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.

The intersection of religion and science is crooked if not actually broken. In a way, this book tries to make that intersection whole and seamless. And the result is magnificent.

This is a short but monumental novel that has so much depth, so many profound thoughts, and a message so intricate and intense that I think I could read it over and over and still find something new in it each time.

Written by Yaa Gyasi, this is the story of Gifty, a brilliant 28-year-old woman—Harvard undergrad, Stanford PhD in neuroscience—who is deeply plagued by the death of her beloved brother, Nana, from an OxyContin addiction and overdose. Gifty was born in Huntsville, Alabama, but her parents and brother are immigrants from Ghana. The story begins when Gifty is a graduate student at Stanford, but seamlessly bounces around in time from her childhood and teen years in Alabama, college at Harvard, and back to the present in San Francisco. Gifty's suicidal mother shows up at her San Francisco apartment nearly comatose from grief—even though this is years after Nana's death. As Gifty valiantly tries to care for her clinically depressed mother, she struggles with the big questions of life, especially those revolving around her evangelical Christian upbringing and how God does—or doesn't—fit into the life of a neuroscientist who is researching the brain-based science of addiction.

This is a profound, elegiac examination of the human spirit after it has been crushed by grief and a powerful statement about the ravages of opioids. While parts of the book are absolutely heartbreaking, the ultimate message of hope and love is transcendent.

This book is bizarre. No, really (really!) bizarre. Each sentence is a little word explosion, a mind-boggling and manic amalgam of letters and punctuation that continue and continue one after another to form a book—a wildly bizarre, but incredibly creative, book.

Is it good? Yeah. Sort of. It's long. And breathless. And almost giddy. If a book could break into uncontrollable giggles, this one just might do that. So even though it is highly imaginative and even innovative, all of this makes reading it a bit exhausting at times. It's almost too much. Hence, four stars and not five.

Written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Chang-rae Lee, this is the convoluted story of 20-year-old Tiller Bardmon, an average guy in every sense of the word—from looks to accomplishments. He has finished his sophomore year at a small, elite college and is spending the summer at home in Dunbar, New Jersey, a Princeton stand-in, before his junior year abroad. While caddying for the first time ever, he meets Pong Lou, and Tiller's life changes practically overnight. Cue the bizarre. Because what happens to Tiller over the next few months is so unbelievable it's preposterous. But wait! Back up! There are two plotlines in the book, and one of them begins on the first page with what happens to Tiller after his adventures with Pong Lou. Tiller (still 20 years old) is living with an older woman named Val and her obese 8-year-old son Victor Jr. Val and Victor Jr. are in the witness protection program after Val squealed on her now dead (but then alive and very crooked) husband to the FBI. Whew. Did you follow all that? Never mind. Reading the book is better than a plot summary anyway.

This is a story about the American dream, about integrating with other cultures, about finding balance and love and goodness in life, about unexpected adventures, about sharing the riches, about the inherent dangers in cheating and dishonesty, and about growing up in a tough world.

While most of the plot is implausible, just run with it. Embrace those little word explosion sentences, and see where they lead.

Bonus: Chapter nine tells the story—through the adult recollections of then-five-year-old Pong Lou—of the beginning of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in 1966. It is a harrowing and unrelenting account that offered me a whole new appreciation for the violence, degradation, and absolute societal upheaval that accompanied this movement.

This is a silly little love story, and sometimes a silly little love story is just the ticket! If you're looking for a distraction from the so-called real world, check out this quick-to-read ChickLit novel by Phaedra Patrick.

In the British town of Upchester, there are a lot of romantic souls. In tribute to the local boy band's international hit song, "Lock Me Up with Your Love," lovers begin putting padlocks, many of which are engraved with initials or messages, on the town's four bridges. But the cumulative weight of the padlocks could seriously damage the bridges, and it's Mitchell Fisher's job to remove them. As he is doing just that one early summer day, he sees a beautiful woman in a yellow dress attach a heart-shaped padlock to the bridge and then with a smile on her face, fall into the raging waters below. Mitchell jumps in after her to try to save her. He succeeds, but then she seemingly disappears. Mitchell becomes a hero, but he doesn't feel like one. He's a curmudgeonly young man, whose life partner died three years ago and left him with their nine-year-old daughter, Poppy. As he and the missing woman's vivacious and flashy sister try to solve the mystery of her disappearance based only on the clue of the heart-shaped padlock, Mitchell learns a lot about himself and the meaning of love.

Bonus: This novel is also a tribute to the lost art of handwritten letters. You know, the kind that need paper, pen, envelopes, and stamps.

Sappy in parts and mildly profound in others, this is a sweet, feel-good book to be read quickly and thoroughly enjoyed, but don't expect it to haunt your thoughts for long. It's not that profound.

Elin Hilderbrand is known as the "Queen of Beach Reads," so I had certain expectations—as in, light, frothy, ChickLitty—for this first book I have read by her. Well, that was wrong!

While this is a wonderful novel for summer reading, it is really a magnificent, intelligent blend of historical fiction and a beach book. It's a beach book with brains!

This is the story of the (very) privileged Nichols-Foley-Levin family of Brookline, Massachusetts, who have spent their summers for generations on the tony Massachusetts island of Nantucket. The novel focuses on four of the women in what is a larger cast of characters: 48-year-old mother Kate Levin, 24-year-old daughter Blair Foley Whalen, 21-year-old daughter Kirby Foley, and 13-year-old daughter Jessica Levin. The story is told in alternating chapters from their four voices.

Kate is overtly distraught and drinking way too much due to excessive worry for her son Tiger, who was drafted and has just been deployed to Vietnam. Blair, who is pregnant and due any day with twins, is in a romantically complicated and unhappy marriage to Angus, an MIT professor who is working on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Kirby, a Simmons University junior, gets a summer job at an inn on Martha's Vineyard in Edgartown, while recovering from a romance with a married man and embarking on a new romance with a Black Harvard student. And Jessie, who turns 13 the day they arrive in Nantucket, is experiencing all those adolescent demons and joys as she, too, worries about her big brother fighting in Vietnam. Each of these four women mirror a major life event most women experience—from adolescence to college to marriage and motherhood to the nearly empty nest—but from a vantage of changing times for women's roles and expectations.

This is a book that grabbed me from the first paragraph. The plot simply buzzes and has enough surprises and small twists to keep the pages quickly turning. And, just as the title says, this is all taking place during that momentous summer of 1969—the first moon walk, the Vietnam War, race relations, Betty Friedan, and Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Very cleverly, each chapter is titled with a song from the era, which gives just a whisper of a hint to the evolving plotline.

Read it! Take it to the beach or your own backyard. This is a summer novel that perfectly captures that tumultuous summer of '69.

Complex characters. An exhilarating plot. An incredible ending. This fascinating blend of fiction and history will not only keep readers turning the pages, but also pausing to really think about the inner meaning of what just happened.

Written by Maggie Shipstead, this is the totally fictitious story of pilot Marian Graves, who learned to fly in the heady days of the barnstormers, worked as an Alaskan bush pilot, flew with the Royal Air Force, and eventually did an Amelia Earhart-type turn flying the great circle in the Earth's longitude before disappearing forever. Marian's story, which begins in the 1920s, is alternated with that of Hadley Baxter, a modern-day scandal-plagued Hollywood actress who signs on to play the role of Marian in a movie. Marian's story is the crux of the book, and Shipstead doesn't waste any time in getting readers hooked on the action and adventure—from a sinking and burning ship in which an infant Marian and her twin brother, Jamie, are rescued to their quick dispatch to a bachelor uncle living in Missoula, Montana to their colorful childhood and dramatic adulthood. The story is peppered with bootleggers, drunks, prostitutes, and gamblers. A less talented author would be giving her poor readers whiplash, but Shipstead is always in control of both the plot and the characters.

And what characters these are! I'm sure that many have Googled Marian Graves thinking she had to be real. She's not, but she brilliantly pops alive on the pages of this masterful book.

Oh, and the writing. It's exquisite. There is a reason this novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Bonus: The ending is incredible. (No peeking!)

While this is a fascinating study and reflection on the history of women pilots, it is most of all a reflection on what it really means for any woman to have determination over her own life, her own decisions, her own fate. It's a tribute to the real meaning of feminism, while also being an intelligent, riveting, and romantic story.

This cautionary tale about the fragility of marriage begins as a page-turner that turns into a bit of a slog-fest before eventually redeeming itself. And that's disappointing because it's so good in the beginning!

Written by Sue Miller, this hybrid between ChickLit and literary fiction, is the story of a marriage and the heartbreaking betrayal of infidelity. Annie and Graham (second marriage for both) have been married for 30 years. They live in Cambridge in the shadow of Harvard University. A big man with an even bigger personality, he owns a thriving independent bookstore. She is a tiny little thing, who putters as an arty photographer. They live in a very small converted carriage house on a street of otherwise grandiose homes. Life is sweet. Because Graham has this habit, albeit one he has resisted for years, he embarks on an ill-advised affair with a friend of theirs. It's all about sex and nothing more. He ends it. And then Graham very suddenly and very unexpectedly dies. That's the page-turner part of the book.

After his death, Annie is understandably heartbroken and absolutely grief-stricken. While Miller portrays these emotions realistically, it just goes on seemingly forever. (And if she had skipped this part, we reviewers would blast her for taking grief too lightly. It's a no-win situation.) It's soon after Graham's death that Annie figures out he had the affair, which just sends her on a whole different kind of grieving—this time for her marriage. Eventually ("Finally!" says the reader), the book becomes an examination of all the characters' relationships and marriages—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and what makes a good marriage. This last part is much more readable, although not the page-turner it was in the beginning.

This is a very sad book. Deeply gloomy. There are several well-imagined minor characters, such as Graham's first wife, Frieda, and their son, Lucas, as well as Graham and Annie's daughter, Sarah. These characters add a lot to the story if only to give the reader a little break from all the grief.

Reader, beware. This is a book that can envelop you in sadness or, quite possibly, bore you because it just doesn't let up for so long. But most of all, it's disappointing. Sue Miller is such a good writer. This is not her best.

An old-fashioned fable at its heart, this extraordinary book by Margot Livesey is literary fiction at its finest. It's the kind of novel that on the surface is nothing more than a good read, but then it sneakily wormed its way into my brain so I found myself often thinking about it and its deeper meanings at the most unexpected times.

The setting is Oxfordshire, England. Three teenage siblings—Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan—are walking home from school one day when Zoe spots something in a field. They run toward it and realize it's a boy about their age, covered in blood and stab wounds. He is barely conscious. Their swift actions save the boy's life, but this act of violence forever changes the three. Matthew, 17, is determined to find the perpetrator. Zoe, 15, starts staring strange men in the eyes—and when they look back at her, things get interesting. Duncan, 13, who never before was concerned that he is adopted and looks very different from the rest of his family, decides it's time to find his first mother. Eventually, they individually meet the unusual boy in the field, and their interactions with him have a lasting impact. Meanwhile, the parents of Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan are experiencing their own heartbreaking and shocking crises.

This imaginative novel's greatest strength is the bright and bold characters. They are all distinct, filled with personality, and absolutely delightful. It is the characters—even the minor ones—who tie the threads of the plot together and turn this into the kind of book that is just so very special.

The ending is both tragic and perfect, as Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan each find what they are looking for, providing not only healing from the past, but also a path to the future.

This is a magnificent tale about love and loss, betrayal and reconciliation that astonishes and delights.

The first chapter in this novel is quite startling. It's weird. OK…very weird. But keep going.

When everything starts to make sense, this is a somewhat eccentric, albeit charming, story of an unlikely friendship between Daniel, a 101-year-old man, and Elisabeth, a 32-year-old woman. Best of all, they've been dedicated to one another since Elisabeth was eight years old and often left in his care by her party-loving and irresponsible single mother.

Written by Ali Smith, this finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize is a tale of friendship and love that is light on plot but filled with vivid characters. It's 2016. Daniel is in a nursing home, dying and slipping in and out of a deep sleep, and Elisabeth is the only one who regularly visits him. While the novel is primarily about Elisabeth's memories of their times together, it is also about the strife, anger, and political discord that envelops that summer and autumn of 2016 in England just after the Brexit vote was taken and politically split the country in two.

This is a literary novel that requires readers to pay attention and think. Some of the text is written in free form, even bordering on stream of consciousness. It is also rife with imagery, especially trees, which writers often use to represent life and growth. That is especially poignant in this book considering how and when Smith employs these images.

The life and paintings/collages of the only British female Pop artist, Pauline Boty, feature heavily in the book, which is quite a feat since the paintings are described in words without the actual images. Take a minute to Google these paintings/collages. It will make all the difference in your appreciation of the book.

In some important ways, the novel is the literary equivalent to Boty's rebellious and highly original artwork that juxtaposed disparate images together to create a startling whole. Just like the first chapter of this book.

If you want a charming and delightful book that is perfect for those cooler autumn evenings, bewitch yourself with this, the second in the four-part series, by Alice Hoffman, the mistress of the genre of magical realism. (And, yes, you should read them in order beginning with the "The Rules of Magic.")

"Practical Magic" picks up where "The Rules of Magic" ended. Sally and Gillian, who were orphaned and sent to live with their aunts in their 200-year-old house in Massachusetts, have grown up. But true to all the Owens women throughout the generations, love hurts them. Sally happily marries and has two daughters of her own, Antonia and Kylie, but tragedy strikes. She flees to suburban New York where everyone is the same and no one thinks she's a witch. Gillian flees to the desert southwest where she marries frequently, divorces quickly, and suffers greatly. And then the unthinkable happens, forcing Gillian to return to Sally's home. These two women, who both have weird connections to the supernatural, begin on a perilous quest to save each other and create a future for themselves where love doesn't hurt.

This book is magical—not because of any "witchy"—but because of the life wisdom sprinkled throughout the book, much like fairy dust. The storytelling is enchanting, the characters are vivid, and there is just enough magic to make the book delightful. It's a real celebration of the power of women—and love.

This is a deeply felt and poignantly emotional book about the coming of age of two teenage girls. The twist is that their father is a bigamist, but only one of them knows it.

Growing up in Atlanta in the 1980s, Dana Lynn Yarboro and Chaurisse Witherspoon are struggling with the usual teen angst—from acne to AP tests. But Dana's worries are more than skin deep. She and Chaurisse have the same father, James Witherspoon, a bigamist with a big heart and a complicated life who is married to both their mothers. But only Dana and her mom, Gwen, know. Chaurisse and her mom, Laverne, have no clue. Dana and Gwen live their lives with this giant secret shrouding their existence. Dana grows up knowing she always comes second in her father's life and heart. But when Dana gets into high school she is determined to meet and befriend her secret sister, who is only four months younger than she is. Of course, James is eventually busted, but how that unfolds and the ensuing fallout is brilliant—both heartbreaking and humorous—in the talented writing of author Tayari Jones.

The story is told in both girls' voices with Dana narrating the first half of the book from her point of view, and Chaurisse narrating the second half. With bright and bold characters and an unflinching plot that keeps the pages turning, this is an engrossing and impassioned novel that celebrates the meaning of truth and the boundaries of love.

This is a good book — just not a great book. And that's a shame, because it could have been a lot more.

Written by Ed Tarkington, this is the story of Charlie Boykin, born in the 1960s to a 15-year-old mother whose family disowned her when she wouldn't go away quietly to have the baby and give him up for adoption. So at 15, she ran away from her South Carolina home to live with an aunt in Nashville. They live on the wrong side of the tracks in what some cities would call the projects. Charlie's mom, Bonnie, works as a cocktail waitress in a somewhat seedy bar. When Charlie is about to enter high school, the unbelievable happens. He is admitted as a scholarship student at Yeatman, an elite boys' school. His entire life suddenly changes. Charlie becomes such good friends with one of the Yeatman cliques led by Archer Creigh that he and his mom are invited to live in the carriage house of one of his friend's estates. He is not only lifted up into this rarefied world where money is no object, but also he is fully adopted into it. However, all is not as it seems, and as Charlie eventually discerns the truth behind all the largesse that has been given to him, his world collapses.

This is the biggest problem with the book: It has the kind of slow-moving plot that absolutely depends on characterization to be fully realized. But the characters are all one-dimensional with their never-changing personality characteristics defined early on in the book. And so plot flops. Even as devastating family secrets are revealed, the reactions tend to be farcical. Either the author overplays his hand or shockingly ignores the obvious. It is very disappointing!

Oh, it could have been so much more.

This is a rich literary gem. The story, a gentle blend of magic and realism, is so so so good that you'll keep reading long after you should.

Written by Alice Hoffman, this is the intriguing story of people who lived in a very small town in the Berkshires in Massachusetts—from its founding 300 years ago to today. Even Johnny Appleseed and Emily Dickinson have roles in this town's history. This is a novel, but each chapter is really a short story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, yet each is connected with the others through shared characters and a mysterious garden where sorrows are buried. In this enigmatic garden, which has distinctly red soil, only red plants will grow. If they're not naturally red, then they turn red.

This novel-short story hybrid is not the easiest format for a writer or a reader, but Hoffman is an expert, and each chapter seamlessly moves into the next for a compelling and engaging book. The story is held together with tall tales and legends of the past (but we readers know what really happened!) and secrets that are slowly revealed. There is love and heartbreak, births and deaths, struggle and survival, hurting and healing, evil and virtue, fear and courage, apparitions and reality. This is a powerful, compassionate story of life.

Meanwhile, the descriptions of the blizzards, the black flies, and the eels swimming in the river are so vivid you'll feel the cold, hear the buzzing, and see the black oozing in the water as it rapidly flows downstream.

If you're looking for a literary treat, indulge in this enchanting novel.

Oh, this book! Wow!

That said, it's not for everyone. You will appreciate it and understand it far better if you have a basic knowledge of Tudor history—and by that, I mean more than being able to list the names of all six wives of Henry VIII.

This, the second in the Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, continues the story of the life of Thomas Cromwell, who is arguably the most misunderstood and wrongly disparaged personage from this time period. (And, yes, you need to read the books in order, so begin with "Wolf Hall: A Novel.") Mantel brilliantly tells the events of a single year—summer of 1535 to the summer of 1536—entirely from Cromwell's point of view.

And what a year that was. Focusing on the rapid downfall and beheading of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, the story is told afresh because it is all portrayed from how Cromwell viewed it, including his own masterful manipulations to do the king's bidding: Get rid of Anne so he could marry Jane Seymour. Even though we all know how the story ends, this book presents the tragic plot in a whole new way and shows not only the conniving Cromwell, but also the loving, generous side of the man that the history books tend to ignore.

The best and most brilliant part of this book is the writing. It is absolutely exquisite with an exceptional eye for detail that will seemingly deposit the reader into the middle of the sixteenth century and right into the volatile court of King Henry VIII. Think intriguing, seductive, and sophisticated—all in one. Descriptions of sounds, flavors, odors, sights, and even touch are so vivid, so perfect that it seems as if you can really hear, taste, smell, see, and feel them.

Bonus: If you're reading this on the Kindle, the X-ray feature is incredibly useful in that it clearly and succinctly defines each character's role and title. This is an excellent tool for keeping straight the varied and large cast of characters. It's especially helpful when someone is called by his title and not his name, such as the Duke of Norfolk. Click on X-ray, and you'll be told the Duke of Norfolk is Thomas Howard, uncle to the queen, ferocious senior peer, and an enemy of Cromwell. (There is also a Cast of Characters at the front of the book with the same information for those reading the paper version, but for Kindle readers it is much easier to click on X-Ray than "flip" back to that.)

This is the rarest of books. I felt myself becoming the main character. The writing is so perfect, so brilliant, so masterful that I, the reader, became Lucy Barton. It was weird. I could feel it happening.

Oh yes, there is a reason Elizabeth Strout is one of my top three favorite writers. (Who can choose one favorite writer? It's like choosing a favorite child!) The sheer genius of this is that Lucy Barton's life is the polar opposite of my own life—yet, I still felt like I was inhabiting the character.

This is the third in the series about Lucy Barton, and you absolutely must read them in order beginning with "My Name Is Lucy Barton: A Novel" and then "Anything Is Possible: A Novel." In this book, Lucy is not only divorced from William, her first husband, but also she has been a widow for five years after her second husband, David, has died. William is almost 70 when the book opens, and is having a bit of a crisis. Since he and Lucy get along OK, he calls her. A lot. He then discovers something truly shocking about his deceased mother—the kind of thing that just turns your world upside down. He and Lucy take a road trip to Maine to try to figure out this life-changing development. While there, they also reveal much to each other about the secrets of their long-ago marriage, and Lucy learns much about herself.

That's the plot, such as it is, but this book is not plot-dependent. It is a story of self-revelation as Lucy begins to comprehend who she is and how pivotal events in her past shaped her personality. It's an intimate look at one woman's deepest, uncensored thoughts. Reading this book almost feels like surreptitiously reading another's journal and hoping you don't get caught in the act.

The literary genius of the Lucy Barton trilogy is how different each book is. The first is a novel. The second is interrelated short stories that together form a novel. And this third book is a memoir that becomes a novel.

This beautifully written book is a subtle but viscerally insightful look at one woman's soul and the meaning of her life written by a master of American literature.

This is a book about female empowerment set during a time when women were considered property and had no voice, no say, and most of all no power. Women were nothing. But in the hands of spectacular author Lauren Groff, these women—nuns in the Middle Ages—come alive with a story so strong, so resonant, so forceful, and so feminist in its telling that we readers are transported to inhabit their piece of the world where women are in charge and virtually all men are shunned.

This is the story of Marie de France, a real person who lived in the 12th century, albeit very little is known about her. Groff has filled in Marie's historical bare-bones story with pulsating life. Born as the result of a rape by a nobleman, she moved to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine when she was 14, but was soon sent to a far-flung abbey in England to serve as the prioress (and eventually the abbess) of the convent even though she had no vocation. After Marie recovers from her considerable resentment and anger at being summarily banished from Eleanor's court, she comes into her own, rescuing the dilapidated abbey from a slow demise and its inhabitants from death. Marie has extraordinary organizational and management skills, but what truly sets her apart is her gift for writing poetry and her dramatic and striking visions of the Virgin Mary.

Lauren Groff's writing is absolutely exquisite. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph is superb. The descriptions of the rain and mud, the birds chattering, the eagles soaring, the human body odor, the icy cold stone floors…all of it is just so visceral and surprisingly passionate and sensual that it plunges the reader right into this Middle Ages' abbey.

Rich in historical detail, this is a deeply creative book with complex and vivid characters. It is a literary gift…a masterpiece of historical fiction.

This is a difficult book to read on several levels. Not only is the subject matter disturbing in the important story it has to tell, but also the many (many!) words and phrases written in Tagalog, Ilocano, and Pangasinan with no translation can just make it confounding to understand.

Written by Elaine Castillo, this is the story of Hero De Vera, a 34-year-old woman who illegally immigrates to the United States from the Philippines. We very slowly learn the details of Hero's life, and those details are horrific in places. Born to a wealthy and politically influential family, she studied to become a physician. Along the way she joined the New People's Army, an armed group of the Communist Party, until she was captured and tortured. Now she is starting a new life in San Francisco, living with her aunt, uncle, and young cousin, Roni, for whom she serves as caregiver. Hero eventually makes friends and begins a real life of her own, but the torture that was done to her hands—and soul—
will forever remind her and others that she has a past.

Castillo takes a bit of a literary leap in the writing style. When the book is about Hero, it's in the third person. When the book is about another character, it's in the second person. It begins this way, and I found it quite disconcerting until I got accustomed to the awkward style.

That said, the story is quite imaginative and an important one that should be told about the immigrant experience. While it is emotionally searing in parts, at other times it's hard to stay interested because the story is so unnecessarily drawn out.

Bonus: The novel is packed with Filipino myths, superstitions, legends, stories, and food. Lots and lots of food. It's a fascinating journey through a country's culture.