers as Avengers Paintball, Catfish Catering, Gropp's Liquor Lounge and Winemart, and Flanders Nut House—the kind of jobs English majors are forced to take if they skip grad school.

This is what makes it so much fun: Some of the letters are not only recommendations, but also a kind of personal diary and vengeful confessions that are improper at best and wildly inappropriate at worst. Fitger sometimes discusses in these letters of recommendation his sexual liaisons with various women, the torment of his divorce, and the physical state of the English department as it is engulfed in fumes, possibly toxic smoke, and construction dust while the economics department one floor above is lavishly renovated. Meanwhile, Fitger is obsessed with one student in particular, thinking he may be the next literary novelist wunderkind. He repeatedly tries to get the kid funding and placement and repeatedly fails. It doesn't sound funny, but in Schumacher's hands, I was laughing out loud—until suddenly I wasn't.

As the academic year progresses, Fitger's letters become more and more unhinged, revealing his dismay, anger, and angst with both the profession in general and his own career in particular as both seemingly spiral into freefall. Still, while he may be sullen and grumpy, he's got a big heart. He adores literature, teaching, and shaping the next generation of writers—all of which are priceless qualities in an English professor.

The novel won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. It's a short, quick read that will improve your mood just because it will make you laugh. Winner! Winner!