Oh, I just want to hug this book.

It is a book about nothing. And at the same time, it's a book about everything. It is a book about what people think and say and do. It is a book about how they treat one another in good times and bad. It is a deeply perceptive book about life and how we will be remembered.

It is extraordinary.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout, this is an imaginative culmination of almost everything she has written—the four books in the Amgash series featuring Lucy Barton, the two Olive Kitteridge books, and "The Burgess Boys"—pulling together the characters from those seven novels into one incredible story about friendship, love, healing, and hope.

Well-known novelist Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William Gerhardt are living together amicably in the small town of Crosby, Maine, along with grumpy Olive Kitteridge, who is now in a continuing care community, and Bill Burgess and his wife, the Unitarian minister, Margaret Estaver. Lucy and Bill go on long weekly walks, telling each other everything. It's a kind of emotional affair. Lucy visits Olive in the home where they exchange stories about people's lives, which they call "unrecorded lives." And Bill, who is an attorney, takes on a murder case defending a man named Matthew Beach whom prosecutors think killed his own mother by drowning her in a rented car in a nearby quarry. Matt has an odd hobby of painting nude pregnant women, which has caused some in this small town to think of him as a pervert, but the paintings are spectacular.

And that's pretty much the plot, such as it is. But that isn't the point. The point is in the characters, who are so genuine, so vivid, so vibrant you will think you know them in real life.

The brilliance of the story—the masterful ambition of it—is Strout's inimitable way of writing about life and feelings and emotions. I surmise that virtually every woman of a certain age will see herself somewhere in the story and in that moment will feel authenticated. It's that powerful!

There's just one really important catch: You must (must!) read those seven books mentioned in the beginning of this review before you read "Tell Me Everything." First, there are many references in this novel that would be spoilers from the previous books. Second, you won't understand the nuances of the characters if you don't know their full backstories. But what a treat awaits you with these eight Elizabeth Strout gems!

What this book is: Literary criticism of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
What this book is not: A theological or religious analysis of the Book of Genesis.

Every student of literature, no matter that person's religion or lack thereof, should read the Bible—as a great work of literature, not necessarily as religion. And it should be read more than once. So many prized works of literature—from Shakespeare to Steinbeck—reference passages and people in the Bible. If you haven't read the Bible as a piece of literature, you probably won't understand those references.

In this profound book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson, has written what is essentially a long essay of literary criticism, analyzing the Book of Genesis for its plot, characters, themes, and symbolism. Most important, she analyzes the big stories (and some of the smaller ones) in terms of their political and historical context and importance, delving into their meaning and perspective—as literature.

For example, she demonstrates how much of the book Genesis is what is called a "pastiche" in literature; that is, it imitates and reinvents similar stories from other ancient traditions, such as the two Creation narratives and the Flood, which were also part of the myths of Canaan and Babylonia. She views the Flood as a parable about how we humans ruined the world so much that God may have been tempted to fully destroy it, but He didn't. She shows how the main characters, such as Cain and Abraham, are deeply flawed but still beloved by God. Robinson insists that Abraham following God's word to sacrifice Isaac was actually an admonition against child sacrifice, a common practice in some ancient cultures. Forgiveness and grace are the predominant themes of Genesis. Other literary devices she explores include literary structure, parallelism, repetition, framing devices, and paradox.

All 50 chapters of the Book of Genesis, published in the traditional King James Version, follow the essay. I read the essay over five days, and during each of those days, I also read 10 chapters of Genesis, which more or less allowed me to keep current with the essay's topics.

If you're looking for a more religious analysis of Genesis, move on. This isn't your book. But if you want to better understand the first book of the Bible as literature—and, therefore, references from Genesis in major literary works—dive right in. Just know this. It's not an easy read. Instead, it's an erudite study, worthy of graduate school study in English, not theology.

This is a strange book. It gets big points for originality, but it's also confusing and confounding. About halfway through, I was so bewildered, I did something I rarely do: I got online to figure out what the heck it was I was reading.

Written by Nicole Krauss, this is a book within a book and stories within stories—hence the perplexity. There are two distinct story lines/plots (as well as several other minor ones) that take a very long time to connect, so the chapter changes between them are utterly jarring, a kind of literary whiplash.

The two main stories:
• Leo Gursky's story spans 70 years beginning when he is a 10-year-old Jewish boy in Slonim, Poland and ending when he is in his 80s, living alone in an apartment in New York City. As a child, he fell in love with his playmate, Alma Mereminski. When she is 20 and Nazi Germany begins to threaten Poland, Alma's father whisks her to the United States for her safety. Unbeknownst to Leo, Alma is pregnant. He swears he will never love another. He, too, makes his way to the United States after his entire village—except for him—is slaughtered by Hitler's troops. Leo is a writer, and he pens a novel called "The History of Love" in which every female character is named Alma after Leo's one true love. He entrusts the only copy to his best friend, Zvi Litvinoff, who flees to Chile. Zvi presumes Leo is dead and publishes the novel—under his own name. Only 2,000 copies were printed in Spanish, and it quickly becomes lost in boxes in booksellers' basements.

• Alma Singer is a precocious 12-year-old girl living in an apartment with New York City with her widowed mother, Charlotte, and her brother, nicknamed Bird. Bird is convinced he is a "lamed vovnik," one of a group of 36 hidden saints in Jewish folklore who are responsible for the fate of the world. Charlotte has spent the past five years grieving for her dead husband, and the children acutely feel her pain and loss, as well as their own. The couple's favorite novel was "The History of Love," which is why they named their daughter Alma. Alma's quest is to help her mother find a new love, and when a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus offers to pay Charlotte $100,000 to translate "A History of Love" from Spanish into English, Alma is inspired. In addition to playing matchmaker, Alma is determined to find the original Alma after whom she is named. Eventually, Alma figures out the true identity of Jacob Marcus, and the two stories slowly—very, very slowly—begin to merge.

And the ending? It's quite creative…but just as confusing as the rest of the novel. This is an incredibly sad story. Ultimately, it is about significant, irreparable loss—loss of loved ones, loss of dreams, loss of country, loss of what is rightfully one's own.

While this complex literary novel often left me perplexed, once I figured out the rhythm of the writing, characters, and plotlines, I enjoyed it. As the reader, you'll have to work a bit, but it's worth it if you appreciate imaginative and artistic literature that strives to be different than mainstream fiction.

This is a history book. I had to keep reminding myself of that because it reads like a mystery novel. But it's all true. All factual. And that makes it all the more horrifying.

Written by David Grann, this is the story of the brutal murders of hundreds of people, many in the same family, in the Osage Tribe of Native Americans living on land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. It is called the Reign of Terror.

In the early 1870s, the Osage, like so many other tribes, were forced off their ancestral land in Kansas by the U.S. government and moved to a less hospitable and desirable area. When the savvy Osage leaders signed the contract with the government for the rocky, seemingly useless land in northeastern Oklahoma, they inserted this provision: "That the oil, gas, coal, or other minerals covered by the lands…are hereby reserved to the Osage Tribe." Guess what? Oil was soon discovered. To get to the oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage for leases and royalties. The people of the Osage Nation and their descendants became very, very wealthy, specifically the richest people per capita on Earth.

There were some White men who deeply resented this. The U.S. government determined that many of the Osage were incapable of handling all this money and deemed them to be incompetent. White financial guardians were assigned to oversee and authorize all spending, including something as minute as buying toothpaste. For some White men that wasn't enough. Deeply envious that Indians should be so rich, there was a nefarious plot hatched to ruthlessly kill off the tribe for their own twisted financial gain.

One woman in particular appeared to be the primary target. Her name was Mollie Burkhart, and one-by-one her extended family was murdered, each by different means. As her sisters and mother died, Mollie inherited their valuable headrights to the oil. Some who investigated the murders also turned up dead. This book is the story of those grisly killings, the ineffective local police presence, and the federal response led by Special Agent Tom White, which was largely recognized as the birth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover when Hoover used the Osage murder investigation as a showcase for his fledgling bureau.

It gets worse. Decades later, Grann's research uncovered holes in the FBI probe, including evidence of many more murders—hundreds and hundreds of additional murders--something that the author describes as "a deeper, darker, even more terrifying conspiracy which the bureau had never exposed." It was a culture of killing.

Prodigiously researched using primary and unpublished materials and written in the style of literary journalism, this is one of those few history books that is a page-turner and will keep you reading long past your bedtime.

Oh, this book is good. Really, really, really good. As in, once I got into it—about three chapters in—I could barely put it down. It just consumed me with its creative and electrifying twisty-turny plot.

Infused with a touch of magical realism, this is a suspenseful novel about three resilient women struggling against the cruelty of some very bad men. The mysterious story is shrouded in long-kept secrets, betrayal, and violence, as well as the power of nature.

Written by Emilia Hart, this is the story of three women from the Weyward family, who live different times:
• It's 1619 in Crows Beck, a small village in Cumbria in northwest England. Altha Weyward, whose first name means "healer," has been accused of being a witch, specifically causing the death of a dairy farmer when his otherwise placid cows stampeded over him on a cold winter's day. She has been transported to the dungeon in Lancaster where she will be tried for the crime.

• It's 1942, and Violet Ayres, the sheltered and despised daughter of a viscount, is rarely allowed to leave the grounds of Orton Hall, the viscount's historic estate. She has learned to never ask questions about her mother, who died under mysterious circumstances when Violet was only two years old. One day, Violet finds a strange marking scratched into the woodwork of her bedroom: Weyward. What does that mean? After 16-year-old Violet is raped by a visiting cousin, she is sent away to a mysterious cottage in Crows Beck.

• It's 2019 in London, and Kate Ayres is tremulous with fear, as her live-in boyfriend, Simon, a wealthy businessman comes home from work. Simon controls Kate's every move, tracking her on her phone among other things. And when he gets angry, which is often, he hurts her—scalding her, punching her, bruising her. He has closed her off from her family and friends. Kate is all alone in this living hell, until one day—newly pregnant and desperate to keep her unborn child safe—she gets up the courage she needs and flees to remote Crows Beck where her late great-aunt Violet has left Kate Weyward Cottage in her will.

All three women have a gift they share: They are able to commune with nature—from spiders to crows.

Each story alternates every third chapter, and while this may seem like it could be disconcerting or confusing, it's not. Instead, it is powerful, ingenious, and captivating. Of course, the three stories eventually connect, but meanwhile the cliffhanger endings of each chapter kept me riveted and avidly reading.

Bonus: Be sure to read the first two paragraphs of the author's acknowledgements at the end of the book—especially if you're a teacher.

This is a can't-put-it-down satirical literary thriller that is also an uneasy, stomach-churning read that left me twitchy and nervous, but anxious to keep turning those pages. This book should come with a bottle of aspirin.

Written by R.F. Kuang, this is the story of Juniper Song Hayward. She is in her late 20s, a graduate of Yale University, and a published novelist. But her mediocre debut novel hit the dustbins almost before it was released. Living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., Junie's only friend is fellow novelist and Yalie Athena Liu. It's a friendship fraught with angst, intense envy, and maybe a bit of hatred. Athena is wildly successful with multiple bestselling novels, scads of literary awards, and a stuffed-full bank account. She is living the dream of all novelists. Yes, she is pretentious and devious, but for some reason Athena and Junie still meet for drinks and chats.

The book opens with the two of them celebrating Athena's new Netflix deal, imbibing adult beverages on the rooftop of a pricey Georgetown bar. They go back to Athena's gorgeous Dupont Circle apartment and continue talking. They get hungry. They make pancakes. And Athena chokes…and dies. (This is not a spoiler; it's the entire basis on which the book's plot is built.) Junie then does something shocking: She steals Athena's latest manuscript about the 140,000 men in the Chinese Labour Corps who were forced to work for the British Army on the battlefields of Europe during World War I. The novel is still a very rough first draft, and June edits it—polishing the words, filling in the blanks, excising parts, adding more. She then passes it off as entirely her own work. It's a blockbuster—a bestseller beyond June's dreams of anything she could have written. Her life changes—drastically.

Will she be caught? The façade begins to crumble but Junie—now known as Juniper Song—must defend her work. She is White; Athena was Asian American. There is so much going on here from plagiarism to racism, from the overwrought power of social media to the despicable effects of cancel culture. After all, who gets to write the stories? Are we only allowed to write about what we intimately know? Can a Black novelist create a White protagonist?

I wonder how R.F. Kuang did it. Juniper is not a likeable person; it's difficult to be on her side knowing what she did. But somehow, I felt supportive of her. That's writing skill.

The ending? It's just as twitchy, nerve-wracking, and stomach-churning as the rest of the book. (Where is that aspirin?)

Bonus: As a reader, if you ever wondered the process authors go through to publish a book and then promote it, all the information is here. It's a fascinating, deep (deep!) dive into the publishing industry. In a word, it's brutal.

Okay, I admit it. I bought this book for the title, which should win an award for being so clever and evocative. And while the eponymous short story in this collection of 13 stories by Hilma Wolitzer (mother of novelist Meg Wolitzer, in case you wondered about the same last name) is fabulous, it is just the opening entry among equally fabulous stories.

Mostly written in the 1960s and 1970s, the stories focus on one theme: what it's like to be a married woman in a time when women focused on home and children, rather than careers. Seven of the stories feature the same family that lives in a too-small, high-rise New York City apartment—Howard and Paulette (Paulie) and their very young children Jason and Ann. Paulie gets "in trouble" at age 20, and she and Howard get married. We then learn about their lives in subsequent stories from Howard's ex-wife coming to live with them to a sex maniac on the loose in the communal laundry room to the escapist fun of spending Sunday afternoons looking at model homes in the suburbs as a way of staving off Howard's depression.

Bonus: The last story, which takes place in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, checks in on Howard and Paulie some 50 years later. It is heartbreaking and tragically relevant.

These 13 stories are keenly observed snippets of ordinary life, interspersed with passion and boredom, laughter and love—just like real life. The power of this collection is in the brilliantly written sentences about the quotidian details of everyday living, making the stories resonate with insight and wisdom. Best of all, they are a delight to read.

This is a frightening book to read—so frightening that most people will avoid it. The terrifying topic? Aging. And dying.

Most of us envision living a long life. What most of us avoid thinking about is getting old, frail, and dependent on others. The hard truth is that we need to think about that—for ourselves and our parents. This book by Atul Gawande, M.D. will help you face these facts so you're better able to make the decisions that must be made for end-of-life care for yourself or someone you love.

This is a fact-filled personal meditation on how to live well while facing getting old and sick…and eventually dying. In addition to the medical facts of aging, Gawande has included personal anecdotes about those who are aging and what it's really like to successfully live independently with confidence but then suddenly and almost without warning need assistance after a fall or too many incidents of forgetfulness.

And Gawande sounds a loud call for geriatric health care changes. Unfortunately, the medical establishment is not adept at treating the elderly. Oh, doctors will enthusiastically treat individual ailments—from heart disease to diabetes—but to look at the whole body and understand what it will take to keep this 90-year-old human happy and strong is not something physicians are inclined to do. (Why? It's too time-consuming and expensive.) Gawande says we should value well-being over survival because often the valiant medical efforts used to extend life only extend suffering. Always remember that death is normal. It's not a failure when an elderly patient dies.

Gawande doesn't mince words, making this a must-read book that is not only instructional, but also terrifying. Still, knowledge is power.

Louise Penny's incredible 20-book (and counting?) series of Chief Inspector Gamache mystery novels are a reader's delight, and I think this may be the best one yet. I say that having read just six of them because THEY MUST BE READ IN ORDER, so I reserve the right to change my mind later.

If you haven't yet discovered Louise Penny, go get "Still Life," the first in the series. Now. You're welcome.

This book is so riveting and compelling (yes, dinner will be late and so will your bedtime) because it's really three unconnected mysteries in one book:
1. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his closest colleagues lost one of their own in a most horrific way, and all of them are still recovering from the physical gunshot wounds and the haunting, nightmarish emotional scars that aren't as easily healed. Gamache has retreated for rest to the home of his aging mentor, Émile Comeau, in Québec City during the time of the Winter Carnival. He spends much of his days with his dog, Henri, in the Literary and Historical Society, an old library specializing in English language books in the middle of a French-speaking city. And haunting him the whole time…he knows mistakes were made.

2. While he is walking the frozen and icy streets of Old Montreal, Gamache is pulled onto a murder case. An amateur archeologist named Augustin Renaud spent a lifetime on a crazed and singular mission to find the unknown burial site of Samuel de Champlain, who founded Québec in 1608. Now Renaud has been found murdered and partially buried in the root cellar of the Lit and His Society. Who did it?

3. You'll recall in "The Brutal Telling," the fifth in the series, an upstanding citizen of Three Pines (whom I will not name so as not to give any spoilers) was convicted of murder. Now Gamache is having second thoughts about this case, and has sent Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir to Three Pines. Beauvoir is to tell everyone he is on a vacation, but the real purpose is to do some undercover investigating just to be sure of the person's guilt. Gamache, who led the investigation is thinking an innocent human being is in prison…he knows mistakes were made.

And then: There is a stunning, astounding, and perfect plot twist I never saw coming.

As with all of Louise Penny's novels, this is a literary murder mystery. It's so much more than plot, plot, plot. The characters are vibrant and bold, there are fascinating literary asides and historical information, and her trademark words of wisdom for living a good life are scattered throughout. And don't forget the food! Every meal is a wordy, mouthwatering delight.

Each of Louise Penny's book is a delight to read, but this one is especially outstanding.

Fun fact: If you look up Samuel de Champlain in Wikipedia, you'll see this note in the "Death and Burial" section of his entry: The search for Champlain's remains supplies a key plot-line in the crime writer Louise Penny's 2010 novel, "Bury Your Dead."

This psychological thriller is everything a novel should be: great literature and a page-turner that will keep you up past your bedtime.

Written by Donna Tartt, this is the story of six college students in the 1980s who attend the small (fictional) Hampden College in Hampden, Vermont. They are all studying ancient Greek—to the exclusion of almost everything else—with a charismatic, brilliant, and mysterious professor they think of as a deity. The six become such close friends and are so engrossed in ancient Greece that what seems like eccentricity to others is actually more cult-like.

This is not a spoiler because it's revealed in the first chapter: Five of them murder the sixth, a young man named Edmund whom everyone calls Bunny.

Why they kill their good friend Bunny is the focus of the first half of the book. The stunning, powerful, page-turning second half is the effect the murder has on the five students as they crumble emotionally, psychologically, and physically. In addition, we witness the slow disintegration of their friendship as they each process the haunting guilt they feel and become consumed with worry about being caught.

While the plot is highly implausible, the superb, literary writing keeps the story together and moving forward. It is told in the first person at some future date by Richard Papen, the newest member of the group, a scholarship student who has transferred from a college in California. Richard is a classic fish out of water, a stranger to New England, a poor kid among rich ones, a public high school grad when the others went to posh prep schools. He is so embarrassed by his background that he tells an intricate web of lies in which he is occasionally caught. Richard is so needy for friendship and belonging that he is unthinkingly pulled into this dangerous, precarious snare.

While I was horrified by the students' murderous actions and thoughts, I was also strangely drawn into their lives and bizarre situation as they struggle with deep questions of morality, good vs. evil, and surviving their own misguided and troubling consciences.

This is a short but powerful novel—so powerful that I had to occasionally stop reading and just breathe. It's a story about real life in rural Ireland around 2010 when the economy collapsed in a severe recession. Jobs were hard to come by, making money tight and lives compromised. As the novel progresses, it gets darker and more disturbing, reflecting the way people feel when they lose control of their lives. What could once be contained now erupts in violence, but there is also much humor, love, and tenderness.

Masterfully written by Donal Ryan, the novel, which was a finalist in 2013 for the prestigious Booker Prize, is structured as 21 interconnected vignettes with each one focused on a single person with a unique story to tell. These individual stories create a unified tragic story of a community that is fractured and bleeding, a community that is falling apart and unable to support its citizens. The brilliance of the writing is in each character's voice—the different use of language, style, and vernacular.

It begins with Bobby Mahon, a construction foreman known for his hot wife, Triona, and his absolute sense of ethics and honesty. Bobby figures in each of the other stories, making him the common thread throughout.

You'll meet Pokey, the manager of a construction company who cheats everyone—his workers and homebuyers. You'll meet Josie, Pokey's father, who is mortified by his son's actions. Réaltín is young, single, and beautiful and the mother of a 4-year-old Dylan. They live in one of the not-quite-finished homes that Pokey built, and she uses her sexual charms to get what she wants. Trevor is troubled…and frightening in his latest desires to do harm. Kate runs a daycare center and is barely holding it together after the Dell plant closed, leaving so many unemployed. There is also Bobby's father, Frank, who tells his story from the grave.

This is a novel without a plot, but the characters are so real, so authentic that they carry the book from the first page to the last. Each has a heart, a spinning heart, and we are privileged to know them.

While this is dark and somewhat dispiriting, there is hope and transcendence in the end.

I was weirdly disappointed in this book, the seventh novel written by Australian Kate Morton. Don't get me wrong. This is a good book—and parts of it are really good—but it's not a great book and not up to the same quality as Morton's previous novels.

This is a murder mystery written in two timelines: December 1959 when the murders occurred and 2018 when a descendant of the victims starts her own investigation. And while this dual timeline typically works well in a skilled author's hands, I found this one to be awkward. The transitions between the two timelines were rough and sometimes jarring.

It's early December 2018. Jessica Turner-Bridges, a 40-year-old single woman, is a struggling magazine journalist in London. She is suddenly called home to Sydney, Australia with news that her beloved grandmother, Nora, is dying. Nora raised Jess after Jess's mother (and Nora's only child), Polly, decided to move to Brisbane and leave Jess behind. Nora and Jess love and adore one another. When Jess arrives, she finds Nora unconscious in the intensive care unit, but she is muttering nonsensical things about a man trying to take away her child. Jess's journalistic instincts are ignited, as she tries to uncover Nora's deep, dark secret she has kept all her life.

Meanwhile, when the story transitions to December 1959, we meet the wealthy Turner family of Adelaide Hills, Australia who are living in a mansion they have named Halcyon. (Adelaide Hills is on the other side of the country from Sydney.) Thomas Turner, who is Nora's beloved older brother, married an Englishwoman named Isabel. The two moved to Halcyon and had four children, the youngest of whom is an infant. Thomas is away on business seemingly all the time. Isabel is lonely and overwhelmed with childcare responsibilities. Nora, who is heavily pregnant and due within weeks with her first baby, retreats to Halcyon and the care of her sister-in-law for her delivery.

On Christmas Eve, Isabel organizes a picnic (remember, it's summer in December in Australia) for her family in an idyllic spot near a swimming hole. Hours later they are all found dead, lying on the picnic blankets as if they were only sleeping. There is no evidence of violence, gunshots, or bruising. But all of them are dead—except for the baby, who appears to be missing. It is feared that wild dogs have dragged her away.

Who killed the Turner family? And by what means? The solution the police came to in 1959 may not be the right one, and Jess is hopeful she can figure out what really happened. She may find new clues known only by the Summers family. It was Percy Summers who found the bodies, and the traumatic effect this has had on him, his wife Meg, and their sons, Kurt and Marcus, is formidable.

While this is a compelling and complicated mystery, the sudden stops-and-starts between 1959 and 2018 can feel discordant, almost giving the reader literary whiplash. Also, it's pretty easy for the observant reader to figure out many of the mysterious, unanswered questions. Part of me gives kudos to Kate Morton for giving so many hints, but it also makes it less of a page-turner.

Still, it's worth it to keep reading—even though the story can be slow and drag on at times—because the ending is good with two twists and turns I never saw coming.

As with all of Kate Morton's books, this is more than a mystery. At its heart, this novel is a story about belonging. Where is home? And what keeps us grounded as family?

It is July 1962. Joe is six years old. Ruthie is four. They are the part of the Mi’kmaq tribe and live in Nova Scotia, Canada. Every summer, the family—mom, dad, and the five kids—come to Maine to work as blueberry pickers. But this summer is different. This summer Ruthie disappears…and Joe is the last one to see her.

This emotionally searing book by Amanda Peters follows Joe and Ruthie through a lifetime of guilt and confusion, of fleeting memories and unforgiving thoughts of what could have been vs. what is. Ruthie was snatched by an affluent woman desperate for a child, but Ruthie's family has no idea what happened to the little girl. They fear someone killed her, and so they keep looking for her dead body not only that summer, but also in the years to come. They never find any clues, and the local police refuse to get involved because they are itinerant Indians.

The story is told in alternating chapters between Joe and Ruthie, who is renamed Norma by her new family. Joe's perspective is that of an adult man who is dying of cancer, as he recalls the past, specifically what happened that awful summer and the effect it had on his life and the lives of his three siblings and parents. Meanwhile, Norma's story is told in chronological order, progressing as the years go by as she grows up with parents who look nothing like her and a mother who keeps a tight rein on her all the time. Eventually, Norma realizes her parents have big secrets they aren't telling her…secrets she is determined to uncover.

Considering the storyline, one would think this book would be all about the plot. Interestingly, it's not. The plotline is actually somewhat weak. Instead, this novel is built on character development. It is all about Joe and Norma/Ruthie, a chilling psychological study of two lives that were forever changed in a heartbeat.

It is a story of trauma, grief, anger, memory, and truth. It is a story of a love that never ends.

This is one of those rare novels that I read on two levels seemingly at the same time:

--First, I was captivated with the plot, as sad and tragic as it is. Those pages almost turned themselves.

--Second, I was mesmerized following the story that was lurking in the shadows underneath it, almost like a ghostly spirit: "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens. This is a somewhat daring modern-day retelling of that Dickens classic, and ferreting out the similarities and differences became a kind of literary parlor game I played while I was reading. (Check the Wikipedia article on "Demon Copperhead" to find out—in case you can't figure it out—a character list that corresponds to the character list in "David Copperfield.")

In anticipation of reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver for my book club, I (re)read "David Copperfield" first. While this is not a prerequisite for reading "Demon Copperhead," I highly recommend it. You'll get so much more out of Kingsolver's novel if you do. (That said, both are VERY long novels, so this is a big commitment.) Both David and Demon are orphans, and when I read Dickens's novel, I wondered what would have happened to David if he had lived in our times with a social services safety net to help him. Well, now I know. And the answer is that it's not much better.

This is the story of a boy named Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead because of his red hair and feisty attitude, who lives in the mountains of southwestern Virginia in Lee County, deep in Appalachia. People are poor, but they look out for one another—until that is sometimes just too hard to do. Demon, whose father died before Demon's birth, is born to an addictive, single teenaged mother, who lives in a small, rented trailer. She soon marries a meanspirited, abusive man. When Demon's mom dies of a drug overdose, he is left on his own. Kindhearted neighbors help some, but Demon becomes a ward of the commonwealth, cared for by foster families who are paid for their efforts. He gets moved around—a lot. His problems are myriad, including child labor, underperforming schools, bullies, and rarely having enough to eat. Eventually, he connects with his paternal grandmother, who takes a firm interest in his future, until Demon utterly disappoints her. What follows is Demon's horrifying descent into opiate addiction. While David Copperfield is at the mercy of a harsh, unforgiving Victorian society, Demon Copperhead is at the mercy of a harsh, unforgiving world of drug abuse—from meth to opiates.

This is a tragic, dark, and distressing story—so much so that it was difficult to keep reading it at times. (Tears in my eyes will do that!) My heart broke for Demon, all the more so because while this may be a fictional tale, it is all too true to life. And that makes it all the more heartbreaking and emotionally searing.

The ending? Of course, it's happy. Just like "David Copperfield." Whew! Take solace in that.

One last thought: The only downside to reading "David Copperfield" first is that I knew what would happen next in this book. Kingsolver has done a brilliant job of mimicking the classic novel but with a modern twist that is highly original, as well as heartbreaking, compelling, and monumental because it rings so true to life.

This book, while an emotionally tough read, is a remarkable literary achievement.

This may be the perfect summer novel. It's a multilayered mystery about a missing 13-year-old girl at a summer camp nestled deep in the Adirondacks and wrapped around a horrifying domestic drama. And secrets! So many secrets being closely guarded by so many people.

But it's more than that—a lot more. It's also a deftly written and intricate novel with vibrant characters whose very different stories about their troubles and worries and their quests for happiness and purpose in life are just as important as the underlying mystery.

Written by Liz Moore, the novel is told by multiple characters in alternating chapters that bounce around in time but in a way that is easy to follow and adeptly advances the story. From the moment Louise Donnadieu, the 23-year-old camp counselor at Camp Emerson, realizes that Barbara Van Laar is missing from her bunk in the early morning hours of an August day in 1975, the story is a whirlwind that sucks in the reader. The campers are taught on the first day that the forest around them is dangerous. If they are ever lost and alone, they are instructed (over and over again) to sit down and yell.

The camp is owned by a fabulously wealthy family, Peter and Alice Van Laar, whose son, Bear, went missing from the camp 14 years ago in 1961 when he was only eight years old. And Barbara, a troubled, angry teen, is their daughter, so this is no ordinary situation. We soon learn that all is not right in the Van Laar mansion located on the hill above the camp with shocking, appalling revelations about troubled Alice, who has never recovered from Bear's abduction, as well as deceitful Peter.

This truly is a character-driven novel with deep backstories and a richly descriptive narrative for each of them. From the awkward camper, Tracy Jewell, whose only friend is Barbara to the spoiled rich boy John Paul McLellan, who is toying with Louise to T.J. Hewitt, the no-nonsense woman who runs the camp to Lee Towson, the good-looking prep chef with a dark past to Judyta Luptack, a rookie police investigator who is the first female investigator in the state and the only woman on this large team that is hunting for Barbara. Add to this mix Jacob Sluiter, a notorious killer who haunted the area a decade ago and escaped from prison three weeks ago.

And the ending? It's perfect. It's a two-part ending: One gave me the shivers, while the other made me smile.

Oh, this is the best love story! Bonus points: It's witty, intelligent, and funny, too.

Written by Curtis Sittenfeld, this is a rom-com novel with a clever plot: It's 2018. Sally Milz is a longtime writer for "The Night Owls," a not-so-subtle spoof of "Saturday Night Live" complete with a Loren Michaels-type character. Sally is 36, divorced, and somewhat bitter about love and romance. She has noticed a trend over the years. Gorgeous, talented female celebrities who serve as guest hosts often fall for male writers who have only average looks, but it never happens the other way around. She is so unnerved by this that she writes a skit for the show about it, which is so funny it goes wildly viral.

Meanwhile, the guest host and musical guest one week is Noah Brewster, a hugely successful pop singer who is incredibly good-looking, wealthy, and talented. And while he has reputation for dating models, he's also kind and thoughtful—a good human being. And guess what? Noah falls for Sally. Big time. But she doesn't trust it. Why would someone like Noah Brewster date HER? Sally says something stupid, and it ends rather abruptly. Fast forward two years. It's July 2020 and the country is hunkered down for the coronavirus pandemic. Sally has moved to her childhood home in Kansas City and taken up residence with her much loved 81-year-old stepfather, Jerry, and his dog, Sugar. Out of the blue, Noah emails her. The sparks fly…and you'll have to read the book to find out what happens next.

While Noah is a little too perfect, Sally is a little too whiny and untrusting, and the plot is a little too predictable, it's easy to forgive all that. It's a romantic comedy, after all! This is an entertaining and humorous novel that will lift you out of real life in a delightful, fun way. Read it and enjoy.

This is a heartbreaking and wrenching novel.

Written by Ian McEwan, this is the story of Edward and Florence, whom we meet on their wedding night in their hotel suite as they are being served a dinner of roast beef by two waiters. It's the summer of 1962 in Great Britain, specifically Chesil Beach, a shingle barrier beach in Dorset. Edward and Florence are both virgins and anxious—for totally different reasons—about what is about to happen in the adjacent room once the roast beef is cleared away and the waiters have departed. Edward is excited, looking forward to having sex for the first time, but Florence is frightened beyond reason. The short novel—just 200 pages—is focused on this tumultuous wedding night with frequent flashbacks to their respective childhoods, how they met, and their formal courtship. Both have recently graduated from college, and they believe that the only way they will be considered adults is to marry. So they do—even though they don't know each other well.

The flashbacks are the best part of the novel, while the wedding night bedroom scene, written in excruciating detail, is almost painful to read as we realize the incompatibility of these young lovers. Florence is frigid, naïve, and terrified. Edward is fumbling and insecure. And they feel so much pressure because it is their wedding night.

The decisions they make and the actions they take on this fateful evening will reverberate for years to come. The ending is surprising, but it's the only ending that makes sense.

While the writing is excellent and the tone is perfect, the story—short and tightly wound—is just so heartbreaking and without redemption that it's a tough one to like. I do admire the novel as a literary accomplishment, but it's not a book I will treasure.

Who among us hasn't thought that our family story would be perfect for a novel? Claire Messud has written that novel about her family. This bighearted, cosmopolitan family saga begins in 1940 at the start of World War II and continues for three generations until 2010.

While the names have been changed (for the most part) and the intimate conversations, fierce arguments, private thoughts, and hopeful dreams have been embellished with this novelist's rich imagination, the bones of the story are based on fact. And those facts take us around the world—from Algeria to Australia to Argentina, from New England to England, from Canada to France. It's all over the map—literally.

We first meet Gaston and Lucienne Cassar, a couple who married with a huge age difference—she is13 years older than he is—and were utterly devoted to one another through a life that no one would describe as easy. They are French, but they think of their home as Algiers. Gaston is the French naval attaché and diplomat and so the family moves a lot. They have two children, François (the author's father) and Denise. François is a brilliant academic with a troubled and miserable marriage to Barbara, a Canadian, while fragile, tightly-wound Denise never marries and suffers multiple bouts of depression. François, who is irascible, a heavy smoker, and an alcoholic, and Barbara have two children, Loulou and Chloe (Chloe being the fictional version of the author).

The final chapter—the epilogue—takes us back to 1927 when a secret about Gaston and Lucienne—often hinted at during the novel, but never revealed—is shockingly exposed. And it's a big one!

There is no plot, per se, but rather a rich, profound, and dramatic narrative about the lives of these people as the years pass and their relationships with each other become more complex and tangled—and more secrets are revealed.

More subtle is the nod to Shakespeare's "As You Like It." Both the title of the book and the idea that a human life has seven ages come from the play—and there are seven sections in the book that mirror this.

This book by James McBride is a masterpiece of genius, a story about the bonds of community, the grace of diversity, and the blessings of caring for one another.

That said, it is not an easy book to read, especially in the beginning. There are a lot of characters. There is a lot of action. And it's easy to get confused to the point of giving up. Don't! It is so worth plowing through that bit of literary chaos until the novel becomes a joy to read. And face it, literary chaos is James McBride's signature!

The cast of characters is long and disparate—from wealthy to poor, from Jewish to Black, from disabled to able-bodied, from conniving to innocent, from prejudiced to clueless, from old to young. When taken together, they form a community—a poor one named Chicken Hill, which is part of Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

This is the gist of the primary story, which takes place primarily in the 1920s and 1930s: Moshe Ludlow, a young Jew with ambitions to own a musical theater hall, marries Chona, a beautiful young woman who walks with a distinct limp that was caused by polio. Chona's father started the local shul, and her parents own the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Chona takes over the store, which never makes a profit because she gives away groceries for free to those in need. Everyone loves Chona. She and Moshe can't have children, and eventually they take in a 12-year-old Black orphan nicknamed Dodo, who is deaf. Dodo would do anything for Chona. When the authorities are searching for him to forcibly remove him and place him in a horrific institution for the feeble-minded, Chona and Moshe—and the rest of the community of Chicken Hill, especially Nate Timblin, a Black janitor at Moshe's theater—hide Dodo to keep him safe. One day something horrific happens to Chona, and when Dodo tries to rescue her, he gets caught up in the authorities' net.

Meanwhile, the novel is filled to the brim with many (many!) other stories of the motley crew of people living in Chicken Hill—stories that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. There are humorous stories, tender stories, heartbreaking stories, uplifting stories, frightening stories, and confounding stories. They are all stories about life, how we get along with each other and how we don't get along. And in the end, they merge in a brilliantly creative way that is guaranteed to make you smile or tear up—or both.

Bonus: Do take the time to read the acknowledgements at the end. McBride explains the inspiration for the novel, and it is poignant, affectionate, and superb.

This is a perceptive, emotionally powerful novel about the agonies of change, the depths of our humanity, and the transformative power of love. And the ending? It hit me like a thunderbolt.

Masterfully written by Carys Davies, this is the story of The Rev. John Ferguson and his new wife, Mary. Although they are in their 40s, they only recently wed. The novel takes place in the wilds of Scotland in 1843 when two big events in the history of that country collide: The Great Disruption in the Scottish Church when more than 400 ministers, including the fictional John Ferguson, rebelled against the traditional Presbyterian church and broke away to form the new Free Church. In the process they gave up a way to earn a living, having to now start a new church from nothing. In addition, wealthy Scottish landowners who owned vast swaths of rural lands were forcibly evicting and displacing the longstanding residents so they could use the land for sheep. This was called the Clearances.

When John is unable to make a living as a minister, he accepts a one-time job to travel to a remote island in the far north of Scotland to evict the last remaining resident there. It's a long and arduous journey by boat, and John is greatly troubled with seasickness and fear of the water. Complicating matters, the man who lives on the island speaks only the old language, called Norn, and does not understand English. Traveling with minimal possessions, along with a gun and ammunition, John lands on the island. He finds a dilapidated cottage in which to live, and goes out exploring. He has a terrible accident, but his life is saved by the man, who is named Ivar. He is big, smelly, and quiet. And Ivar is not used to sharing his world with anyone else.

Now John is in a terrible conundrum: He must clear out Ivar, evicting him from the only home he has ever known. How can he do it? What always seemed to be a difficult task now seems impossible. Meanwhile, Ivar, who has lived in solitude for years, must integrate his life with another human being and try to understand all the confusion and joy that he feels. The power of the story is in the friendship John and Ivar form even though they can't communicate well in words.

Bonus: John valiantly attempts to learn Ivar's language, and Welsh author Carys Davies magnificently brings some of the strange words to life, including in a glossary at the end. A language and culture lost to time have a bit of a resurgence in this creative story.

This is a polished and eloquent novel with a most unexpected ending that I never saw coming.