This is a book about female empowerment set during a time when women were considered property and had no voice, no say, and most of all no power. Women were nothing. But in the hands of spectacular author Lauren Groff, these women—nuns in the Middle Ages—come alive with a story so strong, so resonant, so forceful, and so feminist in its telling that we readers are transported to inhabit their piece of the world where women are in charge and virtually all men are shunned.

This is the story of Marie de France, a real person who lived in the 12th century, albeit very little is known about her. Groff has filled in Marie's historical bare-bones story with pulsating life. Born as the result of a rape by a nobleman, she moved to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine when she was 14, but was soon sent to a far-flung abbey in England to serve as the prioress (and eventually the abbess) of the convent even though she had no vocation. After Marie recovers from her considerable resentment and anger at being summarily banished from Eleanor's court, she comes into her own, rescuing the dilapidated abbey from a slow demise and its inhabitants from death. Marie has extraordinary organizational and management skills, but what truly sets her apart is her gift for writing poetry and her dramatic and striking visions of the Virgin Mary.

Lauren Groff's writing is absolutely exquisite. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph is superb. The descriptions of the rain and mud, the birds chattering, the eagles soaring, the human body odor, the icy cold stone floors…all of it is just so visceral and surprisingly passionate and sensual that it plunges the reader right into this Middle Ages' abbey.

Rich in historical detail, this is a deeply creative book with complex and vivid characters. It is a literary gift…a masterpiece of historical fiction.

This is a difficult book to read on several levels. Not only is the subject matter disturbing in the important story it has to tell, but also the many (many!) words and phrases written in Tagalog, Ilocano, and Pangasinan with no translation can just make it confounding to understand.

Written by Elaine Castillo, this is the story of Hero De Vera, a 34-year-old woman who illegally immigrates to the United States from the Philippines. We very slowly learn the details of Hero's life, and those details are horrific in places. Born to a wealthy and politically influential family, she studied to become a physician. Along the way she joined the New People's Army, an armed group of the Communist Party, until she was captured and tortured. Now she is starting a new life in San Francisco, living with her aunt, uncle, and young cousin, Roni, for whom she serves as caregiver. Hero eventually makes friends and begins a real life of her own, but the torture that was done to her hands—and soul—
will forever remind her and others that she has a past.

Castillo takes a bit of a literary leap in the writing style. When the book is about Hero, it's in the third person. When the book is about another character, it's in the second person. It begins this way, and I found it quite disconcerting until I got accustomed to the awkward style.

That said, the story is quite imaginative and an important one that should be told about the immigrant experience. While it is emotionally searing in parts, at other times it's hard to stay interested because the story is so unnecessarily drawn out.

Bonus: The novel is packed with Filipino myths, superstitions, legends, stories, and food. Lots and lots of food. It's a fascinating journey through a country's culture.

Published in 2009 just a few months after John Updike's death at age 76, this collection of 18 short stories is a magnificent look at the world past and present. The keen observations—from the quotidian details of life during the Great Depression to doomed love affairs—are what make these stories of faith, infidelity, and the small choices we make in everyday life so resonant and powerful.

Some of my favorites:
• "The Walk with Elizanne": The high school class of 1950 is holding its 50th reunion in 2000, and David Kern encounters his first girlfriend—but doesn't immediately recognize her. Then all the thoughts! All the memories!

• "Varieties of Religious Experience": This is the story of 9/11 told through the viewpoints of a New York City survivor, someone trapped high in the World Trade Center, two of the hijackers, and passengers on one of the doomed flights, but they are all wrapped up in one man's loss of faith because God let it happen.

• "Delicate Wives": The story of a couple who had an illicit affair, break it off, and then reunite years later.

• "Kinderszenen": Life during the Great Depression as told through the viewpoint of a little boy, an only child living with his parents and grandparents in an old house that may have a ghost or two.

Beautifully written with distinct characters, but sometimes overlapping settings, this masterful collection is one to be savored. It is storytelling at its finest.

This is a novel about many things, but most of all it's about the power of forgiveness. The kind of deep-seated, soul-searing forgiveness that heals deep-seated, soul-searing hurts.

And what a book it is! This novel just grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go. I devoured it.

Written by Mary Beth Keane, this is the story of two families: the Gleesons and the Stanhopes. When they first joined the NYPD in the early 1970s, Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope were assigned as partners. Francis and his wife, Lena, buy a home in a leafy, small-town suburb north of the city. Brian and Anne buy the house next door. Francis and Lena have three little girls in quick succession; after a stillbirth, Brian and Anne have a little boy, Peter, who is six months older than the youngest Gleeson girl, Kate. Peter and Kate become best friends…and in their early teens, they fall in love. One night, one horrific night, something so horrible, so tragic, and so bone-chilling happens that utterly shatters the worlds of both families. And this is where the story really begins, as chapter after chapter follows each of the characters—parents and children—as they first fall apart but slowly recover and reclaim their lives, finding forgiveness for the unforgivable.

Powerfully written, this almost magical novel brilliantly and realistically captures these two families' pain and suffering, as well as their joy and love. But the reason the story is so powerful is that it is suffused with vital human truths—not only for the characters, but also for all of us. There are valuable life lessons in these drama-filled pages.

Just know that once you start reading, you won't be able to stop.

Reading is magical. It transports us to places we can't visit on our own and drops us smack into cultures and lifestyles we would never otherwise experience. Reading can be a little like eavesdropping—being that proverbial fly on the wall. That is exactly what it felt like to me reading this book by Etaf Rum in which we readers become part of a conservative Arab-American family living in New York City.

That said, this is a sad book. Very, very sad. And the sadness never lets up. Just know that before you start reading.

Forget the melting pot. Khaled and Fareeda Ra'ad have been displaced from their homeland of Palestine, and even though the United States is a safe haven from the refugee camps, they are doing everything they can to keep their children from becoming Americans. Traditional Arab culture is king of this house, which means the men rule the women and the women submit, which means regular beatings and physical abuse by fathers and husbands.

It's 1990. Isra is 17 and living in Palestine when she marries Khaled and Fareeda's eldest son, Adam, in an arranged marriage and the next day leaves all she has ever known to live with Adam in the nearly windowless basement of his parents' row house in Brooklyn. Isra has one purpose: bear sons. Her domineering mother-in-law, Fareeda, makes her life miserable, while Adam's father and brothers ignore her. Only Adam's sister, Sarah, pays her any attention. But Isra fails. She only has daughters. Four of them. And she suffers greatly for this, both physically and emotionally as she lives a life shrouded in silence, violence, and fear. Isra's tragic, horrific story alternates in time with that of her daughter, Deya, a senior in high school who is being pushed by Fareeda into an arranged marriage against her will, as well as Fareeda's devastating, gruesome backstory. But secrets—awful, horrifying, unspeakable—secrets lurk beneath the surface and eventually bubble up. There is a little hope: Deya does something truly daring and that could change the trajectory of her life's planned path.

Note: The ending gave me chills, but it only makes sense if you recall the events that occur on pages 218-220.

This is a story about women who are discarded, women who are little more than the day's trash, women who are daily abused, women who are invisible, women who have no life beyond serving men who are ungrateful and brutal in return. This makes it a hard, albeit profound, book to read because it just never lets up. It is absolutely relentless.

According to the Etaf Rum (and do read the excellent interview with her at the end of the book), this is all real. She confesses to feeling "constantly swallowed by fear" for breaking the code of silence. This is a novel, but it's based on her life; she calls the book semi autobiographical. It is a true depiction of how women are actually treated in conservative Arab-American communities. And that makes this book even more dreadful and shocking.

There is one bright light: The book is also a love letter to books and the power or reading.

On the cover of this charming book by Madeleine St John, there is this quote by Hilary Mantel (author of the acclaimed "Wolf Hall" series about Thomas Cromwell, so really serious stuff!): "The book I most often give as a gift to cheer people up." Well, that's enough for me!

Hilary Mantel is right. It is a book that will cheer you up. Taking place in the late 1950s, this delightful ChickLit novel is about four very different women, who have one thing in common: They work together in an upscale department store in Sydney, Australia, selling beautiful, expensive cocktail frocks. They dress in black at work to distinguish them as the sales team, hence the title of the book.
• Patty Williams, who desperately wants a baby, is unhappily married to Frank, a clueless, bumbling, and selfish man who always wants to eat steak for dinner and then spend the rest of the evening in the nearest pub—without Patty.
• Fay Baines, who is all alone in this world, can't seem to find Mr. Right. In fact, it's only Mr. Wrong she manages to date. Over and over and over.
• Magda ("no one could even try to pronounce her frightful Continental surname") is a Slovenian immigrant, who is stylish, sophisticated, and ambitious with plans to open her own dress shop someday.
• Lisa Miles is a very smart, albeit shy, recent high school graduate who loves to read. She has big dreams to become a poet, but her grumpy father doesn't think girls should go to college.

This is a delightful, tender, and occasionally humorous story about how all four of these women find love, hope, and happiness despite their problems and challenges. It is a tribute to the power of friendship among women. Best of all, it's a wonderful life lesson for us all: keep trying!

If you're looking for a quick read to boost your spirits, this is it.

A Fun Note: The dress (er…frock) sizes in this novel are odd letters combinations, such as XSSW or OW. Google "vintage Australian dress sizes" for a fascinating explanation!

We humans have a fascination for the majestic, violent, and sometimes deadly power of Mother Nature. And while we take for granted 21st century meteorologists' ability to warn us of storms in our path, that wasn't always the case.

Isaac Monroe Cline was the head of the fledgling U.S. Weather Bureau in Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900 when a category 4 hurricane slammed into the island, killing an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 people. The storm surge hit 15 feet on an island that was just nine feet above sea level. It is still considered the worst storm in history.

This historical account is riveting. Author Erik Larson alternates chapters titled "The Storm," which detail the formation and approach of the hurricane, with chapters that tell the backstories of the major players, as well as of a select group of Galveston's citizens young and old, the history of meteorological forecasting, and even the unfortunate ships caught in the path of the storm.

But this is more than a story about a formidable killer hurricane. It's also the story of an arrogant, self-serving federal bureaucracy that placed more value on its own good reputation than it did on saving lives and property. For example, weather forecasters were forbidden to use the word "hurricane" without approval from the head of the Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. Why? The word was deemed too scary. If you don't acknowledge it, maybe it will go away. And while Isaac Cline eventually bucked his superiors and used the word "hurricane" to warn the residents of Galveston, by the time he did it, it was far too late.

Larson's writing is magical. He paints vivid, bright word pictures that make the sounds, sights, and even the odors of the hurricane and its aftermath pop off the page like a movie. I felt as if I were living the middle of the storm. His description of what it's like to be inside the eye of a hurricane is so intense and dramatic, it gave me the chills. And the depiction of the hurricane hitting and destroying Galveston has left me forever in awe of the destructive, violent power of such storms.

Bonus: You will learn lots of fun weather facts, such as how waves form, why a brick-red sky often precedes a hurricane, and how a storm surge forms.

There should be an official fiction genre called "escape novels." These are books in which the story, place, and characters all conspire to sweep the reader away from current reality, current problems, current worries. And this book would lead the way.

Written by Kate Morton, this is the story of Grace, a housemaid-turned-lady's maid in a large manor home in England beginning just before World War I. (Think "Downton Abbey" but with more of a "downstairs" focus.) When Grace begins working at Riverton, she is only 14 and very shy but totally dutiful. She soon meets the grandchildren of the master and mistress, David, Hannah, and Emmeline, who frequently vacation there. Grace feels an immediate connection. Through loveless marriages, tragic wars, illicit lovers, the revelation of shocking secrets, and desperate financial losses, this book, with a touch of literary Gothic, traces the history of the slow decline of the great British aristocracy after World War I through the lives of one family.

The house, named Riverton, is as much a character as any of the humans who inhabit it. Morton's incredible descriptions paint a word picture that is bold and bright and makes this 300-year-old mansion and its extraordinary gardens and grounds pop off the page in full life.

Bonus: Agatha Christie makes a cameo appearance at a dinner at Riverton. If you're a fan, you'll love this part!

The novel's ingenious plotline is complex enough to make it fascinating (albeit a tiny bit predictable), and the characters are distinct and vibrant. Morton's penchant for historical details cradles the book in authenticity. I was so totally engrossed in reading it that I felt as if I had time traveled to this other era.

Beginning with Henry VII and ending with Queen Elizabeth I, this fascinating and highly readable history book on the three generations of Tudors, is a deep dive into one of the most interesting and tumultuous periods of England's royal rulers.

Written by G.J. Meyer, the book focuses on the facts, as all good history books do, which has the effect of upending some of the most delicious Tudor legends and myths. Exhibit A: Henry VIII may not have been the sexual stallion of which he is often portrayed.

Find out:
• How Henry VIII was truly savage and cruel and why his irrational and monstrous behavior was the only way he knew to continually feed his incredible and insatiable ego.

• If you have the stomach for it, you'll learn the many ways King Henry executed his subjects, advisors, and kin, some so gruesome you may need to gently close the book for a few minutes just to take a few breaths.

• Why his lust and desire for Anne Boleyn was only the secondary reason that Henry VIII separated England from the Roman Catholic Church.

• The heartbreakingly sad emotional and psychological state of Henry's only son, Edward, when he became the boy king as a 9-year-old child.

• Why Queen Mary may have been a more accomplished and effective ruler than her sister Queen Elizabeth I—the opposite of conventional wisdom.

• The horrifying story of how Queen Elizabeth I used torture—far more than her father—in both intensity and frequency, as well as the sadist she employed to carry it all out.

• Why Queen Elizabeth I was so vain about her appearance that her daily makeup routine may have led to her death at age 69.

Each chapter ends with a short bonus chapter giving background information, and most of these are truly fascinating—from common foods (no potatoes—they didn't come about for 100 more years) to what it was like inside the Tower of London to why the "sport of kings" was engaging in bloody battles.

This is an accomplished, well-written historical account of England's most famous—and infamous—royal family. If you enjoy reading novels about this period, this history book is a must-read.

What a fun love story! The plot is imaginative, the dialogue snappy, and the characters feel like real people. It isn't profound. It isn't great literature. But it is a delight to read.

Written by Nick Hornby and taking place in London in 2016, this is the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back love story—with a twist. The boy, Joseph, really is a boy at age 22. He's immature, floundering in his multiple part-time jobs, and still living at home with his mom. The girl, Lucy, is a 42-year-old woman and the head of the English department at an inner-city school. She is the mother of two boys and is in the process of getting a divorce from an alcoholic, drug-addicted husband. Lucy hires Joseph to babysit her boys for occasional evenings out, and the sparks fly. But they both realize the futility of a relationship with such a huge age gap--not to mention that Lucy is highly educated and an avid reader, while Joseph finished secondary school and hasn't read a book since. He's black. She's white. (You know, just to add to the complications!) So, what could possibly go wrong—even with those sparks?

It's not a perfect book. Some of the conversations between Lucy and Joseph are tiresome, longwinded, and circuitous. Better editing would have helped. But this is a relatively minor complaint.

Intriguingly, the 2016 Brexit vote, which is constant background noise in the storyline, is a bold (and impossible to miss) metaphor for Lucy and Joseph's relationship. It's an interesting literary ploy.

This is a really sweet and entertaining love story replete with wisdom, humor, and all the awkwardness and excitement most of us feel in a new relationship. I was enchanted!

This book is weird. Odd. Strange. But the weirdest, oddest, strangest part of all is this: It's really, really GOOD. I just couldn't stop reading it.

This is the second in the seasonal quartet by Scottish author Ali Smith. The series begins with "Autumn" (it was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize) and ends with "Summer," but you don't need to read them in order, unlike most series.

Taking place mostly on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day—with lots of flashbacks to earlier times, including another Christmas Day years ago—this is the story of two sisters, Iris and Sophia, as well as Sophia's son, Art. Iris and Sophia have been estranged for years. Iris is a bleeding-heart liberal who has made a life as a protestor, while Sophia, an entrepreneur, disdains this. Art and his live-in girlfriend, Charlotte, are supposed to visit his mom in Cornwall for Christmas. When he and Charlotte have a huge argument and she walks out of their London apartment, Art hires Luz, a homeless former college student from Croatia whom he meets at a bus shelter, to pretend she is Charlotte and come with him for the holiday. When they arrive late at night, quickly realizing that Sophia's mental state has frighteningly deteriorated, they call Iris in as a reinforcement—never mind that she and Sophia haven't talked for decades. What could possibly go wrong? Or put another way, what could possibly go right?

With both a lovely nod to Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" and a not-so-subtle diatribe against Brexit, this is a sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious family soap-opera drama that had me riveted to my reading chair.

The book may be a bit quirky in places, but the writing is truly extraordinary and the imaginative storyline so tight and well-crafted that what could have been just a literary highbrow novel is also a super good and compelling read.

This very short novel—really, more a novella—is one of the most powerful and poignant books I have ever read. It is the story of the Japanese "picture brides" who were sent to the United States in the early 20th century to marry Japanese men, who mostly needed another set of hands to do farm work and someone to warm their beds at night.

What makes this book so unusual is that it is told in the first person plural using the pronouns "we," "us," and "our" (instead of "I," as is typically done in the first person) by an unnamed narrator without named characters to populate the story. The first few sentences set the linguistic style for the rest of the novel: "On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves." The brilliance of this literary ploy is that author Julie Otsuka can better tell the sweeping, tragic story of the whole, rather than focusing on only one story that is not representative of the entire experience.

And tragic it is. Beginning with the trip on the boat from Japan to San Francisco, the story continues with the young women's first night with their new husbands, their hardworking lives doing backbreaking, exhausting labor, their birth experiences, their children, and their deportation to Japanese internment camps during World War II.

The immense power of this short book is in the masterful writing, which is so eloquent and exquisite that these words of prose are as close to poetry as prose can ever become.

This is the heartbreaking and remarkable story of resilient young women who immigrated to a strange land without family or friends and how they gradually relinquished their native identities of self and country to become Americans—even though they were shunned and persecuted and never fully accepted.

This is a difficult book to read. It's also difficult to stop reading.

It's difficult to read because of the subject matter—a 42-year-old high school English teacher grooms a 15-year-old student for sex—and it's difficult to stop reading because it's written with such psychological compassion, emotional depth, and intelligent insight into the human condition.

Here is the crux of the plot: He is a pedophile. But she thinks it's love.

Vanessa Wye is the one who never fit in. She is going into 9th grade and earns a scholarship to Browick, a prestigious boarding school in Maine. The novel begins at the start of Vanessa's sophomore year when she is taking an American literature class taught by Jacob Strane, a 42-year-old who has never married. He makes overtures to Vanessa, but she is so innocent and naïve she doesn't immediately figure out what is happening. When she does, she is thrilled. Strane tells her how special she is, so smart and talented. A rare gem. It doesn't take long for Strane to dress her up in little-girl pajamas and take her to bed. The affair continues for months until something truly devastating happens to Vanessa. And then come the years ahead as Vanessa tries to parse what occurred. Was she a victim? Did Strane really rape her if she was willing? He truly loved her, right? (Right?) The bulk of the book is about what happens to Vanessa after her affair with Strane ends, as she grapples with these questions that consume her so totally that her life is mostly in shambles.

This brilliant novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell is so much more than a lurid tale about a creepy pedophile grossly manipulating a child. (Although, it is that, too.) It's an important and vivid exploration of the meaning and effect of sexual abuse—a deep dive into the psychological horrors inflicted on Vanessa as she valiantly tries to cope while the adults in her life look the other way.

The thing that struck me over and over again was the sheer honesty with which the story is told. It would have been so easy for the author to fall back on platitudes and oversimplifications to neatly tie up the loose ends and make a sweet ending about a hundred pages earlier. But that doesn't happen. As such, it's almost brutal to read. But I dare you to stop!

This is a book about teen boys playing hockey. Well, kind of. I mean, yes, it is about teen boys playing hockey in a small town in Sweden. But it's SO SO SO much more than that. And if you barely know a puck from a stick (count me in that category), you will still love this book. Because it's about so much more than hockey.

This is a book with some of the best life advice you'll ever read. This is a book about parenting. This is a book about getting along with your neighbors. This is a book about marriage. This is a book about growing up. This is a book about families. This is a book about community. This is a book about what it truly means to have courage and to be loyal to your friends. This is a book about secrets. This is a book about love. This is a book with a heart. A very big heart.

Written by Fredrik Backman, this is the story—on the surface—of an unlikely ice hockey team in Beartown, Sweden. The boys were not supposed to be winners, but with the right coaching, dedicated players, and fanatical fans, the team turned into winners. Now they are getting ready for the championship—first the semifinal and then the final. But something horrific happens that leaves a 15-year-old girl stunned, shocked, and nearly suicidal and a 17-year-old boy terrified for his future. They aren't alone. All of Beartown takes sides, and the result is ugly and frightening, as well as one filled with courage.

The charm, heart, and soul of the book are the population of characters young and old—so many, but they are easy to remember because they are as distinct and special as real human beings. Add this to a solid plot, excellent writing, and brilliant insight into the human condition, and this book vaults into something extra special.

And bonus: The ending. It's perfect.

Treat yourself to a trip to Beartown.

This is a 10-star book in a five-star world.

If you're an Ann Patchett fan, this is a must-read. If you've never heard of Ann Patchett, you still need to read this, but first treat yourself to one or two of her novels. I highly recommend "The Dutch House" and "Bel Canto."

Each of these essays is a sparkling little gem, a valuable lesson in life, lessons in living and in dying. It could just be an astute observation or it could be a pithy little sentence that makes you go, "Yes! That's it!"

I adored every single one of the essays, but just to whet your appetite, here is a sampling:

• "Three Fathers": Ann Patchett had three fathers because her mother had three marriages, two of which ended in divorce. At her sister's wedding, Ann realized all three of the men, who were never together for obvious reasons, would be in the same place at the same time. So she had her photo taken with them. One of the dads astutely observed to the other two, "You know what she's going to do, don't you? She's going to wait until the three of us are dead and then she's going to write about us. This is the picture that will run with the piece." He was right.

• "The First Thanksgiving": When Ann was a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College in New York City she couldn't go home to Nashville, Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Because she didn't know any one well enough to be invited home for the long weekend, she stayed in the dorm. What happened next is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

• "How to Practice": A wise admonition to men and women of a certain age to get your house in order—clear the clutter, get your papers organized—long before you die so your children don't have to do it for you.

• "Cover Stories": A fascinating explanation of how book covers are created, specifically Ann Patchett's book covers.

The best one, and that's really saying a lot because they could all be considered "the best one," is the title story, "These Precious Days," in which Ann recounts her unlikely friendship with Tom Hanks's personal assistant, Sooki. Have a box of tissues handy when you read this one.

Brilliantly written with keen insight these essays are, quite simply, a treasure. When you close the book on the last page, you will feel like Ann Patchett is your friend because you will know that much about her.

Bonus: I read this book, as I read every book, on my Kindle. But if you read the hardcover version (it's not available in paperback yet), you get a double cover. The front and back covers are different. I had to Google it to see the back cover. Why? Read the essay "Cover Stories" to find out! (P.S. I just bought the hardcover version for just this reason.)

I hadn't even read half the book when I realized that this would likely be one of my favorite novels of all time. It is brilliant. A masterpiece. Monumental. All overused words in book reviews, but totally apt descriptors for this brilliant, monumental masterpiece by Kent Haruf.

Taking place in the fictional rural setting of Holt, Colorado, this is the story of several people who have one thing in common: They are all emotionally damaged, but through their interactions with each other they achieve a level of healing.
--High school history teacher Tom Guthrie is the father of two boys, Ike and Bobby who are 10 and 9 years old respectively. His wife, Ella, has retreated to the guest room where she sleeps all day and all night and eventually leaves the family entirely.
--Victoria Roubideaux is 17 and pregnant by a young man she met the previous summer. She has no idea where he is now. And things get complicated very quickly when her mother kicks her out of their house.
--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.
--Maggie Jones is a high school teacher who has a knack for helping others just when they need it most. But will she ever find happiness of her own?

The astonishingly spare and sparse prose in which the novel is written reflects the spare and sparse landscape of Holt. It's almost as if the writing style allows the reader to vicariously become a part of the setting. But at the same time, the writing is incredibly descriptive from an old screen door to the sight of oncoming headlights to the look of faded wallpaper. Brilliant. Monumental. A masterpiece.

This exquisite work of literature is also a compelling story with a finely rendered plot and characters that simply pop off the page they are so real and vivid. In many ways, this may be the Great American Novel—or at least in the top 10.

Just an afterthought: "Plainsong" was a finalist in 1999 for the National Book Award. Only a finalist? When I realized this, I immediately Googled to find out that year's winner. It was "Waiting" by Ha Jin, which I have read. Here are the opening lines of my review of "Waiting": On the one hand, this is a literary masterpiece, a political allegory, and a love story that won the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. On the other hand, the title is quite apt. The reader will be kept waiting…and waiting…and waiting for something to happen. It doesn't. This is a relatively short book that feels quite long.

"Plainsong" is better, in my opinion. Much, much better.

Bonus: This is the first in a three-part series, so the story doesn't end here. Yay!

I felt like I was looking in a mirror when I read this book. It is spookily close to my life story. Because of that resonance I found it to be powerful, heartbreaking, and healing, but I can't begin to fathom if this would be something most readers would also experience.

Magnificently written by Tara Conklin, this is the story of four siblings—Renee, Joe, Caroline, and Fiona Skinner. When they are still very young, their father dies suddenly of a heart attack. Their mother retreats to her bed with a debilitating depression—for three years. Still a child herself, Renee becomes the defacto mom, cooking dinner, doing laundry, reading bedtime stories. Joe tries to become the man of the family, Caroline suffers recurrent nightmares, and Fiona, at age five, is just confused. They call this time The Pause. Eventually it ends. The kids grow up. And when they are adults, one of the four of them dies. The book, which is narrated by grown-up Fiona, is not only the story of their childhood, but also the effect these two traumas had on each of them, the people they become, and most of all who they choose to love. Because more than anything, this is a love story. A family love story.

This book has it all: a well-developed, page-turning plot coupled with vivid, pop-off-the-page characters. Parts of it are hilarious, and parts of it made me cry. Just like real life. It is witty, wise, and tender.

Bonus: At the beginning of the third chapter there is a two-sentence description of female adolescence that is so perfect, so spot-on true that it will make all mothers who have or have ever had a 13-year-old daughter almost weep.

And I just want to say after my rather personal introduction to this review: My father died when I was seven, and one of my beloved sisters died more than a decade ago. But after my father's death, my mom never took to her bed. She will always be my hero for how she cared for my two sisters and me during a terrifying time.

This may be a perfect novel. The plot is compelling. The characters are painted with such vividness that they seem real. And the writing…oh my goodness. The writing sings. It is beautiful, lyrical, and poetry in prose. It's the kind of writing that demands to be reread.

This novel is a literary gift.

Written by Nathan Harris, this is the story of a beleaguered group of people living in rural Old Ox, Georgia just after the Civil War has ended.
• George and Isabelle Walker live on a large farm that they pretty much ignore. He is lazy, content to read, putter, and make occasional trips to town riding his trusty donkey, Ridley. She is quiet, reserved, and likes to be left alone.

• Caleb Walker and August Webler are best friends and brothers in arms in the war. But they are more than that. They are also secret lovers. August, who is the son of the town's richest man, returns to Old Ox without Caleb and with tragic news.

• Brothers Prentiss and Landry are slaves on a neighboring plantation who are set free thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. When given the opportunity, they leave their abusive master. They simply walk away from the plantation where George soon finds them in the woods on his property.

It is when two things happen—George, Prentiss, and Landry strike up a friendship and unusual business arrangement, while Caleb and August's deepest secret is revealed—that the rules of society are tested to the breaking point. And it is quiet, reclusive Isabelle who figures out how to survive amidst horrific violence, vicious murder, and senseless destruction.

This is an extraordinary, elegiac historical novel that is often unsettling but always insightful as the old order crumbles, and no one quite knows how to make sense of the new one. Highly recommended.

It may be titled "Spring," but this is not a book about the blossoming of new love or reveling in Earth's colorful pastel rebirth. It is bleak and dark with just a smidgen of hope. It's also experimental in form—so much so that when I was about 35 pages into the book, I stopped reading and started over at page one, which made all the difference to understanding what was happening.

Written by Scottish author Ali Smith, this is the third in what the author describes as a seasonal quartet. Unlike virtually all book series, this one does not need to be read in order. Each book is totally independent of the others. If they weren't grouped together as a quartet, you wouldn't even know they were a series.

But one thing the books in this seasonal quartet do have in common is they are all stories interwoven with political discourse. (Some might even call it political diatribe.) "Spring" is focused on immigration issues in Britain, specifically how immigrants are treated once they arrive. Many are housed in Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) where they are held indefinitely—like prisoners—even though they are only supposed to be detained for 72 hours.

This is a book about lost souls in a very divided Britain. Richard Lease is an aging TV and film director who hasn't worked in years. Paddy, the woman who taught him so much and served as his muse has died. He is devastated and suicidal so he decides to travel north from London to Scotland to send her off—at least in his mind. Meanwhile, Brittany Hall is off to her dreaded job at an IRC when a little girl named Florence waylays her and convinces her to go with her to Scotland. Florence is an unusual child to say the least. She has a nearly magical ability to charm everyone around her to give her things, allow her to accomplish the seemingly impossible, and basically just get her way. It is this child of 12 who saves Richard's life, and the three of them begin a journey that is rife with joy, sadness, and betrayal. But in the spring, there is always hope (even if it's just a smidgen)—for new life, for reconciliation, and for love.

Just as much as it's about immigration, it is also a book about the importance of stories—the ones we live, the ones we tell, the ones we read. English majors and avid readers will enjoy the frequent literary namedropping and almost cameo-like appearances of short story writer Katherine Mansfield and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, as well as silent film star Charlie Chaplin and British visual artist Tacita Dean.

At times, the minimal plot of the book can be confusing as it bounces around in time. It didn't keep me reading past my bedtime. But it's an interesting way to frame the dire human concern of immigration and what happens to real people in real ways that are alarming, frightening, and abusive.

It may be somewhat difficult to read, but this is a book that will make you think.

This book by Laurie Frankel is a lot of contradictory things:
-- It's billed as a novel for grown-ups, but it should be shelved in the young adult section.
-- It's a riveting story, but it goes on far too long, spoiling something that started out really good.
-- I wanted to love it because "This Is How It Always Is," also by Laurie Frankel, is one of my favorite books of all time, but I just couldn't love it that much.

This is the story of three sisters, 16-year-old triplets Mab, Monday, and Mirabel. They call each other One, Two, and Three based on their birth order and the number of syllables in their names. This is also the story of their town, Bourne, where 17 years ago a chemical company poisoned the town's water and the residents. Many, many of them died, including the triplets' father, many got cancer, and most of the children were born with birth defects. While Mab is considered "normal," Monday is autistic, and Mirabel, while brilliant, was born physically deformed with only her right arm and hand fully functioning, leaving her unable to walk or talk. Why not move away? Their mother, Nora, is mad. So very, very angry. And she spends her life, when she's not caring for her daughters or working one of her three jobs, fighting the chemical company and seeking restitution for the little town of Bourne. It truly is her purpose in life.

Then, quite suddenly, everything changes in this place almost everyone else forgot about.

This is the story of what can go disastrously wrong when unscrupulous, uncaring people are in charge and then get away with it. It's well researched in terms of science and law, so the novel feels authentic. We're all rooting for the underdogs here, and while the ups and downs, the incessant legal wrangling, and evidence sleuthing are at first fascinating, it all just goes on way too long. What Frankel tries to do is build the story to a climax we'll never forget, but unfortunately the result falls flat like a balloon after all the air has leaked out—and it's only because it took too long to get there.

Still, this novel is very well-written, as well as imaginatively written, with each chapter titled "One, "Two," or "Three" and told from the point of view and in the distinct first-person voices of Mab, Monday, or Mirabel. It's a clever writing ploy, and it works really well. Unfortunately, it's just not enough to pull the story out of the mire into which it eventually sinks.

A lovely bonus: This book is a love letter to libraries and librarians, while it also gives a tip of the hat to vocabulary words learned well and used appropriately in conversation.