This is an intellectual, erudite literary novel that is compelling in parts and a real slog in others.

Written by Gary Shteyngart, this is the story of Sasha Senderovsky and Masha Levin-Senderovsky, who invite five of their closest friends to come live with them and quarantine from the rest of the world on their country estate in upstate New York. It's the start of the Covid pandemic, and the world is in an upheaval with the many uncertainties, the tragic death toll, the overcrowded hospitals, and the grim insecurity of not knowing how this virus is transmitted.

The friends—Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta, Ed Kim, Dee Cameron, and a man who is only identified as The Actor—come to the estate, which the Russian hosts think of as their dacha. The Senderovskys, along with their eight-year-old daughter Natasha, who is a troubled and precocious child enamored by a Korean K-pop boy band, live in the main house. Each of the visitors lives in a very small bungalow surrounding the main house. They eat dinner together, take walks, have lots of sex, drink copious amounts of alcohol, share their emotional torments, and seem to thrive on troubled interactions. They resurrect old wounds, recall their younger days, and analyze what is most important to them in life. They love one another. They betray one another. The virus may be raging out of control somewhere out there, but on this country estate, temperaments and emotions are also raging out of control.

Organized as a play in four acts, but written as a novel, this is a philosophical and almost scholarly book with numerous references to classic Russian literature, especially Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" on which the novel is very loosely based.

The writing is sharp and witty, and sometimes quite funny, but too much of it drags on—especially the fever dream of an ending—for me to call it an enjoyable read.

This is a brilliant novel written in fierce prose that sings like lyrical poetry. It is heartbreaking, shattering, and overwhelming.

Written by Fatimah Ashgar, this is the story of three Pakistani-American sisters, who are orphaned at a young age after their father is murdered and are sent to live with their only living relative, an uncle in New Jersey they have never before met. Divorced from his White wife who is living in a big suburban house with their three sons, the uncle only agrees to take the girls—Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar—for two reasons: Money and religion. He will not only get monthly government checks for their support, but also their father's money. In addition, Muslims believe that taking care of orphans is a straight ticket to paradise. While his sons attend private school, the orphan girls are mired in poverty. Clearly, the money isn't going to support them.

Noreen, who is mature beyond her years, is pretty and smart. Aisha is confident but also angry and hostile. Kausar is the baby, who is devoted to her sisters but also filled with an anger that is so hot she describes it as a scorpion stinger. Kausar is questioning her gender identity, adding a new layer of confusion and angst to an already confused and angst-filled life.

The story is told in the first person by Kausar, who is only five when her father is killed. (Kausar is 27 when the book ends.) She has no memory of her mother. She carries her abiding grief throughout her life, as it touches everything she does. The uncle houses the girls in a shoddy, filthy apartment and pretty much leaves them alone. They have no supervision and regularly run out of food and money. Except for school, they are told to stay inside. The sisters take care of each other, surviving—even while arguing, as sisters do—as best they can.

This is a story about the meaning of family and the heartbreaking quest for mother love. It is about the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, of love and arguments, of staying together and leaving each other, of surviving neglect.

It is a thoughtful but emotionally devastating and inherently sad novel.

This is a literary mystery—a true-crime whodunit with a brain—that is a gripping, masterful novel written by the award-winning author Rebecca Makkai.

It's 2018. Bodie Kane is 40, a film scholar, adjunct film professor at UCLA, and the co-host of a successful podcast on women in film titled Starlet Fever, when the Granby School, her New Hampshire prep school, invites her to teach two two-week classes in January—one on podcasting and the other on film studies. Leaving her two children with her soon-to-be ex-husband, she flies east from Los Angeles and returns to a place where she was once unhappy, conflicted, and an outcast.

Being on campus on these dark winter days dredges up the horrific memories of the murder on March 3, 1995 of student Thalia Keith in their senior year. Hours after the school production of "Camelot," Thalia was found floating in the pool with severe head injuries inconsistent with drowning. Bodie roomed with Thalia as a junior but was never close friends with the popular girl. Thalia's murder was blamed on 25-year-old Black athletic trainer Omar Evans, but Bodie is convinced the wrong man is in prison, serving a life term for something he didn't do. When one of the students in her seminar decides to do a podcast on Thalia's murder, Bodie is intrigued and assists in the background. What they discover is chilling, but too much of it is circumstantial. Still, is the real murderer walking free all these years later?

The form of the book is clever. It is written in the first person from Bodie's point of view but penned as a kind of letter to the man Bodie suspects to be the real murderer, whom she addresses throughout the novel as "you." That person is Denny Bloch, a favorite music teacher and the drama coach, whom Bodie believes was having an affair with Thalia—an affair that went drastically wrong and had the power to upend Bloch's marriage and career. Is Bodie right? What kind of nefarious coverup is still going on years later? Who else is being protected? And what does Bodie know about that tragic spring that she may not have told anyone else?

In addition to being a complex murder mystery that simmers with tension, this is a coming-of-age story as Bodie and her Granby classmates as adults recall those formative years. This is a story about memory—the good ones that make us happy and the dark ones we have relegated to a deep part of the past. It's also a story about the abuse so many women suffer at the hands of men who supposedly love them, making this a inspired entry in the literary #MeToo genre.

This novel excels on so many levels: an extraordinary multilayered plot, believable characters that pop off the page, and masterful writing.

Best of all, it's a page-turner, as any good murder mystery should be.

This book is fantasy—a completely made-up world where the main character possesses extraordinary magical abilities and lives to be 247 years old. And while fantasy is my least favorite genre, I am enamored of Salman Rushdie. After all, any author who has a fatwa placed on his head because of his books deserves to be read. And so I read Salman Rushdie, although this book, like most of his, is difficult.

This is more than a fantastical tale. It is a fable, a fairy tale, an allegory, a myth, a parable, and (most of all) a formidable warning against religious fanaticism. It's a lot of things. (Of course, it is. It's Salman Rushdie.) Suspend your sense of reality and get ready for a literary roller coaster ride.

It's early in the 14th century in India. Pampa Kampana is nine years old when her beloved mother followed the other women of their village into a massive, flaming pyre and burned herself to death. Bowled over in grief and totally alone in the world, the goddess Pampa spoke out of Pampa Kampana's mouth giving her magical gifts and the ability to age and never look old. She prophesized that Pampa Kampana would spend her (very long) life ensuring that this kind of mass suicide never happened again. After spending the next nine years in semi-seclusion with a religious fanatic who repeatedly raped her, she emerges when two brothers, Hukka and Bukka Sangama, find them. They are carrying bags of bean and okra seeds, and in Pampa Kampana's hands they become enchanted seeds that she uses to create a new city—Victory City or Bisnaga, as it is known. The rest of the novel is the story of this city, created from seeds with people Pampa Kampana also conjured up, whispering their memories and stories into their ears. She chooses Bisnaga's king, and she creates a life for herself where she freely loves and has sex with two men. This is a city where women are equal to men, no one religion is paramount, and the rulers are fair. Until it's not, and it all comes tumbling down.

Pampa Kampana may be magically powerful and nearly immortal, but her tragedy is that she will be left alive when everyone and everything she loves is gone. Ultimately, her fate is horrifying (as in gruesome and grisly). What began as an idyllic land conjured by magic ends in the kind of brutality only humans can visit on one another.

Highly imaginative with colorful characters and a convoluted, ever-changing plot that defies description, this is a remarkable and majestic novel about the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries with a powerful message for the 21st century.

Before I read this book for my book club, I was skeptical. The only other novel I have read by JoJo Moyes is "Me Before You" (also for my book club), and it was a sappy love story. This one is more historical fiction than love story, featuring engaging characters and a compelling plot.

Taking place deep in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression, this is a story of redemption and new beginnings, a story of justice and hope, a story of love and passion. Alice is a young British woman who has never fit into the upper crust society, much to her parents' chagrin. When wealthy American Bennett Van Cleve and his father, Geoffrey, visit Surrey, England and meet Alice, both men know she will be the perfect wife for Bennett. Alice assumes she'll be living in a city and is disappointed when she finds out they are living in the mountains. The Van Cleves own the local coal mine, and the elder Mr. Van Cleve rules the mine, his workers, and his home with an iron fist. Alice is bored with nothing to do, no friends, and a husband who is cold in bed. Against the Van Cleves' wishes, she joins the fledgling packhorse librarians, which is based on the true WPA Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky that was instituted by then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and begins riding all over mountain and dale delivering books to isolated Kentucky residents. But not everyone is happy with the five women librarians as they are becoming a bit too independent. Alice and her fellow librarians have a series of adventures, but things pick up when something truly shocking happens to Margery O'Hare, the lead librarian. From then on, this book is unputdownable even if this last part of the story is rather predictable.

The colorful characters and the bold seasonal changes of this mountainous setting are so vividly described that I felt as if I had been plopped down into the fictional town of Baileyville, Kentucky. More than anything, this novel is about the power of books, the power of reading, and the power of women's friendships—all of which can change lives.

I was captivated by this book!

I started first grade in 1960. Even at that young age, I was told that when I grew up, I could only be a teacher, secretary, or a nurse, but most of all I should be a wife and mother. And then, quite suddenly about 10 years later, everything changed. While I wasn't part of the catalyst that made it happen, I was a thankful beneficiary.

This brilliant, highly readable, and entertaining book by Gail Collins, the first-ever female editor at The New York Times, traces the women's movement from 1960 to today in broad strokes and anecdotes. All the history and public drama are here, as well as dozens of poignant and powerful personal stories of everyday women who lived it. (And bonus! The epilogue at the end updates what happened to many of these women who are profiled in the book.)

Just to set the stage: It's 1960. The smart women who are graduating from the elite Barnard College in New York City, attend a pre-graduation party hosted by the college. At the party, the women who are engaged receive a corsage to wear. Those who are not engaged receive lemons to carry. About two-thirds of the graduating class receive corsages.

Even for those of us who lived through that time and remember things well, there is a lot of surprising information in this book—information that goes beyond the gender-based job ads that easily let employers discriminate or the fact that women were almost always paid significantly less than men who were doing the same work.

Among many other things, find out:
• The shocking laws that were on the books, including some that gave husbands control not only of wives' property, but also their earnings, as well as laws that prohibited women from serving on juries.

• How one senator's decision to play games with the 1964 Civil Rights Act had the unintended consequence of ending job discrimination for women.

• How the birth control pill was more influential in women going to medical school and law school than almost anything else.

• The dramatic effect the women's movement had on clothing. Just reading what women had to wear in the 1960s made me feel uncomfortable and itchy.

• The extraordinary impact of Title IV, especially allowing girls to play more sports in high school and college. Of everything in this book, this is the chapter I most recommend mothers have their daughters read—just so they can understand how much things have changed.

• The real reasons the Equal Rights Amendment failed, including the outsized role Phyllis Schlafly played.

• The horrifying impact on women who were involved in several headline-making sexual harassment cases in the 1990s, including Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas, the Navy's Tailhook scandal, and the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair.

• What happened when women were deployed for the first time in combat in the first Gulf War in 1991.

• How dating has changed, especially the "hook-up" culture that has exploded in popularity.

• The different standards for college admissions for men and women and the disturbing reason why.

Cultural and societal changes tend to happen slowly. The women's movement happened fast. Very, very fast. In a matter of just 10 to 15 years, little first grade girls who thought they could only be certain things when they grew up had everything opened to them if they worked hard and had the courage to try—just like men.

This is a novel. It says so on the cover. But it's not exactly that. It's a memoir. Sort of. The reason it's only "sort of" a memoir is that author Elizabeth McCracken uses a lot of words in this short "novel" decrying how this is not a memoir.

Well, whatever it is, it's an interesting—that is strange, odd, curious, mildly fascinating—book.

This is the story of McCracken's mother, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy at birth but never let the pain or discomfort, never mind the canes and scooters and frequent falls, get in her way or slow her down. She married, had two children, earned a doctorate, and had a stellar career at Boston University at a time when married women with children typically didn't work outside the home.

She is the hero of this book.

The novel/memoir begins after her mother's death and is grounded in a trip to London the unnamed narrator (that we can safely assume is Elizabeth McCracken) takes by herself in August 2019. She remembers the things she and her mother did just a few years earlier when they took a similar trip to London together. With every stop along the way—from the bells of St. Paul's Cathedral to the London black cab taxis to an avant garde production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"—memories of her mother's long life intrude, many good and some troublesome.

And while the narrator insists repeatedly that this isn't a memoir and it's all fiction (including the unusual and creative dedication at the beginning of the book), it is near the end that the narrator names her mother for the first time—first, middle, and last name. And that left me wondering how true the story was. I Googled the name. It's a memoir. Mostly. Except when it's a novel.

This is not a riveting read. While it's slow-going in parts, it is a heartrending tribute to a mother who was dearly loved and for whom the author deeply grieves.

If you're an Elizabeth McCracken fan, do read it. If not, and especially if you have not yet read any of her novels or short stories, skip it for now.

This is a work of biographical fiction that almost qualifies as a horror story. Using fact and poetic license--after all, it is a novel--author Andromeda Romano-Lax profiles the life of Rosalie Raynor Watson, the wife of Dr. John B. Watson, who developed in the 1920s the controversial psychological theory of behaviorism. Specifically, Watson advocated that parents should put their newborns on a rigid feeding and sleeping schedule, ignore their cries, hold them as little as possible and never kiss or cuddle them. To arrive at this theory, he and Rosalie, his laboratory assistant at Johns Hopkins University, conducted cruel psychological and physical experiments on newborns, most of whom were orphans. (This is where it turned into a horror story for me.)

John, who was married and had two children, had a torrid affair with Rosalie. The affair was quickly exposed and even publicized in the mainstream press, which ruined John's academic career at Johns Hopkins and mortified Rosalie's family. Eventually, John was able to divorce his first wife and marry Rosalie, although he continued having multiple lovers on the side. The couple moved to New York City to begin life anew, but the gossip followed them there, too. Rosalie, a 1920 graduate of Vassar, was frustrated most of her life, unable to have a career in science as she had always dreamed and unhappy as a mother of two boys.

This is a fascinating, well-written story not only of life in the roaring '20s among the rich and educated, but also the incredible power parents have over their children's psychological development. Read it!

Condoleezza Rice has written a well-deserved love letter to her parents, John and Angelena Rice, who raised the future U.S. Secretary of State under horrific circumstances: 1950s and '60s segregated Birmingham, Alabama. I am in awe of her parents and grandparents who did so much with so little, especially in a time of such violence, hatred and fear when the bonds of segregation were first broken. This is a story of sacrifice and love on their part and prodigious accomplishment on her part--academically and musically. And while the subject matter is fascinating, I found the writing to be less than riveting and often boring.

I want to give this book 10 stars. Five is not enough. What happens when a grumpy old man who is intent on killing himself when he believes his life no longer has meaning meets a group of characters who thwarts his every suicidal move--unintentionally, of course? What happens is hilarious. And heart-warming. And poignant. What happens is love. And the power of community.

Ove is 58 and finished with living. And then new neighbors move in--a very unlikely bunch that moves into Ove's heart, too. Yes, it's a feel-good story, but what could be syrupy sentimentality is muted by the quirky, snarky humor and the result is you will laugh out loud more than once. I promise.

This is a 10-star book. Read it. Now. And be prepared to laugh and cry and go buy a Saab. (You'll get that last one when you read the book.)

This story effortlessly and fluidly jumps from the present to the past and back again, as well as from San Francisco to China and back again as accomplished author Amy Tan tells the tale of three generations of Chinese women: Precious Auntie, LuLing and Ruth.

LuLing, who is well into her 80s, is showing signs of Alzheimer's disease, and while Ruth takes care of her mother--and relives much of her own hurtful childhood--she finds extensive writings her mother has done. It's a memoir of her mother's life growing up in China.

This book is filled with secrets, mysteries, superstitions and curses that one by one are resolved or put to rest. But it is also a story about the power of family, tradition and love that stretches between generations.

No wonder this won the Pulitzer Prize! This is (officially) a short story collection. It's also a novel. So maybe it's a hybrid between the two. The 13 short stories in this book cover a period of about 30 years and take place primarily in and around Crosby, Maine, a small coastal town where everyone knows everyone else. Olive Kitteridge, who is a junior high school math teacher, is the main character in several of the stories and has a supporting role, minor appearance or cameo in all the other stories.

Each story tells the tale of a different Crosby resident, but each story is interrelated to the others. No story stands alone, which is what makes this feel like a novel. An unexplained question or mystery in one story is resolved in another.

This is a book about the human condition: joy and sorrow, commitment and betrayal, honor and revenge, love and sex, life and death. I found the book captivating and gripping, albeit a bit sad and at times heartrending.

This coming-of-age book, which is told in the first person from the point of view of 15-year-old Thea Atwell during the first years of the Depression, is a captivating read. Born and raised in Florida on a remote, 1,000-acre citrus grove, Thea and her twin brother, Sam, have the run of the place. Thea is an avid horse rider. Sam loves nature. They grow up in an isolated world, but filled with the love of their parents, an aunt and uncle and their cousin, Georgie.

Then Thea disgraces and shames her family, so they send her away to North Carolina to the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for girls, a respite for young Southern girls. Author Anton DiSclafani expertly tells this tale in the past (in Florida) and the present (the camp), seamlessly weaving the two back and forth. We don't find out what Thea did to deserve to be fully shunned by her family until well into the book, making it a juicy page-turner.

Thea is a complicated character. While some may dislike her, I found her fascinating as she attempts to figure out who she is and how she wants to live her life. She is fiercely independent during a time when this was perceived to be a character flaw in a young woman. But she is also selfish and caught up in a scandalous life of her own making. The subsequent secrets she must keep isolate her more fully and with more emotional pain than any shunning could do. Highly recommended!

Oooh! What a delicious book! It just sneaks up on you--and in a good way. It takes a bit to get into it, but it's worth the wait. By the time the plot really gets moving the characters are fully developed and seem like real people. And look out! You won't be able to put it down.

It's 1922--just after WWI. Frances lives with her mother in a lovely British neighborhood in a house that is falling down around them--just like their finances. To make ends meet, they reluctantly take in borders, a married couple named Leonard and Lilian Barber, whom they refer to as "paying guests." Frances quickly develops a friendship with Lilian. Leonard and Lilian's marriage is falling apart, they fight, there is great unhappiness and Lilian turns to Frances. And then the unthinkable happens.

"The Paying Guests" has it all--historical fiction, love and sex, crime and intrigue and lots of suspense. Author Sarah Waters is a master!

This book will make you laugh. And this book will break your heart. It is about the comedy and tragedy of life--some of which we bring on ourselves and some of which just happens. The good. The bad. The in-between. And sometimes the horrific.

The story is told through the perspective of one family, broken as they are. Miles Roby and Janine have split up. She is marrying someone else after getting caught having an affair. They have a 16-year-old daughter, Tick, who is like all teenage girls--lovable, hateful, a know-it-all, insecure and still a child at heart. They live in Empire Falls, New York, a gray and gritty town that has fallen on hard times after the shirt factory and mills have closed.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel starts off slowly--almost excruciatingly so--and then picks up and takes off, much like a car idling through a parade and then zooming away at 80 mph. It's a story of dreams and nightmares, of what we do to protect our children and the horrors that sometimes happen that are beyond our control. Plain and simple: Author Richard Russo is a genius.

P.S. It's worth reading "Empire Falls" if for no other reason than the driver's ed scene about halfway through the book. I laughed so hard I had to stop reading. And then every time I thought about that scene for the next few days I would laugh again.

If I could give this book 10 stars, I would! But do know this is not an easy, on-the-beach type read. This is an intelligent book--literary fiction at its finest. The story by Lauren Groff, which is a behind-closed-doors look at the marriage of Lancelot (Lotto) and Mathilde Satterwhite, is told in two parts.

The first half of the book, titled "Fates," is the marriage as viewed through Lotto's eyes. The second half of the book, "Furies," is from Mathilde's point of view. And it leaves the reader thinking: "Wait! This is the SAME marriage?" Which, of course, makes you wonder if all marriages are like this? Do we ever really know one another even after decades of marital bliss?

This is ultimately the story of how Mathilde engineered their marriage to appear to be perfect--not so much to the outside world but to Lotto. What seemed like such a sweet romantic story in "Fates" becomes a chilling, dark and creepy tale in "Furies." Pay attention to things that happen in "Fates," even if they seem unimportant because there are many revelations in "Furies" that will send you back to those early pages. You'll think, "Aha! So that's what really happened!"

I highly recommend this book.

This book, while being a very slow read, is rich in the details, manners and the lifestyle of the late Edwardian period just before the outbreak of World War I. I was all set to give it three stars until the last 20 percent of the book when (finally) the plot picks up and something actually happens. That last 20 percent is so good, I've upped my rating to four stars. Still, for all the hype (the author is likened to a modern day Jane Austen), I found it disappointing.

This is a story about the village of Rye in Sussex, England. The little town thrives on gossip--some benign and much malicious--with a strict divide among the classes and ironclad unwritten rules about manners and behavior. So when fiercely independent spinster Beatrice Nash comes to town to teach Latin to the poorer children in the public school, tongues wag. A woman as a TEACHER? Goodness. What is the world coming to? And that is exactly the point. The world, as the good people of Rye know it, is about to change and it will never again be the same. War does that.

Even though it's thin on plot, author Helen Simonson's writing is excellent, the characters are fully developed and the descriptions are vivid.

Powerful story. Exquisite prose. This short book by Jacqueline Woodson will grab you with the first sentence (For a long time, my mother wasn't dead yet.), squeeze your heart tight and not let go. If I could give it 10 stars I would.

This is the story of August, a black girl who has moved from SweetGrove, Tennessee to the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn with her father and little brother in the early '70s. This is the story of August and her three best friends. This is the story of how those girls grow up on the streets, living on the edge of poverty and either make it--or not--in the world. This is the story of a dangerous place, but one also filled with hope and courage. This is a story of grief. This is a story of love.

Read it.

Oh, how delicious! This is historical FICTION. Emphasis on the word "fiction." While it is a historical account of Catalina, princess of Spain who becomes Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife and queen of England, there is liberal artistic license taken.

The facts are the bones of the book; the fiction is the flesh. And author Philippa Gregory, who is one of the leading novelists about this time period, melds the two brilliantly. The book alternates between a third-person story and the first-person thoughts of Catalina/Katherine.

This is the first in a series of novels about the Tudors. The story continues in the next book, "The Other Boleyn Girl," when the Bolelyn family (first Mary and then her sister, Anne) so devastatingly disrupt the marriage of the King Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and set in motion the birth of the Church of England.

If you enjoy the stories of the Tudors--I find it all quite enthralling--then this is a must-read.

This is a difficult book to read--not because of inferior writing, a confusing plot or one-dimensional characters. The writing is excellent, the plot is well-conceived and the characters ring true. Rather, it is difficult to read because of the horrific subject matter: the relatively little-known genocide in 1915 of some 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Turks in Ottoman Turkey. And the rest of the world didn't know it happened. It was called the Slaughter You Know Nothing About.

The story: Elizabeth Endicott, newly graduated from Mt. Holyoke, accompanies her father to Aleppo, Syria to provide humanitarian aid to the Armenians. The Armenian men were summarily executed, while the women and children were marched across the desert for days without food or water to refugee camps. They were raped and often murdered for sport during the marches. Those few who made it to Aleppo were walking skeletons.

The book tells the story of Elizabeth, two German soldiers who were fighting as allies with the Turks, and Armen, an Armenian who lost his wife and infant daughter. The plot gets a bit weighed down, in my opinion, by bouncing back and forth between 1915 and the present day as Elizabeth's granddaughter attempts to unravel the secrets of her grandmother's past.

This book by Chris Bohjalian is shocking, tragic and romantic--historical fiction at its best because it tells a tale that needs to be told and that still resonates more than 100 years later.