This is a profound book, albeit highly disturbing, about the love and conflict, addictions and deceptions that bind together families who are struggling to survive on very little money, very little education, and very few community resources. These are people who are truly on the forgotten fringes of society.

Written by American Book Award winner Ocean Vuong, this is the story of Hai (pronounced "Hi"), a 19-year-old Vietnamese-American living in the dying, post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut. It's September 2009. Hai is lost. He has lost his sense of self and rightness. His short life has been built on lies and drugs. And now he has seemingly come to the end after telling his beloved mother a whopper of a lie that is so big, so glorious that she has found real happiness for the first time in a long time. But what he told her isn't true. So Hai does the only thing he can think to do: Kill himself.

Just as he is about to jump off a railroad bridge into a swirling, powerful river, an 82-year-old woman living in deep poverty and neglect in the shadow of that bridge, screams at him to stop. Miraculously, he hears her and obeys her. And then she takes him in…for good. Her name is Grazina Vitkus, a widow of Lithuanian descent and the mother of two adult children from whom she is quite distant. She is suffering from advanced dementia. Because her house is so dilapidated and in such a run-down and chemically toxic area, no live-in nurse will stay long. Hai takes on that role. But money is scarce, so he gets a job at a fast-food restaurant called HomeMarket, thanks to his autistic cousin Sony who also works there. It is here in a restaurant that serves Thanksgiving dinner foods year round that Hai is fully embraced into a caring community for the first time. It is also here that he finds order, consistency, and discipline for the first time. But the big lie he told his mother and his continued dependence on drugs taints his new life with desperation and despondency as he desperately searches for a second chance.

This is a provocative and haunting work of literary fiction that is not only unsettling, but also emotionally searing. It is a dark and difficult book to read because the characters' lives are so devastating. Even though there is a small sense of redemption and hope, the ending is just as sad and shattering as the rest of the book. Still, it's an important novel with a profound and relevant message.

Anne Tyler is one of my all-time favorite authors. If she writes it, I read it. There is just something magical about every book she has written, and this latest book—No. 25, which is just as special as those that precede it—was published when she was 83 years old. The girl's still got it!

The book opens when the lead character, Gail Baines, a 61-year-old assistant headmistress at a posh private school in Baltimore, is summarily let go instead of being promoted after her boss, the headmistress, decides to retire. This just happens to be the day before Gail's only daughter, Debbie, is getting married. Gail flees the school building in confusion and embarrassment and soon after arriving home, her ex-husband, Max, who is a kind of human hurricane, unexpectedly appears on her doorstep from his home in Delaware. He is asking to spend the wedding weekend in her house, along with an elderly foster cat for which he is caring. And even though he is the father of the bride, he has no suit—only a rumpled sport coat. As they are preparing for the imminent rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, Debbie drops in with shocking news—news that could very well derail the wedding the next day.

The novel is told in three parts—the day before the wedding, the day of the wedding, and the day after the wedding. But this is so much more than a wedding story. We find out Gail's complicated backstory and secrets of her past that she has confided to no one, including the real cause of her divorce from Max.

This is a story about love, especially married love, and all that makes it work—or not. Like all Anne Tyler novels, it is brilliantly told through the lives of the quirky, colorful characters. The plot is minimal—just enough to nudge it along bit by bit with a delightfully happy ending. Do pay attention to the mentions of wristwatches and the marvelous symbolism of time—past, present, and future.

This is a charming summer read filled with solid life advice and remarkable insight into the our human foibles and fears, while parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. It is witty, wise, and wonderful.

This book, just like the two in the Century Trilogy series that precede it, is a solid history lesson complete with well-known and obscure factual details embedded in a delicious soap-opera story of love and sex, revenge and intrigue, regret and hope. Even at more than 1,100 pages, it's an all-consuming read!

The third in author Ken Follett's massive, epic history of the 20th century, this volume covers 1961 to 1989 with an epilogue dated November 4, 2008, the date of Barack Obama's election as president. I thought this book was the best of the three, but that might be because I lived through this time period and remember almost all the events.

The reason this series works so well and is so compellingly readable is that the history is told from the perspective of key characters who are loosely connected to one another. And these characters are placed all over the world—from the United States to Great Britain to Germany (East and West) to the Soviet Union to Cuba. They are rock 'n roll stars, CIA agents, close aides to the top Soviet officials, leading U.S. government employees, Stasi secret police, TV and newspaper journalists, and more, which makes their perspective seem like an insider point of view.

The book opens on a rainy Monday in 1961 when Rebecca Hoffman, a teacher who is married and lives in East Berlin, receives a terrifying order to report to the Stasi, the East German secret police. After she learns that the Stasi has intimately spied on her and her extended family for years, Rebecca makes an impassioned decision to escape over the Berlin Wall. And from there the story catapults into a fast-moving chronicle of life around the world at a volatile time when everything seemed to change—and quickly. From John F. Kennedy's presidency and womanizing to Martin Luther King's quest for civil rights to Robert Kennedy's tragic run for the presidency to the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Strap on your reading chair's seatbelt and get ready for a wild and fascinating literary ride.

This is a compelling, can't-turn-the-pages-fast-enough novel, but it's definitely pop fiction—not literary fiction. It's a perfect vacation read when you want a long book to last the duration of the trip.

And the ending? Let's just say there were tears…quite a few. It's wonderful.

Advice No. 1: Follett helpfully provides a cast of characters arranged by country and then family. Bookmark it. Even with the Kindle X-ray feature, I referred to this list frequently in the early chapters of the book. There are so many characters, and the scenes shift quickly so this list is indispensable.

Advice No. 2: While the books in the Century Trilogy can be read independently, it's probably best to read them in order, beginning with "Fall of Giants" and followed by "Winter of the World" and then "Edge of Eternity." Why? There is continuity in the stories of the characters and their descendants so it's best to read from the beginning to avoid inadvertent spoilers.

Imaginatively written by Alice Hoffman, this is the multilayered story of a house and the surrounding farmland located on the outer reaches of Cape Cod and its many occupants over the years. The house was first constructed in the 1700s when Massachusetts was occupied by the British, and each chapter moves ahead in time to the next family, all of whom live in what becomes known as Blackbird House.

Although this is a novel, it reads like a collection of closely interwoven short stories with each one of the 12 chapters building toward the next to catapult the novel forward in both time and plot.

Some of the characters we meet include:
• The Hadley Family opens the novel when John builds the house for his beloved wife Coral and their two sons, Vincent and Isaac. John is a fisherman, but the British occupation forbids him from pursuing his trade. If he is captured fishing on the open water of the ocean, he'll be imprisoned in England. But his family needs to eat.

• Ruth Blackbird Hill teeters on the edge of insanity when she loses her home to a ravaging fire, choosing to live without shelter on the beach in all seasons, accompanied only by her cows and her red boots. Kind women in the village intervene, and Ruth's life changes when they bring her to the farm that Lysander purchased from the Hadleys.

• Two sisters, Violet and Huley, live with their widowed father in the house. Huley is beautiful. Violet is disfigured with a large violet-shaped and violet-colored birthmark on her face. One day a professor from Boston comes to the village to investigate a sighting of a sea monster, and the girls' lives change forever.

• It's 1969, and teenage Maya's hippie parents have bought the old house that doesn't even have proper plumbing. In the winter, they have to use the outhouse. In the winter! Her parents live in a bubble by themselves, leaving Maya and her brother almost abandoned. It is only far later in her life that Maya comes to appreciate and better understand the love her parents had for each other.

• The last two chapters feature the same set of characters, set about 25 years apart. Emma is seven years old and has successfully battled leukemia when her parents impulsively buy Blackbird House as a summer escape. What happens that first summer is both joyful and heartbreaking. Fast forward to Emma's 30th birthday when her parents gift her the house. She returns on Midsummer's Night, a time when you become who it is you really are.

At just 250 pages, this is a short, character-driven novel that has a powerful message about love and family and the importance of community. Symbols abound and are woven through every chapter in some form—from water and fire and earth to blackbirds, including a white blackbird in the flock, and the color red.

Told with candor and compassion, this is a fierce but also lyrical and insightful tale.

If you're a James McBride fan, this is a must-read book. If you haven't yet treated yourself to this award-winning author's novels, don't read this memoir of his life and his mother's life quite yet. I've only read two of his novels—"Deacon King Kong" and "The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store"—but it's fascinating to see how the seed of some of his story ideas came from his mother's storied and remarkable past. Read a novel or two or three first and then treat yourself to this masterful memoir.

James McBride is the eighth of 12 children born to a White woman and a Black father. His father, Andrew Dennis McBride, died before James's birth. His mother, Ruth McBride Jordan, remarried several years later to another Black man named Hunter Jordan; the couple had four children, but most importantly, Mr. Jordan treated the McBride kids as his own. Lots of love to go around. McBride loved Hunter Jordan dearly and thought of him as his father.

Ruth was not only a White woman living in a Black world in a time when society mightily disapproved of this, but also she was the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. In addition to regularly sexually abusing her, her father was cruel and vindictive. Ruth ran away from her Suffolk, Virginia home on day after her high school graduation, and when she married a Black man, her family declared her dead to them. They sat shiva for her. She found solace in the Christian church, something that held her up after the tragic loss of her two husbands.

Discerning his mother's life story was a difficult, years-long project for James McBride. Ruth was a very private person and saw no need to dredge up the past. But James was insistent. As he says, "It took many years to find out who she was, partly because I never knew who I was."

This memoir switches chapter-by-chapter between Ruth's life story and James's life story when he grew up poor in Brooklyn and Queens with little money, little food, and sleeping four to a bed. Some of the stories—especially Ruth's—are so astonishing as to feel made-up, but it's all true. James truly did come from two worlds—one White, one Black—and this has greatly informed and influenced his writing. Even though he was brought up a Christian, he says he has a Jewish soul inherited from his mother.

McBride's thoughts and ruminations on race and the struggles he had with his racial identity are candid, but also heartbreaking, and form the backbone of this brilliant memoir. His mother truly was an extraordinary woman, raising 12 children in poverty. She enforced strict rules and focused on their education. It paid off. Two became medical doctors, one a psychologist, one an Ivy League college professor, one a registered nurse and midwife, one a chemistry researcher, one a medical practice office manager, one a computer consultant, and two teachers. And James McBride himself is not only an accomplished musician, but also the 2013 winner of the National Book Award for "The Good Lord Bird."

This is a fascinating, almost mesmerizing book that reads more like a novel than nonfiction. It is filled with sincere, forthright, and brutally honest revelations that truly capture their lives—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It takes a lot of courage to be this truthful.

The meaning of the book's title? When he was little, James asked his mother the color of God's spirit. "Oh boy…God's not black. He's not white. He's a spirit," his mother told him. "What color is God's spirit?" asked James. "It doesn't have a color," she said. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color."

This is one of those delicious mystery/thrillers that is unputdownable while you're reading it (or more likely devouring it), but chances are you won't remember it weeks or months later. It's the equivalent of literary dessert. Oh, so tasty!

Written by Alafair Burke, this is the story of three best friends, the secrets they closely guard and the lies they tell each other and themselves until their lives implode after a murder and they are forced to face the truth—no matter how difficult that truth may be.

It's summer and rich girl Kelsey Ellis invites her besties Lauren Berry and May Hanover to join her for a week in the Hamptons in a home she has rented on the bay. Kelsey works for her very controlling father in the sprawling and highly successful family real estate business in Boston. Lauren is a classical musician and the director of the Houston Symphony. May is a new professor of law at Fordham University, having just left the Manhattan district attorney's office. All three have endured being socially "canceled" after three completely unrelated, embarrassing, and highly public events that diminished their professional and personal lives. Now they are off for a bit of R&R in the tony Hamptons.

The first night together, they go to Sag Harbor for drinks with Lauren driving. She spots a primo parking space and patiently waits while the driver in the huge pickup holding the space takes his sweet time pulling out. Just as he does and before Lauren can scoot into the space, it is taken by another couple. When they get out of their car, they turn to the three women and gloat. Seriously gloat. Well, that's maddening! This becomes the main topic of conversation over drinks, and they decide to write notes to the driver. It's fun. It's harmless. And the notes get stuffed into a purse. The note Kelsey writes says, "He's cheating. He always does." Unbeknownst to Lauren and May, Kelsey goes one step further, tucking the note under the wipers of the car. It's just a harmless prank that is payback for stealing the parking space!

The weekend is fun and relaxing until the driver of that car turns up missing, and Kelsey, Lauren, and May are targeted as suspects by the police. What started as a silly joke quickly spirals out of their control. They spin elaborate lies—so many lies. They guard deeply-held secrets—so many secrets. And the plot twists and turns, keeping the reader guessing until the end.

This is an ideal vacation book—fast and easy to read and totally riveting.

Local Souls
By Allan Gurganus

Imagine a small Southern town where everyone knows each other and on the surface, it's a beatific, innocent place. A visitor might look around this town, named Falls, North Carolina, and see happily married couples, successful children, thriving businesses, and churches of every denomination. Okay, now scratch the surface. What do you see? Everything isn't as perfect as it seems. That is the subject of these three loosely connected novellas by Allan Gurganus.

Each story focuses on characters who have a deep yearning to form a connection with others.

• "Fear Not": When Susan was 14 years old her father accidentally died in a horrific, very public way at the hands of his lifelong best friend, Dennis, who is also Susan's godfather. Dennis, the married father of three, is wracked with guilt—just consumed with it. Susan is grieving. Her mother has checked out mentally having witnessed her husband's death and takes to her bed. Dennis spends a lot of time alone with Susan, and before you know it, he gets Susan pregnant—and she's only 14. What happens to her in the ensuing years is the soul of this heart wrenching story.

• "Saints Have Mothers": Caitlin Mulray is a bit much. She is a high school junior who is perfect. And I mean perfect: Kind to everyone (and she's a teenage girl!), brilliant, musical, talented in every possible way, and gorgeous. She is also compassionate, working tirelessly with and for those who have less. The summer before her senior year, she goes to Africa to teach. While she is there, something horrific happens that sends her mother reeling, as well as her father and stepmother in California, her twin 11-year-old brothers, and basically the entire town of Falls, North Carolina. She is, after all, their golden girl. This melodramatic novella is written in the first person by Caitlin's less-than-perfect mother, Jean, who is having an identity crisis all her own. It's a difficult story to enjoy because Caitlin and Jean are tough characters to like.

• "Decoy": Bill Mabry has a bad heart—so bad that it was diagnosed as a ticking time bomb when he was just a child. But the small town of Falls, North Carolina has one of its own as the favorite physician, and Doc has sworn to care for Bill with great care and keep him alive. Told in the first person from Bill's point of view, this is a love letter to Doc and life in a small town. All is well, almost idyllic, until tragedy strikes Falls when the normally placid river overflows its banks after a hurricane, causing death and destruction.

This is a slow read. Yes, the stories frequently drag, getting bogged down in mindless details. But it's more than that. There is something about the writing that makes it difficult to read at times. Hence, three stars.

Oh, wow! This book gave me goosebumps. Quite simply, it's a masterpiece.

Brilliantly and imaginatively written by Percival Everett, this is the other side of Mark Twain's 1885 novel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." It is a treatise on the inherent evils of slavery, the significance of abiding friendship and romantic love, and the deeply human need to be respected and free. It rightly won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2024 National Book Award.

In Twain's novel, Huck frequently goes off on adventures, leaving Jim alone, mostly to tend the raft and canoe, their mode of transportation as they both escape their former lives as they float down the Mississippi River. What was Jim doing all that time when he was left alone? Everett has reimagined "Huck Finn" to tell Jim's side of the story, and it's a story that is so compelling, so enthralling, so mesmerizing that you likely will stay up long past your bedtime to read just one more chapter.

Mark Twain portrays Jim as a befuddled, ignorant Black man, liberally using a much harsher and derogatory epithet than "Black man." In Percival Everett's book, Jim is an educated, erudite man who can read and write. He expounds complex philosophical ideas. He speaks English properly, as do all the slaves, except in the presence of White people when he speaks in a put-on Southern dialect common to slaves. They call it slave language. But Jim is trapped as a slave, until he escapes Miss Watson. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has been abused by his no-good father one time too many, and he, too, escapes, leaving an ingenious trail so the townspeople will think he was murdered. The two serendipitously find each other on a deserted island in the Mississippi. Everett sticks fairly close—but not entirely—to Twain's story of Huck and Jim's adventures. In this book we see a whole new side of Jim, as he cares for and protects Huck, who is, after all, just a child.

About two-thirds of the way through "James," which is the beginning of Part II, Everett bids farewell to Twain's "Huck Finn" and strikes out on his own in a page-turning story that is riveting and remarkable and filled with surprises—especially one stunner. (No spoilers here!) Everett wisely abandons Twain's version when it got to be silly and farfetched as Huck and Tom Sawyer try to rescue Jim when he was captured as a runaway on the Phelps family's plantation. This second part of "James" is the strongest and most electrifying part of the book.

This is a fast-paced novel that is more plot than philosophy, but taken as a whole it is one of the most powerful and profound novels I have ever read. Most notably, Everett, unlike Twain, treats slavery as the violent, bloody, abusive, and inhumane institution it was.

And the ending? I will only say it was amazing. It's the best ending, albeit unexpected, I could ever have imagined.

"James" is truly an extraordinary novel with sophisticated storytelling that is provocative, haunting, and triumphant. Read it.

Just a thought: Consider reading (or rereading) "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" before reading "James." I did this, and had I not, I wouldn't have appreciated or even understood not only certain plot turns, but also many subtle references. That said, because "James" does veer from Twain's novel, it's not absolutely necessary to read "Huck" first.

Clear the decks! Order takeout for dinner. Turn off your phone. This is a riveting, unputdownable history-mystery by Fiona Davis that had me mesmerized from the first chapter. Yes, it's ChickLit, but it's intelligent ChickLit.

This is the story of two very different women, a priceless ancient Egyptian artifact, and the challenges smart women have endured in a man's world.

• Charlotte Cross is 60 years old and is the associate curator of the celebrated Department of Egyptian Art at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her specialty is Hathorkare, a rare female pharaoh whom most other Egyptologists deem unimportant. It's 1978, and Charlotte has a big secret she has been guarding for decades. In 1936 as an undergraduate college student, she worked on an archaeological dig in Egypt, making an extraordinary discovery—one that may have cursed her for life. Charlotte also fell in love, got pregnant, and then got married (big taboo then) until tragedy struck. What happened on that fateful night has haunted her ever since, but repressing the memories has left her a somewhat broken woman.

• Annie Jenkins, who is 19, has spent her life since her father died when she was five years old caring for her high-strung and unstable mother. Instead of college, she took on small jobs—waitressing and cleaning houses—to pay the bills for them because her mother refuses to work. Quite surprisingly, Annie receives an opportunity to work as the personal assistant to the revered and feared Diana Vreeland, the legendary former fashion editor of Vogue magazine. Now 75, she is chairing the annual Met Gala, which is a week away. Annie is thrilled because the Met is her favorite place to visit, and her favorite display is the fragment of a statue known as the Cerulean Queen in the Egyptian Art collection.

On the night of the Met Gala, everything goes wrong—terribly, terribly wrong, and the ramifications of what happens send Charlotte and Annie to Egypt to solve the mystery and the crime, a place Charlotte has deeply feared since she left in psychological tatters 42 years ago.

Very loosely based on historical fact and prodigiously researched, this richly imagined and captivating book is filled with unlikely twists and turns. With its superb pacing and page-turning suspense, I was spellbound!

This is a good book…a very good book. But…and there is a big "but" here: It took about 70 pages before it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. For many readers, this is way too long and too much effort to grasp that literary foothold. Stick with it! It's worth it.

Written by Essie Chambers, this is the story of Diamond Newberry, an obese Black 16-year-old girl living in abject poverty in the horribly racist fictional town of Swift River, Massachusetts. Her mother is White. Her father is Black. And after her father mysteriously disappears in the summer of 1980—although his shoes, wallet, and house keys are found, his body is not—Diamond is the only Black person in Swift River.

The poor mill town has a reprehensible history. One night in the early 1900s, forever known as "The Leaving," all the Black citizens fled before they could be violently expelled by the Whites, which was the original plan. Because they did so on their own terms—all at one time in one night—the White citizens were enraged. Only one Black person remained, a nurse named Clara. The town doctor desperately needed her as his nurse and housekeeper, but she was only allowed to stay in Swift River if she was off the streets by sundown or risk death. And just like that, Swift River became a "sundown town" like 10,000 others in the United States, mostly in the North and Midwest.

But 1987 marks seven years since Robert Newberry seemingly walked off the face of the Earth, and his wife, Annabelle, is determined to have him legally declared dead so she can collect the life insurance money. One day that summer, Diamond receives a letter from her father's cousin Lena in Woodville, Georgia, who wants to teach the child about her family and ancestors, including their Aunt Clara. The two secretly correspond, and Diamond learns her family's history of prejudice and abandonment, as well as love and caring. Meanwhile, Diamond is plotting her own leaving in a town where she endures overt racism and microaggressions from so many—from her classmates to the cops.

Some of the novel—and this is by far the best, most compelling part—is epistolary, told through letters from Lena and Clara. This is only a minor part of the overall book, but it is so good that I was wishing this was the story that was being told.

This is an intriguing and well-written novel that gets better and better with each page turn, a big improvement from the uneven and sometimes flat early chapters. It's a touching book about beginning again, focusing on the perils and regrets, as well as the expectations and dreams, of leaving and starting over and all that entails.

I laughed. I mean I really, really laughed out loud. Several times. And I cried. Oh, I needed a tissue or two. And not just once. This is just one of those books that hits every emotion.

And I loved it!

Written by Edward Kelsey Moore, this is the story of three longtime friends: Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. They are now in their mid-fifties, but they met in high school in the 1960s and became inseparable. They were dubbed "The Supremes." One of their favorite places to go—then and now—is Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner where lots of folks who live in the quiet little town of Plainview, Indiana also go. Good food, good gossip. But it's more than that. It's community, security, and solace.

And quite often, our three Supremes are the subject of that good gossip at Earl's, like it or not.
• Clarice, who is a superbly talented pianist, is married to Richmond, and Richmond has a very active love life—just not always with his wife. She has just about had it with him and his adulterous shenanigans. People are talking, and she is hurting.

• Barbara Jean, who was born to a single mother who had no idea who her daughter's father was, grew up in poverty but married Lester, a wealthy entrepreneur who loves and adores his beautiful wife. But years ago, their only son, Adam, tragically died when he was eight years old. After Lester dies, too, Barbara Jean suffers both losses terribly, drinking far too much while she pines for a long lost love who has suddenly returned to town.

• Odette is very happily married to James, but she has a few problems of her own. In addition to frequently seeing and talking to the ghost of her dead mother, Odette receives a scary health diagnosis that she tries to keep secret—until she can't.

Each of the three Supremes experiences great joys and great sorrows—just like in real life—and they are there for each other through it all, a testament to a friendship that has endured through the decades.

This is an engaging and captivating novel with colorful characters and often hilarious plot points. It is a little treasure and an absolute delight. Just like the dishes served at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner, this is a literary comfort food for the soul.

Just a note: When I bought this book, I thought it was ChickLit. It's not. Men: If you want to understand women better, read this book.

This is going to sound odd, but I didn't want to like this book. Why? I have only read two other Kristin Hannah books, and both of them played deeply with my emotions in a way I felt wasn't a fair way for an author to treat a reader. And, of course, this one did the same thing. But it is a good book! Very good. So many people—from my best friend to Bill Gates—highly recommended it, which is why I gave in and read it.

This is the fictional story of one young woman who served as an Army nurse from 1967 to 1969 in Vietnam, and her tale—of moving from insecurity and naivety to confidence and heroism—that is meant to be the story for every brave and patriotic woman who served in that conflict and then came home to a nation that was not only ungrateful, but also openly hostile.

Frances Grace McGrath, or as Frankie as she is better known, grew up in a wealthy and privileged home on Coronado Island, California. The beach was her front yard and earliest sandbox. Frankie and her beloved brother, Finley, were inseparable as children. After graduating from the Naval Academy, Finley is sent to Vietnam, earning the respect and admiration of his father. When Frankie is challenged by one of Finley's classmates to go, too, she does. She has just graduated from nursing school and knows there is a desperate need for combat nurses. While her parents are proud of Finley, they are horrified with Frankie. But she goes anyway, joining the Army Nurse Corps.

The novel, which is a rat-a-tat-tat of action and plot twists and turns, is the story of Frankie's experiences in Vietnam, the other nurses and doctors she befriends, her impassioned love affair, and her transformation from the "good girl debutante" to one who is independent, confident, and opinionated. There is tragedy. There are gruesome wounds. There is death. (So much death). Throughout it all, there is the constant, unrelenting brutality and violence of war.

After two tours of duty, Frankie comes home to parents who reject her and a country that betrays her. But just as she relied on her best buddies in Vietnam, Ethel and Barb, so she relies on them when she comes back to the United States, a changed woman with barely controlled rage, irrational mood swings, and inexplicable anger. "She'd gone to war a patriot and come home a pariah. 'How do I get back to who I was?'" And, of course, the answer is, no one who went to Vietnam can ever get back to who she (or he) was.

Bonus: The detailed descriptions of 1960s and 1970s fashion and music add a lot to the ambiance of the story.

And while readers will take an emotional beating reading this book (keep a box of tissues handy), it is a page-turner that is hard to put down. Wrenching as it may be, this provocative and haunting book is a testament to the brave women who put their own lives at risk to help save the men fighting in Vietnam.

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!