History comes vitally alive when it's told not with facts and dates and lists but rather through the drama of the people who lived it. And author Hilary Mantel does a magnificent job of bringing to life Thomas Cromwell, a man long cast as a cunning Machiavellian villain but in Mantel's deft storytelling, he is something else entirely: a man of honor, respect, ambition, brilliance, and great loyalty. (Okay, in fairness he was a cunning Machiavellian villain—but with a heart.)

Cromwell was a close aide and attorney to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. After this holy man was disgraced and discarded by King Henry VIII, Cromwell found a place in that volatile and dangerous Tudor court, winning Henry's respect and friendship when he cleared a legal and religious path for Henry to do what was heretofore unthinkable: divorce his wife of 20 years, Katherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn.

Through a combination of extraordinary research and old-fashioned storytelling, Mantel has cast Cromwell in a way that gives him flesh and blood, a soul and a heart.

This multilayered book, the first in a three-part series on Cromwell's life, is rich in historical detail with big and bold characters. It is imaginatively written in a style that is uniquely Mantel, although admittedly that style can be quite confusing at times. (The word "he" almost always—but not every instance—refers to Cromwell, even when logic says it should be someone else. I got used to it.)

Just beware! There are quite a few detailed descriptions of the brutal and violent practices of torture and execution that were common during this time. Parts of this book you definitely do not want to read just before going to sleep.

If you grew up in the 1960s, graduating from high school in the early 1970s, this coming-of-age story is likely to resonate with you. While the novel recounts a girl's passage into adulthood during a somewhat turbulent time, it also pays homage to the power of Mother Nature, and in both cases reminds us how little control we really have over our lives—no matter how much we think we do.

Beautifully written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen, this is the story of Mimi Miller, the third child and only girl in a Pennsylvania farm family. Mimi is smart and plays by the rules. The farm, which has been in the Miller family for generations, is located at the bottom of Miller's Valley, an area that is prone to severe flooding. The government wants to buy out the families and flood the valley to create a recreational lake, but Mimi's father and others refuse to budge. Meanwhile, one of Mimi's brothers enlists in the Army and is sent to Vietnam. Although he survives the war, his return home is filled with trouble, conflict, and heartbreak. Through it all, Mimi navigates her way through junior high and high school and college—best friends, boyfriends, sex, summer jobs, and farm work—eventually discovering a startling, long-guarded family secret while at the same time finally figuring out who she is and what she wants to be.

The book, which focuses on the meaning, memories, joys, and sorrows of home, is highly readable with a realistic plot and genuine characters. That said, the end is very disappointing in that many years of Mimi's life are glossed over quite quickly—almost as if the author were told she had one day to finish the book when she needed much longer. It could have been better.

This book grabbed my heart on page one and never let go. Exquisitely written by Laurie Frankel with aplomb, humor, and a rare insightful emotional intelligence, this is a book about a subject that is so difficult—and to some so disgusting—it's easier to ignore it or, worse, ridicule it.

Rosie and Penn—she's an emergency room physician and he's a would-be novelist and stay-at-home dad—have five children. All boys. Loud, messy, smelly, chaotic, lovable boys. The youngest is Claude, who is precocious and adorable. And when Claude grows up, he says he wants to be a girl. By the time he gets to kindergarten, he is wearing dresses. He soon changes his name and to all outward appearances becomes a girl. This is a secret the family holds close. But secrets are hard to keep, and when this one is revealed, the love of this family is fully tested.

This is a book about how to parent, how to love, and how to let your child be whom he wants to be—even if it breaks your heart.

Multiple research studies have shown that reading novels makes you more empathetic. This book should be Exhibit A for that theory. Most of us have no experience (our own or that of our friends) of a little child desperately wanting to be a different gender. But it happens. And this book will gently bring you into that world so when you finish the last sentence, you will have a new understanding…a new compassion…a new empathy. You will be a better human being for it. That is the power of reading.

More than anything, this is just a really, really good book. You will not want to stop reading, but also you won't want it to end. There is so much wisdom and insight that it will take your breath away, so much wit that you will laugh out loud, and so much heartbreak that you will cry real tears. This is almost a perfect book.

History DOES repeat itself. I read this book about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and the similarities are chilling—especially the many elected officials who first mocked it and later denied it, not only radically increasing the number of cases and deaths, but also posing a public health threat to the overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted health care workers.

Expertly written by John M. Barry, this is what I think of as a real history book. There are facts and figures and more facts and figures that are interrupted with stories of people, mostly the incredibly dedicated and hardworking scientists who were trying to understand this mysterious new disease and stop it with a vaccine, all while the bloviating public officials were busy denying it and putting the public at even greater risk.

As with all good historical accounts, this one begins at the beginning. In this case, the beginning is a lengthy account of the state of medicine and medical education starting around the time of the American Civil War—long before ever mentioning the first instance of flu. While parts of it are absolutely riveting, other parts are a bit longwinded and borderline tedious. Still, every bit of it is important and must be part of this story if the full history is to be told properly.

Find out:
• Why it was popularly called the "Spanish flu," even though it seems to have started in Haskell, Kansas.
• President Woodrow Wilson's absolutely shocking response to the virus as millions died worldwide.
• The best and most understandable description of antibodies and how they function in the human body that you will ever read.
• Why newspapers were not permitted to honestly report what was happening.
• The mind-boggling reason why young adults were far more likely to die from this influenza than the elderly.
• A detailed and quite comprehensible medical explanation of the flu's symptoms and the devastating effect they had on the human body.

Prodigiously researched and intelligently written for the common reader, this is a vitally important and at times utterly fascinating examination of a terrifying time in our history that has very real ramifications for today and our Covid-19 pandemic.

You will never again watch Trevor Noah tell a joke or go on a political tirade without asking yourself this question: How did he do it? How did he grow up to become a functioning human being? Even with the fierce, protective love his mother, Noah lived a precarious and dangerous life in South Africa where he truly was born a crime. His father is white. His mother is black. When he was born, it was against the law—punishable by five years in prison—for the races to mix. And he was the living proof of their crime.

Trevor Noah is a funny man. And while parts of this book are funny as you would expect, most of it alternates between shock and incredulity and sheer tragedy. Apartheid officially ended when Noah was six years old, but that didn't mean his life got any easier. As a mixed-race child he never fit in. As a toddler in the 1980s, he could not be seen walking with his black mother, so he was hidden inside and even forbidden to play with anyone other than his cousins.

He does know how to spin a tale! From attending three different churches on Sundays to all the bad things he did as a boy to the fun and normal escapades of a teenager, some of which were borderline criminal, as well as surviving an abusive, alcoholic stepfather, the book contains story after story about his life in South Africa—a life that is so unlike anything in my frame of reference that I found it absolutely riveting.

His meteoric rise to success as a comedian — and what are the chances of THAT for anyone?? — is probably the least unbelievable part of his astonishing life. And, truly, it all comes back to one person: His mother. Mother-love is powerful. Mother-love can overcome so many wrongs and so many hurts. Mother-love is like an angel's wings. And Trevor Noah has that kind of mother.

This is a book that shocked me, but it also made me laugh — and it gave me hope. I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.

This novel, written long before "Covid-19" or "coronavirus" were in our everyday lexicon, has an eerie ring of verisimilitude. So if the daily headlines aren't scary enough for you, grab this book—but don't plan on getting anything else done for a while because you won't be able to stop reading it.

In this stunning and intelligent thriller by Chris Bohjalian, it's a race against time pitting the initially clueless good guys against the evil, moneygrubbing bad guys to prevent a pandemic of an antibiotic-resistant plague from spreading around the world.

A plot summary is impossible to give without significant spoilers. Suffice it to say that Alexis, an emergency room physician at a busy New York City hospital, and Austin, who works in the hospital's development department, are dating. Austin, an avid bicyclist, wants to return to Vietnam for another bike tour so he can pay his respects to the sites where his uncle died and his father was wounded in that unpopular war 50 years ago. On the second-to-last day of their trip, Austin vanishes. And then the real story takes off like a rocket. Hold onto your reading chair! This is going to be an exhilarating ride.

Bohjalian has mastered the thriller genre with aplomb and creativity. The characters are realistic — good in the right ways so we readers like them and flawed just enough to make them human — and the plot is absolutely riveting and spine-tingling right to the very end. Anything can happen, and sometimes I didn't see it coming, which makes it even better.

What a book!

This is a heartbreaking book. And while I believe this may very well be great literature, it is not a book one should read lightly. It is absolutely devastating.

Written by the inimitable Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the lyrical, sometimes gritty prose will take you on a Nigerian journey of family, misguided love, violent secrets, and the psychological breakdown of two children.

Eugene Achike is a very wealthy and generous man, who is powerful because of his money. He and his wife, Beatrice, and their two teenaged children Jaja, 17, and Kambili, 15, live in a gated mansion with servants, plenty of food, and luxuries most Nigerians will never see. But this is not a happy home. Eugene, a fanatic Catholic who singlehandedly financially supports the local church, cruelly rules his wife and children with an iron fist. He doles out discipline, which typically involves unspeakable violence, for the slightest infractions. For 10 days, Jaja and Kambili are permitted to visit with their aunty and cousins, who live in small flat in a university town where everything from fuel to chicken is carefully rationed but where love, laughter, and singing abound. After their father makes a startling discovery about their short visit, Jaja and Kambili must return home immediately, and the terror and defiance that ensues tests Kambili's very heart and soul. The denouement is stark, chilling, and absolutely perfect.

Functioning stylistically as a shadow to the narrative of the Achike family is the secondary story of a government in chaos with political unrest, daring defiance, and violent disturbances.

Told in Kambili's first person, elegiac voice with utter candor, this remarkable coming-of-age story will alternately inspire in readers rage and sympathy, anger and compassion. It is an unforgettable and emotional tale of the power of the human psyche in that liminal space between love and hate.

Bonus: The vivid and colorful descriptions of Nigeria—from earthworms crawling in a sparkling white tub to the intense heat before a drenching rain—are so realistic that you will feel transported to the heart of Africa.

This book is the literary equivalent of a bottle of Champagne. It opens with a pop, and while it's fizzy and bubbly and fun, there ultimately isn't much substance to it. Still, it's pretty amazing!

Written by Jay McInerney in his witty and intelligent style, this is the second of three books in the "Brightness Falls" series. The golden couple Russell and Corrine Calloway are living the good life in the heart of New York City in a converted loft with their six-year-old twins. It's Monday, September 10, 2001. Corrine is running late for their big dinner party. She arrives home minutes before the guests, surprised to find her sister Hilary, whom Corrine thought was at her home in California, lying on their couch, while Russell plays chef in the kitchen. And then the world changes so drastically that it's hard to remember what it was like before. Corrine meets a man walking out of the dust and ash of the World Trade Center, and they meet again volunteering at a Ground Zero soup kitchen. The troubles in the Calloway marriage rise to the surface as Corrine and Russell deal quite differently with the emotions and anguish of the 9/11 tragedy.

This is a story of enduring love and love lost, of an enduring life and life lost. But it's also a story of the aftermath of 9/11 and the supercharged emotions and anguish that roiled New York City for so long. While what happened on that fateful day in 2001 is always treated with respect, the story that surrounds it is a sex-fueled tale of rich New Yorkers with too much of everything. And it truly is the quintessential "New York" story with lots of inside jokes, tidbits, and trivia, which, as a non-New Yorker, I often felt left me on the outside looking in.

But even so, I greatly admire Jay McInerney. He's a solid writer in the same mold as Tom Wolfe. A good story. A good bottle of Champagne. Enjoy!

Oh, this book is dark. Very, very dark. It is about dying and grief—grief in the myriad ways that the deaths of those we love bruise the human psyche. Adding to the complexity of the story, the death in question is a suicide, which means the "why" will never be answered and that question will forever niggle in the hearts of those left to pick up the pieces.

The story, which takes place primarily in a small town outside Dublin, Ireland, is narrated by 39-year-old Veronica, who has just learned that her beloved brother, Liam, who was a scant 11 months older than she, committed suicide by walking into the sea with stones in his pocket. Veronica and Liam are two of 12 children in a troubled and dysfunctional Irish family—so troubled that at one point in their childhoods, Veronica, Liam, and their younger sister Kitty were sent to live with their grandmother for a year. It was during that time that something horrific happened to Liam, which most likely leads to his subsequent alcoholism and eventual suicide. But that is only the surface of the story. It is Veronica's colorful and often bizarre memories, including many about her grandparents that she freely admits she makes up as a way to comfort herself, as well as her intense grief for Liam's life and death that is the crux of this 2007 Man Booker Award-winning novel by Anne Enright.

This is a story about the indelible ties of family, the heartbreak of death and the forever separation it causes, the healing power as well as the shame and futility of sex, the inherent wounds of old secrets, the ongoing scourge of abuse, and most of all how these all merge together like modeling clay to shape and form us into our very selves.

While the writing is extraordinary with some sentences so lyrical that they demand to be read over again, the story is just so incredibly sad and desolate I found it difficult to keep reading at times.

The essential power of books is both simple and majestic: Knowledge can change lives. That is the power of this short book by Ta-Nehisi Coates that succinctly and poetically recounts America's racial history both nationally and in the author's own life. And it is absolutely riveting.

Written as a very personal letter to his teenage son, we readers are permitted to peer into this private missive and by doing so share in the joys, aspirations, love, anger, and bone-deep fear that one man has for his black son in modern-day America. I felt his joy. I felt his love. I felt his anger. And I, a 66-year-old white woman, definitely felt in a whole new way his bone-deep fear.

And there we have it: The power of books.

This book is spellbinding. Some of the stories Coates tells about his life on the streets of Baltimore, at Howard University, the killing of a close friend by a police officer, and how he felt when his son was born are compelling, vivid and as engrossing as a fine novel.

What troubles me the most is the deeply engrained fear that Coates has endured all his life. Just walking down the street or shopping or doing a simple, everyday activity is spiked with fear. No child should grow up learning that fear is the best (only?) way to survive. This must change. How can I help do that? That is the most important question I am asking myself.

While reading this book has given me a new sense of empathy and understanding, what it has done best is given me a new sense of the questions to ask. Coates encourages his son to do what we all should be doing: to question what we see. And then to question what we see after that. "…because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers," he writes.

This is a book about a specific time and place and horror. This is a book about Colombia at the height of the terror-filled reign of drug lord Pablo Escobar. This is a book about a privileged, affluent little girl, as well as her impoverished teenage maid who is the sole support for her mother and four siblings. This is a book about innocence destroyed and the horror of war when it happens in your own front yard.

Written by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, this is the unlikely coming-of-age story of 7-year-old Chula and 13-year-old Petrona and the intersection of their lives in Bogotá where bombs and guns and kidnappings are plentiful and people can—and are—killed right in front of your eyes. Chula is a sweet, innocent girl whose days are spent with her Barbie dolls, playing with her older sister, Cassandra, doing her schoolwork, and the twists and turns of her vivid imagination. Meanwhile, Petrona, who is herself still a child, comes to work for Chula's family, bearing the financial and emotional burdens of an adult. But Petrona gets mixed up with the guerrillas, and life for both families changes forever.

This is a novel that is based on the life of the author, but at its heart, it is the true story of many Colombians. And it is that truth that makes this book so brilliant. It teaches a slice of history and shows the human toll of living in terror in a way that absolutely resonates.

Profound and moving, this emotionally searing book touched my soul in a ferocious, gritty, and especially tender way.

In the 1930s in the hardscrabble mountains and hollers of eastern Kentucky food was scarce and jobs were backbreaking, but thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, there were books. Think of it as a bookmobile on a mule. Women (and a few men) were hired as librarians, and they delivered and retrieved books via horse, mule, and donkey up and down steep trails and through dark forests.

Written by Kim Michele Richardson, this novel is based on these "book women" with a major plot twist: The lead character, Cussy Mary Carter Frazier, is one of the infamous blue people of Kentucky, supposedly the last of her kind. Her skin is a vivid shade of blue, which gets so blue that it's almost purple when she blushes. While the few blacks in the backwoods town of Troublesome Creek in which the book takes place faced fierce discrimination, the blues were even more hated.

Cussy, or Bluet as she was nicknamed early on in life, becomes a book woman, and her work fills her with tremendous joy. But her widowed father is set on marriage for his daughter — if anyone will have her. And then trouble brews. On her book route she is "hunted" (quite literally) by the local parson, a vulgar and dangerous man, until something happens that puts both Cussy and her father's lives at risk of a public hanging. While the plot left me breathless at times, the real strength of the book is in the stories of Cussy's patrons—the 16-year-old pregnant woman whose husband was shot in the foot for stealing chickens, the school teacher and her endearing students, the moonshiner who resents the time Cussy's books take from his wife and children who should be doing chores, and the handsome newcomer who moved back home to the mountains after helping to build the Hoover Dam.

Deftly written with authenticity, keen insight, and extraordinary descriptions, this is a gripping saga about poverty, prejudice, and the resilience of the human soul. It's also a love song to books and the pleasure, power, and light they bring to even the darkest of places.

Best of all, it's just a really good story. It's one of those hard-to-put-down novels that will keep you up past your bedtime.

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the consciousness-raising sessions that were popularized by feminists in the late 1960s. This brilliantly written book by Ijeoma Oluo is like that—consciousness raising about racism. But it's a lot more than that, and herein lies the wisdom of the book: It's also a manual for constructive behavior change.

White people can—and should—read it on two levels:
• Read it as a way to raise your consciousness about racism and how you, a white person of privilege, have knowingly and unknowingly fostered racism both one-on-one between you and a person of color and systemically in our society. Yes, be prepared to be shocked, surprised, and stunned.

• Read it again in a few months after you have had time to fully digest and contemplate all this book has to say, and then you'll be ready to use it as a manual for behavior change. The questions you would like to ask but are too timid to broach or feel would be too rude to actually say out loud are answered here. What if you talk about race incorrectly? How can you talk about affirmative action? What are microaggressions? What is tone policing? What do you do if someone calls you racist?

Not only is this an excellent primer on how to talk about race constructively and compassionately, but also it's a constructive way to learn and think about racism in a manner you have probably never before considered.

Most of all, this book is practical. This is something you can really use to positively change how you think and act.

Bonus: Take the time to read the acknowledgements at the end of the book. I was moved to tears.

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! What a book! It has it all: a historical thriller that doubles as a love story (actually two love stories), incredible writing, a colorful cast of characters, and a plot that is so compelling you had better order out because you won't want to stop reading to do something as mundane as make dinner for your family.

Written by Beatrix Williams, who I think is THE best living ChickLit writer, this is two seemingly disparate stories that eventually intertwine and then connect.

The first, which takes place in the early 1900s, is about Elfriede, an 18-year-old German beauty who marries a baron and suffers horribly from postpartum depression. She is summarily shipped off to a psychiatric facility in Switzerland to come to her senses. Instead, while there she meets the man who will be the love of her life.

Paralleling this is the story of Lulu, which takes place primarily in the Bahamas at the start of World War II. Lulu, who isn't all she appears to be on the surface, is sent to Nassau to write a monthly gossip column for a New York magazine—a column that is focused on the Duke and Duchess of Wales. Better known as Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson, the couple were essentially banished to the Caribbean after he abdicated the throne, and their friendship with Hitler became not only embarrassing, but also problematic to Great Britain.

While in Nassau, Lulu meets Benedict Thorpe, who is supposedly on the island as a botanist, but is really a spy, and the two fall madly in love at the most inopportune time. Add to this breathtaking plot twists of espionage and murder coupled with bravery, daring, and a kind of courage that borders on fearlessness, and the result is a captivating read.

The multilayered plot is not only juicy, but also intelligent and imaginative. Rich in historical detail, the book ingeniously alternates the two stories with each chapter ending in its own little cliffhanger. Truly, once you start reading it, you won't want to stop. This novel left me spellbound!

Tip: In the first pages of the book, reference is made to the 1890 short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it serves as a thematic anchor to Elfriede's life. I highly recommend reading this very short tale before you read "The Golden Hour."

This is an exceptional book for and about women. It's about the tragedy of rape. It's about the will to survive. It's about what women will do for one another. It's a story that left me shaking and sad, but also feeling heartened and strong.

This is a book that is character driven with only the bare bones of a plot. It's the day after Valentine's Day in 1976. A 14-year-old Mexican-American girl is brutally raped by a white man. She manages to escape her rapist in the middle of nowhere—an arid, dry, and dusty remote area of Odessa, Texas—and finds help on the front porch of a lonely farmhouse. The story cascades from there like dominoes with each chapter telling a tale from the point of view of a different woman or girl—seven characters in all. While the rape and its ugly connotations of class, race, and "boys will be boys" is the centerpiece of the story, it's not the whole story. There is also hope and solace…and maybe even redemption.

Because this extraordinary debut novel by Elizabeth Wetmore is so profoundly compelling, it's hard to stop reading, but because it's also so emotionally raw and gritty it's just as hard to keep reading. This is one of those rare literary novels that is also at its heart a really, really good story.

Bonus: The descriptions of this remote, heat-encrusted area of Texas are so vivid and realistic that I swear I felt the scorching rays of the sun and the itch of chigger bites and even caught a whiff of the odiferous oil in the oil fields as I was reading. The words were so powerful they actually engaged all my senses.

This is an extraordinary novel about love, marriage, family, and faith, and while the title makes it sound like the ultimate ChickLit book, it's not. Written by Eve Harris, this is serious literature that was longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

The plot is pretty much nonexistent. Chani, a 19-year-old Orthodox Jew, lives with her family in an Orthodox Jewish community in a London suburb. Her world is very insular. And it's time—really, past time—for her to marry. When Baruch, a 20-year-old man she has never met and whom her family does not know, shows an interest in her, the matchmaker goes to work. After four dates, they are engaged. This is not only their story, but also the story of Chaim and Rivka, the rabbi and his wife. Married more than two decades, their relationship is hardened and fracturing. Their son commits an abominable sin that will forever stain their family. Can they find redemption and hope again?

It is the stark contrast between the two stories—of falling in love and falling away from love—that makes this book so deep and rich.

Bold and vibrant characters are what make the novel sing. The life of an Orthodox Jew, even in 2008 when the book is set, revolves around daily attendance at synagogue, kosher meals, no touching of the opposite sex unless it's within a family, and a vast array of religious practices that determine everything from fashion to food. When young adults, who truly believe everything they have been taught all their lives, collide with a promiscuous and permissive culture, those beliefs and their strict way of life that are at the core of their being are fully tested. And it this conflict that makes the book so brilliant. While the ending was a real surprise (to me, at least), it was also perfect in its own way.

Bonus: While parts of this book are unspeakably sad, other parts are hilarious—especially Chani and Baruch's wedding night. Both have been so purposefully sheltered their entire lives that neither has any idea about the mechanics of sex or even kissing. It's funny, charming, and endearing.

Tip: Yiddish is liberally sprinkled throughout the text, making the glossary of Yiddish terms at the back of the book essential for all who are not versed in Yiddish. Even this Episcopalian learned enough Yiddish to read the second half of the book without consulting the glossary! And the Yiddish adds so much to the flavor of the book that it's worth the extra time to look up the words. (If you're reading this on a Kindle as I did, do bookmark the glossary.)

This book is not a page-turner. It is not filled with suspense. There is very little literary tension. Instead, there is an undercurrent—one that is so subtle at first that it's barely discernible but eventually grows in power — so much so that when the substance and the meaning of that undercurrent dawn on you, you won't be able to stop reading.

Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson were born on the same day — July 4, 1949 — in the same small hospital in the same small town in New Hampshire. Ruth's mom called them "birthday sisters," but when the Dickersons moved away, the two had little contact. Oh, every once in a while, the families would meet, but it wasn't ever long enough for Ruth and Dana to become friends again, although Ruth did have eyes for Dana's handsome older brother, Ray. Chapter by chapter, the novel alternates between Ruth's story and Dana's story, both of which are told in the first person as adults looking back on their lives. And it seems as if that's all that is going on—two very different women telling their stories with little connection to the other. Just wait…just wait. Aha!

If you're paying attention, it's easy to figure out what's really going on. But here's the thing: Long after most readers have that "aha!" moment, author Joyce Maynard still doesn't confirm it. For me, that was the genius of this novel. And as the reader, you're in on the secret plot long before the characters realize what's going on.

This is a well-written, imaginative story that adeptly captures the meaning of family and the dark danger of well-kept secrets.

Sometimes history really is shaped by a single man. Or, in this case, two men. Two very different men. They both hailed from South Carolina, although they lived in different worlds. But eventually it was because of them that the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools are unconstitutional—and neither of them had anything to do with the 1954 case of Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Written by Richard Gergel, a South Carolina attorney and U.S. District Court judge, this book is an imminently readable slice of history you probably never knew.

What happened first: In February 1946, just three hours after Sgt. Isaac Woodard was discharged from the Army following heroic service in World War II, he was traveling home in uniform on a Greyhound bus to Winnsboro, South Carolina when he had a minor dispute with the driver. The driver kicked him off the bus and into the arms of a Batesburg, South Carolina cop, who proceeded to beat Woodard with his blackjack, blinding him in both eyes. There were many violent acts against Blacks occurring all over the South at that time, but Woodard was unusual in that he lived through it. His case made the national news, thanks to Orson Welles's radio show. Public opinion demanded that the police officer, Lynwood Shull, be tried.

What happened next: President Harry S Truman was appalled by what happened, and his actions—based almost solely on hearing about Isaac Woodard—changed the course of American history by beginning the civil rights movement.

What happened after that: Enter Judge J. Waties Waring, a Charleston blueblood, who was asked to serve as the judge for Shull's trial. Not surprisingly, the all-white jury found Shull not guilty. Quite surprisingly, Judge Waring was deeply affected by Woodard's story, and it dramatically changed his views on race. And then the good judge proceeded to influence equally dramatic changes in the laws of our land. The personal attacks and violence he endured were horrifying, but the support he received from unexpected sources was truly gratifying.

If you ever think that one person cannot make that much of a difference, then read this book to find out how Judge Waring daringly risked everything he held dear in his life to make life better for Black Americans. It's quite a story!

Caution: The description of the beating of Isaac Woodard is quite graphic, as it had to be to fully explain what happened.

What a delightful and richly imaginative book! Author Alice Hoffman has perfected the genre of magical realism, telling tales that are captivating and intelligent with just a sprinkle of magic.

This is the first of a three-book series, and while it's not as strong as other Hoffman novels—the writing feels rushed somehow—it is still wonderful.

The Owens siblings—Franny, Jet, and Vincent—were brought up to think they were normal, but they know better. Birds alight on Franny's hands, Jet can read people's minds, and everyone who sees Vincent falls in love with him. When Franny turns 17, she follows family tradition and traipses from her New York City home to her aunt's old house in Massachusetts. Jet and Vincent accompany her, and the three of them spend a memorable summer with Aunt Isabelle, who helps them realize the obvious: They are witches. In addition to learning spells and potions, they learn about their bloodline, which extends to the Salem witch trials. They also learn about the Owens family curse that dates to 1620: If they fall in love, the object of their desire will fall to great harm. The book is the riveting story of their lives—and loves—and how they live with such a curse hanging over them. What is the remedy for this curse? What is the remedy for being fully human?

The real magic of this novel isn't the hocus-pocus. It's the words of wisdom about life and fate, love and loss, and death and dying. Enchanting storytelling combined with complex characters equals a novel that is a true pleasure to read and is perfect for those cool, bewitching autumn evenings.

Bonus: The three rules of magic espoused in the novel are also ideal rules for living a happy, good life.

This is a short novel that is eloquently written, but it's a very slow, almost abstract read. It is a deeply profound and philosophical book that tackles the big questions, such as the meaning of life, the importance of love and family, the significance of God, the impact of the Christian church in our daily lives, especially through the sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, and the grief we humans suffer.

While parts of it are absolutely mesmerizing, much of it is rambling and sluggish. There are no chapter breaks; instead, it is a single, long narrative.

Translation: This isn't a book for everyone.

It's the 1950s, and the Rev. John Ames is dying. He 76 years old with a wife in her early 40s and a seven-year-old son. John is the minister at the congregational church in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. The book is a letter he is writing to his young son. In addition to stories about his life, he offers life lessons—those things he would have shared with and taught the boy had John lived to see his son become an adult. He also explains to him what John calls his son's "begats"; that is, the family history, which goes back 100 years to John's rather eccentric grandfather, who served as a chaplain for the Union forces in the Civil War.

While this highly original book by Marilynne Robinson feels like a prayer in parts, it is just as much the theological inquiry of a man who spent his life in the Lord's service as he considers and deeply probes what it all means.

This is an intelligent and accomplished literary achievement. Read it because it is a masterpiece, but don't expect a compelling, page-turner of a story.