Some books are literary with richly developed characters and exquisite prose that can take your breath away.  Others are plain old good stories that keep you turning pages long into the night.  Father of the Rain is one of those amazing novels –it is both!  Lily King paints the portrait of a family, in particular a father, who will upset you deeply.  How did I keep reading?  This novel is dark and troubling, but Lily King gives us moments when the human spirit shines through and I had to keep going.  Upsetting, yes.  but riveting as well.  At the end of this book I felt wrung out, but also uplifted.  Father of the Rain is truly unforgettable.

I loved this novel andI was immediately pulled into this fascinating story.  Sue Miller presents a group of characters whose lives intersect around the performance of a play.  As a writer, I was taken with the structure and the way the play itself, The Lake Shore Limited, served as the unifying factor.  Miller weaves together events from the past and the present in a meaningful way and the disparate lives of her characters all touch upon each other in an amazing ripple effect.  While I was reading this novel the story stayed in my mind even when I was “away” from the book.  I longed to get back into this fictional world.  A lovely book that will stay with me much like The Good Mother  did so many years ago.

It’s a rare treat to find a novel that makes you laugh out loud and Susan Coll’s Beach Week is wonderfully funny from the very beginning making it a great summer book.  Yet underneath the humor, you’ll find a captivating story along with a set of characters who will touch your heart.  The misadventures of parents dealing with children before they leave for college are hilarious.  The behavior of the high school seniors is equally outlandish, and if you’ve already survived raising high schoolers, you’ll breath a sigh of relief.  If you are still facing  this stage of parenting,  you might brace yourself for the ride!  All in all, a truly entertaining book that will keep you thinking long after you’ve read the last page.

If you haven’t read Rose Tremain, run -don’t walk- to your closest bookstore or library.  A dear friend put me on to this English writer and kindly shares Tremain’s  latest books when she is in the UK and buys them before they come to the US.  Best of all, Tremain’s novels are all very different from each other.  Trespass takes place in the south of France and it is both a mystery and  a novel about the emotional complexity of family.  I couldn’t put this book down and I hated to have it end. As the Brits would say, “brilliant!”

Ann Hood has done it again.  Her novel, The Red Thread, is one of those books you don’t want to put down.  I remember talking with a friend about novels “with heart” versus novels, indeed often very fine novels, without heart.  The characters and the stories that make up this wonderful tale of adoption in China are so strong, so true, that they stay with you long after you have finished reading.  The Red Thread is a novel that has heart in great abundance.  Reading this book is a life enhancing experience and a pleasure from the first page to the last.

I remembered reading a good review of The Irresistible Henry House and found a copy at my local library. This novel by Lisa Grunwald is a sweeping story of a baby raised in a “practice house” in the home economics department at a college during the late 1940′s. It’s the story of Henry’s life from birth to adulthood within this unusual upbringing. I found it totally engrossing- a wonderful big, almost oldfashioned, novel.