I read this book now in preparation for being in the audience when author George Saunders is presented with the 2023 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction at the National Book Festival on August 12, 2023. While Saunders is receiving this award for the body of his work, this collection of short stories is so spectacular, so special, and so brilliant, it is almost enough on its own to warrant such an honor.

I enjoy reading short story collections, but typically only about half the stories in any given book are what I would rate as excellent or very good. In this collection, eight of the 10 are stellar and the other two are excellent—so highly unusual. While some of them take place in a near dystopian future, most are mind-twists about life today and how we react as human beings. It's social satire at its absolute best.

My favorites among the favorites:
• "Victory Lap": Kyle Boot, a sheltered, overprotected teenage boy whose parents control his behavior with strict rules, is alone at home after school. He witnesses his 14-year-old neighbor Alison Pope, a childhood playmate on whom he now has a big crush, be abducted. If he were to help her, he would break many of his parents' inviolable rules. He is caught in a moral conundrum.

• "Escape from Spiderhead": Young people who have been convicted of the worst crimes can be sent to a facility conducting mind experiments instead of going to prison. Jeff is one of these, and he endures a series of experiments using powerful drugs that test his sexual prowess, his ability to fall in love, and his ability to be the cause of irreparable physical and mental harm to others. This story is disturbing and powerful.

• "The Semplica Girl Diaries": The ultimate status symbol for the suburban lawn and garden is something so outrageous and cruel it boggles the mind. But that's not how the characters in this startling story see it. The story is told in a father's diary entries, written in choppy, incomplete sentences—and it's brilliant.

• "Tenth of December": The title story is a haunting tale of two people—Don Eber, who is a scared and terminally ill middle-aged man who has decided to die by suicide, and Robin, a creative little boy with an inventive imagination who stops him. The story is told from the two characters' inner dialogue—the running thoughts of what each is thinking.

Collectively, the stories are a challenge to the reader: Who are YOU as a human being? How can YOU be a better human being?

This is quite the genre-defying novel written by Victor LaValle, mixing traditional historical literary fiction with a demon/monster that transforms it into a farfetched horror story.

It's 1915. Adelaide Henry, a 31-year-old Black woman is living with her parents on their farm in California's Lucerne Valley, which is part of a community settled only by Black families. But Adelaide's family has a deep, dark secret—so deep, so dark, and so secret that they purposefully isolate themselves from the rest of the community. It is said that they are "queer folk." When Adelaide's parents are brutally murdered, she escapes the only life she has known by fleeing to the wilds of Montana where "lone women" are legally allowed to own land if they homestead and cultivate their assigned acreage within five years. Escaping with a small bag and a cumbersome trunk, Adelaide begins life anew in Big Sandy, Montana where she makes good and trustworthy friends but also incurs the wrath of vicious enemies. Secrets have a way of following us, and this one is no exception. When the secret is revealed, Adelaide's new life begins to implode.

This is such a mixed bag of a book! The writing and the historical fiction are excellent. It's a truly well-told, well-researched story that had me riveted from the beginning. But when it morphed into a demon/monster-horror story, it lost me because it was just too unbelievable, too farfetched, and too outrageous a plot twist.

This book is adventure, historical fiction, and horror all mixed up in a blender and spit out in 282 pages.

When it comes to reading novels, who do you trust? I'm not sure I ever before thought about this question in such direct terms, but that's the underlying premise of this remarkable novel by Hernan Diaz, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Literature (shared with "Demon Copperhead," by Barbara Kingsolver) and longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

Set in the 1920s and 1930s in New York City, this is the story of (fictional) tycoon Andrew Bevel, a man who accomplished the most amazing financial feat: He beat the market just before October 1929, turning his stocks and bonds into cash weeks before the crash that led to the Great Depression. He spent his entire adult life beating the market, figuring out nuances and tricks to always come out on top—nuances and tricks that no one else could copy. But he is a cold, uncaring man who avoids society, has no real friends, and who is only made more human when he marries Mildred. This is not only a novel about Andrew Bevel's life and work, but also it's a novel about money—the ways it serves, benefits, and corrupts.

The book, which is described as a literary puzzle, is written in four distinct parts:
1. "Bonds," a novel by Harold Vanner that not only ruthlessly tells the story of Bevel and his wife (using different names), alleging that Bevel's wife went insane and he had a role in her death, but also reveals the secrets of how Bevel accumulated his money.

2. "My Life," the rough first draft of an unfinished and unpublished memoir by Andrew Bevel that sets the record straight after Vanner's hateful, hurtful, and fabricated novel.

3. In "A Memoir, Remembered," Ida Partenza, Bevel's private secretary who was the ghost writer for his memoir, writes her own memoir of that experience 50 years later.

4. "Futures," by Mildred Bevel, Andrew's wife, who finally gets to tell her side of the story after being maligned by Vanner and sugar-coated as a quiet aesthete by her husband. In this diary that she kept in the last weeks of her life she makes a big confession…one that would horrify her husband if it were ever made public.

Which one of these is the truth? Which one should the reader trust? All four pieces and parts have one thing in common: They focus on the meaning of family, the untold power and pain of extraordinary wealth, the moral devastation of greed, and the ultimate price of unfettered ambition.

This masterfully written book is highly imaginative and creative with a multilayered plot that I found riveting. But it's so much more than that as it expounds ever so stealthily on all the things money can do—from benefiting those who need it most to corrupting one's very soul.

And when it comes to telling our stories and reading about others, who is telling the truth? Is the truth the persona revealed to the public? Or is the truth the story only you can tell about yourself?

Who would you trust to tell your story?

This short, coming-of-age book by Kevin Wilson begins with an imaginative and snappy plot…but then just starts to draaaaaaag out until it finally sputters to a disappointing ending.

It's the summer of 1996. Frankie and Zeke are two 16-year-olds living in Coalfield, a rural, out-of-the-way town in Tennessee. Frankie lives with her mom and older (wild, uncontrollable, almost feral) triplet brothers; her dad left her mom after he got his secretary pregnant. Zeke, who is from Memphis, is living with his mom in his grandmother's house just for the summer after his dad had multiple affairs. Both are lonely and insecure, and neither Frankie nor Zeke has ever had a best friend, so when they find each other, life is better. And more fun. Frankie is a budding author, while Zeke is an artist.

Out of sheer boredom they jointly create a poster. Frankie writes the bizarre saying: "The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us." Zeke creates an equally bizarre drawing to accompany it. They make hundreds of copies and post it all over town. Then they wait to see what happens. They tell no one it is their creation. But both are shocked and horrified at the viral reaction that causes a wild chain of events—some deadly—that can be traced back to the poster in what becomes known as the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Fast forward to 2017, and Frankie, now a successful novelist who is happily married with a daughter, gets a phone call from a reporter who has figured out that she is behind it all. Will this deep, dark secret that she and Zeke have kept for more than 20 years upend her perfect life?

There are several problems with this book. Most important, the story is told exclusively in Frankie's voice, and I think that is what makes it drag. The novel would have been greatly enriched if we could have heard something from Zeke's point of view and possibly something from the point of view of a Coalfield resident caught up in the "panic." In addition, I feel like author Kevin Wilson is trying to offer profound insight and philosophical contemplations about everything from teen love to family dysfunction to the power of art circa the 1990s, but much of that falls flat—just like the second half of the book.

This is a fun, albeit odd, little book for a quick summer read but even at a scant 250 pages the story seems to stall about midway through until it sputters to a most disappointing ending.

This is one of those novels that sneaks up on you, dear reader. The first half is good—actually, quite good—but not what I would call riveting. Or compelling. It's more interesting than engrossing. But hang on to your hats because the second half is unputdownable. The story sweeps into overdrive, and I just couldn't tear myself away.

Written by Luis Alberto Urrea, the novel is loosely based on his mother's experiences in World War II as a "Donut Dollie." His mom, known as Phyllis McLaughlin then and later as Phyllis de Urrea, served with the American Red Cross in Clubmobile Cheyenne where she and two other women made donuts and coffee for the soldiers serving on the frontlines. Phyllis (or "Phyl") is a very minor character in the book, making several cameo appearances.

This is the story: It's 1943. Irene Woodward is a 25-year-old New York City socialite engaged to the son of a wealthy and prominent political family. But he's far from ideal as he has this unforgivable habit of hitting her. She does the only thing she can think of to escape: Throws her engagement ring down a storm drain and hops a train to Washington, D.C. to join the American Red Cross as a Donut Dollie on the frontlines of the war. She is assigned to work with Dorothy Dunford, a tall, gangly Indiana farmgirl whose brother died in the Pacific Theater of the war, whose father died of throat cancer, and whose mother died of heartbreak. Dorothy is filled with hurt and rage and wants to extract revenge for her brother's death.

Irene and Dorothy are shipped to England first and then Europe on the Western Front. Their job in the Clubmobile Rapid City—a 14-foot GMC military truck—is to pass out coffee and donuts, but also to listen to the soldiers when they need to talk, joke with them, hug them, and give them a taste of home. This is the story of Irene and Dorothy's friendship, experiences, romances, heartbreak, and shocking secrets as they serve in General Patton's 3rd Army. Irene falls in love with a handsome American fighter pilot named Hans (and nicknamed Handyman) and dares to imagine a life together after the war. But first, they must all survive.

Urrea is an incredibly talented writer, and this is especially true in his vivid, bold, and wrenching descriptions of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, the Battle of the Bulge, and the harrowing and horrific evils of war. The sounds, the sights, the smells—it's all here. Extraordinary…truly extraordinary.

And the ending? It's magnificent. I wept tears of sadness and joy.

This masterful and brilliant World War II story is told from a different point of view than usual about the little-known women who made donuts but doubled as heroines. It is an adventure story. It is a romance. But most of all, it is imaginative, authentic, and haunting.

Even though you probably know at least the basic facts about the beginning, the middle, and the end of this story about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in cold blood during a play at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, you may not know the details. The gory, gruesome, intriguing details.

And it is in these prodigiously researched details culled from primary source materials that author James L. Swanson weaves a two-pronged tale of intrigue and betrayal that is as riveting as a well-written thriller or murder mystery.

Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth was a famous stage actor, and many people nationwide knew well his handsome face. How did he manage to elude authorities for so long—from April 14 to April 26, 1865—with only a horse while suffering excruciating pain from a broken leg? This is the enthralling story, told from his point of view as the hunted prey, but also from that of the often hapless hunters.

This book not only details the fascinating, frustratingly slow, and often fruitless search for Booth and his accomplices, but also gives an hour-by-hour account of the assassination and Lincoln's activities that day. The details are so vivid—the sights, the scents, the sounds—that I felt as if I were there on the scene, from the ill-fated box in Ford's Theater to the wilds of Maryland as Booth valiantly tried to escape. The writing and the research are truly exceptional.

Find out:
• The detailed planning of Lincoln's murder, including the conspirators' plot to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson at the exact same time Lincoln was killed.

• How Booth viewed the entire event as a perverse kind of Shakespearean drama that he scripted and performed as the leading man.

• How Booth escaped wearing dress clothing and carrying no supplies while galloping through the streets of Washington, D.C. on a skittish horse and was never stopped.

• How Booth broke his leg, who fixed it, and how much pain he suffered.

• Where Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, hid for days on end and who tended to them. For years, this was a mystery—a lost week. Now we know what happened and where, and it's an astonishing story.

• How Booth's escape both incensed and thrilled the country, as well as the horrifying penalty for everyday citizens who said anything against Lincoln after his death.

• They may not have been able to find Booth and Herold for 12 days, but authorities rounded up, arrested, and threw into prison more than one hundred suspects, including Booth's brother Junius and his brother-in-law John Sleeper Clarke, as well as a strange Portuguese sea captain, Confederate sympathizers and agents, and anyone else who expressed disloyal sentiments.

• The surprising way Booth was finally found after 12 long days and the bizarre details of his death.

Bonus: After you read this book, treat yourself to the historical novel "Booth," by Karen Joy Fowler that brilliantly and creatively explores the personal life story of John Wilkes Booth.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, this book will make you think. It might make you cry. It might make you angry. But I can almost guarantee that you will have some visceral reaction to it.

Approach it with an open mind, and it could very well change how you view poor people and—are you ready for this?—your own guilty role in keeping them poor.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, this book examines not only why there is so much poverty in the United States, but also how to eliminate it. It is filled with facts and footnotes, but it is also a bit preachy in parts—and that righteous preachiness is exactly what it will take for most of us to sit up and pay attention.

Think poverty isn't that big of a problem? Think again. The United States is the richest country in the world with more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Almost one in nine Americans (and one in eight children) live in poverty. And while Desmond details the surprising figures, that is only the beginning.

The real shocker of this book is the answer to two big questions: WHY is there so much poverty? WHO is to blame for it? The answer is me. And you. Are you scoffing at that? I would have, too, before I read this book. Desmond lays out clear, concise, and tough-to-argue-against assertions about how some lives are made small and poor so others may grow big and rich.

He also offers real and thoughtful solutions to poverty that are both innovative and obvious—and just might work. And even though his ideas will not raise the federal budget deficit, they will require new policies, renewed political movements, and a real effort from each of us, all of which will be difficult to enact in this polarized political environment in which we are living now.

Find out:
• How wealthier people benefit from poverty in myriad ways.

• How most big companies seek new ways to limit their obligations to workers. Exhibit A is the growth of gig jobs that come with no benefits and often come with expenses the worker must bear.

• Who receives the highest amount of money from the government in entitlements, tax breaks, and subsidies. (Spoiler: It's not the poor.)

• Why so many poor people do not take advantage of government programs to which they are fully entitled. Billions in dollars of allocated aid is never claimed.

• How giving choices to poor people is the antidote to exploitation.

• Specific things you can do to become a "poverty abolitionist." Warning: This isn't easy.

Read it if you are brave enough!

This novel is like an onion. Author Alex Michaelides very deliberately and very slowly peels away the layers, creating a psychological thriller that teases and tantalizes the reader right up to the explosive ending.

This is the story of Alicia Berenson, a talented artist living in London. She has been married for seven years to Gabriel, an in-demand fashion photographer. They have a seemingly happy marriage until one night several shots ring out inside their home. When the police arrive, they find Gabriel tied to a chair and dead after having been shot five times point-blank in the face. Alicia is just standing by the fireplace. The gun is on the floor and only her fingerprints are on it. Instead of being found guilty of the murder and imprisoned, Alicia is sent to the Grove, a secure psychiatric facility in Hampstead, a residential community in North London where she refuses to speak. Six years go by. The crime is largely forgotten. But Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, remembers it. He maneuvers his way into employment at the Grove just so he can treat Alicia. His goal is to get her to speak again and find out what really happened on that fateful night. But Theo has personal problems of his own when he discovers that his beloved wife, Kathy, is cheating on him, a revelation that leaves him distraught and heartbroken. But his important and innovative work with Alicia must continue…

This is more than a murder mystery or a page-turning thriller, although it is both of those. It is also an intellectual thriller with pertinent and fascinating psychological facts offered throughout, as well as a literary thriller in that Alicia's case is loosely based on the tragedy "Alcestis" by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides.

Bonus: Do read the section at the end of the book titled "A Book Club Conversation with the Author," but DO NOT read it until you have finished the novel. It's filled with spoilers—and lots and lots and lots of information of the whys and hows and whats that Michaelides was thinking when he wrote this book. Fascinating!

Bottom line: Read this novel just for the ending. It's brilliant and may be one of the best endings ever!

This is an intellectual, erudite literary novel that is compelling in parts and a real slog in others.

Written by Gary Shteyngart, this is the story of Sasha Senderovsky and Masha Levin-Senderovsky, who invite five of their closest friends to come live with them and quarantine from the rest of the world on their country estate in upstate New York. It's the start of the Covid pandemic, and the world is in an upheaval with the many uncertainties, the tragic death toll, the overcrowded hospitals, and the grim insecurity of not knowing how this virus is transmitted.

The friends—Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta, Ed Kim, Dee Cameron, and a man who is only identified as The Actor—come to the estate, which the Russian hosts think of as their dacha. The Senderovskys, along with their eight-year-old daughter Natasha, who is a troubled and precocious child enamored by a Korean K-pop boy band, live in the main house. Each of the visitors lives in a very small bungalow surrounding the main house. They eat dinner together, take walks, have lots of sex, drink copious amounts of alcohol, share their emotional torments, and seem to thrive on troubled interactions. They resurrect old wounds, recall their younger days, and analyze what is most important to them in life. They love one another. They betray one another. The virus may be raging out of control somewhere out there, but on this country estate, temperaments and emotions are also raging out of control.

Organized as a play in four acts, but written as a novel, this is a philosophical and almost scholarly book with numerous references to classic Russian literature, especially Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" on which the novel is very loosely based.

The writing is sharp and witty, and sometimes quite funny, but too much of it drags on—especially the fever dream of an ending—for me to call it an enjoyable read.

This is a brilliant novel written in fierce prose that sings like lyrical poetry. It is heartbreaking, shattering, and overwhelming.

Written by Fatimah Ashgar, this is the story of three Pakistani-American sisters, who are orphaned at a young age after their father is murdered and are sent to live with their only living relative, an uncle in New Jersey they have never before met. Divorced from his White wife who is living in a big suburban house with their three sons, the uncle only agrees to take the girls—Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar—for two reasons: Money and religion. He will not only get monthly government checks for their support, but also their father's money. In addition, Muslims believe that taking care of orphans is a straight ticket to paradise. While his sons attend private school, the orphan girls are mired in poverty. Clearly, the money isn't going to support them.

Noreen, who is mature beyond her years, is pretty and smart. Aisha is confident but also angry and hostile. Kausar is the baby, who is devoted to her sisters but also filled with an anger that is so hot she describes it as a scorpion stinger. Kausar is questioning her gender identity, adding a new layer of confusion and angst to an already confused and angst-filled life.

The story is told in the first person by Kausar, who is only five when her father is killed. (Kausar is 27 when the book ends.) She has no memory of her mother. She carries her abiding grief throughout her life, as it touches everything she does. The uncle houses the girls in a shoddy, filthy apartment and pretty much leaves them alone. They have no supervision and regularly run out of food and money. Except for school, they are told to stay inside. The sisters take care of each other, surviving—even while arguing, as sisters do—as best they can.

This is a story about the meaning of family and the heartbreaking quest for mother love. It is about the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, of love and arguments, of staying together and leaving each other, of surviving neglect.

It is a thoughtful but emotionally devastating and inherently sad novel.

This is a literary mystery—a true-crime whodunit with a brain—that is a gripping, masterful novel written by the award-winning author Rebecca Makkai.

It's 2018. Bodie Kane is 40, a film scholar, adjunct film professor at UCLA, and the co-host of a successful podcast on women in film titled Starlet Fever, when the Granby School, her New Hampshire prep school, invites her to teach two two-week classes in January—one on podcasting and the other on film studies. Leaving her two children with her soon-to-be ex-husband, she flies east from Los Angeles and returns to a place where she was once unhappy, conflicted, and an outcast.

Being on campus on these dark winter days dredges up the horrific memories of the murder on March 3, 1995 of student Thalia Keith in their senior year. Hours after the school production of "Camelot," Thalia was found floating in the pool with severe head injuries inconsistent with drowning. Bodie roomed with Thalia as a junior but was never close friends with the popular girl. Thalia's murder was blamed on 25-year-old Black athletic trainer Omar Evans, but Bodie is convinced the wrong man is in prison, serving a life term for something he didn't do. When one of the students in her seminar decides to do a podcast on Thalia's murder, Bodie is intrigued and assists in the background. What they discover is chilling, but too much of it is circumstantial. Still, is the real murderer walking free all these years later?

The form of the book is clever. It is written in the first person from Bodie's point of view but penned as a kind of letter to the man Bodie suspects to be the real murderer, whom she addresses throughout the novel as "you." That person is Denny Bloch, a favorite music teacher and the drama coach, whom Bodie believes was having an affair with Thalia—an affair that went drastically wrong and had the power to upend Bloch's marriage and career. Is Bodie right? What kind of nefarious coverup is still going on years later? Who else is being protected? And what does Bodie know about that tragic spring that she may not have told anyone else?

In addition to being a complex murder mystery that simmers with tension, this is a coming-of-age story as Bodie and her Granby classmates as adults recall those formative years. This is a story about memory—the good ones that make us happy and the dark ones we have relegated to a deep part of the past. It's also a story about the abuse so many women suffer at the hands of men who supposedly love them, making this a inspired entry in the literary #MeToo genre.

This novel excels on so many levels: an extraordinary multilayered plot, believable characters that pop off the page, and masterful writing.

Best of all, it's a page-turner, as any good murder mystery should be.

This book is fantasy—a completely made-up world where the main character possesses extraordinary magical abilities and lives to be 247 years old. And while fantasy is my least favorite genre, I am enamored of Salman Rushdie. After all, any author who has a fatwa placed on his head because of his books deserves to be read. And so I read Salman Rushdie, although this book, like most of his, is difficult.

This is more than a fantastical tale. It is a fable, a fairy tale, an allegory, a myth, a parable, and (most of all) a formidable warning against religious fanaticism. It's a lot of things. (Of course, it is. It's Salman Rushdie.) Suspend your sense of reality and get ready for a literary roller coaster ride.

It's early in the 14th century in India. Pampa Kampana is nine years old when her beloved mother followed the other women of their village into a massive, flaming pyre and burned herself to death. Bowled over in grief and totally alone in the world, the goddess Pampa spoke out of Pampa Kampana's mouth giving her magical gifts and the ability to age and never look old. She prophesized that Pampa Kampana would spend her (very long) life ensuring that this kind of mass suicide never happened again. After spending the next nine years in semi-seclusion with a religious fanatic who repeatedly raped her, she emerges when two brothers, Hukka and Bukka Sangama, find them. They are carrying bags of bean and okra seeds, and in Pampa Kampana's hands they become enchanted seeds that she uses to create a new city—Victory City or Bisnaga, as it is known. The rest of the novel is the story of this city, created from seeds with people Pampa Kampana also conjured up, whispering their memories and stories into their ears. She chooses Bisnaga's king, and she creates a life for herself where she freely loves and has sex with two men. This is a city where women are equal to men, no one religion is paramount, and the rulers are fair. Until it's not, and it all comes tumbling down.

Pampa Kampana may be magically powerful and nearly immortal, but her tragedy is that she will be left alive when everyone and everything she loves is gone. Ultimately, her fate is horrifying (as in gruesome and grisly). What began as an idyllic land conjured by magic ends in the kind of brutality only humans can visit on one another.

Highly imaginative with colorful characters and a convoluted, ever-changing plot that defies description, this is a remarkable and majestic novel about the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries with a powerful message for the 21st century.

Before I read this book for my book club, I was skeptical. The only other novel I have read by JoJo Moyes is "Me Before You" (also for my book club), and it was a sappy love story. This one is more historical fiction than love story, featuring engaging characters and a compelling plot.

Taking place deep in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression, this is a story of redemption and new beginnings, a story of justice and hope, a story of love and passion. Alice is a young British woman who has never fit into the upper crust society, much to her parents' chagrin. When wealthy American Bennett Van Cleve and his father, Geoffrey, visit Surrey, England and meet Alice, both men know she will be the perfect wife for Bennett. Alice assumes she'll be living in a city and is disappointed when she finds out they are living in the mountains. The Van Cleves own the local coal mine, and the elder Mr. Van Cleve rules the mine, his workers, and his home with an iron fist. Alice is bored with nothing to do, no friends, and a husband who is cold in bed. Against the Van Cleves' wishes, she joins the fledgling packhorse librarians, which is based on the true WPA Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky that was instituted by then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and begins riding all over mountain and dale delivering books to isolated Kentucky residents. But not everyone is happy with the five women librarians as they are becoming a bit too independent. Alice and her fellow librarians have a series of adventures, but things pick up when something truly shocking happens to Margery O'Hare, the lead librarian. From then on, this book is unputdownable even if this last part of the story is rather predictable.

The colorful characters and the bold seasonal changes of this mountainous setting are so vividly described that I felt as if I had been plopped down into the fictional town of Baileyville, Kentucky. More than anything, this novel is about the power of books, the power of reading, and the power of women's friendships—all of which can change lives.

I was captivated by this book!

I started first grade in 1960. Even at that young age, I was told that when I grew up, I could only be a teacher, secretary, or a nurse, but most of all I should be a wife and mother. And then, quite suddenly about 10 years later, everything changed. While I wasn't part of the catalyst that made it happen, I was a thankful beneficiary.

This brilliant, highly readable, and entertaining book by Gail Collins, the first-ever female editor at The New York Times, traces the women's movement from 1960 to today in broad strokes and anecdotes. All the history and public drama are here, as well as dozens of poignant and powerful personal stories of everyday women who lived it. (And bonus! The epilogue at the end updates what happened to many of these women who are profiled in the book.)

Just to set the stage: It's 1960. The smart women who are graduating from the elite Barnard College in New York City, attend a pre-graduation party hosted by the college. At the party, the women who are engaged receive a corsage to wear. Those who are not engaged receive lemons to carry. About two-thirds of the graduating class receive corsages.

Even for those of us who lived through that time and remember things well, there is a lot of surprising information in this book—information that goes beyond the gender-based job ads that easily let employers discriminate or the fact that women were almost always paid significantly less than men who were doing the same work.

Among many other things, find out:
• The shocking laws that were on the books, including some that gave husbands control not only of wives' property, but also their earnings, as well as laws that prohibited women from serving on juries.

• How one senator's decision to play games with the 1964 Civil Rights Act had the unintended consequence of ending job discrimination for women.

• How the birth control pill was more influential in women going to medical school and law school than almost anything else.

• The dramatic effect the women's movement had on clothing. Just reading what women had to wear in the 1960s made me feel uncomfortable and itchy.

• The extraordinary impact of Title IV, especially allowing girls to play more sports in high school and college. Of everything in this book, this is the chapter I most recommend mothers have their daughters read—just so they can understand how much things have changed.

• The real reasons the Equal Rights Amendment failed, including the outsized role Phyllis Schlafly played.

• The horrifying impact on women who were involved in several headline-making sexual harassment cases in the 1990s, including Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas, the Navy's Tailhook scandal, and the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair.

• What happened when women were deployed for the first time in combat in the first Gulf War in 1991.

• How dating has changed, especially the "hook-up" culture that has exploded in popularity.

• The different standards for college admissions for men and women and the disturbing reason why.

Cultural and societal changes tend to happen slowly. The women's movement happened fast. Very, very fast. In a matter of just 10 to 15 years, little first grade girls who thought they could only be certain things when they grew up had everything opened to them if they worked hard and had the courage to try—just like men.

This is a novel. It says so on the cover. But it's not exactly that. It's a memoir. Sort of. The reason it's only "sort of" a memoir is that author Elizabeth McCracken uses a lot of words in this short "novel" decrying how this is not a memoir.

Well, whatever it is, it's an interesting—that is strange, odd, curious, mildly fascinating—book.

This is the story of McCracken's mother, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy at birth but never let the pain or discomfort, never mind the canes and scooters and frequent falls, get in her way or slow her down. She married, had two children, earned a doctorate, and had a stellar career at Boston University at a time when married women with children typically didn't work outside the home.

She is the hero of this book.

The novel/memoir begins after her mother's death and is grounded in a trip to London the unnamed narrator (that we can safely assume is Elizabeth McCracken) takes by herself in August 2019. She remembers the things she and her mother did just a few years earlier when they took a similar trip to London together. With every stop along the way—from the bells of St. Paul's Cathedral to the London black cab taxis to an avant garde production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"—memories of her mother's long life intrude, many good and some troublesome.

And while the narrator insists repeatedly that this isn't a memoir and it's all fiction (including the unusual and creative dedication at the beginning of the book), it is near the end that the narrator names her mother for the first time—first, middle, and last name. And that left me wondering how true the story was. I Googled the name. It's a memoir. Mostly. Except when it's a novel.

This is not a riveting read. While it's slow-going in parts, it is a heartrending tribute to a mother who was dearly loved and for whom the author deeply grieves.

If you're an Elizabeth McCracken fan, do read it. If not, and especially if you have not yet read any of her novels or short stories, skip it for now.

This is a work of biographical fiction that almost qualifies as a horror story. Using fact and poetic license--after all, it is a novel--author Andromeda Romano-Lax profiles the life of Rosalie Raynor Watson, the wife of Dr. John B. Watson, who developed in the 1920s the controversial psychological theory of behaviorism. Specifically, Watson advocated that parents should put their newborns on a rigid feeding and sleeping schedule, ignore their cries, hold them as little as possible and never kiss or cuddle them. To arrive at this theory, he and Rosalie, his laboratory assistant at Johns Hopkins University, conducted cruel psychological and physical experiments on newborns, most of whom were orphans. (This is where it turned into a horror story for me.)

John, who was married and had two children, had a torrid affair with Rosalie. The affair was quickly exposed and even publicized in the mainstream press, which ruined John's academic career at Johns Hopkins and mortified Rosalie's family. Eventually, John was able to divorce his first wife and marry Rosalie, although he continued having multiple lovers on the side. The couple moved to New York City to begin life anew, but the gossip followed them there, too. Rosalie, a 1920 graduate of Vassar, was frustrated most of her life, unable to have a career in science as she had always dreamed and unhappy as a mother of two boys.

This is a fascinating, well-written story not only of life in the roaring '20s among the rich and educated, but also the incredible power parents have over their children's psychological development. Read it!

Condoleezza Rice has written a well-deserved love letter to her parents, John and Angelena Rice, who raised the future U.S. Secretary of State under horrific circumstances: 1950s and '60s segregated Birmingham, Alabama. I am in awe of her parents and grandparents who did so much with so little, especially in a time of such violence, hatred and fear when the bonds of segregation were first broken. This is a story of sacrifice and love on their part and prodigious accomplishment on her part--academically and musically. And while the subject matter is fascinating, I found the writing to be less than riveting and often boring.

I want to give this book 10 stars. Five is not enough. What happens when a grumpy old man who is intent on killing himself when he believes his life no longer has meaning meets a group of characters who thwarts his every suicidal move--unintentionally, of course? What happens is hilarious. And heart-warming. And poignant. What happens is love. And the power of community.

Ove is 58 and finished with living. And then new neighbors move in--a very unlikely bunch that moves into Ove's heart, too. Yes, it's a feel-good story, but what could be syrupy sentimentality is muted by the quirky, snarky humor and the result is you will laugh out loud more than once. I promise.

This is a 10-star book. Read it. Now. And be prepared to laugh and cry and go buy a Saab. (You'll get that last one when you read the book.)

This story effortlessly and fluidly jumps from the present to the past and back again, as well as from San Francisco to China and back again as accomplished author Amy Tan tells the tale of three generations of Chinese women: Precious Auntie, LuLing and Ruth.

LuLing, who is well into her 80s, is showing signs of Alzheimer's disease, and while Ruth takes care of her mother--and relives much of her own hurtful childhood--she finds extensive writings her mother has done. It's a memoir of her mother's life growing up in China.

This book is filled with secrets, mysteries, superstitions and curses that one by one are resolved or put to rest. But it is also a story about the power of family, tradition and love that stretches between generations.

No wonder this won the Pulitzer Prize! This is (officially) a short story collection. It's also a novel. So maybe it's a hybrid between the two. The 13 short stories in this book cover a period of about 30 years and take place primarily in and around Crosby, Maine, a small coastal town where everyone knows everyone else. Olive Kitteridge, who is a junior high school math teacher, is the main character in several of the stories and has a supporting role, minor appearance or cameo in all the other stories.

Each story tells the tale of a different Crosby resident, but each story is interrelated to the others. No story stands alone, which is what makes this feel like a novel. An unexplained question or mystery in one story is resolved in another.

This is a book about the human condition: joy and sorrow, commitment and betrayal, honor and revenge, love and sex, life and death. I found the book captivating and gripping, albeit a bit sad and at times heartrending.