We humans do not know as an absolute scientific fact what happens after death, but we can pretty much surmise that it is one of two things:
1. Nothing. We are dead. Our existence ceases. It is finished. Over. Done. Sweet everlasting dreams.
2. There is an afterlife.

The idea of an afterlife—be it a literal heaven or hell, who goes to which, is it our body and our soul or just our soul that lives on—has a long and storied past, dating back to the Greeks and Romans. Theologian and professor of religious studies Bart D. Ehrman explores this long, somewhat convoluted, sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, sometimes reassuring, sometimes absurd history.

And that is just what this book is: a HISTORY of the various beliefs of the afterlife from the Greeks and Romans to the Jews and the Christians. This is not a theological treatise advocating one belief over another; it is a historical exploration of this very human yearning that our life here on Earth can't be all there is.

Since the point of the book is to examine how views of the afterlife came to be and how they changed over the centuries, it is ideal for both believers and nonbelievers.

In addition to many delightful descriptions of heaven, as well as terrifying ideas of hell (including detailed explanations of the torture that awaits sinners), the book explains in easy-to-understand ways what the Bible REALLY says about the afterlife. The Hebrew Scriptures have various ideas that radically changed over the generations. Meanwhile, the difference between what Jesus says in the four Gospels about the afterlife vs. what Paul says in his many letters to the churches are quite different. I read the Bible every day, and I never noticed this discrepancy!

Bonus: Chapter 11, which focuses on the New Testament book of Revelation, is alone worth the price of the book. It is the most straightforward, intelligent, and truly understandable explanation of this most confounding and confusing book in the Bible.

Before you start reading this book, here is some advice: Clear your calendar, and stock up on dinner leftovers. You won't want to stop reading. Yes, it's that good.

This prequel to Ken Follett's hugely successful "Pillars of the Earth," begins in 997, which is closing in on the end of the Dark Ages in England. The multilevel storyline is riveting with entrancing plot twists and turns, characters so well created they seem like real people, and such detailed and colorful descriptions of the setting—from castles to cathedrals and monasteries to alehouses—that it drops the reader into the middle of the action.

The multiple storylines of love, sex, violence, politics, good vs. evil, and extreme power plays make for a riveting tale. The main characters around which this complex plot revolves are:
• Ragna, the daughter of a wealthy Norman count, falls in love with the English ealdorman Wilfwulf. Her parents reluctantly agree to the marriage, and Ragna moves to the English village of Shiring where a few months after her wedding she discovers a heartbreaking secret her husband has been hiding from her. Meanwhile, she is in a political battle for power against Wilf's formidable brothers and stepmother.

• Edgar is only 17 and a poor workingman, but he knows how to build things—from boats to brewhouses to bridges. In the first pages of the book, a Viking invasion levels his hometown of Combe, and he loses everything except his life. How he rebuilds and comes of age is a central part of the book.

• Aldred, a monk in Shiring, happily labors in a small scriptorium making illuminated manuscripts. Since Aldred is a moral, ethical man who is living in a corrupt society with dishonest superiors, he finds himself in constant conflict as he attempts to do the right thing and is punished repeatedly.

This is fiction. It is a made-up story. It isn't real. But the book's superpower strength is the threads of nonfiction woven throughout. Read this book to be entertained, but when you are finished, you will be just a bit more knowledgeable about what life was like more than 1,000 years ago for slaves, peasants, the working class, women, clergy, and nobles.

And while this is not great literature, it is a great story. It's all plot and not much else. No underlying themes. No imagery or symbolism to analyze. But wow! What a plot it is. Read and enjoy.

No one — no one!— writes like Anne Tyler. This, her 23rd novel, is by turns tender, humorous, wise, and just plain delightful. Told with candor and compassion, the story is the literary equivalent of comfort food. The quirky characters, the life lessons, and the essential nature of human relationships are all here, wrapped up in a short novel that just took my breath away it was so astoundingly good.

Micah Mortimer is in his early 40s. A bachelor, he is superintendent of a small apartment house in Baltimore, Maryland and operates a very part-time computer repair business called Tech Hermit. He runs at 7:15 a.m. every day. On each day of the week, he does a special cleaning chore. For example, on Thursdays he cleans the kitchen and one cabinet, rotating through the cabinets week by week until he starts over again. He begins each morning with a run, followed by a shower and breakfast. Micah, the youngest of five children and the only boy, grew up in a chaotic household. As an adult, his life is built around the calmness of order and routine. But suddenly the routine and order of his life is shattered. An 18-year-old boy, the son of his college girlfriend, unexpectedly shows up on Micah's doorstep thinking Micah is his biological father, while Micah's girlfriend of three years unexpectedly and abruptly breaks up with him.

Everything about this novel is perfect. As in all of Anne Tyler's books, this is a character study first and foremost. What happens—what little plot there is—is truly secondary. The sparkling gem of the book is how profound truths and joys about life are revealed so lovingly and beautifully by simply showing us the life of one flawed and finicky man as he tries so hard to be good soul.

Oh, I loved this book! Treat yourself and read it.

Bonus: When you find out who is the redhead by the side of the road, it's bound to make you smile if not actually laugh out loud.

This book grabbed me right from the first page and wouldn't let go. And that's quite a statement because even though this is a novel, it reads more like interconnected short stories. Each new chapter begins a tale about new characters in a different time period, so the fact that I was riveted to the book—even with all the sudden starts and stops inherent in short stories—says so much about the extraordinary writing of author W.S. Winslow.

This is the story of several families living in Wellbridge, a very small town on the wild coast of Maine, that takes place over a 100-year period. Each chapter begins with a genealogical chart of the characters who are about to be portrayed. On top of that chart is the year in which that chapter takes place. These clues are really important for threading all the pieces together. The book begins in 1977, but then jumps back to 1904 and continues chronologically from there to 2017. Life is hard. The weather is hard. The people are hard. There are devastating secrets. There are reprisals and betrayals. Each chapter is a thin slice of life—a deep dive into the microcosm with the end result being an overview of the macrocosm: one night of a mother's hallucinatory grief over her son, a dinner party, a phone conversation between two sisters, a funeral (which is really quite funny), a death that is told from the point of view of the one who is dying, two days in the life of a woman trying to heal after divorce ended her 30-year marriage. All of these stories ring true and real, and each one is imminently engrossing to read.

This novel is fierce, intelligent and emotionally resonant with vivid characters that are so real they seemingly pop off the page. "The Northern Reach" is serious literary fiction at its finest.

This book is for two audiences:

1. Richard Russo fans. If you have read at least one or two of his books, you will recognize the source of some of the characters, places, and storylines. Plus, it's by Richard Russo. Need I say more?

2. Anyone who has had a mother totally dependent on him or her—that is, dependence so all-encompassing that it significantly impacts your own life choices because you must (always) think of Mom first.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this soul-baring memoir by one of America's best novelists is a fascinating peek into the very personal lives of one man and his mother and the small town in which they lived. Richard's mom, Jean Russo, was divorced when her son was a little boy at time when marriages—even bad ones—were held sacrosanct. (His father was an alcoholic who spent his time and money gambling, and after the divorce rarely contributed money to Richard's care.) The pair lived in a duplex with her parents in Gloversville, New York, a slowly dying factory town. Jean was fiercely independent, confident, and self-reliant, except that was mostly a show. Deep down she was terrified because she and Richard lived so close to the edge financially that one misstep or unexpected expense could spell catastrophe. But there was one other big problem: Jean was mentally ill, even though everyone then just called it "nerves." By the time Richard was 18, he was pretty much responsible for his domineering, controlling, and passive-aggressive mom in a way that most of us could never fathom.

Told with surprising honesty and a raw intimacy that occasionally brought tears to my eyes, this is a book that was, no doubt, cathartic for Russo to write and reassuring for many readers who may have endured a similar life.

This is a murder mystery. But as soon as you see it's written by Louise Penny, you know it's no ordinary murder mystery. It's also a story of love and betrayal, hope and horror, rebirth and death. It is a book that is entertaining (see above: murder mystery), but even more so it is a book that plumbs the psychological depths of we humans as we try to live and love and be happy. I define it as a literary murder mystery.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force for the province, is sent back to the idyllic village of Three Pines to investigate a murder. (OK, the high murder rate for such a small town does take away some of that idyllic sense.) It's April, and since this takes place in Canada it snows one day and is sunny and warm the next. Ah, the cruelest month—but it's not only the weather that incites cruelty. During a séance in the old Hadley house on Easter evening, one of the residents of Three Pines dies. Was this individual literally scared to death or was it something more sinister? Gamache and his crew are on the case. But someone from the police force is on Gamache's case, out to destroy his life.

The intelligent, multilayered plot is engrossing for even the most discerning reader. Translation: If murder mysteries are too mundane for your highbrow literary tastes, give Louise Penny a try. But you must start at the beginning of this now 16-book series (No. 17 is on the way in August 2021) with "Still Life."

A bit of advice: Do NOT read this book when you are hungry. I know, I know. It's a murder mystery, and that's a weird piece of advice. Just trust me on this one.

Aside to Louise Penny: Please, please, please write a cookbook with the recipes for all these delectable dishes you describe in such mouthwatering detail.

In a word, this novel is: creative. And by "creative," I mean just a little weird. Odd. Bizarre. Peculiar. Strange. (Really, really strange.)

BIG WORD OF ADVICE: Before you buy this book, use the Amazon "Look inside" feature and read the preface. Just a few pages (maybe even a few paragraphs) will tell you if this is your kind of book—or not. Because the whole sense of bizarreness is on full display in the preface. Still, if you love words and language, chances are you will enjoy this curious little novel by Eley Williams.

The first "creative" bit of writing is really structural. There are 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, and each one is associated with a word that sums up that chapter's plot. Such as "A is for artful" and "K is for kelemenopy." I'm not sure if this is clever or just a bit too cute. (Some of the words are so esoteric, they are not found in the Kindle dictionary or Wikipedia.)

The story takes place in London in two time periods, alternating chapters. Victorian lexicographer Peter Winceworth, who fakes a lisp for some weird reason, is helping to write Swansby's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, a massive multivolume work. Like many a disgruntled employee, he sabotages his employer. In this case he creates and then inserts fake words into the dictionary. Fast forward to the present day. The dictionary was published unfinished in 1930, and now David, the great grandson of the founder, and his intern, Mallory, are digitizing it. It becomes Mallory's job to figure out which of these words were faked—such words are called mountweazels—and remove them. But when a word like "mountweazel" is real, this is very difficult task.

And while I didn't really enjoy the book, I will say it is a beautiful love letter to words. I was glad I read it on my Kindle because it was easy and fast to look up the bajillion or so words in this 269-page book that I didn't know. OK, I exaggerate. But there were a LOT of words unknown to me. Of course, some of them were mountweazels, making the task a bit tricky at times.

A random thought: Every high school student should hope that Eley Williams never gets a job writing questions for the verbal section of the SAT.

This should be required reading for every woman young and old, but especially for women who became teenagers in the 1950s, 1960s, and very early 1970s. This is a heartbreaking, deeply intimate historical account of what happened when girls and young women got pregnant before they were married in a society that had zero tolerance for such behavior.

The 1950s were a magical time—on the surface, that is. GIs had come home from World War II, got married, bought homes, found jobs. Their wives stayed home, had babies, and cared for their new families. It was a time of deep conformity. You followed the rules, you did as everyone else did, and you fit in. You were accepted. But if you broke the rules—such as having a 16-year-old daughter who was pregnant—your entire family was shunned.

Because sex education was pretty much nonexistent in the schools or in the home, birth control not available unless you were married (and even then it was sometimes difficult to get), and abortion illegal, girls who found themselves pregnant had one of two options: Get married or give up the baby for adoption. About half did get married. The other half—too young for marriage or whose boyfriends refused to accept responsibility—were typically sent away to have the baby. A convenient cover story was cooked up, and off the girl went to an aunt's or more likely, a maternity home. There she awaited the birth of her baby, and within days (and sometimes hours) the child was taken from her and sent out for adoption. And then the girl was told in no uncertain terms to just go on with her life and forget the birth ever happened. That scenario led to irreparable psychological harm.

This bold book by Ann Fessler is an unflinching account of what happened to these girls who were sent away. The author recounts the sociological history (in VERY readable language) of good girls vs. bad girls, the intense shame they felt, the family's fears, the fear and loneliness of being sent away, and the inevitable search for these lost children. This is alternated with the heartbreaking personal stories of dozens of these women who recall the chilling, disturbing, and deeply sorrowful details of not only being pregnant and hidden away, but also what it felt like to give up a child. Ann Fessler is herself adopted, and begins and ends the book with her own story.

I venture to say that virtually all of us of a certain age know someone who either "had to get married" or was "sent away." This is that friend's story. The story she never shared. And it's the story you need to hear.

This is a powerful, no-holds-barred, and gut-wrenching account of an important slice of women's history. Five stars is not enough to do this book justice.

These nine very different short stories have one thing in common: They are all stories of love and loss, happiness and sadness as people adjust to the human condition. From adultery to abandonment, loneliness to falling deeply in love, each of the stories in this stellar, Pulitzer Prize-winning collection by Jhumpa Lahiri is absolutely brilliant.

I thought "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" was the most poignant and imaginative of the collection. It told of the crushing heartache of the 1971 civil war in Pakistan, but it's all seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old Indian girl who lives in Massachusetts and the man who dines with her family daily as he worries about his family caught in the crossfires of the war.

My favorite was "This Blessed House" about Indian newlyweds who move into a house and keep finding Christian paraphernalia hidden in the home—from a porcelain effigy of Jesus to a 3D postcard of St. Francis to a statue of the Virgin Mary. The husband is annoyed, while the wife thinks it's hilarious. How they resolve it says much about their marriage.

This is an extraordinary collection of literature that is a delight to read.

This book is a real dichotomy.

On the one hand, it is a literary masterpiece, a political allegory, and a love story that won the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.

On the other hand, the title is quite apt. The reader will be kept waiting…and waiting…and waiting for something to happen. It doesn't. This is a relatively short book that feels quite long.

At its core, this is a love story. But it's so much more than that. Written by Ha Jin, this is the story of Lin Kong, a man who watches as his life passes him by. Forced into a loveless arranged marriage at an early age, Lin becomes a doctor and works in the big city of Muji, while his wife, Shuyu, and their daughter, Hua, live in rural Goose Village. Every summer he visits them. Every summer he asks Shuyu for a divorce, even making it as far as appearing before a judge. But every summer his request is denied. The impetus for the divorce is simple: At the army hospital, Lin has a girlfriend named Manna Wu. Because adultery is absolutely forbidden by Communist Party, Lin and Manna have a platonic relationship. What happens when Lin is finally granted the divorce after 18 years is at the crux of the novel's ultimate premise.

Lin's life is defined by waiting for everything he can't seem to achieve, and he blames it all on everyone but himself—the Chinese government, the army's regulations, his gossiping coworkers, and society's unwritten, but stringent, rules—when it's actually his own inability to take the risks needed to fully live and love.

The story takes place over several decades from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s during the height of the Chinese cultural revolution. The novel deftly contrasts life in a remote, rural village with life in the city, and also portrays the strict control that the Chinese government had over its citizens' lives and freedoms.

This is a deeply tragic, disturbing, and sorrowful story of a flawed man who waits his entire life for…nothing. And there is an important life lesson in that. Still, this is not an easy read so be prepared for that.

Gobsmacked. That's how I felt when I got to the end of this astonishing and rather addictive book by John Boyne.

But let's go back to the beginning.

This is not a "thriller" in the typical sense, but Boyne carefully—oh, so very carefully—builds the story from not much of anything into something that is truly powerful, enticingly dark, and just so enthralling that I couldn't stop reading it. This not-thriller is really very suspenseful. (Honestly, it is because of books like this that my favorite quote is: "Life is just a series of obstacles preventing you from reading your book.")

This is the story of Maurice Swift, a very handsome, very charming young man who has always dreamed of being a writer. Better yet, a famous and rich writer. But Maurice has a big stumbling block: He has no imagination. He writes well…even very well. But he can't conceive of a plot or a storyline. So he does the only thing he can think to do: He steals other people's ideas. And sometimes he steals more than that. Maurice publishes his first book to great acclaim, but then gets stymied. The story of his second successful novel gave me the shivers and nearly made me cry. But his treachery gets more sordid and so dark it's almost inconceivable. An absolutely morally corrupt human being is winning and winning and winning…and getting away with it. And then there is that ending.

Oh, and John Boyne's writing. It's superb. Each "chapter" is really a novella or a short story, depending on the length. Each is totally different than the others with the connecting link being Maurice Swift.

This isn't a horror story. There are no axe murderers stalking victims at midnight. But this richly imagined story is frightening, spine-chilling, and sinister. And the ending left me gobsmacked.

This is one of those books that just crawled into my heart and curled up. Fierce and unflinching, but also mournfully sorrowful, this 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel by Douglas Stuart is emotionally devastating and so brutal in parts that I felt almost bruised by reading it.

Just know this before you read it.

This is the story of beautiful and glamorous Agnes Bain—daughter, wife, mother, lover, friend, and most of all alcoholic. It is set in the slums of Glasgow, Scotland and an almost-deserted mining town on its peripheries during the 1980s when the coal mines closed, resulting in huge levels of unemployment. Agnes is married to Hugh "Shug" Bain, a taxi driver, and they live with her parents in a cramped Glasgow public housing apartment along with Catherine and Leek, Agnes's teenage children from her first marriage, and 5-year-old Shuggie, who gradually realizes as he gets a little older that he is not like other boys. Agnes is a drunk, and as the years go by, her drinking destroys not only herself, but also everyone around her.

This novel is a literary descent into the hell of addiction.

I think the most impressive part of the book is really very simple: The title. This may be Agnes's story, but because of the title, I kept thinking it was Shuggie's story first and foremost. I saw everything that happened to Agnes through Shuggie's tender, trusting, and loving eyes and heart and soul. And that's absolutely wrenching. Because this little boy tries so hard, as do most children of alcoholics, to hold life together for his mother. He is brave and resourceful, but he is just a child. And so he is doomed to failure. If the title alone is not enough, take a good look at the cover art. I realize this photograph is not the work of author Douglas Stuart, but this one image captures all of Shuggie's angst and anguish. It's brilliant.

Yes, this is a dark, depressing, and disheartening novel, but I'm so glad I read it. It is modern literature at its finest.

But here is something fun: The dialogue feels almost visceral because it is peppered with dozens of Scottish idioms, such as dout (a cigarette end), stour (dust), tick, (IOU), and dreich (gloomy). For what it's worth, it's pretty easy to figure out what these words mean from the context, but there is always Google if you get stuck. I did get totally stuck on "messages." It means groceries or shopping and sometimes errands, so context is critical.

Taking place at a seaside resort in Ireland, this Booker Prize-winning novel by John Banville is as much about time—past, present, and future—as it is about the sea. It's about memories of the past, the tricks and ravages of those memories, the ache of the present, and the hope of the future.

Mourning the death of his wife, Anna, middle-aged Max Morden is besieged with memories of a summer spent by the sea. While his family stayed in a rundown three-room cottage with an outhouse and no electricity, Max made friends the summer he was 11 years old with the Grace family and their twin children Chloe and Myles, who were staying in a beautiful home called the Cedars. Max thought of the family as divinities, godlike. But that summer was not idyllic in the least. Something horrific happened, which is driving Max to ruminate on it half a century later. Now as a grieving widower, these memories are so vivid that they entice him to return to the sea and stay in the Cedars, which has become a rooming house.

This short, brilliantly-written novel explores the facets of grief, the meaning of memory, the fear of death, and hope for the future. The writing, which is close to stream of consciousness (but not quite), is exquisite with almost every sentence shining like a sparkling gem.

This is a cerebral book. There is no fast-paced plot, no twists and turns that will keep you reading past your bedtime. Instead, it should be read slowly and savored for its subtle message and insightful meaning.

This book should come with a warning label: It will inspire you to read many, many books. It could cost you some big bucks if you're not careful!

But even with all these wonderful book suggestions lining the pages, this is far more a loving account of a mother's life after her diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer—her dying months and eventual death—than it is a compendium of excellent books to read and why. Just know that going in.

That said, author Will Schwalbe, a former book publishing executive and avid reader since childhood, offers more than 150 titles and authors that will likely fill up your "to be read" list for months to come. As his 73-year-old mother, Mary Anne Schwalbe, was undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, he and she started an informal book club of just the two of them. For years, they had recommended books to one another. But now they read the same book at the same time and then discussed it during her hours-long chemo sessions. He recounts what they both thought of the books, which I found to be the most fascinating and fun part. She is an older woman, he a younger man. So naturally, their views are different. And often, the discussion of the book was also a way to discuss the great tragedy unfolding before them.

A helpful appendix at the end lists all the book titles and authors cited, whether it's a short analysis/review of the book or just a mention of the author. They're all here!

Interwoven between the book recommendations are lessons for living, courtesy of the wise Mary Anne Schwalbe. The advice ranges from always saying "thank you" for even the smallest of courtesies to thinking of others before yourself.

Bonus: This love letter to reading and the woman who first introduced Will Schwalbe and his siblings to the magic of books is also a bit of a parenting guide for those who wonder how best to turn their children into readers.

The power of this book—as well as the other two books that comprise this gripping family saga trilogy—is the wisdom, compassion, and human insight of Jane Smiley's imaginative story arc.

This is the 100-year story of the Langdon family. Each chapter is titled with a year, covering 1920 to 1952 in the first book, "Some Luck," from 1953 to 1986 in "Early Warning," and from 1987 to 2019 in "Golden Age."

Rosanna and Walter Langdon had six children from 1919 to 1939, which means the family tree has greatly expanded its branches by the end of the 20th century. The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live not only on the farm in Denby, Iowa where it all started, but also New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Palo Alto, and San Francisco. While this puts them in the center of the action for political and current events, the book is far more about the minutiae of life—the hopes, heartbreak, and dreams of human existence that define who we are as individuals and where we fit into a family.

A Disappointment: Since everything that happens to the characters right from the first page of the first book is mirrored by corresponding current events of that year, Jane Smiley took a leap of faith by publishing this book in October 2015 (and presumably finishing the writing as much as year earlier) but still continuing the story through 2019. Beginning with the 2016 chapter, she creates current events that didn't happen from a president who was not actually elected to international skirmishes that are figments of her imagination. She was writing about an unknown future. It was disappointing to me in that it violated the basic premise she herself created at the beginning of the series—for the life of one American family to reflect the current events of the time. She should have waited the five years to publish the third volume or stopped the story in 2015. (Even so, it's still a five-star book.)

Two pieces of advice:
No. 1: You absolutely must read the books in order or they won't make sense. This really should have been one book. If you start with the second or third book, it's like starting halfway through a novel. It will be very confusing.

No. 2: The Langdon family tree is quite complex. Bookmark that page so you can easily refer to it later. If you are reading this on a Kindle, here is the most efficient way to figure out the characters: Search the name of the character (and first name is enough). The first search result you'll get is on the family tree. Go there. That puts you right where you need to be within the multipage family tree so you don't have to hunt. I was still doing this 70 percent into the story! THAT is how complex these relationships are.

This is an extraordinary family saga that almost serves as a mini-history of the United States, as well as quite the writing achievement for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley. When you view all three of the books as one, it truly is the Great American Novel.

I wonder how long it will take for someone to try to get this powerful, profound, and astonishing book banned? Translation: It's a must-read.

This is one of those brilliant novels that can be read on two levels. First, the highly imaginative plot and intriguing characters will keep you reading past your bedtime. But scratch below that surface, and you'll find a literary masterpiece that is not only sophisticated and daring, but also what some could view as a dangerous dystopian allegory. This is a story that tests the limits of human love, the effects of artificial intelligence on society, and the abiding, potentially debilitating fear of our own mortality.

Written by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, the novel is told in the first-person by Klara, an AF (artificial friend), and set at some unknown point in the future when many are unemployed and fringe political groups exist on the outskirts of society. Klara is a technologically advanced robot that can think and even feel. When she is purchased for 13-year-old Josie, it becomes her job not only to do the everyday tasks Josie asks of her, but also to learn as much about Josie as she can so she can anticipate her every need and assuage Josie's loneliness. But Josie is gravely ill, and there is a very real concern she may die. While Klara conceives of a religious-like plan to try to save Josie's life, Josie's desperate mother Chrissie, concocts a bizarre plot that could have tragic and unintended consequences.

This book is so much more than its gripping, fantastical plot. Most of all, it is a profound and moving statement about humanity—our strengths and our weaknesses. What is it that makes us human? Makes us special? While this is an impassioned story of family and friendship, it is even more so a profound story about the pain of human loneliness and the lengths we will go to keep those we love close to us.

This is a magical book.

What will draw in most readers almost immediately is the complex, multilayered plot that is so twisted (in a good way!) it's nearly impossible to figure out (too far) in advance. But this is so much more than an ingenious story. Author Kate Morton has crafted a novel that almost doubles as a fairy tale. The end result is a book that is both entrancing and highly original.

The novel bounces back and forth in time and place in way that could be jarring and absolutely discombobulated in the hands of a less-talented writer. But in the hands of Kate Morton, it is brilliant. And I can't imagine it being written in any other way. It's a little slow to get started—so stick with it—but it really takes off by the fifth chapter.

Taking place in the first two decades of the 1900s, 1975, and 2005, this is the story of several girls/women in one family. It opens with Nell, a four-year-old who boards a ship in England bound for Australia as she holds the hand of her dead mother's cousin and trusted friend. And then the cousin disappears, leaving Nell completely alone. After the ship lands, she is standing on the dock in Maryborough, Australia with her child-sized white suitcase when Hugh, a kind dockworker, takes her home. The only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales found in the suitcase. Hugh and Lil are childless and lovingly care for the little girl who has no memory of her name. They call her Nell. How Nell got to Australia, the stories of her grandparents, parents, the cousin who is the author of fairy tales, and Nell's own daughter and granddaughter make up the riveting story that follows. This is a tale filled with secrets galore—from family secrets to secret gardens—that takes place from colonial Australia to the sea swept coast of Cornwall, England.

Several fairy tales are part of the story, all written by one of the book's characters, and each cleverly presages the novel's next plot development.

Bonus: Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of the beloved book, "The Secret Garden," makes a cameo appearance.

This is an engrossing page-turner with characters so bright and bold they give the book a big heart and soul. The twists and turns of the plot and the mesmerizing storytelling result in a magical, gripping novel.

This is a delightful, escapist book that will take you far away from your real life.

A professional review published in the Sydney Morning Herald described this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen as "genre-bending." And that is apt. It's historical fiction. It's a spy thriller. It's satire of a highly intellectual kind. It's a war novel. It's philosophical. It's kind of, sort of darkly funny in parts. It's a disturbing tragedy. Oh, and it's highly entertaining even if it's not a particularly easy book to read.

The unnamed narrator, who defines himself as "a man of two minds" who can see both sides of an issue, is a 30-something Vietnamese man who was born in the north of that country and fled to the south with his mother in 1954 when he was nine years old. He is illegitimate and suffers greatly for that. His mother was a young teenager when she was impregnated by a French Roman Catholic priest she served as a maid. The narrator eventually goes to college in Los Angeles and learns to speak English without an accent, which he thinks of as a great accomplishment. He returns to Vietnam during the war. Because of his position in the South Vietnamese army, he is able to flee the country on the last plane out and ends up back in Los Angeles. But here is the narrator's deep secret: All along he has been a Communist spy, a "sympathizer," infiltrating the military of South Vietnam to rise to the rank of captain to report their movements, thoughts, and plans to the North Vietnamese. Our narrator, so trusted and even loved by his South Vietnamese friends and colleagues, is Viet Cong. The book is his supposed written confession to a mysterious "commandant," so right from the beginning we readers realize this mole has been outed—but not in the way you might expect.

The narrator is living a dual life in obvious ways as a Communist mole, but that duality penetrates everything about him. He is of two minds. It's this troubling, difficult-to-maintain dichotomy that truly defines everything he is and does and leads to his eventual downfall.

The greatest strength of this excellent, albeit complex, novel is in its point of view. We experience the Vietnam War's chaotic and brutal end as Saigon fell in April 1975, as well as get a real sense for what it was like to be a Vietnamese refugee in the late 1970s in the United States. Because the writing is so extraordinary, we empathize with these refugees' love of their country—a place from which they may forever be exiled—and how that influences everything they do.

This is the power of truly great literature: It places us inside others' lives. It offers us a perspective outside our own experiences. It gives us empathy. It makes us better human beings.

I learned so much from this book! And the reason is simple: perspective. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of caste and racism both in broad, sweeping historical terms as well as through poignant, troubling, tragic, and heartrending personal stories.

This book is a fascinating examination of a trifecta of caste systems: Indian Dalits (the so-called "untouchables,"), Jews in Nazi Germany, and Blacks (primarily but not exclusively) in the American South—from the beginning of slavery to today. The history, commentary, and human stories are intertwined, which shockingly shows how similar these different caste systems really are.

This is more than race. This is more than hatred. This is more than prejudice. The United States has a caste system to this day, but the American caste system is even more insidious than that in India or Nazi Germany because it is based solely on the color of one's skin. How that caste system permeates everything in our society is something you may never have fully considered or understood—until you read this book.

Most telling of all is Wilkerson's detailed explanations of how these caste systems developed, why they continued with the encouragement and support of those outside the lower castes, why such deep-seated prejudice and hatred continue to exist and, as such, lead to the perpetuation of the caste system. Exhibit A: How racial attitudes of Barack Obama's presidency led directly to the election of Donald Trump.

And here's a stunning fact: Before embarking on their diabolical quest to first cast out and eventually attempt to eliminate the Jews, the Nazis carefully studied how Southern Americans treated Blacks in the 1930s and then based what they did on the American system.

This book is so well written and so fascinating that it's actually hard to put down, something that's not typically said about historical nonfiction.

Reading this book gave me a more educated perspective, a deeper knowledge, and a more fine-tuned cultural awareness. And that is the power of reading: Minds can be changed with insight. This is an extraordinary book.

Reminiscent of Lauren Groff's brilliant novel "Fates and Furies," this remake is whiny, whiny, whiny, as well as a quite daringly sexy read, but most important it is not as erudite, intelligent, or shocking as Groff's literary masterpiece. In all fairness, author Taffy Brodesser-Akner probably doesn't think of this book as a "Fates and Furies" remake, but because the plot/structure similarities are unmistakably alike it's hard not to compare them.

And "Fleishman Is in Trouble" is a poor runner-up.

This is the plot set-up: Toby Fleishman, M.D. is a top hepatologist at a top New York City hospital, making a respectable quarter of million dollars a year. But that's not enough for his wife, Rachel, who has her own creative agency representing actors and makes five times what her husband pulls in. This is Manhattan in the 2000s and it's all about money because it takes a lot of it to buy the lifestyle of a tony apartment with the right address, private schools for the children, a house in the Hamptons, and vacations in Europe. She is greatly annoyed that Toby just doesn't care about any of that. Rachel is all about the money and prestige and impressing others. Toby is all about loving the children. Rachel and Toby's love story dissolves. They separate. They work out child custody. But before the divorce is final, Rachel disappears and goes completely incommunicado, leaving Toby (who has recently discovered sexy dating apps and has become weirdly obsessed with them) with the children.

The novel has three chapters, all told by the narrator—unnamed for quite some time, which is incredibly confusing, if not actually disconcerting—who is an old friend of Toby's named Libby whom he met in Israel during their junior year abroad and hasn't seen since. Libby is a former magazine writer turned happily married, stay-at-home New Jersey suburban mom. The first chapter is from Toby's point of view. The second chapter is mostly from Toby's point of view with a lot of Libby interjecting her own story, while the third chapter is from all three points of view. After all, every marriage—and its disintegration—has two sides.

I am willing to stretch my imagination for every novel I read and give the author a lot of artistic license. But Libby as the narrator is just too much—even for me. Libby is a distant friend, but somehow Libby knows intimate, incredibly personal details about both Toby and Rachel. It is completely, eye-rollingly implausible.

And did I mention it is whiny? Oh, so very, very whiny. Uber-privileged, rich white people who have everything in the world kind of whiny.

One more thing: The ending is awful. Very, very disappointing.

Longlisted for the National Book Award, this is a well-written, satirical novel that is amusing and entertaining, although quite pretentious, but it absolutely does not rise to the level of great literature as its National Book Award nomination would suggest. It is ChickLit. And because of all the whining, it's not even very good ChickLit. Just know you're getting ChickLit and not literature before you buy the book. I have no idea why it's so highly overrated.