In the early pages of Wayward Saints, I thought the language harsh, the character Mary edgy, and the story dark. I almost put the book aside. I am grateful that I decided to read on. Mary Saint, an angry, defiant teenager, flees from her hometown of Swallow, New York, and from her family. She rises to near fame as an alternative rocker, but then descends into drink, drugs, and depression, deepened by the death of her fellow band member and boyfriend Garbargio. When author Suzzy Roche introduces the second Saint, Mary's mother Jean, the novel gains depth and complexity. Through the musings of this conservative, religious small-town mother, the reader gains insight into a family held in thrall by an abusive man, a town where little compassion or tolerance exists, and a gentle mother's heart that yearns for her daughter's love.

With such heavy themes it may be hard to believe that this is also a funny book. Roche's voice is true to her characters and the dire problems they face -- abuse, astraingment, dementia, and death --but she writes laugh-out-loud prose, as well. When Jean answers a student who asks about Mary's back tranvestite friend Thaddeus with the quip, "Oh, don't worry about him, he's a chocolate tranny." this reader did just that Throughout there are the themes of music, famly, friendship and spirituality, but above all this book is a warm and witty ode to tolerance and empathy.

"Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars (p.143). This quote from Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus captures my reaction to this unusual novel. Coming from a reader who does not list fantasy as a genre of choice, these words of praise may be more compelling. A tender love story, a dark and devious competition, and a stage for myriad actors and characters, this circular novel pulls the reader into its thrall and captures the imagination. As Morganstern slips from the third person point of view into the second throughout the book, so I invite you to don a red scarf, join the line to slip into Le Cirque des Reves, seek out the fortune teller and have her cast the stars to read the future -- one that is never set in stone.

As does the popular musical whose title I borrowed, "The Kitchen Daughter" challenges its audience to question the definition of "normal." Told through the voice of a young woman with Asperger's Syndrome, this book gives the reader insights into the thoughts, feelings, and reactions of Ginny Selvaggio as she struggles with the sudden death of her parents and the persistent demands of her sister Amanda and society at large. Jael McHenry writes with clarity about Ginny's grief, fears, and uncertainties; she writes with passion about the soothing effects of cooking in the family kitchen, following beloved recipes of family members.

While this book is engaging and readable, there are aspects not as convincing or rewarding. The episodes of ghost-conjuring did not inspire a "willing suspension of disbelief" for this reader. Also, the last chapter, really an epilogue, tied up all loose ends without explaining how essential issues were resolved.

Murder, miracles and mysticism are as prevalent in Melanie Sumner's "The Ghost of Milagro Creek" as complex characters, consuming love, and a landscape so compelling that it becomes a character. Although the author tells the story through the many voices of her characters, witness statements, police reports, interviews, letters, and petroglyphs, the voice that speaks most eloquently to this reader is that of Abuela Ignacia, a deceased woman who, like other characters, defies simple definition. "Whatever I was: Spanish or Indian, nurse or nutcase, dead or alive -- I would be remember." And, she will.

Non-linear in its structure and haunting in its release of detail, this book would be an excellent choice for book clubs and for anyone who loves flawed but compassionate characters, subtle symbolism and hidden meanings, and a tale whose open-ended conclusion challenges the imagination of the reader.

In the author's note following "Alice I Have Been," Melanie Benjamin recalls a Chicago exhibit of "Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll." There she saw the photograph of seven-year-old Alice Liddell -- a child scantily clad in gypsy-like rags whose eyes were worldly, wise, and those of a woman. Haunted by that photo and intrigued by the girl/woman who had inspired "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Benjamin thought she had a story. With the added mystery of an abrupt end of a long-term friendship between the Rev. Charles Dodgson (the real name of Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell family in 1863, when he was thirty-one and Alice eleven, she knew she had a story.

Weaving fact and fiction, Benjamin produces the rich tapestry that was Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves' life. Told in the first person by eighty-year-old Alice, the story of her life unfolds -- from the days of childhood wonder in Oxford through courtship with a prince; from marriage and motherhood to war, loss, and grief; from wealth to genteel poverty and deliverance; from resenting being "the Alice" to extolling "Alice I am, Alice I will be. Alice I have been."

Masterfully written, this "Victorian" novel will satisfy not only those who have been charmed by "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" but any reader who enjoys history, mystery, and a journey through life's vagaries with a heroine whose admonition, borrowed from Lewis Carroll, is "May we be happy."

In the hands of a lesser writer the theme of this novel -- a woman who takes into her home an in-denial, dying friend -- could slip into the maudlin, mawkish, or morose. In the capable hands of Helen Garner, it never does. While emotions of fear, frustration, anger and hurt are laid brutally bare, the humor and wit sparkle. Throughout the book I was moved from empathy to anger to laughing out loud.

This is a fine book written by a first-rate author. On a personal note, I lost two long-time friends to cancer this past year. Although I was not the care giver to either, these experiences are, perhaps, another reason that this spare book spoke volumes to my heart.

When Ren, the "good thief" of the title is rescued from the Brothers of St. Anthony orphanage by Benjamin Nab, he has with his scant possessions a stolen copy of The Lives of the Saints and a bit of cloth with the letters R E N embroidered on it. The adventures of this one-handed little orphan and his scam-artist companions make for an enjoyable and engrossing read. What lover of books would not warm to author Hanna Tinti when she pens Ren's response to his second purloined volume, The Deerslayer... "At times he felt like he was reading fragments of his own dreams, reassembled into words that pulled at his heart as if there were a string tied somewhere inside his chest that ran down into the book and attached itself to the characters, drawing him through the pages."

Murphy, in her lyrical language, short chapters, and changing points of view, spins multiple stories and introduces the reader to a fascinating array of characters -- foremost, the complex and complicated Mata Hari. I enjoyed the book and loved the mythical stories Mata Hari told and wrote to her children.