A brilliant collection of short stories that take you on a walk with survivors. You will become a witness to human nature in motion. The characters of these stories , although only glimpsed for a short period, run the gamut of emotions. Varna looks at the world through a microscope and binoculars at the same time.

Carrot Quinn writes from her experiences growing up in Alaska with a mentally ill mother and an absentee father. Her childhood is marred by hunger, abuse and deprivation that is gut wrenching, but she recalls these events as a kind of flashback while telling the tales of her wanderings across the country by hitch hiking and riding the rails. Her search for love and acceptance are never quite fulfilled, but she comes to find a place in the world where she can exist.

I cannot say this story is uplifting or entertaining, but it is a look into a segment of our society that struggles daily with survival. Children can be amazingly resilient and Carrot manages to survive the neglect and challenges of a totally dysfunctional family.

I enjoyed the format that Stuart Evers used to write this book. He begins with a scene in current time that implies a possible conflict and tension rooted in a past event. The he goes back 60 years to a past generation and begins a story about a young Englishman. The narrative continues with alternating voices and leap frogs years to keep the characters maturing. He often makes allusions to past events to explain a current scene. Pay attention because the plot twists and turns, but it keeps you engaged in a story that is personal, profound and immersed in a bygone event that changed and scarred the main characters.

Tishani Doshi is a very good writer. She provides insight and detail to life in India and the challenges of a bicultural marriage. Her framework for this book is to chronicle, as if in a journal the life and thoughts of Grace from the death of her mother to finding out she has a sister with Down's syndrome to the break up of her marriage and finally to a life not necessarily of contentment, but of resignation to moments of happiness.

This story is filled with nuggets of wisdom, insight and dreary ordinary that makes it read more like an epic poem than a work of fiction.

War can impose strange circumstances on people that can alter the rest of their life. The story of Elise Sontag and her family is riveting. A cascade of small events leads to the arrest of her German father and throws Elise into the role of enabler for her mother and younger brother. The family eventually ends up in an internment camp in Texas where she meets Mariko who is the same age as Elise and in the same class, but is Japanese American. They become friends but again events tear them apart when their families are sent back to their countries of origin.

Susan Meissner does a mesmerizing job of weaving historical events through the fictional life of a teenage girl raised in Iowa who is thrust into the vortex of WW2 . Her struggle with identity bounces around between economics, citizenship, family and job choice. Is she German? Is she smart? Is she pretty? I she independent? Is she creative? You have to read to the end to appreciate who she eventually becomes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book with its twists and turns of plot and character development. It is a wonderful read for a rainy afternoon.

This book, "A Place for Us" is very multi-layered. There is the story of a Muslim Indian family finding their way in the US and American culture. They are an integral part of a closed community that the father helps to maintain customs and traditions. I learned a tremendous amount of insight into Muslim customs and family life, but I also saw how divisive it can be trying to maintain a closed society in the midst of 21st century USA. According to your perspective the first generation born here becomes either a bridge to a different world or an ax dividing families and communities.

Another aspect of this book that is so well written is the family dynamics. How the siblings link together to protect and advance their own causes and wishes. How the father cannot overcome the his own childhood trauma and background. How the mother tries to maintain control of her children so the father can be at ease, but realizes at the end the irreversible damage she has caused.

I loved this book and its characters, especially Amar and his mother, Layla. The author provides so many insightful anecdotes into their relationship that you are holding your breath when the final confrontation occurs. This book would be an excellent book club choice as it wrestles with cultural clashes, family dynamics and individual choices.

The birch family is full of secrets waiting to be unveiled. Every member is backed into a corner where their inner selves are peeled back to reveal hidden secrets and strengths. The contemporary topics and challenges keep you on your toes and asking for more.

I especially enjoyed the evolving relationship between Andrew and Olivia. It is a revelation to Olivia that her father has had a past life that was every bit as passionate, dangerous and interesting as her own experience fighting Haag in Liberia. That 'ah ha' moment when she realizes she has much in common with her father is worth waiting for.

I highly recommend this book as a good beach/pool read for the summer. The interjection of an illegitimate son and a homophobic boyfriend only add to the fun and complications as they all work out new relationships with each other.

I thoroughly enjoyed Rosnay's biography of Daphne Du Maurier, one of my favorite authors when I was younger. I knew nothing about Du Maurier's family of her life story and found this account fascinating, especially her love of houses. This recurring theme provides a look behind the writing style of Du Maurier's most recongnizable novels with their historical settings and detailed, emotional descriptions of the homes where all of the starring characters are located.

It was also quite engaging to read about Du Maurier's passionate, but on again, off again relationships with women and men. Rosnay hints at a bisexual orientation that would have been scandalous in the English caste society, but Du Maurier's ambivalent nature travelled between sophisticated Parisian culture and the Cornwall coast with reluctant sojournes in London. She is pictured as living as self-centered, indulgent life that revolved around her need for freedom in movement, nature and intellectual pursuits. A very good read for a frosty, wintery day.

I have enjoyed the writing style of Ms Leisure, the story line is challenging to follow. This is almost a collection of vignettes. Her descriptive passages of the life and landscapes of Provence are delightful. Her characters are not as dimensional, but seem only motivated by opportunistic sexual encounters.

I thoroughly enjoyed this combo of essays and recipes. The storytelling is intimate, life giving and always returns to the food on the table. Pam and her daughters, Sharon and Maggy, share much more than their love affair with cooking. They also shed light on their family relationships and how the creation of good food connected them to each other and their spouses.

I also love the recipes that are included because the comments read like your mother is standing in the kitchen with you. The "Cheese Drawer Mac and Cheese" has become my newest, favorite version of baked macaroni and cheese.

An easy and comforting read for a winter's afternoon that inspired and gave me numerous smiles at the trials and tribulations of raising two daughters through adulthood and marriage.

All of the women in this book have great expectations for the men in their lives and all are at first disappointed and even devastated by the reality of relationships. Marissa Stapley artfully weaves their lives together then rips them apart only to be darned together again. I loved following the lives of these women and how each one had to discover their own inner strength and beauty before they could have meaningful relationships with the men in their lives.

There are many places in the world where people live behind solid, almost impenetrable walls. We sometimes get a glimpse of a courtyard or inner sanctuary, but rarely can we enter so fully the life that goes on in these sequestered homes. Khaled Khalifa takes us by the hand and leads us into the life of a young Muslim girl living in Syria at a time when most of us had little knowledge of this part of the world.

The coming of age behind the walls of an extended family and behind the veil of Islamic culture is a story worth reading. Although sometimes challenging to follow the hopscotch of time, the text reads more like a journal than a fictional narrative.

The premise for this book - why would a Jew who survived World War II chose to live in Germany - is an entry into the chaos of post-war life. It is also the framework for a poignant love story. The horror of survival in Germany of two Jewish young adults is not whitewashed. At times the deprivation and violence is hard to read, but the author counter balances these passages with wonderful descriptive phrases of an emerging spring and the resurrection of trust and love in Jacob and Sarah. Simple pleasures, like a bag of cherries and hot water, are embraced and savored. But the secrets and suffering of unfulfilled promises are potential obstacles to the future of their life and love together.

I thoroughly enjoyed this well written and satisfying novel of romance, love and restoration seen through the eyes of Jacob and Sarah who scarred by the Holocaust.

The location of New Zealand for "Song of the Spirits" is precipitous. This is a country with a glorious landscape that evokes a primal spirituality is most people who visit there. I was disappointed at the author's decision to not describe the scenery of New Zealand and its Maori culture more fully in an attempt to evoke the spirits.

Instead she concentrated on their human story and their relationships to animals as the doorway into their spirit. The twists and turns in the plot as it follows the two young women and their quest for independence and adulthood is fascinating. There is no condemnation at the recklessness of young love or the abandonment of a child because there is an extended family that wraps itself around these women and 'cleans up their mess'.

It was the story line that kept me engaged through 600 some pages. I think the translation is a bit clumsy in some places and I longed for a mental transportation to New Zealand, a gorgeous country that I have been fortunate to have visited.

This story seesaws between two characters - Nicolle, a beautiful, young mother with a deadly disease and Solomon, a retiring Supreme Court judge - and their extended families. Both characters have a close and long term relationship with a family member and both have a dilemma weighing them down. The resolution of these dilemmas is the fodder for the story line.

Rosenberg's writing is lyrically descriptive, but her dialogue is choppy and punctuated with body language. I enjoyed the story and the book is very readable. There is no surprise at the end, but a satisfying conclusion ties up most of the loose ends. I found the intersection of new life and death with the diverse responses of various family members to be intriguing.

The plot of this novel has a familiar ring to it. Power, politics and privilege are all bought with money and connections. A lone individual, George Becket, is sucked into the vortex of an event because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He continually makes poor or just plain wrong conclusions and is easily manipulated. But he is a likable character without much depth.

This was an enjoyable page turner with a weak and unsatisfying ending. The location of the story and the family that it revolves around are recognizable which leaves the reader with the sense that you know how the book will end long before you come to the last page.