A complex who-done-it from start to the final chapter, THE LAST GIRL by Jane Casey includes all the necessities for success: difficult character relationships, a smart plot, vivid imagery and an abundance of food for thought. Unlike most thrillers these days, Casey's THE LAST GIRL is a thinking reader's delight.

A mother's anguished love for a son who has returned from the depths of hell to which fate had seemingly committed him, his sister's pure, nonjudgmental love for him, the first and only knight in her young existence, and the victim's remorseful guilt and an subconscious wish to return to the life of his past three years rather than face the difficulties of re-entering the "family" life of his youth are warmly created in Sheri Joseph's beautifully written WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME. The author's empathy for the family caught in this trying situation is effectively transmitted through words spoken and left unspoken. The reader wiill feel the strength of the mother's emotion and comprehend her need for physical passion in her life as an anecdote for dark thoughts her mind will not dismiss. This contradiction, this desire to make everything picture-perfect drives the plot forward even as the young victim of society's worse type of abuse makes his way through the rich jungle setting of the landscape that echoes his interior landscape as well. Joseph's rich, colorful description of Costa Rica with its beautiful flowers, luscious fruit and incredible animal life juxtaposed against the poverty (both literal and figurative) of the characters creates a plot this reader won't soon forget. Satisfied and richer for having read it...that's how I feel. Book clubs would enjoy the food for thought.

The Civil War comes to life with Kiana Davenport's THE SPY LOVER. The author's graphic telling of a Chinese immigrant who had to escape China to save his life, only to be conscripted from a ship to serve in the Union Army, where he encounters
more hatred and prejudice from the troops and officers with whom he serves, is at times hard to read. But Johnny Tom is on a mission; he is searching for his wife and daughter. Davenport's story is one of love: love for one's fellowman, love for family and love for country. The imagery of the most gruesome settings -- field hospitals reverberating with the hum of saws; corpses littering the battlefields and poppy fields of worn women -- creates a vivid landscape. Johnny Tom's wisdom is what carries the book. Davenport has mastered the art of the novel.

When an old woman returns to the place of her birth, she reminisces about the past, about the delights of childhood and the challenges of living on a peninsula off the northern California Coast. in Christinia Schwarz' novel "THE EDGE OF THE EARTH", an inherited manuscript takes the reader to the 1890's through the eyes of Gertrude Swann, early marine biologist and lighthouse-keeper. When Trudy breaks ties with her family to marry young visionary Oskar, she cannot foresee her future. The difficulties of Mother Nature in the form of cold, wind, rain, ice, relentless waves, isolation and rocky cliffs parallel the challenges of human nature as Trudy and Oskar struggle to find balance in their marriage. The addition of an unexpected family on the premises when they arrive at Santa Lucia and a strange figure at a distance will keep the reader engaged in the well-detailed plot and enchanted by the beautiful imagery.

If the "meek shall inherit the earth," certainly Harold Fry in Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will be among the crowd. In his allegorical five hundred mile foot journey in a pair of yachting shoes to save the cancer-ridden Queenie from the fangs of the Grim Reaper, Harold meets many obstacles, but like a knight on a quest, nothing will deter him from his goal. A college professor once told me that it is not the object of reaching one's goal in life that is of the greatest important, it is that we, like Harold, continue the journey, for it is in the knowledge that we gain that we meet ourselves. The journey is all. Harold's journey is, in a way, a triumph. And then there is Maureen, Harold's wife, who has been literally abandoned and ... who is almost another story.
Joyce's narrative tugs at our heartstrings and forces readers to delve into their own pasts, dragging buried failings of their own out into the light. Harold's epiphany should provide good reading as well as food for thought for all who undergo the journey.

If we could all live in Eloise James' "moment," what a smorgasbord of delightful memories we would have with us to take us to the grave. James has it all: a wonderful and tolerant husband, two bright, articulate children, a pocketbook that allows fine dining, the best shopping, time for museums and the fine arts, and a year in the most romantic city in the world, Paris. Her brief vignettes, are often so touching, that this reader felt as if she had experienced these moments herself. James is a master travel guide, chef, writer, mother and wife. There is much to learn from her memoir and much to enjoy.

Ashley Ream's Clementine in her novel LOSING CLEMENTINE does what every woman wants to do at one time in her life: she eats everything she wants without guilt, dumps her kitchen ware out the window, and, in her despondency over a failed marriage, almost whispers goodbye to life on schedule, in thirty days to be exact in her case.. Her wry sense of dark humor aimed at her own weaknesses offers the reader plenty of food for thought. The novel is not "literature," but it's great reading.