The subtitle of this enchanting and riveting debut novel by Tara Karr Roberts could be the famous Winnie the Pooh quote: "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you'll ever know." This is the story of four generations of brave, strong, smart, and beloved women very loosely interwoven into the story of "Moby Dick" and told with a light touch of magical realism.

And it's a delight!

The novel opens in 1849 on Nantucket Island. Evangeline Hussey has a psychic gift that she keeps a secret: She can see people's recent memories. And one day when her fisherman husband, Hosea, doesn't come home, she knows exactly what happened to him because she can see it in her mind. He fell off his boat and drowned. New to the island, Evangeline's marriage to Hosea was not viewed with approval by his large family and many friends, so she realizes she must do something drastic in order to keep hold of the Try Pots Inn they ran together, her only form of livelihood. Her bizarre plan works…for several years. And one day a man named Ishmael arrives on the doorstep of the inn, asking for a room and bowl of chowder. Before long, Ishmael is sharing Evangeline's bed. On Christmas morning, he and his buddy Queequeg ship out on the Pequod with the eccentric Captain Ahab, but he has left Evangeline a parting gift: She is pregnant.

Her little girl, Rachel, grows up saucy and sassy with a psychic gift of her own. She can place spells (which she calls "curses") on people forcing them either to remember something or to forget it. Rachel is nine years old when she learns about the mysterious Ishmael and is determined to find out who is. One day, she reads a column about whaling adventures in a Boston newspaper and realizes the author is her father, Ishmael. Rachel travels to Boston in search of him, but it's not easy tracking down an itinerant sailor. The story continues with Rachel's daughter, Mara, who has her own psychic gift: She not only vividly retains her own memories, even from very early childhood, but can sometimes see the darkest, most secret memories of other people. Mara's daughter, Antonia, has an uncanny ability to envision other people's paths and where they have been, seeing every stop along the way.

One thing all of the women have in common is the seemingly fruitless search for Ishmael because somehow, someway they believe it will lead them to family. This quest is what drives each of them, but secrets and lies—oh, so many lies—abound. Eventually, it is Mara and Antonia who realize the most important quest of all, and once those secrets are revealed and the truths divulged…well, let's just say that I (really, truly) got goosebumps.

This ingeniously plotted novel jumps from Nantucket Island to Boston to Brazil to Italy to Idaho and back to Nantucket Island, and each stop in this unusual historical travelogue is filled with intrigue, hope, fear, and touch of magic as the age-old mystery of Ishmael continues to haunt this family through the generations.

This is a sweeping epic that is creative storytelling at its best.

This is a haunting, deeply philosophical, and almost otherworldly novel, written in elegiac prose that feels poetic. It's short and succinct, and every word counts. It can also be confusing at times, but stick with it.

Masterfully written by Anne Michaels, this is the story of a single family covering more than 120 years—a family shrouded in tragedy but encompassed in a deep and abiding love. It's also a romantic story, but brace your heart because it's also incredibly sorrowful.

The novel, which was shortlisted for the prestigious 2024 Booker Prize, opens in 1917 on a snow-packed field near the River Escaut in Cambrai, in France during World War I where John, a British soldier, lies half-buried in the snow. He can't feel his legs, and he is hallucinating, remembering bits and pieces of his life, especially his one true love, Helena. We are then propelled three years hence when John is home with Helena, trying to restart his life, including his photography business. And then John begins taking photos of ghosts, an event that has a devastating impact on him. Again, a big jump in time to Anna, John and Helena's daughter…and then a jump in time to Anna and Peter and their daughter Mara…and then another jump in time to Mara and Alan.

It can be confusing because it bounces back and forth in time, introducing new characters whose connection to the characters we already know can be a bit murky at first. It can almost feel like a mirage until suddenly it clicks into place and meaning and you'll see clearly. Each chapter is labeled for location and year. Pay attention to that.

This is a story about life. And death and dying. And love and romance. And memories. Throughout the book are lyrical passages and plotlines about the spirituality of death and dying and the soul living on in a new and different state.

An example of just such a passage: "Everywhere the dead are leaving a sign. We feel the shadow but cannot see what casts the shadow. The door opens in the hillside, in the field, at the sea's edge, between the trees at dusk, in the small city garden, in a café, in a tram in the rain, on a stairway."

Exquisitely written with many passages that just beg to be read over and over, this is a novel that will likely offer hope and solace to those who are grieving.

Chilling. Very, very chilling. And considering the times we are living in (I write this in April 2025), this book is terrifying. The dystopian idea of Big Brother watching your every move, governing your every action, paying heed to your every word has never before seemed so possible.

Written by Sandra Newman, this is a creative feminist retelling of George Orwell's classic novel "1984," told from the perspective of Julia Worthing, Winston Smith's illicit lover.

Julia is 26, smart, and an ideal citizen—doing everything she is supposed to do with a smile and only a little (private) cynicism. She is living an uncomplicated life in Air Strip One (formerly England), residing in a women's hostel, sleeping in a large dormitory room with dozens of others, and working as a mechanic in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth. The Fiction Department is where books are "written" by machines that spout the party doctrine. Julia fixes the machines when they break, and she is good at her job. Because she is bored, she begins an illicit affair with Winston Smith—just for the clandestine excitement of trying to outwit the ever present telescreens of Big Brother. One day the manipulative and charismatic O'Brien, a high-level member of the Inner Party summons Julia to his luxury apartment with an offer she can't refuse. And while she really couldn't refuse it, the work she is then assigned is nefarious, ugly, and duplicitous, but she does it willingly. And that is when everything changes…and eventually falls apart.

What makes this rewrite different than the original is the female focal point. Not only do we see things through Julia's perspective, but also we learn much about how other women live in this restrictive government, both caring for and betraying each other. Still, it's not as strong as Orwell's classic.

This is a haunting, incendiary tale with a provocative and searing storyline that catapults from emotionally devastating to emotionally resonant. It's appalling and horrifying because it doesn't seem so farfetched as "1984" once did. And this sense that pieces and parts of it could really happen right now and right here is more terrifying than any horror novel.

Note No. 1: There are somewhat explicit sex scenes and very explicit scenes of violence and torture.

Note No. 2: Do read (or re-read) "1984" or at the very least look for a plot summary online before you begin this book so you can better appreciate the different perspective.

It's impossible not to love this book. And I mean love it like a favorite blanket…this is one of those books that I read with a smile and a frown, a laugh and a tear. This book will own your heart. It certainly owned mine.

Brilliantly written by Kent Hauf, this is the second in the three-part Plainsong series that begins with "Plainsong." And, yes, you need to read them in order because there are spoilers in this second book that you don't want to know if you haven't already read the first one.

This novel is the story of three groups of people living in the fictional rural setting of Holt County, Colorado. While they are very different, they have one thing in common: They are all emotionally damaged, but through their interactions with each other they achieve a level of healing:
• Raymond and Harold McPheron are elderly brothers who live 17 miles out of town on a cattle ranch. Orphaned at a young age, the two have always lived together and neither ever married. Two years ago, they "adopted" the then 17-year-old pregnant Victoria Roubideaux. The three became a family, and Victoria's little girl Katie is like a granddaughter to Raymond and Harold. And while they are proud and supportive of Victoria going away to college in Fort Collins, they desperately miss her.

• The Wallace family: Married couple Luther and Betty and their children Joy Rae, 11, and Richie, 6, are poor. Very, very poor. The parents are disabled and don't work so they live on welfare and food stamps. Rose Tyler, a devoted social worker, follows them closely, monitoring much in their lives. But Betty's Uncle Hoyt, a violent deadbeat, comes to live with them in their small, dilapidated, and (very) messy trailer, and nothing good comes of this.

• Mary Wells has two little girls, Dena and Emma. Mary's husband took off for Alaska, and as she gives up hope of ever seeing him again, she slides into a deep depression. Meanwhile, an 11-year-old boy down the street named DJ Kephart, who lives with and takes care of his grumpy, old grandfather, develops a deep friendship with Dena that may be the only thing that gives either of them a measure of happiness.

The writing, which is spare and sparse, reflects the equally spare and sparse landscape of Holt. But there is magic here. This spare and sparse writing seemingly transports the reader vicariously to become part of the spare and sparse setting. The plot is minimal. This is a character study about the deep truths of being human—the joys, the sorrows, the everydayness—but at some point just when you think nothing has happened, you will realize all that has happened.

I think this is a literary masterpiece.

This brilliantly written book by John Boyne is layered with tragic secrets that are slowly revealed. It's a palimpsest in novel form—that is, a manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. As the novel progresses, the past secrets are peeled away, but traces of them always remain, scarring and tainting the future.

The story begins in September 1919 in Norwich, England. On his 21st birthday, Tristan Sadler travels from London to Norwich to meet Marian, the sister of his deceased wartime buddy Will Bancroft. His stated mission is to deliver to Marian the letters that she wrote to Will during the Great War, but in reality he has come to unburden himself of a shameful, horrific secret about Will's death. After months of fighting, Will became "an absolutist," meaning he refused to fight or even assist in noncombat roles.

The novel bounces back in forth in time from Tristan and Marian's meeting in 1919 to the French wartime battlefields and the treacherous, grisly foxholes in 1916. This back-and-forth in time adds to the tension that slowly builds as we learn what really happened to Will and Tristan's role in it.

Tristan is guarding two secrets, both of which would devastate Will's family: One of them is not a spoiler…Tristan and Will were lovers. The other secret that is revealed near the conclusion of the novel is haunting and horrific, making the ending a real gut-punch for the reader.

This is a haunting and gripping saga that magnificently captures the conflicted feelings of wartime, social class, patriotism, and revenge. At times viscerally brutal and at times fiercely redemptive, this is a story of what it means to be a hero—and a traitor.

John Boyne is one of the most gift novelists writing today.

Oh, this book! It is an ingenious, riveting, and truly profound novel that is a brilliant statement on the interconnectedness of human beings even generations apart. We are not separate. We only have an illusion of separateness.

Do note: This is a short novel at 225 pages or so, but carve out your reading time carefully. Once you start it, you won't be able to stop. It's THAT good.

This novel is a series of stories that take place from 1939 to 2010, bouncing back and forth in time and between characters—from the battlefields of France to Manchester, England in the 1980s to the Hamptons in 2005 and Hollywood in 2010. It may seem like literary whiplash, but it's literary brilliance. Author Simon Van Booy is always in tight control of the story, which I quickly realized could only be told this way.

The genius of the novel is that the characters are interconnected to one or more other characters, often without realizing it until the end when Van Booy pulls off the seemingly impossible by ending a novel in 1944 that began in 2010. (Yes, you read that right.)

We meet:
• John, an American World War II pilot of a B-24 bomber who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France and had to try to escape with a broken foot if he had any chance of survival.

• Amelia, John's 26-year-old granddaughter, who is blind and bravely trying to create a full life for herself, including finding romantic love.

• Mr. Hugo, a World War II soldier who was horribly maimed when half his face was shot off by a Nazi in Paris and along with it his memory. His only possession is a novel by Victor Hugo, so the medical staff name him Victor Hugo.

• Danny, a scared little boy from Nigeria who lived next door to Mr. Hugo in Manchester, England in the 1980s and grows up to become a successful film director.

• Sébastien, a dreamy child in Saint-Pierre, France in 1968, who finds the wreckage of a World War II jet on his family's farm, including photos the pilot stashed under the seat.

• Martin, a devoted orderly at the Starlight Retirement Home in Los Angeles, who has a startling secret in his past that his parents kept from him for years.

This multilayered story about war, love, resilience, imagination, and service is narratively compelling with bold and vibrant characters, but the secret sauce is the writing. It is lyrical. Tender. Magical. Magnificent. Read it.

Just a thought: This is an ideal book for someone who only reads occasionally. It's short, unputdownable, and suitable for men and women.

This is a richly imagined novel that transports readers to a utopian commune in New York State in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s…until eventually, it becomes a disintegrating, dying, and problem-filled commune. What makes this so special is that the story is told through the perspective of a small child—basically from his birth until far into his adulthood long after he joined "the Outside" world.

Masterfully written by Lauren Groff, this is a vibrant and captivating story of life in Arcadia, a 600-acre forested plot of land on which sits a (literal) mansion. When the scraggly group of several dozen acquired the property for $1, they were astounded that the house existed. That said, the house was broken—rodent-infested, rotted wood, shattered windows, collapsed roof. But with years of work and a lot of scavenging for pieces and parts, the group managed to build it back up. Living in Aradia was never easy. The residents worked long hours to survive and basically lived in poverty.

The story centers on a little boy named Ridley Sorrel Stone, who weighed only three pounds at birth and quickly acquired the nickname Bit—as in the Littlest Bit of a Hippie. Bit, who is always small for his age, is brilliant, teaching himself how to read and write. He is extremely attached to his parents, Abe and Hannah, who adore him. Hannah suffers from clinical depression, especially in the dark winter months.

Arcadia grows and within 10 to 15 years, the population explodes to more than 1,000 and now includes the "Trippies" (drug-addicts), the Runaways, and the Hen House (pregnant women) who gravitate to the commune. The Newbies are not turned away as long as they adhere to the rules. But eventually this experimental society falls apart with infighting and theft, desertion and poverty.

And this is where Bit's story becomes even more riveting when at age 14 he is thrust into "the Outside" and must make a life in a world he has never known. It is as an adult that he suffers his greatest heartbreaks and greatest joys.

This is not just another failed commune, a failed experiment in living. It is the only life Bit has ever known, and we readers are plunged into his despair, his anger, his longing, his insecurity in a way that would not have happened had the novel not been told from his childlike point of view.

What makes this novel a five-star book is not the vibrant characterization or compelling plot. It's the writing. Lauren Groff has the gift. Some sentences are so lyrical, so extraordinary that I just had to stop, take a breath, and reread them.

Lauren Groff is and will always be one of my favorite writers.

Genius. Pure genius.

Written by Louis Bayard, this is a novel about one extraordinarily scandalous event in the life of renowned playwright Oscar Wilde and the effect the intense public notoriety and scorn had on his wife and two sons. Not only is the story riveting, but the style is so creative in that it is written—exactly as you would expect a novel to be—but within the shadow of a stage play.

Each of the novel's five "acts" is set (basically) in one place, making it easy to imagine it taking place on a stage. I could even see stage directions carefully disguised in the prose.

It is August 1892, and the Wilde family—Oscar, Constance, and 7-year-old Cyril—are vacationing in a rented house at Grove Farm in Norfolk, England. Their younger son, Vyvyan, is staying with friends in London as he recovers from whopping cough. Accompanying the family are their close friends Arthur and Florence Clifton, newlyweds who are on their honeymoon. One day, Oscar tells Constance that a new friend named Lord Alfred Douglas will be joining them. The aristocratic and flamboyant Lord Alfred, nicknamed Bosie, is years younger than Oscar, but the two seem incredibly close. Very, very close. For quite some time, Constance has wondered if Oscar truly loves her, and while it takes a while for her to figure it out, she finally does: Oscar is having a sexual relationship with Bosie. Her husband is gay! Constance angrily leaves Oscar, taking the boys with her. At this point, Oscar Wilde exits stage right and doesn't appear in the novel again—until the fantastical last chapter.

A pause for a bit of history: Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, highly disapproved of the relationship between his son and Wilde. He publicly confronted Wilde. That led Wilde to sue Queensberry for libel, but his plan backfired—big time. Because homosexual sex was illegal in those days, Wilde was arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for two years. His career was destroyed, and he died in 1900, two years after Constance died in 1898.

The book focuses first on Constance and her shocked and deeply hurtful reaction to the scandal and then later to their tormented grown sons, who continued to live in their father's shameful shadow.

And then, somehow, it gets even better in Act 5 when Bayard creates an alternative account of their lives that is wonderfully creative and possibly believable—if only Constance could have done in real life what she did in this final section of the book.

Ingeniously plotted with an exceptional eye for detail, this is a harrowing story and emotionally devastating tale that is brilliantly written.

Reading this book is a lot like ending up on stage in an Oscar Wilde play!

What started out as an eye-rolling story about privileged, wealthy, entitled Harvard alumni going to their 20th reunion in 2009 morphed into a thoughtful, introspective, and smart novel about the ravages of time—of where we hoped to be in life by middle age versus where life's blows landed and what those blows did to us.

Four Harvard college roommates—Addison, Mia, Clover, and Jane—reunite in Cambridge for a weekend in June, along with their spouses, significant others, and children. They have kept in touch with each other and their classmates from the class of 1989 via "the red book," a publication that lists all the graduates and their accomplishments.

• Addison, who is a lesbian but couldn't imagine living life like that, is married to her prep school boyfriend, Gunner. She is an artist. He is a novelist, but he has only written one book that was published 10 years ago. They have three spoiled, bratty children. They live the high life all on his family's fortune. And guess what? His parents just invested all their money with Bernie Madoff. Poof! It's all gone. As if that's not enough to cause angst and stress, Addison's reunion weekend starts off horribly when she lands in jail for $100,000 in unpaid parking tickets she accumulated as a college student in Cambridge.

• Mia, a promising actress in her undergraduate days, is very happily married to Jonathan, a film director of romantic comedies. He is 18 years her senior, and they have four children, three boys and a newborn daughter named Zoe. Their children are polite, smart, kind, and compassionate. While Mia ponders all she personally and professionally gave up to be a stay-at-home mom, Jonathan is quietly worrying about their failing financial situation, reluctant to confide this to Mia.

• Clover, the mixed-race daughter of hippies who grew up on a remote commune, was laid off seven months ago from her high-paying job at Lehman Brothers when the 2008 housing industry crisis and recession hit full force. She is married to a man she loves, but he is incredibly self-centered. She desperately wants a baby—so much so that she'll do anything to get pregnant.

• Jane is a Vietnamese orphan, rescued as a child by an American physician and his wife. She has suffered so much loss in her life—first her entire family in Vietnam, then her adopted father, her husband, and her adopted mother. Jane is the mother of six-year-old Sophie, which is about the only thing holding her together. Jane makes some shocking discoveries during the reunion weekend—discoveries that rock her world and leave her staggering emotionally.

This is a time when long-held secrets come into the open, scores are settled, and relationships are forever changed. But it is also a time when all four roommates discover their authentic selves, and that is life-changing. The compelling plot points, the snappy dialogue, and the characters' wise and witty introspection make this a charming and insightful novel to read.

Bonus: Author Deborah Copaken Kogan, herself a Harvard graduate, has created her own version of Harvard's "red book" interspersed in the novel. Of course, the entries—each graduate writes a short essay—highlight all the alumni have accomplished, but what is missing from each entry is sometimes more telling. This may be the most entertaining and enlightening part of the book!

Granted, this is ChickLit and not award-winning literature, but it is a good read.

It takes a bit of literary courage to read this 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel by Bernardine Evaristo because there are no capital letters to signal the start of a new sentence and no punctuation save a very rare period, question mark, or semicolon. But strategically-placed line breaks and the human brain's amazing ability to adjust make it a lot easier to read than I imagined before I started it.

But most important: This is an incredible book. It is intelligent and literary, but also captivating and filled with a big heart. It's everything a novel should be. I would give it 10 stars if I could!

While it most definitely is a novel, it's also a hybrid, doubling as a collection of interrelated short stories. There are 12 characters. They are all women. They are all Black. They all live in London. Some are lesbians, some are straight, some are young, some are old. They all have a fascinating story that ranges from the joyful to the tragic. This is human life on full display. And once I got going and got into its unusual rhythm, which is almost poetic, I couldn't put it down.

The 12 characters are divided into related groups of three with the stories told in four chapters. The fifth chapter brings everything together.

• Chapter One: Amma, Yazz, and Dominque
Amma is a 50-something lesbian who successfully manages an experimental theatre group. Yazz, Amma's daughter, is a university student who is really good at exploiting her gay father and multiple godparents. Dominque is Amma's friend and is smitten with a statuesque stranger named Nzinga she meets in a train station; the two become a couple and Dominque suffers greatly in this psychologically and physically abusive relationship.

• Chapter Two: Carole, Bummi, and LaTisha
Carole's story begins when she is gang-raped at age 13. After a year of hiding in her room, she emerges as the most brilliant student in her class. Her trajectory is nothing short of stellar. Bummi is Carole's mother. After her husband's untimely death from a heart attack, Bummi has raised Carole by herself, far from her homeland of Nigeria. LaTisha is Carole's best friend from childhood, but the two couldn't be more different. LaTisha's story is so familiar: by the time she is 21, she has three children by three baby daddies and no husband.

• Chapter Three: Shirley, Winsome, and Penelope
Shirley is a teacher at the troubled Peckham School for Boys and Girls where she endures taunting from the students and derision from her colleagues, but her heart is in educating kids. Winsome, Shirley's mother, is now retired with her husband, Clovis, and they are living in Barbados. Their children, the spouses, and grandchildren all visit for two weeks one summer, causing old memories to surface. Penelope is also a teacher at Shirley's school, and the two have a long love/hate friendship.

• Chapter Four: Megan/Morgan, Hattie, and Grace
Megan/Morgan, Hattie, and Grace are daughter, mother, and grandmother. Theirs is a complicated and horrifying story, but one filled with love for each other.

• Chapter Five: The After-party
During the after-party for Amma's new hit play about lesbian warriors, the disparate characters come together in one room, creating lots of sparks.

This imaginative and ingeniously plotted novel is truly extraordinary. The big and bold characters feel so real. Their profound and moving stories went straight to my heart. Taken as a whole, the book is provocative and haunting, as well as tender and wise. Above all, it is daring.

Do you dare read it? Oh, please do!

Secrets…oh, so many secrets! And when those secrets are revealed in a most horrifying way, life as they know it implodes.

Written by Paul Murray, this award-winning literary novel is the story of a smart but unhappy man named Dickie Barnes. Dickie is the elder of two sons, but he has always lived under the big shadow cast by his larger-than-life father, Maurice, and athletic, handsome, and popular younger brother, Frank. Cerebral Dickie is a bit of a misfit in his small and insulated Irish town where Maurice owns a successful car dealership and garage and Frank plays football for The Gaelic Athletic Association. It's always been known that Dickie will succeed Maurice in the business, whether he likes it or not.

Dickie is the first in the family to go to college, and while he is just as unpopular at Trinity College in Dublin as he was at home, he does well in school, until something horrific happens and sends him fleeing for home in sheer terror. Meanwhile, Frank is falling in love with Imelda, a gorgeous woman, albeit one with no education from a poverty-stricken, disreputable, and dangerous family. In addition, Frank has his own problems as he succumbs to drink and drugs and gets kicked off the team.

When Frank is killed in a horrific car crash, everything changes for the surviving members of the Barnes family and Imelda. It's not a spoiler to reveal that Dickie and Imelda get married and have two children, Cass and P.J. What happens 20 years in the future is when all Dickie's secrets from Trinity College and beyond, all Imelda's disillusionments, all Cass's worries for her future and bad-girl ways, and P.J.'s terror from two men who are trying to harm him come crashing down on the family, just as the Irish economy is collapsing in 2008.

The novel is written in five sections, four of which are told from the point of view of each of the four members of Dickie and Imelda's family, beginning with Cass. The fifth section is a mixture of all four telling their troubling stories as the novel climaxes with each character swirling into their individual tornadoes of big feelings and angst…until the ending, which is bone-chilling.

This is a novel of desperate secrets, disconnected loved ones who don't communicate, the brutality of inner demons, and shallow lives lived without true fulfillment. It is about love and distrust. It is about good and evil. Most of all, it is deeply tragic tale of dysfunctional family drama. But it is also a study in human nature: One person's reality can be wildly different from another one—even married couples and parents and children who all live together—when they erect walls of denial and secrecy between them.

The writing is remarkable. Most of the book is written as readers would expect, but not all of it. Imelda's tale is a told in a stream-of-consciousness with very little punctuation or capitalization, so it takes a bit of work to read, while the final section is mostly told in the second person, which is an especially tricky point of view for author and reader.

Checking in at about 650 pages, this novel is a commitment. And while it truly is high-brow literary fiction, it is also a compelling and riveting story about the power of secrets to destroy us.

This is an eye-opening book about the real world, but it's a world many of us have never inhabited. It's a scary world. It's almost an underworld. This is the world of an abortion clinic told from several points of view, but primarily from that of a dedicated clinic employee and two protestors, one of whom is on the premises and one of whom hatches online his peculiar form of terrorism against women.

The novel, which was published in February 2022 prior to the June 2022 demise of Rowe v. Wade, is set in snowy Boston, Massachusetts as the city is slammed with five nor'easters in five weeks. It opens on Ash Wednesday. Lent is the favored time for protesting in front of abortion clinics.

Written by Jennifer Haigh, this is the story of Claudia Birch Landau, a divorced 43-year-old who works as a counselor at a Boston clinic officially known as Women's Options but colloquially known by its address of Mercy Street. Claudia helps women, many of whom are teenagers or abused or poor or terrified (or all of the above), with their unplanned pregnancies. She views it as so much more than a job or even a career; it is her mission, her life's work. Claudia's mother, Deb, was 17 when she had her in 1971 and was shunned by her horrified parents. Deb and Claudia lived in an isolated town in Maine in a single-wide trailer, accompanied by Deb's assorted boyfriends and assorted foster children whom Deb took on for the extra money. It was Claudia's job—even as a little girl—to care for these fosters.

Claudia smokes marijuana to numb the anguish and fear caused by her job, making regular visits to her friendly dealer, Timmy, who is about her age. Timmy lives in squalor and smokes all day. He is always high and always on alert for getting caught. He dreads the day weed is made legal in Massachusetts, as he has no idea how he will earn a living. With an ex-wife and son living in Florida and no steady (legal) job, Timmy has a full-blown midlife crisis.

Anthony, whom Timmy calls Winky because of a facial tic, is 39 and lives with his mother. He was injured in an accident in the Big Dig and lives on his disability check. He spends his time going to early morning Mass at the local Roman Catholic Church, followed by coffee and doughnuts in the fellowship hall with elderly ladies, and then protesting outside the Mercy Street clinic. One day he shoots a video of Claudia who goes ballistic when she sees a sign that says: "Abortions Cause Breast Cancer." And then the 68-second video is posted online.

The video is posted by Victor Prine, a 65-year-old man living in "Nowhere" Pennsylvania, who is lonely, angry, and beaten down by life. While he desperately wishes he could have married and had children, he is a fierce, unapologetic misogynist. Using the screenname Excelsior11, he is determined that the white race populate itself and does all he can to fight abortions of white babies. He is filled with hate, angst, and anger against women. Now he is ready to risk everything for his beliefs.

This is a timely and perceptive novel about one of the country's most polarizing and divisive political issues, and it succeeds for two reasons: excellent storytelling and vivid and bold characters. The topic is harrowing and unsettling, but the story is unflinching, sharp, and triumphant.

An unhoused young teenager seeks refuge in a church one dark night and falls asleep in a pew. The child of indeterminate background, age, gender, and race is awakened when a family of five sits in the pew on a Sunday morning awaiting the start of worship services.

And so it begins. This chilling, haunting novel by Catherine Lacey is a cross between Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" and the movie "Pleasantville," starring Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. On one level it is emotionally complex and introspective, but on another level it is dark and unsettling. It is a profound fable about the meaning and necessity of identity in human interaction.

It is the Bonner family—Steven and Hilda and their three sons—who find the child in the pew. Since the child won't speak and tell their name, the preacher names them "Pew." The novel takes place over one week—from Sunday to Saturday—in an unnamed Southern town. The residents think it is idyllic.

Pew is found on Sunday, but the whole town is abuzz about the annual Forgiveness Festival that will take place on Saturday, a ritualized event first organized years ago by the small town's churches. The week before this mysterious festival can be dangerous—and this is the week Pew has arrived—because some people think they can do whatever they want and then be forgiven for it a few days later. In addition, there is an unsettling rumor about the festival, one that is intensified by the presence of many police officers lining the streets on Saturday.

Pew's backstory is murky at best, since they can't remember anything about their prior life or parents—just fleeting glimpses and snapshots that don't lead to any kind of revelation. So even if Pew were willing to talk, there isn't much to share.

While some think Pew is an angel sent to them by God and one woman believes Pew is Jesus, the inability to identify Pew in the ways we humans think of as required causes misunderstandings and anger for some people. Almost everyone who encounters Pew one-on-one—from small children to the elderly—confesses their deepest secrets and thoughts. Pew takes it all in. Pew is able to see things in people that pierce through the protective masks we all wear; it's almost as if Pew can see into others' souls.

I'm not sure I understood the ending; it was as indeterminate as Pew's identity—confusing and ambiguous, which is a bit poetic since it aligns with everything about Pew.

This genre-defying novel by Olga Tokarczuk is a literary murder mystery and a fable and a philosophical discourse on life and death that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It is strange. Very strange. But it was also strangely good once I got into its rhythm.

The novel is charmingly told in the first person by the eccentric Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman living alone in the wilderness in a remote Polish hamlet near the Czech border. The story, which begins in winter and ends the following November, focuses on a series of unexplained deaths that look like accidents. Janina spends her days in these harsh winter months calculating horoscopes, reading and translating the poetry of William Blake, and caretaking the nearby homes that are only used in the summer months. She has a propensity of giving bizarre nicknames to those closest to her. Her only two neighbors she calls Oddball and Big Foot, while the manager of a resale store she calls Good News and a former student who regularly visits is nicknamed Dizzy.

Janina is devoted to her astrology and is convinced that she can determine an individual's date of death based on his or her horoscope. She is also devoted to animals, angrily screaming at hunters in the nearby fields and forests. In fact, Janina firmly believes that it is the animals who are murdering these men who turn up dead, taking revenge for their frequent abuse. She shares this quirky theory with others, including the police, a conversation that inevitably results in funny, furtive looks of ridicule. Janina truly thinks there is a special, almost sacred, relationship between animals and humans and that the animals understand us. Virtually no one takes her seriously. She knows that others think she is "just an old woman, gone off her rocker…useless and unimportant."

Most readers will figure out about halfway through the book not only that the deaths were not accidental and were, in fact, murders, but also the identity of the murderer. And the revelation of the murderer makes the story all that more creepy and sinister.

The style of writing was a bit off-putting to me at first, until I figured out that it is prose written in the poetic style of William Blake. That is, random words are capitalized in sentences, just as Blake did in his poetry. Each chapter begins with a few lines of Blake's poetry, making this book a love letter to the 18th century British poet and visionary. Even the title of the book is from Blake's poem "Proverbs of Hell."

This literary novel is indeed unconventional, as well as highly creative and imaginative. If you're looking for something a little different, do read it.

This book made me laugh. And cry…and then laugh again (a lot). Oh, and best of all, it made me think (a lot).

Written by Anne Lamott, this book of essays on living and dying, love and loss, mothering and being mothered, and, most of all, faith, is a compendium of thoughts that will speak to everyone no matter your religious affiliation or lack thereof.

Lamott is an unlikely spiritual guru. She grew up in a dysfunctional home in 1960s California, but as a child she was cared for over and over again by good friends and their mothers. She catapulted into life wanting to be a writer, but before she could get a toehold in that precarious profession, she became an alcoholic and drug addict. She wanted to fall in love and get married, but before that happened at the unlikely age of 65, she had a series of love affairs—some with strange (and scary) married men. But in 1986, she sobered up, and her life changed. She got pregnant in 1989 by a man who didn't want to be a father, so by herself Anne had that baby, whom she named Sam. He became not only the love of her life, but also gave her a new purpose.

So this book, reflecting this rough and tumble life, is not your typical spiritual guide. And that makes it better. It's real. It's tough. It's often irreverent. It's insightful. And it's hilarious—well, when it's not tragic and sad.

Lamott is brutally honest about so much, be it the state of her soul or the state of her hair. She divulges in excruciating personal detail her struggles with bulimia, drug abuse, alcoholism, her messy conversion to Christianity, wearing a swimsuit in middle-age, the intense grief she suffered when her father and best childhood friend died, the difficulties and joy of being a single mom, and so much more.

And while there is much sorrow and suffering, there is also healing and hope. Lamott demonstrates how to pray, and like her book "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers," her methods are unusual but quite effective. It just might be worth trying!

And the title? It comes from a prayer that is said in Anne's church when someone is traveling: "Traveling mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound." I love that!

This is a fabulous soap opera of a book starring gods, goddesses, and a few hapless mortals thrown in the mix. There is love, sex, violence, intrigue, gossip (oh, those gods love to gossip!), and petty infighting—and that is just in the first few chapters.

Written by Natalie Haynes, this is a highly imaginative retelling of several Greek myths told from a decidedly feminist point of view that turns the classic stories upside down, making the women the heroes and the men the villainous monsters.

There are three main stories that eventually intersect with several minor ones just for our entertainment:

Story No. 1: Medusa, a mortal Gorgon (yeah, it's complicated), is raped by the sea god Poseidon in Athene's temple. Athene is furious—at Medusa and seeks to severely punish the girl/Gorgon. Athene turns Medusa's hair into snakes and transforms her eyes so that when Medusa looks at any living creature, it turns to stone. Medusa lives in a cave along a cove by the sea with her two immortal sister Gorgons, Euryale and Sthenno, who love her and care for her and are appalled by what has happened. And then it gets worse. Much, much worse.

Story No. 2: Perseus is a 16-year-old boy whose mother, Danaë, is a mortal and whose father is Zeus. (Another rape.) Danaë's father, Acrisius of Argos, was told long ago that his daughter would have a child who would grow up to kill him, so he sequestered his daughter in a homemade prison to prevent her from ever getting pregnant. Zeus, as a god, was not stopped by a homemade prison. Danaë escapes the wrath of her father by seeking shelter on the isolated island of Seriphos, living with a kind fisherman named Dictys. One day, the king of Seriphos, who is the fisherman's brother, comes to Dictys's home and announces that Danaë must marry the king against her wishes. The king agrees to let Danaë go free if Perseus brings him the head of a Gorgon. So sweet, sheltered Perseus sets off on this nearly impossible quest with Medusa in his sights. Problem No. 1: Perseus has no idea what Gorgon looks like. Problem No. 2: He has no idea where the Gorgons live.

Story No. 3: Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiope, the king and queen of Ethiopia. All are mortals. Cassiope is stunningly beautiful, and in the early days of their marriage Cepheus would spend hours just staring at her. Andromeda is just as beautiful as her mother. Her parents arrange for her to be married to her old uncle, Cepheus's brother, which fills her with anguish and disgust. Meanwhile, Cassiope brags that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, 50 sea nymphs of changeable temper. This enrages them, and they convince Poseidon to punish the royal family, but it is Andromeda who ends up potentially paying with her life. Then—just in time—Perseus stumbles onto the coast of Ethiopia as he is returning home with the head of Medusa.

Humorous in parts, appalling in others, this is a refreshing, albeit somewhat quirky, feminist take on a classical story, told with empathy and understanding for the female characters—perhaps a first in mythology. The women are the ones who are strong, smart, and cunning. The result is that we readers have to rethink who is the hero and who is the monster…and the answer isn't that obvious.

Oh, how clever and creative! Written by Susan Vreeland, this is the story of a painting—ostensibly by the renowned Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer—and all the people who have owned it over the decades since it was painted sometime in the 1600s. Even though this is a novel, each chapter is more like a short story as we share in the tale of the painting's owners from the present day and extending back to the time when Vermeer painted his lovely daughter Magdalena, including why he chose this scene and what she was thinking about while her father painted.

The opening chapter is startling and disturbing. The owner of the painting, Corneilius Engelbrecht, is a high school math teacher, who has closed himself off to the rest of the world, all because of the painting. He knows it has come to him under the most horrifying of circumstances, and he lives in fear he will be found out and the beautiful painting snatched away. Each subsequent story reaches further back in time about the various owners, some of whom are desperately poor and others of whom are wealthy and deceitful. But they all have one thing in common: The painting has in some way affected or even transformed their lives.

This imaginative and impressive book is as much a story about humanity as it is about the provenance of a painting, albeit a fictional one, and the impact art has on our souls.

Bonus: The painting is just a figment of Susan Vreeland's imagination, but when Hallmark made a film of the novel, it commissioned artist Jonathan Janson to paint it as Vreeland describes it in great detail in the book. Google "Girl in Hyacinth Blue Jonathan Janson" to see the extraordinary result. The Kindle cover is a smaller, cropped version of Janson's painting, but it appears (at least on Amazon) that the hardcover and paperback versions do not have the painting on the cover.

This beautifully written book of just five short love stories captured my heart. Each is very different from the others, as each one focuses on a different kind of love in poignant, almost visceral ways. But they have one thing in common: They are all about the pain of loneliness and the salvation of love.

• "Love Begins in Winter" tells the story of a famous and accomplished cellist, who still mourns the loss of his childhood friend, Anna, when she was 12 years old. This achingly lonely man senses her presence with him on stage until one day in the oddest of ways he meets Hannah, a woman who is mourning her own childhood loss. These two people find each other and in the process find themselves.

• "Tiger Tiger" is the story of a woman in a committed relationship—with no intention of marriage—and how they navigate her partner's parents' rocky marriage and divorce. Let's just put it this way: The woman has a bizarre way of showing her affection.

• "The Missing Statues" tells the tale of a single mother and her four-year-old son, who are waiting outside a Las Vegas casino for her latest boyfriend, who has taken all her money for gambling. They wait all night. And then near dawn a gondolier from the Venetian Hotel and Casino approaches them and something magical happens in the love and care he shows them.

• "The Coming and Going of Strangers" is the story of young Walter, who takes one look at a young orphan girl from Canada who has moved with her younger sister to Walter's hometown of Wicklow on the east coast of Ireland and falls hopelessly in love. The ending is both predictable and surprising. And the backstory of Walter's family is a study in the love of community when prejudice should have gotten in the way.

• "The City of Windy Trees" tells about the life of sad, lonely, and isolated George Frack of New York City who receives the most unexpected news in a letter from Stockholm: He is the father of a five-year-old girl, the result of a one-night stand six years ago at a truck stop in upstate New York. What he does next is life-changing for him, the girl, and the girl's mother.

As different as these stories are from one another, the shared thread is the tendency of each of the main characters to give up, to live their life in isolation. Instead, when strangers come into their lonely world, they are able to find their dreams. Author Simon Van Booy writes with keen insight into the human heart…witty, wise, and tender.

This profound book of historical fiction by Alice Hoffman has it all: In addition to fascinating characters, lush descriptions, and meaningful dialogue, this is an intriguing story of forbidden, scandalous love on a tropical island.

Taking place in the 1800s on verdant St. Thomas, this is the story of Rachel Pomié Petit Pizzarro, the only daughter of a doting Jewish father and a disdainful, strident mother. It's a time when girls and women had no rights and a future that consisted only of marriage, a tough path for a sassy and bossy little girl who wants so much more. In order to save his failing business and shop, Rachel's father forces her into a marriage of convenience to a much-older widower with three children. And while Rachel does not love Isaac, she does love his three children very much. After having three children of their own, Isaac dies. A fourth child is born after Isaac's death.

The family business falters and with Isaac's death, it is given over to his distant family in Paris. That family sends one of their own, 22-year-old Frédéric Pizzarro to manage it. It's love at first sight for Rachel and Frédéric, but since she is his aunt by marriage, this passionate union is an incestuous scandal to St. Thomas society and is forbidden under Jewish law. But obstinate and rebellious Rachel will fiercely fight with all she has to get what she wants most in this world even as she and her beloved are shunned from the community. On a very small island, they are outcasts.

This is only a bare description of the compelling plot that also includes the riveting stories about a host of other characters that are shrouded in deeply guarded and shocking family secrets—all of which are entwined with Rachel, Frédéric, and their 11 children, one of whom is the renowned Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, whose artist friends included Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Cézanne. (Google "Camille Pissarro paintings" to view some of his incredible artwork.)

Bonus: The lush descriptions of the flora, fauna, weather, and stars of St. Thomas will have you feeling the heat and wondering if you should enjoy the book with a drink mixed with rum.

This creative and provocative story that is based on historical fact is storytelling at its finest. It is steamy and smart, enchanting and entertaining, impressive and imaginative.

I am in awe.

I am in awe of author Isabel Wilkerson and her masterful ability to write this impressive epic account.
I am in awe of this remarkable book. If all history books were written like this one, everyone would read history—and love it.
I am in awe of all those who made the Great Migration—for their courage, fortitude, and ability to envision an unknown future in a strange land that was not particularly welcoming.

The Great Migration had no leader. It was not organized. It just happened. One by one they walked away from their homes. Wilkerson describes it as a "leaderless revolution." Over six decades from about 1916 to 1970, about six million Blacks living in the South left the only place they had ever known for various northern and western cities. Some had relatives or friends who had made the journey ahead of them so that is why they escaped to Cleveland or New York or Chicago or Los Angeles, as opposed to any other city. And an escape it was. Escape from harsh conditions, both economic and physical. The Jim Crow laws ensured no Black could ever truly prosper or reach his or her full potential. Lynchings were commonplace and used to terrify Blacks and keep them in their place. Even though they were no longer enslaved, many felt they still had to leave in secrecy under the cloak of darkness or they would be stopped—perhaps violently.

When all these Blacks started leaving the South, the South didn't notice at first until seemingly overnight no one was left to pick cotton or tend the fields. Huh? Where did they all go?

The most riveting part of this book is the focus on three people who made the great migration, whom Wilkerson selected from among 1,200 people she interviewed:
• Ida Mae Brandon Gladney (migrated in 1937), a pregnant sharecropper's wife with two young children, who fled Mississippi for Chicago.
• George Swanson Starling (migrated in 1945), a hotheaded man who was seeking his own form of justice and skipped out of Eustis, Florida for Harlem, New York hours before angry white men wanted to hang him.
• Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, M.D. (migrated in 1953), a surgeon who was not allowed by Louisiana law to practice in a hospital and so he drove all alone across the country to California in search of a place where he could be a physician.

These three never knew each other. Their stories are unconnected. But their stories—what life was like for them in the South, why they made the decision to leave, what happened on their treacherous and long journey north or west, and then how they adapted—are fascinating and the stuff of the best novels. Except it's all true.

Bonus: Be sure to read "Notes on Methodology" at the end of the book, which admittedly sounds very academic, but it's fascinating—and even made me cry at the end.

This is a captivating history book—officially, the genre is called narrative nonfiction—that is as riveting and compelling as the best novels. Highly recommended!