You know the painting. It's called "Christina's World." Painted by Andrew Wyeth, it depicts a young woman crawling up a hill toward a home. (Google it. You'll recognize it!) This magnificent book by Christina Baker Kline tells the story of Christina Olsen, the real-life model for the painting. Based on solid fact but embellished with fiction--that is, after all, the definition of historical fiction--this book opens up Christina's world in a way I found fascinating and lyrical. The writing is beautifully haunting, vividly bringing to life the time and place near the turn of the last century and continuing through World War II.

Christina lived with her family in their 18th-century farmhouse on the coast of Maine. Think glorious summers but bitterly cold winters when the sun set at 3:30 p.m. There was no electricity or running water. It was a difficult, work-intense life for all. Headstrong, determined and smart, Christina suffered from a degenerative bone disease that left her so disabled by middle age that she was forced to crawl everywhere she went. Yet she still did most of the chores expected of a woman living on a working farm. By necessity, Christina's world was very limited.

The book not only tells Christina's story and her complex and sometimes bitter relationships with her family and friends, but also that of Andrew Wyeth and how he evolved as a painter as he used the Olson home as a makeshift studio. Many of his paintings are of the house and area around it. His interactions with Christina are a very special part of this book showing how life and art merge.

Most of all, this is a story about the human condition. Who are we? How do others see us? How do our choices--and those others make--affect our lives decades later?

Oooh! Oooh! I loved this book! Set in 16th century Northern Italy, this is the story of a 16-year-old novice entering a convent--absolutely against her will. In this time, women of good birth had one of two choices: marry or become a nun. And neither one was really her choice, since her father would make the decision for her. Marriages were arranged, and if the family was unable to afford dowries for multiple daughters, those daughters were forced to enter a convent--something that happened to more than half of all noble women.

Our story begins when the novice nun, Serafina, who has the singing voice of an angel, is "imprisoned" (in her mind that's what has happened) at Santa Caterina convent in the distant city of Ferrara, far from her home in Milan. Her younger sister is the one who was married, but Serafina has a lover of her own. Like she, he is a musician with a voice that makes the heavens weep with joy, but he is not of good birth or reputation. So Serafina is whisked far away from him and locked securely in the convent. And she does all she can to escape.

Meanwhile, there is also great turmoil beyond the locked walls of the convent where the Roman Catholic Church is undergoing massive changes as the Protestant Reformation sparks a cataclysm that is both religious and cultural. And those seismic shifts will soon envelop the convent in ways that are terrifying to some of the nuns.

The plot is fully and skillfully developed, which keeps the pages turning quite fast, and the vivid and colorful descriptions of life in a convent in 1570 are riveting. Author Sarah Dunant has written an extraordinary historical novel that will keep you up way past your bedtime!

This book grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go! By turns quite humorous and bring-out-a-tissue heartrending, this book by Natasha Solomons is the story of Elise Landau, a 19-year-old in Vienna, Austria in 1938. She has lived a life of luxury in an upper-class world. But her family is Jewish, so for her safety her parents send her to England to work in service at a manor house called Tyneford. It is a wrenching separation, and now Elise, who has lived with the services of a maid all her life, becomes a maid herself. And then she falls in love with Kit, the young, handsome heir. But war comes and everything changes.

The plot is solid, but the real the strength of the book is in the characters, who are all so real—from the crusty butler to the confused Elise—that they just pop off the page. Excellent!

If you plan on ever staying in a hotel again, read this book first. Author Jacob Tomsky, who has worked in a variety of jobs in two luxury hotels in New Orleans and New York City, gives the inside scoop on how to get the most from your stay. And while most of it is legal, some of it is not ethical. (You decide how far you're willing to push it for a free minibar drink.) Find out how to get a free room upgrade, late checkout, a complimentary bottle of wine and lots more—and all of that can be done legally and ethically. Find out why you should tip generously, always be friendly and never (ever) bring your own pillow.

The book is eminently readable and filled with anecdotes about guests rich, famous and ordinary. Some of these stories are laugh-out-loud funny, while others are absolutely astonishing. (People really DO that?!? Apparently so.)

Caution: There is a lot of foul language liberally sprinkled throughout the book. Some of it is perfectly acceptable, such in quotes from bellmen, doormen and valets. It's part of their job, and using it this way adds color. I get that. But there is a lot more that is not necessary and adds nothing to the text—so much so that I would have given the book five stars except for the language.

I just have to say this first: I LOVED this book! And I also have to say that it was a little out of my comfort zone. Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this is a book about Nigeria. And Nigerians. And Nigerians who move to the United States. And England. And then move back to Nigeria. What does a white woman from the 'burbs—even though those 'burbs are considered THE most diverse city in the country (according to a 2017 WalletHub analysis of 313 U.S. cities)—know about Nigeria? Well, that, my friends, is the joy and wonder of reading. We can experience what we do not know in our limited real lives.

Ifemelu and Obinze are in love. They are teenagers in Lagos, Nigeria with big dreams for the future that, for the most part, do not involve Africa. Ifemelu has an opportunity to move to the United States for college. Obinze, who cannot get a visa, still encourages her to go. She lives a life separate from him and does something that is so destructive to her soul she fully separates herself from Obinze—without telling him why. The book alternates between their two stories, as well as in the past and present, but the writing is so perfect this all works seamlessly.

But more than anything else, "Americanah" is a book about life and hope. Love and regret. Racism, prejudice and justice. Leaving home and going back. It is a book that speaks truths profound and witty. It is a book to be cherished.

If you read this book in a public place, such as a crowded commuter train or on an airplane, beware! Parts of it are so laugh-out-loud funny that I had to stop reading to wipe the tears from my eyes.

Written by genius Wally Lamb, this is the story of Felix Funicello, who is in 5th grade in the fall of 1964. (Yes, his third cousin in Annette Funicello!) Felix attends the local parochial school and after inadvertently making his teacher, Sister Dymphna, have a nervous breakdown, the class gets a long-term sub who is not a nun. And then the real fun begins. While the plot culminates in the school's Christmas show/pageant, the heart and soul of the book are in the day-to-day experiences of Felix and his friends, one of whom is a Russian girl who teaches the boys to swear in Russian (among other things!).

While it's an ideal book to read in December, it will be just as heartwarming and humorous any month of the year. If you need a distraction from your real life, read this. And enjoy the belly laughs.

Bonus: The epilogue is brilliant!

This novel does what no other book I have read does: It is 75 percent (or so) fiction and 25 percent (or so) nonfiction. And it works! The story focuses on a Li-yan, a young Chinese woman from the minority Akha tribe in the mountains of Yunnan Province. She violates the Akha cultural taboos in several significant ways, including having a baby before she is married and then later marrying the baby's father of whom her family disapproves. But it is too late. Li-yan had to give up her daughter for adoption. Will she ever find her?

But in addition to a haunting and riveting story that is grounded in solid character development, this book is packed with fascinating information about the history of tea and teamaking in China—and will no doubt make you crave a cup of hot tea.

This is not always an easy book to read. Parts of the story are absolutely horrific to our Western ideas of what is right and wrong. But every piece of it is important and contributes to the story. Bonus: The ending is really good!

Author Lisa See magnificently captures the angst, anger and emotional churning of a mother who feels forced to give up a child for adoption, as well as the feelings of angst, anger and emotional churning endured by the child who always wonders about her birth parents. It is gripping and endearing…and one you will remember long after it ends.

A monster blizzard has shut down New York City in January 2016, and in the process three very different people are brought together—and their lives will forever change because of it. Their stories unfold: Evelyn, a 20-something undocumented immigrant who somehow survived the horrors of the MS-13 gang in her native Guatemala; Lucia, a 63-year-old from Chile with her own chilling stories of forced exile; and Richard, a 60-year-old American professor at NYU with four cats who prides himself on his routine, uneventful life that works to bury his tragic past. Throw into the mixing bowl, a murder mystery and a very touching love story, and stir cautiously because you will be pulled in to this delightful batch of literary delicacies by accomplished author Isabel Allende.

By turns heartrending, shocking, brutal and even somewhat humorous, this is a tale for our times if there ever was one.

This book is intense. Very intense. I found I couldn't read it for more than an hour at a time because it just tore my heart in two. Masterfully written by Wiley Cash, this is the story of two brothers, Stump (Christopher) and Jess, who live on a tobacco farm in a valley of mountainous western North Carolina. Their mother, Julie, belongs to a Pentecostal-snake-handling church. Unadulterated evil emanates from the church and its pastor, invading the souls of its parishioners—something only Jess appears able to see. To tell more of the story would be a spoiler.

Each chapter is told in the first person by one of three characters who are most intimately involved in the plot—the 80-something-year-old church matriarch, 9-year-old Jess and the county sheriff—a literary technique that fully brings the characters to life. We readers are able to climb into the story through their personas.

This is a literary masterpiece. It is a powerful lesson in betrayal and greed, forgiveness and family, good and evil, and—in the end—an abiding hope in God. It will invade your soul and hang on. It will make you cry. It will make you think. It may even haunt your dreams. "Gripping" doesn't even begin to describe it. All I can say is this: Read it.

Colors. Lots of colors. Colors galore--from emerald green to peacock blue to daffodil yellow to ruby red. Author Susan Vreeland describes colors in this book, which is about Louis Comfort Tiffany, in a way that will make you almost see the colors pop off the page.

Tiffany gets credit for all the beautiful leaded-glass windows and lamps that carry his name, but the reality is that hundreds of men and a handful of women, better known as the "Tiffany Girls," were part of that early enterprise in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s/early 1900s. One of those women was Clara Driscoll, who likely conceived the idea of using leaded-glass in lamps and then designed some of the most famous lamps produced by Tiffany. And Mr. Tiffany took all the credit. Clara was never recognized for her incredible artistic achievements—until now.

This book draws on extensive research by art historians Martin Eidelberg and Nina Gray, who unearthed letters written by Clara while she was living in New York City to her family in Ohio. While this is a fictionalized account of Clara's life and work, there is much fact interspersed in the text—so much so that the book also serves as a litany on leaded-glass making. And that is where it loses its oomph. Even if it is never a page-turner, the story is at times quite fascinating, but too much of the book is downright boring. That's a shame, because this is an important story to tell.

What an amazing, creative and outright original book! (And it was Lauren Groff's first novel, too.) This is a two-dimensional story; one part takes place in the present day, while the other takes place some 200 years ago.

Wilhelmina Sunshine Upton, who goes by Willie, is 28 and working on her PhD in anthropology at Stanford. After a passionate affair with her adviser in the tundra of Alaska when they are on a dig, she is pregnant and returns home to Templeton, New York. This idyllic town with a very large lake that is hundreds of feet deep, is modeled on Cooperstown. The day a bedraggled Willie rolls into town, a dead prehistoric "monster" surfaces on the lake.

Willie's mother, Vi, is an aging hippie-turned-born again Christian, who has always told Willie that her father was one of three men with whom she lived in a house in San Francisco in the '60s. It turns out that isn't true. Willie's dad is a man who lives in Templeton. Willie now has a quest: Find out the name of her father.

Fasten your seatbelts, reader. You are in for a ride. Monsters aren't the only thing in Templeton. And some monsters aren't quite as easy to see as the one that came out of the lake.

P.S. Lauren Groff should get some sort of award for the characters' names. Here is just a sampling: Marmaduke Templeton, Noname, Minnie Phinney, Primus Dwyer and Asterisk Upton…just to name a few. And they are as quirky and original as their names!

This is a book about food. More precisely, this is a book about eating food—or not eating it. It is a hymn to food. It is a testament to our relationship with food and how that relationship sometimes goes wrong. Very wrong. It is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

It is also a book about aging and how women endure, fight and/or give in to the inexorable process of having birthdays.

And it is a book about love. Love between men and women. Sexual tension between men and women. And the very precious, lifegiving love of a BFF.

This book by Elizabeth Berg is not to be missed. It is authentic and true. Read it!

This four-generation family saga of poverty-stricken Koreans who are essentially forced in exile to Japan is everything a reader wants in a novel: characters so real they pop off the page, a plot that keeps you reading past your bedtime, and an ending that both breaks your heart and makes you smile.

Written by Min Jin Lee, the story begins with the teenaged Sunja, who falls in love with a much older, wealthy and very powerful man, who is married with three daughters (unbeknownst to her). Not surprisingly, she gets pregnant, and then her meager, but well-ordered, world comes crashing in. But a kind Korean man agrees to marry her and takes her to Japan where they live with his brother and sister-in-law. Remember the lover? Yeah, he hasn't forgotten Sunja. No spoilers here, but suffice it to say that he remains a part of her life forever—and not always in a good way.

This is a story about love in all its forms, a faith in God (or not), the bond of family, life and death, basic human survival, and the power of country and tradition. The ending is perfect in that it brings the story full circle.

This book will grab your heart from the start and not let go. There is a reason "Pachinko" has won a bazillion awards.

This is a wonderful story about life among the Irish-American Catholic community in New York City in the early 1900s. A nice little story. And then PUNCH! The last part of the book delivers such a powerful, unexpected and wholly formidable if not astounding ending that I felt it in my gut. Holy cow! Author Alice McDermott has done it again.

The book tells the story of life inside a convent of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. The good nuns take to the streets every day to care for the sick and poverty-stricken. Annie, a young, pregnant widow, whose husband has committed the grave sin of suicide, is taken in by the nuns. She soon delivers a baby girl, named Sally, and the two spend their days in the convent laundry. Years pass, and Annie then does something in secret that nearly causes their world to fall apart when she is discovered. And then Sally, who has lived such a cloistered life, tries to rectify the sin to save her mother's immortal soul.

Alice McDermott is an extraordinary writer (Admission: She is one of my favorites!), and this book will just grab your heart and not let go. Read it!!!

This sequel to "Gap Creek" tells the story of Julie and Hank's marriage years after they moved away from Gap Creek. They are now the parents of four grown (or nearly grown) children, and the life they live is based in large part on what they can raise and grow on their farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Taking place in the 1920s and '30s, the story of this one family serves a microcosm of the larger events taking place in the country and the world—from the booming '20s to deadly epidemics, from the Depression to World War II. While they are dirt poor, they are rich in love, and that is what makes this story just bloom.

Writing in the vernacular of the time and place, author Robert Morgan has created a tale that rings true and authentic.

Breaking news! Oh, it's just another school shooting. How sad we can even think like that.

The notion that a child could procure guns and make bombs to take down his high school took on a whole new meaning when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did the unthinkable at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. And all these years later you may think (yawning) that this is old news. It's not.

Journalist and author Dave Cullen took 10 years to prodigiously research and write this compelling and gripping book, interviewing the parents of those who died, the injured, the survivors and so many more. He scoured thousands and thousands of pages of documents published in the official government, police and coroner's reports, as well as laboratory evidence from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He read Eric and Dylan's personal journals.

The book's detail is incredible and at times excruciating, such as the stomach-churning fact of how many gallons of blood were spilled in the Columbine High School library. Cullen not only superbly clarifies what is already known about this horrific act, but also shatters the many outrageously false myths that most of us take to be absolute fact. (Exhibit A: Eric and Dylan were NOT bullied.) But this is not a mere recitation of facts. Cullen also offers heartbreaking answers to that most difficult question of all: Why?

Cullen's prose is so engaging, the story so riveting and the pacing so perfect that "Columbine" reads like a page-turning novel. Never mind that you already know the ending, you will still want to keep reading past your bedtime.

Most important of all, reading this remarkable book changed how I think about the perpetrators of such heinous crimes and how we as bystanders—parents, friends, teachers and neighbors—can spot and help a little kid who is already displaying disturbing signs of depression or even psychopathy long before they get to middle school.

In this tragic age of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland, this book should be required reading for everyone.

This is my favorite kind of book: long on characters and short on plot.

Expertly written by Tayari Jones, the book's characters are so real and so fully developed that they just pop off the page. The plot is heartbreaking: Celestial and Roy have a passionate and fiery marriage. Emotions run high—be it love or anger. When he is incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, Celestial must go on with her life. Enter Andre, her best friend since childhood and (literally) the boy next door, who is—just to complicate matters—best friends with Roy. That's the plot. But the genius of the book is in the writing: Each of the three characters narrates various chapters in the first person, so the reader fully appreciates and understands each one's point of view. Jones delves deep into what it means to be committed to love, how it feels to be betrayed and what it takes to forgive.

While this is first and foremost a love story, it is also a human story—an enchanting and beguiling one that explores what it means to be a black, college-educated professional in a Southern society that still judges in tones of black and white. Read it! It's incredible!

This book will transport you to the 1940s, '50s and '60s to the imagined—but, yet, oh so real—mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania where the good times come and go based on the coal industry. This is the story of the Novak family. He works in the coal mines, while she stays home with their two sons and three daughters. He is Polish. She is Italian. And that's important in this little town where ethnicity determines where you live, what you eat, who your friends are and which church you attend. Each of these seven characters is fully created and fully human, giving the reader astute insight into how each one thinks, acts and reacts to the events swirling around them.

Author Jennifer Haigh has told a searing family drama of love and faith, tragedy and pain and the eternal well of hope. But the real power and genius of this book is that it made me feel as if I were actually living in Bakerton. The town and its residents just came alive for me and they moved over to let me join them—and in this sense the book is quite compelling. I highly recommend it.

Secrets. Lies. Innuendoes. Betrayals. More secrets. A murder mystery. And great tragedy. Oh, and enough of a lesson on how electricity is generated from Niagara Falls that it (almost) masquerades as nonfiction. Written by Lauren Belfer, this is one of those utterly delicious books that will also make you feel smarter after you read it—even though it reads a lot like a soap opera.

Taking place in Buffalo, New York in 1901, the story is told in the first person by Miss Louisa Barrett, a 36-year-old spinster who is headmistress of the prestigious Macauley School for Girls. Louisa has a deep and dark secret that would totally ruin her reputation should it ever be revealed. But she isn't the only one with highly-charged and potentially damaging secrets, as we soon learn. The cast of characters is wide, including cameo appearances by two presidents and one vice president. (In fact, so many of the characters are real people that the author's note at the end of the book actually list those that are fictitious. The Kindle X-ray feature helps with this, too.) Meanwhile, the new power station at Niagara Falls is coming online, but not without much political intrigue and a murder (or two?). It's a time that is ruled by powerful men who smoke cigars in backrooms. WHO can be trusted?

I gave the book four stars instead of five because it seemed to me that some of the text is needlessly drawn out. Yes, it's a long book and that's just fine, but the author stretches the plot line at times in ways that add only to the length and not to the development of the story or characters. Still, that's a minor complaint. Read it. It's a fun and educational book.

What this book is: A prodigiously researched, well-written and cogent historical account of the heretofore unrecognized accomplishments of the so-called "code girls," the incredibly smart young women who successfully deciphered the coded secret messages sent by Japan and Germany during World War II. This allowed the Army and Navy to anticipate enemy troop and ship movements so major battles were won, leading eventually to the Allies' victory.

What this book is not: An easy read.

While there is quite a bit of personal information about the women who were recruited to decipher the enemy codes—and all of it is absolutely fascinating—that is a small part of the book, despite the title. Instead, this is a history of the women's efforts, including how they got there, what they did, how they succeeded and how little fanfare there ever was for their phenomenal work. After all, what they were doing was top secret and remained so for decades.

I have given this book by Liza Mundy five stars, but not because I loved it and couldn't put it down. In fact, I had to slog through parts of it. I gave it five stars because this is an incredible book based on extraordinary research about a vitally important part of American history that hasn't been reported until now, largely because it remained classified until quite recently. This book is one for the ages that tells the true story of how much women accomplished for our country in a time when women were thought of as best being wives and mothers. If you enjoy reading history, you will like this!

Bonus: I think the epilogue is the best chapter of the book. It alternately made me tear up and gave me goosebumps!