It’s just an old cotton seed bag. But it is truly priceless.

Sometime in the 1850s, Rose, an enslaved woman in Charleston, South Carolina, gave the bag to her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley, on the eve of her being sold away from her family to another South Carolina plantation. It contained a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a braid of Rose’s hair, and all her love. The two never saw each other again. But the story of little Ashley being ripped away from her mother and her mother’s attempt to make sure the child knew she would always be loved by giving her this sack of useful items and whispers of her kisses and hugs, is the premise of this exceptional book.

Written by Harvard historian Tiya Miles, this is an extraordinary testament to Black family love and history. In 1921, Ashley’s granddaughter, Ruth Middleton, who inherited the precious sack, embroidered fewer than five dozen words on it that told not only its history, but also the tragedy of slavery.

Without knowing anything more about the sack or the people who owned it, Miles has written a timeless book for the ages that tells its own chronicle of love, handiwork, and the power of story, all the while putting on full display the cruelty, degradation, and horror of what it meant to be a slave.

Miles quotes Civil War historian Stephen Berry as saying of the sack, "It is the world’s shortest slave narrative, stripped down to its essence, sent back to us through time like a message in a bottle."

Prodigiously researched and magnificently written, this book takes readers down the deep, dark hole of slavery with a special focus on what it meant to be an enslaved woman in South Carolina in the mid-1800s. While very little to almost nothing is recorded about Rose and Ashley, Miles uses the stories of other enslaved women who lived similar lives to illuminate what may have also been true for Rose and Ashley. And what Miles discovers about Ruth brought a smile to my face after all the tears.

A brilliant melding of the scholarly and the personal, this book is a masterpiece. It is impossible not to be deeply affected by it. Quite simply, this is essential reading.

Despite the title, this is a not a light and romantic romp at the beach. This is a serious book about serious subjects—from the horrors of Nazi brutalities to the isolation of the Covid pandemic—but the story had me riveted.

Written by Ali Smith, this is the fourth in her seasonal quartet that officially begins with "Autumn: A Novel," but can be read in any order, since the stories are not related to each other. That said, I would advise—just for the fun of it—reading them during the season for which each is named. The author’s purpose for the four books is daunting: Each book is topical about current news events as they were happening when she was writing. (Novelists don’t do that! Except Ali Smith did. And pulled it off. Somehow.)

The barely-there plot begins in February 2020 just as people around the world are learning about a vicious and highly contagious virus. The story focuses on a handful of people—from a 13-year-old boy who is brilliant but somewhat delinquent to a 104-year-old man whose memories are more real to him than his daily existence. While the core of the story takes place in winter, many of the characters remember a summer that was special to them.

This is how it begins: On the beach in Brighton, Robert, age 13, does something truly mean and dangerous to his older sister, Sacha. Charlotte and Art (characters from "Winter"), who are wandering on the beach in the dead of winter, offer her assistance, accompanying her home. It is there that they meet the children’s mother, Grace, along with Robert (who hilariously falls madly in love with Charlotte), and the five of them—strangers who become like family—go on an unlikely journey together. From this barebones plot the story branches out so we learn the detailed backgrounds—some filled with joy, some with tragedy—of these and other characters. And the tie that binds these disparate people together is…summer.

Each of the four books in the series features a Shakespeare play, a Charles Dickens novel, and a contemporary artist. In "Summer," we have "A Winter’s Tale," "David Copperfield," and Italian filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti. Yes, it’s an intellectual book about summer!

This final book in the seasonal quartet is far less political than "Autumn" (Brexit) and "Spring" (immigrants who are detained illegally) and more focused on the human psyche with characters so vivid, complex, and real that they just pop off the page.

The writing is exquisite, and it was this more than anything else, that kept me turning the pages. This book is a literary delight.

As much as this is the story of a marriage, it is even more a story of a bygone era when men were the ones who went to work, women were housewives, races and ethnicities lived in separate neighborhoods, and Dad’s word—no matter how unfair—ruled. This is a story that will take you back in time to a place that some still call "the good old days" even if they really weren’t.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Connie Schultz, this is the story of Brick and Ellie, high school sweethearts in 1957 who "have" to get married when Ellie gets pregnant before they even graduate. Both come from troubled backgrounds—Brick’s dad physically abuses him, while Ellie’s father abandoned her to her grandparents after his wife died. They find solace in each other. But the pregnancy changes everything when Brick must turn down a basketball scholarship to Kent State University, and Ellie gives up her dreams of nursing school. The novel spans nearly 40 years as Brick and Ellie build a life together that is sorely tested by mistakes big and small, infidelity, heartbreak, and seismic societal changes.

While this book is almost 500 pages long, it’s a fast read. The plot, filled with family secrets and tension, keeps the reader turning those pages. Yes, some of it is quite predictable and sometimes too much like a soap opera, but it’s still a captivating book that brilliantly captures the era.

One of the main "characters" is the setting of the fictional Northeast Ohio town of Erietown. If you’re a baby boomer who grew up in Northeast Ohio during the ‘50s, ‘60s and early ‘70s, you’ll enjoy the shoutouts to such favorites as children’s show hosts Barnaby and Captain Penny, Indians announcer Herb Score, Lawson’s convenience store and its famous French onion dip, Higbee’s department store in downtown Cleveland and its Silver Grille, CKLW radio station, lake effect snow, and Ohio heroes John and Annie Glenn.

This is the story of a bank robber who botches the job and then inadvertently takes eight people hostage, all of whom are viewing an apartment for sale in a small town in Sweden the day before New Year's Eve. It's also the story of the two police officers—a father and a son—who end the hostage siege and then investigate the crime. And there is a lot of bridge symbolism and imagery.

Except that's not it at all.

This is the story of all those people, all those troubled, hurting, anxious people who meet and share their stories and learn so much about themselves, each other, and the point of living together on this planet. THAT is what this book is really about. It should win an award for Most Heartwarming Book of the Year—without being all treacly and sweet. Instead, it's hilarious, so it could also win Funniest Book of the Year—without being filled with stupid jokes. (OK, maybe there are a few of those, but only a few!)

But there definitely are lots of bridge symbols and imagery, which elevates this from a fun novel to literature.

Written by the incredible Fredrik Backman, the story bounces back and forth in time over just a few hours on December 30. It is brilliantly plotted. And I mean that—it's brilliant. How Backman figured out this particular way to tell the story is a sign of his writing genius. It's one of those books that I kept saying to myself, "Just one more chapter…just one more chapter." And since the chapters are relatively short, this is the kind of thing that leads to hours in a reading chair.

Bonus: This book has the BEST ending. And by that I mean not the last sentence, not the last paragraph, not the last page, and not even the last chapter. It takes the last 44 pages for the ending to be fully told.

And if you have ever lost a loved one to suicide, as I have lost two, then this is a book that may just offer you a bit of hope and peace and respite as it did for me.

Read this book when you're feeling sad because it is packed with common sense life advice that will make you feel better. Read this book if you want to laugh because we all need to laugh. And definitely read this book if you want to know how NOT to rob a bank.

Actually, just read this book.

This a historical novel/family epic masquerading as the most creative collection of short stories I have ever read.

The premise: It is the summer of 1775 on the Gold Coast of West Africa. (The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony until its independence in 1957 when it became known as Ghana.) Effia and Esi are half-sisters, but they do not know of each other's existence. Effia catches the eye of James, a white British trader of slaves, who pays her parents a large bride price and takes his teenage bride from her forested village to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean to live in the Cape Coast Castle, the center of operations for his dirty work. Meanwhile, in a nearby village, Effia's half-sister Esi, is captured in a raid by slave traders where she, too, is taken to the castle. But her quarters are in the dungeon until she is thrown on a ship and transported to the United States to be sold into slavery in the South.

This incredibly imaginative book by Yaa Gyasi follows generation by generation the descendants of the privileged Effia, who remain in Africa as royalty but still living in slavery's horrible shadow and its evil ramifications, as well as the descendants of the American slave Esi, who live a life filled with cruelty, hardship, toil, and discrimination. Each chapter is titled with the name of a person, and the narrative in that chapter not only moves the story forward, but also ties up the loose ends in previous chapters. The final two chapters, taking place in the current day, circle back and bring the story to a marvelous close.

The writing is magnificent, drawing in the reader completely. The images Gyasi paints with her words seem so real I could almost reach out and touch them.

This a fierce, unflinching, and absolutely triumphant novel that becomes a personalized history of Africans and African-Americans told in a way that will sear your heart and soul. It's impossible to read this book and not be greatly affected by it.

It could happen! Well, maybe. OK, never. But that doesn't mean this book—a summer ChickLit delight—won't tug at your heartstrings and make you smile. It is an endearing novel about the tragedy of death, the anguish of grief, and the power of love to heal. And it's partly narrated by an octopus.

Written by Shelby Van Pelt, this is the story of Tova Sullivan, a 70-year-old woman whose husband died a few years ago and whose son died under mysterious circumstances some 30 years ago. To keep herself from drowning in grief, Tova takes a job—just to keep busy—cleaning the Sowell Bay, Washington aquarium at night. Tova loves to clean! While she often talks to the aquarium's diverse creatures while she's polishing the glass of their displays, it isn't long before she realizes that Marcellus, the aging, cantankerous giant Pacific octopus, is talking right back to her—well, in his own octopus way. Yes, Marcellus is a most unusual creature.

Meanwhile, we also meet Cameron Cassmore of Modesto, California, a 30-year-old who was abandoned at age 9 by his mother to live with his Aunt Jeanne. Cameron has no idea who is father is, and there is a persistent heartache and resentment for both these losses. One day, Cameron thinks he figures out his dad's identity, and if he's right this could change his life. The man is a millionaire. Cameron sets out to find him.

The two stories meet in a somewhat predictable but quite delightful way. This is a tender, almost magical novel that explores both the perils and wonders of what it truly means to grow up, as well as to grow old.

Bonus: You'll learn a lot of fun facts to know and tell about octopuses.

The best way to describe this unusual novel by Elisabeth Thomas is: Peculiar. It's strange, odd, and weird. It's also creepy and eerie.

This Gothic mystery, thriller, coming-of-age novel is both a page-turner and a slog. How can it be both? The twisted, mysterious, and very dark plot makes it tempting to binge-read the book, but the novel just drags on and on and on.

It takes the first 60 pages to set up the story, so if you're the kind of reader who gives a book 50 pages and then calls it quits if it's not enticing enough, don't bother with this one. Then it takes the next 60 pages for something to really happen. Eventually, it picks up quite a bit, but it can still get bogged down in parts and then crawl to a sloooooow read before picking up again. Where was the publisher's editor in all this?

The twisted, mysterious, and dark plot: Catherine House is an elite college nestled in the woods of a small town in Pennsylvania. Students study there for three years, including the summers. Every student is given a full ride with absolutely no expenses. Sound good? There are also the creepy requirements and rules that all students must obey: The college is walled in by a fence. No one may leave. Students are totally isolated from the outside world—no news, no music, no phone calls. They may not have any contact whatsoever with family or friends until after graduation. They can't even wear their own clothing; the college provides everything they will need from jeans and white T-shirts to shampoo. But this is no convent or monastery. The college encourages students to drink LOTS of wine (all provided free) and to have rampant casual sex and out-of-control parties. An initiation and weekly "sessions" make this very much a cult-like experience. The academic work is rigorous in all disciplines, but this is especially so in the "new materials" concentration, where faculty and students are experimenting with a substance called plasm. This mysterious material can heal physical wounds and psychic disorders. But something nefarious, sinister, and top secret is going on in those labs. The main character is Ines Murillo, a mediocre, lazy student concentrating in art history. After the unexplained death of her roommate and other weird things she notices, Ines tries to crack the mystery of the plasm labs.

With more astute editing to create a more succinct storyline, this novel could have been far better. It's a shame it's not.

This literary novel is so beautifully and powerfully written that the prose sings like poetry, demanding that readers stop and reread not only paragraphs but also entire pages.

Masterfully written by Robert Jones Jr., this is the story of the forbidden love between Samuel and Isaiah, two slaves on the Elizabeth Plantation (but everyone aptly calls it Empty) in Mississippi in the early 1800s. Joined at the soul when they were little boys, the two become best of friends and eventually lovers. They live in the barn, caring for the animals, and together they do more work than any of the other slaves. Everyone is fine with this arrangement until the slave Amos ingratiates himself with the master, Paul Halifax, and asks to preach Christianity to his fellow slaves. Amos then decides that this unholy relationship must be stopped and punished—so he tells the master what's going on in the barn. What happens next is astonishing, tragic, horrifying, and strangely liberating.

That is just a simple description of a complex, multilayered plot told from both the slaves' and enslavers' points of view. It is brilliant, ingenious, and emotionally wrenching. But most of all, this novel is a love story, and it is one that first made my heart sing and then broke it. It's a tribute to the power of love in any time or place--to transform and help us survive the horrors of life—but it is especially poignant here. The body may be enslaved but the heart and soul soar free with love.

One of the most creative aspects of this novel is the chapter titles, all of which are biblical. Sometimes the chapter refers to a character's name, such as Samuel or Isaiah, but other times the chapter title reflects a biblical book, such as Exodus, Song of Songs, or Bel and the Dragon. A solid grounding in the Bible is helpful, but if you don't have that knowledge, Google the biblical name and you can probably make the connections between that chapter's narrative and the corresponding book in the Bible.

This is not an easy read. Emotionally, it's a sucker punch to the heart—over and over and over. But it's so worth that anguish!

When my oldest child was engaged to be married, a dear friend asked me, "Do you know the most important job for the mother of the groom?" I eagerly replied, "Do tell!" She quipped, "Shut up and wear beige." After I stopped laughing, I realized that this is spot-on advice for not only being the mother of the groom, but also being the mother and mother-in-law of grown children male or female. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you are asked and stay in the background.

Even if you are blessed with a good relationship with your grown children and their spouses as I am, there will still be times of conflict. That is the point of this book by Jane Isay: Tips on navigating these relationships now that everyone is an adult and you, the parent, have lost your parental authority. We all must learn and master new roles, and this can be tricky at times. After all, when we experience conflict with our grown-up children, it can be unnerving at best and extremely hurtful at worst. Our advice is not appreciated and can even be resented. So parents must relearn how to parent.

Most of the book's advice is given through real-life examples of parent/grown child relationships, some of which are nearly off the rails but most of which are very solid with just some bumps of conflict. How these various conflicts started, what happened during the conflict, and how the conflict was resolved—or not—is the crux of the book. Some readers may find this quite helpful, especially if they see themselves in one of the examples, but others may not find value in something that doesn't mirror their own situation. Still, there is value in realizing you're not alone, as well as that others have it far worse than you do!

Some of what you will learn in this book is:
• How to foster a peer relationship between the generations with love and understanding. This requires more change and growth on the part of the parents than it does on the grown children.

• How to better communicate with your grown children, especially when they aren't living up to your expectations, hopes, and dreams for them.

• Find out THE most difficult task for parents of adults, but if you can do this and you are almost ensured of relationship success.

• Find out a lot more, including how to deal with divorce, stepfamilies, the challenges of giving/loaning money to grown children, and those emotion-packed holiday get-togethers.

I read this extraordinary book by Italian author Elena Ferrante with a bit of trepidation. Two of my bookish friends whose opinions I greatly value have wildly different views of this novel. One friend loves it so much that this is her go-to book to give as a gift; it is so important to her that she simply must share it with many people. The other friend is vehement in her dislike, going so far as to tell me, "I hated the book!!!" (Yes, with three exclamation points.)

I fall somewhere between the two. The colorful characters just drew me in to their insular working-class world of 1950s Naples, Italy. The streets came alive, I could feel the crowded apartments, and I could always sense the underlying current of anger and violence that filled the hearts of so many of the men. It just seemed so real. And, oh, the writing! It's simply exquisite.

This, the first of a quartet of books about the lifelong friendship between Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, focuses on the girls' childhood and adolescence—that emotionally volatile time when girls make decisions about their grownup lives while wondering all the while how they could be so ugly and stupid and inept. Who would ever love them? Where will they work? Who will they BE? Although the book is narrated by Elena, the real star is Lila. Naturally brilliant, Lila is forced to quit school at age 12 and work in her father's shoe repair shop along with her angry brother, Rino. Her best friend, Elena is allowed to go to the private middle school and high school, and Lila does her best to keep up with Elena by actually teaching herself Latin and Greek on her own. They are smart and bookish in a world that wants them to just be pretty, silly, and marry young. Still, both girls are caught up in the little neighborhood's social scene, learning to dance, meeting boys, and falling in love. Their friendship is truly based on love for each other, but like adolescent girls from time immemorial, they have deep conflicts and complicated lives, which take very different paths by the book's end.

This is a literary novel about a deep and abiding female friendship that relies on characters instead of plot to propel the story. I was captivated by the novel, delighting in the wisdom, wit, and insight of Lila and Elena as they navigate growing up and becoming young women.

This is summer ChickLit with a big ol' helpin' of whining and complaining. Enough already!

Written by Meg Mitchell Moore, this is the story of William and Ginny, sixty-somethings who are happily retired in Burlington, Vermont on the shores of picturesque Lake Champlain and still living in the home in which they raised their three children. Those three now-grown kids each have problems they think are so insurmountable that they rush home to Mom and Dad. But here's the weird part: The kids show up on the doorstep one-by-one, but it takes seemingly forever for each of them to actually reveal to the others why they are there and why they are suffering so.

• Lillian is living in a beautiful home near Boston with husband Tom and their two children Oliva, 3, and Phillip, three months. The home is decorated from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog. Soon after baby Phillip's birth, Tom has a drunken one-night stand with his very young secretary at an out-of-control office party, and of course someone immediately calls Lillian to squeal. In a fit of anger, she flees with the kids, yelling at Tom not to contact her—ever again.
• Stephen, a mediocre freelance editor lives in a tony New York City loft apartment with his MBA-credentialed wife, Jane, who makes the big bucks. Jane is pregnant and very moody, so Stephen decides the best way to cheer her up is to whisk her off to his family's home for a long weekend. This is puzzling because Jane and Ginny are like oil and water. THIS is going to cheer up the moody pregnant wife? But then there is a medical emergency, and Jane is ordered to bedrest in Vermont for 10 weeks.
• Rachel, who just broke up with her live-in boyfriend because he won't marry her, is failing at her job as a casting agent for one reason only: She has given up trying. Meanwhile, she can't afford the rent on her New York City apartment since the boyfriend walked out. Instead of trying to make the job work out, she flees to Vermont in emotional and financial distress.

That's the set-up. Everyone is home in Vermont in a house that isn't big enough for all of them. Chaos ensues. There is much rage and resentment. The problems take a long, long, long time to come to light before they resolve, which only happens because Ginny and William finally have had enough and force the "kids" to act like the adults they are. (But first they blame themselves that their children are so unhappy. Sigh.)

What bothered me the most about the book—in addition to nothing happening except a lot of noise and laundry—was the unrealistic expectations and actions of every character. They are all wrapped up in their own little world and can't see past themselves to reach out and help the ones they love the most. Instead, they just whine and complain. I had little patience for the characters because they were ALL so selfish, spoiled, and entitled. The result? A boring book.

A warning. That is what this book is. A chilling, daunting and, perhaps, prophetic warning. And you don't even have to be a particularly astute reader to see that.

This is the personal life story of one of the most despised and reviled assassins in American history, but instead of being told from the point of view of John Wilkes Booth, it is told from the perspective of three of his siblings. This is a brilliant and compelling historical novel that is firmly grounded in prodigious research and sweetened with an imagined rendering of the Booth family daily lives, thoughts, and conversations.

Written by Karen Joy Fowler and longlisted (as of this writing) for the prestigious 2022 Booker Prize, this is the story of one American family that mirrors the divisions and hatreds that consumed our nation in the mid-1800s. Junius Brutus Booth is a highly revered and hugely popular Shakespearean actor. Even without the benefit of mass media, he is a celebrity. Junius is harboring a big, dark secret, so he moves his wife, Mary Ann, and their children—eventually there are 10 children, although four die in childhood—to what he considers a secret farm in Bel Air, Maryland. Junius is away touring with his theater troupe nine months of the year, leaving the family on their own and often without money. The ninth child in this brood and the obvious favorite of everyone is John Wilkes. He is charming, brave, and daring.

This novel is told through the eyes of three of John's siblings: sisters Rosalie and Asia and brother Edwin. The siblings are so different from each other! Rosalie is a slightly physically deformed spinster, growing more bitter by the years. Asia is beautiful but can be coldhearted and even cruel. At one point in the book, she is described as "all ice and iron." Edwin is the only one in the family who makes money, but he is a raging alcoholic. The family eventually move to Baltimore, and when Junius's deep, dark secret is revealed, it causes a scandal for the entire family. The children grow up, and Edwin and John become actors. Edwin rises to fame and a bit of fortune; John is mediocre. But John has passionate feelings about the South's position in the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln—feelings that horrify his family. These feelings eventually consume him until he assassinates the president during a stage performance at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865.

Interspersed throughout the book are snippets about Lincoln—what he is doing at the same point in time, as well as brief excerpts from his speeches and letters. It's a subtle and tragic reminder of what's to come.

Even though we all know how this story ends, the novel is still a captivating read. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a page-turner—sometimes Fowler gets bogged down in the historical minutiae—but it is original, imaginative, and ingeniously plotted. Because we know John Wilkes Booth only through his siblings' eyes, we see him as a real human being. His sisters and brothers loved and adored him so it's hard for readers not to do the same—except when we remember his evil, murderous deed.

But this is more than history transformed into story. It is also an unnerving and prescient allegory for today's divisive politics that spark hatred, fear, and dissension both within our own families and our communities. And that hatred, fear, and dissension are what lead to tragedies.

This is not only a good book, but also it's a warning.

This book is nonfiction. And that's a good thing because it's too unbelievable to be fiction. But…wow. It's (mostly) true.

Ostensibly, this is about the baffling May 2, 1981 murder of a 21-year-old out-of-control, drunk, drug-addicted, kid with a history of violence named Danny Hansford by millionaire Jim Williams. Was it a cold-blooded shooting of the boy or self-defense? I say the book is "ostensibly" about this because the murder doesn't occur until just before the halfway point of the book. Until then, author John Berendt gives us a character-driven travelogue of upper- and lower-class Savannah, Georgia circa the early 1980s. And what characters they are!

In addition to Danny, whose violent rampages and extensive sexual conquests with both men and women are enough to give Savannah matrons the vapors, we have:
• a voodoo priestess who wears purple glasses, talks to the dead, and puts curses on the living—for a fee;
• a man who hoards a poison potent enough to kill most of Savannah if he ever dumped it in the water supply (which he sometimes threatens to do);
• a black drag queen named Lady Chablis, who reveals secrets of the drag queen trade that readers will likely find humorous or revolting—or both;
• a man who is (legitimately) paid to "walk" a dog that has been dead for 20 years;
• a professional squatter, who doesn't live in downtrodden, abandoned buildings but rather in unoccupied mansions. And he isn't quiet about it. He opens the mansion for tourists who pay admission for a tour and lunch!

But back to the point of the book: the murder of Danny Hansford. Jim Williams, who owned Mercer House, one of the grandest old mansions in the city that he filled with priceless antiques and paintings, was a bachelor in his 50s who made his fortune as an antiques dealer. He was an outsider who successfully climbed the Savannah social ladder. Many admired him for this accomplishment, especially because he hosted the most incredible parties, but others were envious and even outraged. Williams says he hired Danny because he thought he could help him. Danny had a habit of repeatedly getting so incensed over almost anything that he vented his anger by storming through Mercer House destroying random contents. The reality is that he kept Danny around as a sexual partner, a fact that came to light in his first trial and truly shocked those aforementioned Savannah matrons. Williams was eventually tried four times for this one crime, a record in Georgia.

Just so you know, the title of the book refers to something the voodoo priestess told the author: "Dead time lasts for one hour—from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after midnight is for doin' evil."

In many ways this is a love letter to a historic Southern city by a transplanted New Yorker. It is one of those rare nonfiction books that I couldn't put down. It is a bizarre, strange, peculiar, curious, and incredibly compelling to read.

Oh, this book! This is classic Richard Russo: a really good story written with wit, verve, and so many life-truths that I was nodding my head in wonder when I wasn't laughing out loud or reaching for the tissues. There is a reason this gifted writer won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature (for "Empire Falls").

This is the story of a year in the life of 50-something Jack Griffin, bookended by two summer weddings—the first in Cape Cod, Massachusetts where his parents vacationed every summer when Jack was a child and the second on the coast of Maine where his wife's family vacationed when she was a child. Griffin, as he is called throughout the book, is a former Hollywood screenwriter of B-list TV shows and movies who is now teaching screenwriting in a B-list liberal arts college in New England. He is bitter, deeply unhappy, and incessantly questioning his life choices. As he and his wife, Joy, go the Cape Cod wedding of their daughter Laura's best friend, he plans to scatter his father's ashes on the cape. (He's been toting them around in the trunk of his convertible for almost a year.) But the ghost of memories, centering largely on his dysfunctional parents and childhood, echo all around him, dredging up previous hurts that have the unsettling effect of unraveling his marriage of 34 years. The following summer is his daughter's wedding, and it is here that Russo's writing chops are on full display. The scene of the rehearsal dinner where half the guests end up in the emergency room is worth the price of the book alone!

In typical Russo style, the characters own this story far more than the plot. They seem so real, so authentic, and so human that I just couldn't wait to rejoin them each day. This really is an introspective and highly entertaining novel about the meaning of life—what we inherit from our parents, what makes us truly happy, what cuts us to the bone with heartbreak, and how we handle it all to wake up another day and start all over again.

An aside: In 2018, I had the privilege of hearing Richard Russo speak at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., and he mentioned that "That Old Cape Magic" started out as a short story, but when he finished writing it, it was a novel. I'm so happy it turned out that way because this novel is a literary treasure.

A book about a racehorse from the 1850s? Well, that doesn't interest me. But a book by Geraldine Brooks? That I cannot resist. She is one of my favorite authors, and this novel is yet again a reason why.

Quite simply, this is a masterpiece. It's a truly imaginative, multilayered story that is a gripping, can't-put-it-down read.

The book is several stories in one, but the common thread is the true story of Lexington, a powerful, legendary racehorse in the 1850s that transformed the sport. With Lexington as the centerpiece, Brooks has crafted multiple stories, each of which is riveting:
• Lexington, Kentucky, 1850: Jarrett, an enslaved young man in Kentucky, has a special talent for training horses. At a young age, he is given responsibility for Lexington, and the two develop a special bond that is never severed. One night during the Civil War, Jarrett's courage and passion are supremely tested.

• Lexington, Kentucky, 1850: Thomas J. Scott is an itinerant painter specializing in horses. His chapters are written in the first person just as he would have spoken.

• New York City, 1954: Martha Jackson is one of the very few female art dealers. Although she specializes in modern art, she comes across an oil painting of Lexington of mysterious origin.

• Washington, D.C., 2019: The unlikely pair of Jess, an Australian bone specialist with the Smithsonian who finds Lexington's preserved skeleton in a Smithsonian warehouse attic, and Theo, a Nigerian American PhD student in art history at Georgetown University who finds one of Scott's paintings of Lexington discarded in a curbside junk pile, meet and develop both a professional and personal relationship.

But this is more than a horse story. Throughout the book, Brooks deftly deals with racism—from the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery to the piercing and hurtful racial microaggressions that taunt Blacks today. How Jarrett and Theo feel and how they are treated is as important a part of the story as what they do.

The chapters bounce back and forth in time and place, but Brooks, the consummate storyteller, always has it under control so it's never confusing or disjointed. Rich historical detail, complex characters, and writing that is pitch-perfect together make this an extraordinary novel—even for those of us who know nothing about racehorses.

An aside: The dedication made me cry. Truly. So much that I couldn't turn the page right away.

ANOTHER book on Jackie Kennedy? Oh, yes, and it's a must-read! This is a delightful twist on the tale we all know about this beloved former first lady. Here's the twist: The "me" in "Jackie & Me" is Jack Kennedy's best friend Kirk LeMoyne Billings, or Lem as he was known, and the time he spent with Jackie in the year before she was married.

Lem met Jack Kennedy when they were both in prep school at Choate and became best friends. Theirs was an unlikely friendship: Jack was a philandering lady's man and Lem was a closeted gay man. Lem was poor and an Episcopalian. Still, the very Catholic Kennedy family "adopted" Lem; Rose even referred to him as her fifth son. When Jack's father instructed Jack in no uncertain terms that it was time he was married for the good of his political future, Jack settled on Jackie Bouvier. He really couldn't be bothered with all the time and effort in courting Jackie, so he enlisted Lem to befriend his future bride while Jack worked as a congressman, ran for the U.S. Senate, traveled extensively, and all the while sought out other women for his bed. This was an ingenious ploy to keep Jackie occupied and out of the arms of other men until Jack was ready to actually get married.

That's all fact. Now for the novel part.

Author Louis Bayard, who freely admits in the acknowledgements that this is "an exercise in alternative history," has richly imagined this unusual friendship between Lem and Jackie—what they did, what they said, what they meant to each other—and the result is an engrossing, intriguing story that brings a new perspective to the age-old Jackie story. Narrated by Lem as a 64-year-old man looking back on his life, the stories he tells are of the love, sacrifice, and betrayal of two outsiders who were both intimately drawn into the magnetic Kennedy orbit.

This is, after all, Jackie before—Jackie before Jack, Jackie before the White House, Jackie before Caroline and John Jr., Jackie before the tragedy that forever defined her and our country. This is a different Jackie, and one I really enjoyed getting to know.

Bayard is a brilliant storyteller, which makes this almost magical historical novel a real page-turner. Read it!

Sometimes the best books are the books that make you uncomfortable. Make you squirm. Make you rethink what you thought was true. Make you realize that myths are not facts and should never be treated as such. Make you realize the harm of not holding history and historians to the highest level of fact-checking.

This is that book.

Written by Clint Smith, this is a most unusual book about the history of chattel slavery, and I dare anyone to read it and not feel uncomfortable—as in guilty by association. But don't be daunted by that because this really is a unique way to look at the tragedy and horror of slavery in the United States. And note that I did not write "slavery in the Southern United States." That is one of the surprises of this book. Slavery was also alive and well in the North. Did you know that in 1855, the mayor of New York City pushed for the city to become an independent city-state so it could secede from the Union along with the Southern states to protect the city's slaveholding interests? I didn't.

To write this book, Smith became a tourist, visiting sites in the United States and Senegal that commemorate in some way the slave trade, slavery, and its aftermath, including Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, Angola prison in Louisiana, Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, as well as Galveston, Texas, New York City, and Gorée Island off Senegal. He also interviewed historians and experts. He interviewed other tourists like himself. He researched in libraries. He validated some myths, while extinguishing others.

Here are some of the many things readers will learn from this most unusual travelogue:
• Find out the extreme dichotomy between the legends and myths of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder and the reality of how he actually treated his slaves.

• The largest slave market in the United States was in Charleston, South Carolina. No surprise there. But this may shock you: The second largest slave market in the United States was in New York City.

• Find out the little-known relationship between the Statue of Liberty and the abolition of slaves. This was one of its first symbolic meanings, but it didn't stick. Why?

• Learn the history of Juneteenth and how Texas, not known for its liberal propensities, led the rest of the nation in establishing this as a federal holiday.

• Find out how spirits and bodies were first broken in the House of Slaves on Gorée Island off Senegal that has now become a place where people of all colors are forced to confront the history of the transatlantic slave trade.

• Learn how modern-day European economic prosperity is directly related to Africans who were enslaved on plantations in the United States 200 to 300 years ago.

One of the distinguishing features of this book is the nearly poetic descriptions of everything from someone's hair, eye color, or trails of sweat (yes, sweat!) to the sunlight's colorful rays on a building. I was so entranced by this that I did a little research of my own and discovered that author Clint Smith is not only a scholar, but also a published poet. Yeah, that makes sense!

This is a book that broke my heart many times over. It shocked me. It was an emotional sucker punch. And it is a literary masterpiece.

Written by Jesmyn Ward, this is the story of the Batistes, a poor Black family living in a rundown house on rundown land peppered with rundown junk in the rural Mississippi coastal town of Bois Sauvage as Hurricane Katrina looms at sea, taking direct aim on them. And while that hurricane is churning in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an emotional hurricane is churning in the lives of this family.

Each of the 12 chapters covers a single day, leading up to Katrina's landfall on day 11 of the book. The novel is written in the first-person voice of Esch, a 15-year-old girl who thinks she does only two things well: She can run really fast, and she enjoys having sex. And while Esch has allowed several of her older brothers' friends to have sex with her since she was 12, she has fallen in love with Manny, who is 19. Now only he is allowed to touch her. But Manny is cruelly using her, which becomes a real problem since Esch is pregnant with Manny's baby. She has no one to tell and no one to help her. Meanwhile, her older brother Skeetah, who has groomed his pit bull, China, as a prize-winning fighter, is doting on the dog as she has her first litter of puppies. Randall has thoughts only for basketball, while the littlest one, Junior, follows Esch and Randall everywhere. Their mother died in childbirth with Junior, and their father is an alcoholic who is obsessed with the coming hurricane. And then that hurricane blasts its wrath over the vulnerable land.

"Bois Sauvage" is a fictional town, meaning "wild wood" in French. It is indeed wild and almost savage. But the love and care that family and friends offer each other is what tames those wild woods where white neighbors shoot at them and the pit bulls viciously tear each other apart for their owners' financial benefit. It's not an easy life, and the characters grab at happiness wherever they can find it, be in a bottle of booze, sex, basketball, or a dog.

Masterfully written in prose that is so lyrical and expressive it is almost poetic, this novel is destined to become a classic read in English classes a century from now. It is a literary gift. The book has everything: a gripping, wrenching plot, authentic characters, the powerful symbolism of the intensity of mother love juxtaposed with brutal, bloody violence, and imagery so vivid you will feel the oppressive heat, the howling wind, and the sting of red ants. Also, it should win an award for the best similes; some were so beautiful they almost made me weep.

Perhaps the most brilliant part of the novel is how Ward has interwoven the ancient Greek myth of "The Golden Fleece" throughout the story. In this myth, Medea killed her two children by her husband Jason for revenge after he was unfaithful. Esch, who is reading Edith Hamilton's book "Mythology" for her summer assigned reading, identifies with Medea as she slowly accepts the fact of her pregnancy and shakes off the cloak of apathy.

Most of all, this is just a really, really good story about the brutal struggle for survival—one that grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go.

Read it while you can! This is one of the dozens of books the state of Texas wants to ban. The specific reason cited for "Salvage the Bones" is the explicit descriptions of 15-year-old Esch having sex. Meanwhile, those defending the book insist it has important literary value and therefore is not obscene.

This debut novel by Chip Cheek is about seduction and sex, as well as the scandal, sorrow, and reverberating effects of betrayal.

It's late September 1957. Henry, 20, and Effie, 18, who are from the rural and somewhat backwards town of Signal Point, Georgia, have just gotten married and are spending their two-week honeymoon in Effie's uncle's cottage in Cape May, New Jersey. Unbeknownst to them until they arrived, it's the off season. While a few stores and restaurants are open, the place is pretty much deserted. After one boring week, they are ready to hightail it back South when these naïve newlyweds meet sophisticated New Yorkers Clara, Max, and Alma, who live in the house across the street. Gin-soaked, party-hearty evenings follow one after another as the entire town becomes their bacchanal playground and nothing is seemingly off limits. When Effie gets a cold and takes to her bed with a fever and the sniffles, Henry and Alma start what becomes a torrid love affair. Of course, this secret is exposed, and the scandal and betrayal that result are intense and powerful.

While it's a compelling, albeit overplayed, story of passion gone wrong, I found it difficult as a reader to watch Henry destroy through his uncontrolled lust what we were led to think he held so dear: his love for Effie. Henry was a virgin when he married Effie, and it seems unrealistic that in a matter of days after having sex for the first time he is so capable and willing to destroy the marital boundaries he only just vowed to obey.

The characters are quite colorful, and the descriptions of Cape May are delightful. In addition, I do give the author credit for the last chapter. It was nothing like what I was expecting, but it works surprisingly well. Still, the novel relies far too much on the many explicit sex scenes to carry the plot forward and keep the reader engaged, and somehow this just feels cheap. Hence, four stars instead of five.

When we make the effort to see so many things in life—joyful and tragic—through the eyes of a child, our viewpoint shifts. Think of the magic of Christmas or the tragedy of death as a child would see these. That is this book.

Written by Qian Julie Wang, this is the story of her immigration to the United States from China and her experiences as a little girl living with her parents in New York City in the 1990s. Residing on long-expired temporary visas, none of them has legal documentation. In China, her parents were both professors; her father taught English, while her mother taught mathematics. In the United States, they have the lowest level of jobs, none of which are particularly stable and all of which are boring and sometimes dangerous.

Qian is trained from age seven when she first immigrated to never trust anyone other than her parents. She is to avoid—to the point of running in the opposite direction—all police, as well as anyone in authority. Her father, Ba Ba, sternly instructs her to tell anyone who asks that she was born in the United States. After all, it only takes one unguarded moment, and the family will be deported. They live in poverty in New York City's Chinatown, renting just a single room or later two rooms with a kitchen and bathroom they share with multiple families. Qian doesn't have the basics that other children take for granted, including enough food to eat or shoes that fit her properly. "Shopping day" means scavenging on the sidewalks through trash cans. Qian grows up consumed by adult worries as she learns to survive by lying and keeping secrets. But even with this as the foundation of her life, her story isn't all sad because she tells it as she remembers it through the eyes of a child.

From teaching herself English by reading picture books and "The Berenstain Bears" to riding the subway alone to eating at McDonald's for the first time, this is a memoir of both the familiar and unfamiliar, filled with joy and heartache as Qian is denied so much simply because she is a poor undocumented immigrant. As a child, Qian works in a sweatshop literally earning pennies for her efforts, while she goes hungry most of the day. Still, her world is rocked when she discovers the New York Public Library and all the free(!!) books. After Qian adopts a black cat that she names Marilyn (after Marilyn Monroe), her father blames the cat for their bad luck. When Ma Ma becomes seriously ill requiring a long hospitalization and surgery, Qian's small world nearly collapses. The health and financial strains become too much for her parents' marriage, and when Ba Ba does the unthinkable, Ma Ma and Qian leave him for Toronto where they are considered "legal" and enjoy the opportunities that entails.

The book is focused entirely on Qian's childhood from first grade through sixth grade, but at the end, we learn how she made such a success of her life by first earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Swarthmore College and then her law degree from Yale University. She now works as an attorney specializing in education and civil rights impact litigation meaning this book has the happiest of endings.

Beautifully written in a lively narrative style, this profound memoir reads more like a novel. It is a remarkable story about a brave, smart, resilient, and creative child who grew up in the worst possible conditions. This is a book that everyone should read.