Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz: A Novel. Irene Dische. 1994. 288p. Bloomsbury (UK). Benedikt Waller von Wallerstein spent his adult life in the single-minded pursuit of the solitron, a theoretical particle that by definition exists forever on its own, until a lethal illness brings him face to face with his mortality. As the last male in his noble line, he naively decides to advertise for a child to adopt as his heir—and is rewarded by the arrival of a wild, disheveled Russian woman and her son, Valerie, who move right in. Not having a clue about how to deal with them, Benedikt is first angry, then resigned, and, when a dotty pensioner shows up looking for work as a housekeeper, he decides to leave Berlin and take all three to his ancestral castle. There, he renews ties with his bedridden grandmother, who takes an interest in the Russians, going so far as to get out of bed for the first time in 20 years—an act that kills her. Benedikt decides to marry Marja to make his adoption more seemly, the fact that she already has a husband notwithstanding. After a much-publicized wedding, however, he takes action to get rid of her, finding Marja to be a disruption in his effort to be fatherly to Valerie. But events overtake those plans, and though he loses his wife and son somewhere in the Swiss Alps, all manage to find their way back to Berlin—in time for Valerie’s true father to find them. Eccentric doesn’t begin to describe this rich, Germanic-flavored saga, but the twists and tangents that clash in mood and purpose finally make it seem more a collection of ingenious pieces than a finished work. — Copyright © 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sarah’s Window. Janice Graham. 2001. 304p. Penguin USA. An overloaded love story, set mostly in ranch country, flirts with big issues-parental bonding, mathematical intelligence, and destiny-as a young woman falls in love with a married man. Sarah Bryden has lived with her grandparents in a small Kansas town ever since her grandfather lost his leg in a blasting operation and she had to leave college. She’s an artist, and when she’s not waiting tables or tutoring high school kids, she paints delicate flower pictures in her room. Meanwhile, she’s seeing local man but she’s not yet over a love affair with a Britisher who left her when she became pregnant (the baby was stillborn). Sarah’s life picks up when handsome John Wilde and his wife Susan-a wealthy businesswoman-move back from California to be with Susan’s mother while they try to raise recently adopted baby Will. John, a mathematical genius, is happiest when working with equations, but he’s troubled by Susan’s attitude toward Will. The baby is sickly and difficult, and after Sarah helps out one evening, Susan increasingly leaves him in her care. Sarah and John are drawn to each other, especially after Susan is injured and Will stays with Sarah temporarily, bringing them even closer together. Susan, now recovered and actively disliking her son, offers John an ultimatum: either Will goes or she does. While he wrestles with this decision, he and Sarah confess their feelings for each other, but a flood creates even further problems when Susan, with Will in the car, gets caught in the raging water. Will drowns, and a confused and grieving John heads back with Susan to California, his heart no longer in the marriage. Meantime, Sarah, pregnant with John’s child, goes to France to look atthe art, then stays on. Misunderstandings and surprises ensue, of course, but what’s destined can’t be avoided. Well enough executed, but a victim of emotional excess. — From Kirkus Reviews

Saschenka: A Novel. Simon Montefiore. 2008. 544p. Simon & Schuster. From Kirkus Reviews: Inspired by a true story, historian Montefiore (Young Stalin, 2007, etc.) turns novelist to profile a young revolutionary who leads an exemplary Marxist life until a romantic misadventure puts her in Stalin’s sights. Sashenka, teenage daughter of a Jewish oil magnate, is exiting an exclusive prep school for daughters of the Russian nobility in 1916 when, instead of being picked up by her father’s chauffeur, she’s arrested by the Tsarist police, who have gotten wind of her subversive activities as ’Comrade Snowfox.’ After spending the night in jail, she’s interrogated by Captain Sagan, who releases her to her family. Uncle Mendel, Sashenka’s mentor in the Bolshevik movement, assigns her to turn Sagan into a double agent; Sagan has similar designs upon Sashenka. As these intrigues play out, the Tsar abdicates, and the Revolution ensues. Sagan dies in the rioting, and Sashenka becomes Lenin’s secretary. By 1939, she is a model Soviet matron, the wife of Vanya, a rising star in Stalin’s NKVD. When Uncle Joe himself crashes a soiree at her dacha, she’s intimidated, but relieved that the dictator seems taken with her children, Snowy and Carlo. Despite her communist scruples, Sashenka is drawn to impish younger man Benya Golden, a writer who seduces her with blandishments both verbal and physical. After Vanya bugs the lovers’ trysting places, he’s arrested by his former employers, taking Sashenka, Mendel and Benya down with him. Under torture, all confess to trumped-up conspiracy charges and disappear into the voracious maw of Stalin’s terror machine. Snowy and Carlo survive, spirited under false names to adoptive families by family friend Satinov. In 1994, a Russian oligarch engages fledgling historian Katinka to research the disappearance of his grandparents in 1939. Katinka soon learns that Satinov, now 94, holds the key to the enigma of her client’s origins, but Satinov challenges her to arrive at the solution independently—for reasons not clear until the well-tuned surprise ending. Katinka’s archival research is as suspenseful as Sashenka’s trials in this deft fiction debut. About the Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian of Russia and author of Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; and the bestselling Young Stalin, awarded the 2007 Costa Biography Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Montefiore lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.

Say You Love Me. Marion Husband. 2007. 320p. Accent Press, Ltd (UK). Say You Love Me is a powerful, sensitive yet shocking, exploration of the long-lasting traumas caused by parental sexual abuse. Marion Husband’s superbly drawn characters, loving and hating freely, both fascinate and repel. Ben Walker sets out to trace his father and discover the truth about his adoption in 1968. But the past holds secrets that his brother Mark is desperate to keep. Old hatreds between the brothers are rekindled and their adopted father is made to face his own guilt over the events of that spring of 1968. About the Author: Marion Husband is the winner of the first Andrea Badenoch Prize for Fiction in 2005 for Paper Moon. She graduated with distinction and won the Blackwell Prize for Best Performance for the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University in 2003. She currently teaches creative writing through the Open College of the Arts and has had poems and short stories published, most recently a pamphlet of poetry about her father and childhood entitled Service. Her first novel, The Boy I Love, was published in July 2005 to much critical acclaim. Marion is 43, married with two children and lives in the Tees Valley.

Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World. Tom Davis. 2009. 304p. David C Cook. Stuart Daniels has hit bottom. Once a celebrated and award-winning photojournalist, he is reeling from debt, a broken marriage, and crippling depression. The source of Stuart’s grief is his most famous photo, a snapshot of brutality in the dangerous Congo. A haunting image that indicts him as a passive witness to gross injustice. Stuart is given one last chance to redeem his career: A make-or-break assignment covering the AIDS crisis in a small African country. It is here that Stuart meets Adanna, a young orphan fighting for survival in a community ravaged by tragedy and disease. What seemed like a chance encounter will forever change their lives. This sweeping, dramatic story explores the most vital social issues facing our world and offers a unique perspective on the tragedies taking place in Africa today. Readers will be encouraged to step out and help the “least of these.” About the Author: Tom Davis is an author, consultant, and the president of Children’s HopeChest (www.hopechest.org) a Christian-based child advocacy organization helping orphans in Eastern Europe and Africa. His first book, Fields of the Fatherless, has sold over 60,000 copies. Tom holds a Business and Pastoral Ministry degree from Dallas Baptist University and a Master’s Degree in Theology from The Criswell College.

Scrapping Plans. Rebeca Seitz. 2009. 360p. (Sisters, Ink Series #3). B&H Publishing Group. Scrapping Plans is the third in the Sisters, Ink series of novels for women (Sisters, Ink [2008]; Coming Unglued [2008]; and Perfect Piece [2009]). At the heart of each story are four unlikely sisters, each separately adopted into the loving home of Marilyn and Jack Sinclair where they still meet as adults in their late mother’s attic to work on scrapbook projects and work through life together. The focus moves now to youngest sister Joy who was adopted from China as an infant. Always the quiet one, she and her husband’s struggle with infertility is being drowned out by sister Kendra’s wedding day, her daddy’s new romance, and another Sinclair sister who may see that double pink line on a pregnancy test before Joy does. Will a trip back to China help Joy understand that God’s timing is perfect, and His plans are the ones to follow? About the Author: Rebeca Seitz is the author of Prints Charming and the founder and president of Glass Road Public Relations, a company dedicated solely to representing novelists who write from a Christian worldview. She has previously worked with authors including Ted Dekker, Frank Peretti, Robin Jones Gunn, and Brandilyn Collins. Seitz lives with her husband and son in Fulton, KY.

Sea King’s Daughter, The. Barbara Michaels. 1975. 245p. Dodd, Mead. Ariadne Frederick had been Sandy Bishop for the 20 years since her stepfather had adopted her. Then her real father appeared, calling her Ariadne. She knew little about him, just that he was an archaeologist and his colleagues scorned him for his theory on the Lost Continent of Atlantis. He had come to take her with him on an expedition to the Greek island of Thera to be his diver, plunging in search of hidden civilisations and their sunken treasure.

Sea Swept. Nora Roberts. 1998. 382p. Jove Books. New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents the first novel in a stunning new trilogy of three young men bound by the love of the extraordinary couple who took them in and raised them as brothers. Now grown and living on their own, the Quinn brothers must return to the family home on the Maryland shore, to honor their father’s last request. A champion boat racer, Cameron Quinn traveled the world spending his winnings on champagne and women. But when his dying father called him home to care for Seth, a troubled young boy not unlike Cameron once was, his life changed overnight. After years of independence, Cameron had to learn to live with his brothers again, while he struggled with cooking, cleaning, and caring for a difficult boy. Old rivalries and new resentments flared between Cameron and his brothers, but they tried to put aside their differences for Seth’s sake. In the end, a social worker would decide Seth’s fate, and as tough as she was beautiful, she had the power to bring the Quinns together--or tear them apart. Other Titles in the Series: Rising Tides (1998); Inner Harbor (1999); Chesapeake Blue (2002).

Search. Linda Knapp. 2007. 282p. BookSurge. This novel travels through a year with two adopted teenagers—one white and the other part black—as they search for their biological roots and for themselves. They’re brother and sister with different quests, yet they grow together while exploring who they ’really’ are and want to become. Ultimately, we hope they learn to accept the genetic traits they were given, add features of their own choosing, and blend the mix to create the individuals they want to be. However, we also know that growing up seldom happens as planned. About the Author: Like most people, Linda Knapp has been a “writer” since she first put words on paper. Unlike most, however, she has embraced writing as a profession, as well as a place to go for inspiration and peace of mind. While teaching English, Linda encouraged students to write for publication, then followed her own advice and began publishing articles and books (two), before initiating a column on parenting for a local weekly and another on personal technology for The Seattle Times and McClatchy-Tribune news services. Search is Linda’s first novel.

Search For Shannon, The. Vicki L Allen. 2000. 368p. Magnolia Publishing Company. Set in southern Mississippi, Alabama and southeast Georgia, The Search for Shannon is the story of four women, brought together by the birth and subsequent adoption of one child: Andie, the elusive blonde who fled her hometown with a deeply hidden secret, only to return twenty years later to right the wrongs and reveal the truth; Dana, Andie’s daughter, raised by her father, but hungers only for her mother’s love; Diane, the pampered heiress who can have anything except the one thing she longs for most; and Zoe, the golden child, torn between two families and the question of her heritage. About the Author: Vicki Allen spent most of her childhood in central Louisiana before relocating to Oklahoma where she lives with her husband and three children. Her other works include For Molly and The Return, the sequel to For Molly, coming Autumn 2001.

Search to Belong. Christmas Carol Kauffman (1901-1969). 1963. 341p. Herald Press. When David Grant came to live with the Aaron Loomas family, neither he nor they knew anything of his mother or father. Practically an orphan from birth, David grew to manhood against the background of this frustrating mystery. David’s trials as a child, his quest for identity and the answer which finally confronted him make this an intriguing and sensitive story. Search to Belong is based on an actual experience and has been written with the hope that it will: encourage foster children to respect and honor their foster parents; encourage foster parents to understand, love and respect the adopted child; assure children of unfortunate circumstances that they can overcome every obstacle and make a fine contribution to society; remind workers in children’s homes of the lasting impression they make on the children they work with; and help the general reader to understand the needs of the foster child.

Second Life, A. Dermot Bolger. 1994. 312p. Penguin. Highly regarded novel by acclaimed Irish author tells the story of Dublin photographer Sean Blake who, after a near-death experience, is compelled to re-examine his past. He must seek out the natural mother who gave him up for adoption at the age of six weeks. Because only by coming to terms with his past can he understand his marriage and build a relationship with his children.

Secret Daughter: A Novel. Shilpi Somaya Gowda. 2010. 352p. William Morrow. From Kirkus Reviews: Fiction with a conscience, as two couples worlds apart are linked by an adopted child. Gowda’s debut opens in 1984 with poor Indian village-dweller Kavita giving birth to a second daughter. When her first was born, husband Jasu immediately arranged the child’s death. Girls are a luxury the couple can’t afford; they need boys, who don’t require dowries and can help with the labor of surviving. This time around, Kavita stands up to Jasu, names the baby Usha and takes her to an orphanage. Adopted and renamed Asha, she becomes the only child of Krishnan, scion of a wealthy Bombay family, who is now a neurosurgeon in San Francisco, and his American wife Somer. Asha’s arrival assuages some of Somer’s pain over her infertility but brings its own cultural problems. Asha grows up feeling incomplete, cut off from half her heritage by her mother’s fears and neediness. As a college student, her flair for journalism leads to a fellowship, and she chooses to spend the year in Bombay (now Mumbai), giving Gowda further opportunity to describe India, mainly its gender imbalance and the social divide between the wealthy and the grindingly impoverished. Somer and Krishnan’s marriage goes through a rocky phase, and Kavita and Jasu have problems too, but Asha’s visit inevitably provides the opportunity to connect some, if not all, of the loose ends. A lightweight fable of family division and reconciliation, gaining intensity and depth from the author’s sharp social observations.

Seeds of Doubt. James Ryan. 2001. 288p. Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK). This is an ambitious and unforgettable story with all the warmth and emotional intensity of James Ryan’s first novel, Home From England. Set in the rural Ireland that James Ryan portrays so evocatively, it is the story of five women, looking back to their girlhoods in the faraway world of the 30s, and coming slowly to terms in their own ways with the single traumatic event that forever changed their lives. As war threatened in Europe, life in rural Templeard went on as usual. In this golden childhood, the futures of a wealthy farmer’s five daughters seemed as solid as the stones of their farmhouse home, as hopeful as the green fields that stretched to the edge of their world. Flossie, Nora, Margaret, Ber and the baby Girlie were as close as girls could be. Their life was the nearby convent boarding school and the long summers on their father’s farm. Looking back to those moments before tragedy struck, facing the event itself—the rape, the child born in secret—Nora, the girl with the voice of a bird, is at last free. With his third novel, James Ryan returns to the land and the lives of the people wedded to it which made his first novel, Home From England, so resonant.

Sellevision. Augusten Burroughs. 2000. 208p. St. Martin’s Griffin. Pity the talent on the shop-at-home channel dubbed—yes—Sellevision. During the “Toys for Tots” segment of Slumber Sunday Sundown, gay, lonesome Max inadvertently exposes himself in front of 60 million kids and their parents and loses his job—and any possibility of another. On-air person Peggy Jean Smythe, meanwhile, is a clueless, churchy mother, the oldest of whose three sons would rather play with C-4 than Silly Putty because of issues he has with mother dear. When she’s bundled off ranting to detox and rehab for 30 days to get in touch with her addiction to Valium and alcohol, her much deprived husband takes up with Nikki, the almost 16-year-old Lolita from next door whose issues are a whole lot more fun—not to mention kinky—than Peggy Jean’s. Then there’s Leigh, who is having an affair with married boss Howard Toast, who shows no signs of leaving his own wife. Until, that is, Leigh, after consulting with already-exposed Max, exposes Toast on air and gets him fired and kicked out of his wife’s house—whereupon Leigh becomes a feminist icon and much-sought-after talk show guest. And then there’s Bebe, Sellevision’s most successful host, who finds Mr. Right through a personal ad she puts on the Internet—except that he just might turn out to be the long-lost brother her mother put up for adoption before she was born. Et cetera. — From Kirkus Reviews. Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. About the Author: Augusten Burroughs was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. An advertising copywriter since the age of 19, he lives in New York City. Sellevision is his first novel.

Seven Sisters, The. Frederic Prokosch. 1962. 405p. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy. “This is the story of the seven Nightingale sisters of Bishop’s Neck, Maryland, and their unusual destinies.”

79 Park Avenue. Harold Robbins. 1955. 275p. Knopf. Marja Fludjicki is a Depression-era tenement girl who is accused of murdering her drunken stepfather. She claims the crime was justifiable because she’d been raped by the bounder. Marja progresses from teenaged prostitute to elegant, high-priced Park Avenue Madam—and mob mistress. Forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution, Marja marries Las Vegas high-roller Ross Savitch. Ross is bumped off by the Syndicate, leaving Marja in the lurch. Marja rebounds from tragedy to become a federal witness against the Mob. [Pictured: 1956 Paperback edition]

Sexing the Cherry. Jeanette Winterson. 1989. 167p. Bloomsbury (UK). In the reign of Charles the Second, the first pineapple came to England. Who brought it and why? Pineapple as metaphor is not the only fruit to be both real and imaginary. This is a story which ebulliently rejects any single reading of history or life and revels in the multiplicity of truth and time. By the Same Author: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Shadow Baby. Margaret Forster. 1996. 346p. Chatto & Windus. Shadow Baby is the story of two illegitimate daughters—one born in contemporary Scotland, the other born a century earlier, in the north of England. Evie, born in 1887, is left to make her own way in the world when her mother, Leah, is offered the chance to better herself. Shona, born in 1956, has a happy childhood, but, like Evie, she desires that special love only a real mother can provide. Both mothers fear revelation, both daughters seek emotional recompense. About the Author: Margaret Forster was born in Carlisle in 1938, and educated at the Carlisle and County High School for Girls. From here she won an Open Scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where in 1960 she was awarded an honours degree in History. The day after she finished her final exams, she married Hunter Davies, whom she met and fell in love with at the age of 17. Since 1963 Margaret Forster has worked as a novelist, biographer and freelance literary critic, contributing regularly to book programmes on television, to Radio 4 and various newpapers and magazines. She lives half the year in London and half in the Lake District, and is married to the writer Hunter Davies. They have three children. By the same author: The Battle for Christabel.

Shadows of Nikki, The: Based on a True Story. Christine D. Patterson. 2007. 240p. Outskirts Press. We all have shadows that are hidden in our past. Many of us hope that they will never be known. For Nikki these shadows have haunted her every since her childhood. As an adult these shadows are still in front of her. Was Nikki insane like her adopted parents claimed she was? Why did the Justice System turn their back on Nikki as a child? Find out in this true story, who really was insane. For all those parents that have adopted a child or who have children this is a must read book. It will change the way you think and feel about the Justice System. This is a very emotional story that will touch the very core of one’s heart. This book contains graphic and cruel content; this book is not for under the age of 18. Parent discretion is advised. Comments By the Author: I wrote this book to let everyone know that what happened to Nikki should not happen to any child in America again. Our children are our future. Without them we would not have generations to come. This story happened thirty years ago, but still today we have not solved the problems that our children are facing today. We need to see the signs and listen to what they have to say. They have a face,and a voice. Our children are not just somebody, they are somebody special.

Shadows of the Past. Lois D Carlson. 2009. 236p. Bookstand Publishing. Ripped from her adoptive home and returned to Mack and Wanda, her abusive alcoholic father and controlling mother, Sheila struggles to survive in this chaotic environment. Traumatized by the separation from her only known parents, she is plagued with fears of abandonment. One day, an uncle mysteriously appears who provides an escape from this dysfunctional situation. Noting Sheila’s natural skills on ice skates, Uncle Bill arranges for her to receive expert training which leads to her becoming a professional figure skater. Furious about his loss of Sheila, Mack hunts her down, determined to rake in the returns from her accomplishments, regardless of who might get hurt. Once again, Sheila fears for her safety until unexpected circumstances set her free—forever.

Shadows on a Wall. Charles E Israel. 1965. 350p. Macmillan (UK). Psychological novel of an African teenager brought to America for adoption.

Shambles. Debra Monroe. 2004. 203p. Southern Methodist University Press. Eking out a living as a social worker in Port Town, Texas, Delia Arco works with teenagers as outcast as she was, as well as a student intern convinced that Delia was sent to replace her murdered parents. In this landscape dominated by rumors and refinery smoke, Delia negotiates uneasy, romantic liaisons with men who can’t fathom her obsessive independence and struggles to understand her long lost mother’s seedy life and puzzling death. Having been abandoned by her mother, Delia anguishes over raising her adopted daughter, Esme. Delia’s frantic love for her child terrifies and sustains her as she cobbles a new family from the ruins of the past. About the Author: Bebra Monroe is the author of three previous works of fiction: The Source of Trouble, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award; A Wild, Cold State; and Newfangled. She teaches at Texas State University-San Marcos and lives in Wimberley, TX.

Sheer Abandon. Penny Vincenzi. 2007. 640p. Doubleday. From Kirkus Reviews: At Heathrow Airport, a teenaged, anonymous returnee from Thailand gives birth in a closet, then abandons her infant. Never fear—“Baby Bianca” becomes a London tabloid darling, and is adopted by a decent middle-class couple. Flashback to Heathrow the year before: Four rucksack-toting strangers-vicar’s daughter Martha; pretty, chubby Clio; tycoon’s daughter Jocasta; and her golden-boy brother Josh-meet while awaiting a flight to Bangkok. They vow to reunite, but lose touch after fanning out across Southeast Asia and Australia. Cut to 2000. Martha is a successful corporate lawyer. Jocasta relishes reporting for a London tabloid, the Sketch, and sex with her “commitment-phobe” boyfriend and fellow scribe Nick. Clio is a caring geriatrician defying NHS restraints (no fan of universal coverage, Vincenzi) to care for her elderly patients. Sterile, she dreads bursting her control-freak surgeon husband Jeremy’s bubble of stay-at-home motherhood. Josh, married father of two, is still as randy as he was back in Thailand, where bronzed backpacking beauties were flinging themselves at him. When Baby Bianca, now Kate, surfaces (as a patient advocate for her grandmother), red herrings proliferate. Blond, striking Kate resembles Jocasta, who covers the NHS-bashing story and forms a bond with her. Kate models for a Sketch fashion spread and would-be birth mothers pester her. Meanwhile, her real mother begins to spiral downward, despite a rejuvenating affair with a younger man and a role as an MP candidate. Rebounding from Nick, Jocastamarries a wealthy retail magnate. Clio leaves Jeremy and finds her soul mate in Kate’s publicist/manager Fergus. Then a jealous mentor spills the MP candidate’s secret to Nick. Nick sits on the story until Kate and the candidate’s conservative parents can be told, and the plot, flirting with implausibility all along, succumbs. More compact than five seasons of soap operas, but equally brain-curdling. About the Author: Penny Vincenzi is the author of several novels, including No Angel, Something Dangerous, and Into Temptation. Before becoming a novelist, she worked as a journalist for Vogue, Tatler, and Cosmopolitan. She lives in London.

Shelterbelt. Tricia Bauer. 2000. 368p. St Martin’s Press. A year ago, Jade Engler’s younger brother Benjamin was found dead at the edge of their Paradise, Nebraska, farm. The event tore their family apart: the farm failed; Jade’s father, despondent, has taken up with a sugary sweet younger woman; her mother ran off without a word. Jade herself responded by seducing any boy she thought might be responsible for her brother’s death. Only recently had she begun to settle down—and now she’s discovered she’s pregnant. Jade is paralyzed by indecision yet terrified of staying in Paradise. And so, off she goes. From the first leg of her journey, where she works as an au pair to a rich Connecticut family, to a trip back to the Midwest and then onto San Francisco, which she romantically hopes will inspire her the way the same westward journey inspired her great-great-grandmother over a hundred years ago, Jade looks for answers. What she learns has more to do with the accidents along the way, as her mother might have told her: “How could one slip of a letter from Jane to Jade be so prophetic?” In one of Tricia Bauer’s lyrical, heartfelt, even humorous novels, that’s the way life goes. About the Author: Tricia Bauer is also the author of Working Women and Other Stories, Boondocking, and most recently, Hollywood & Hardwood. She, her husband, playwright Bill Bozzone, and daughter live in Connecticut.

Shine of Rainbows, A. Lillian Beckwith. 1984. 122p. Hutchinson (UK). This is the story of Thomas, a shy, frail orphan boy who goes to live with foster parents on the Hebridean island of Corrie. Mairi and Sandy are a very contented couple, their happiness marred only by the fact that they cannot have children of their own. However when Mairi brings Thomas back from the orphanage on the mainland, Sandy is disappointed by the boy’s timidity and apparent physical weakness and feels threatened by Mairi’s affection for him. Under Mairi’s care and guidance, Thomas blossoms, growing in strength and even beginning to lose the stammer that has previously afflicted him. He soon grows to love the island and his new home, but Sandy, taciturn by nature, remains aloof and distant. How Thomas’s happy world is shattered for a while and how a shy but loving gesture brings the boy and the man together in a new understanding is told in this deeply moving stoy.

Shoot the Moon. Billie Letts. 2004. 352p. Warner Books. A Beverly Hills veterinarian goes south hoping to locate the mother who gave him up for adoption—but finds himself instead investigating a murder, a cover-up, and attempts on his own life.

Shunning, The. Beverly Lewis. 1997. 283p. (Heritage of Lancaster County Series, No. 1). Bethany House. She only knew the Amish ways, but with one visit to the attic, her world began to crumble—In the quiet Amish community of Hickory Hollow, Pennsylvania, time has stood still while cherished traditions and heartfelt beliefs have flourished. But a secret lies buried that could shatter the tranquility its inhabitants have grown to love. When Katie Lapp stumbles upon a satin infant gown in the dusty leather trunk of her parents’ attic, she knows it holds a story she must discover. On the eve of her wedding, startling news staggers out of her anguished parents, and nothing prepares Katie for the devastation their confession brings. Feeling betrayed, Katie watches as the only life she has ever known begins to unravel. By the Same Author: The Confession and The Reckoning, volumes 2 and 3 in the series.

Sign for Drowning, The. Rachel Stolzman. 2008. 192p. Trumpeter Books. Anna Levy has grown up haunted by her younger sister’s death by drowning. In the life she constructs as a barrier against the emotional wreckage of her family tragedy, Anna, who learned sign language in order to talk to her dead sister, settles comfortably into a career as a teacher of deaf children. But a challenge arrives—in the form of a young girl. Adrea’s disarming vulnerability and obvious need for love offer Anna the possibility of reconnecting with the world around her—if she has the courage to open her heart. In this debut novel, Rachel Stolzman has crafted a moving and poetic witness to love’s power to transcend grief, pain, and the constraints of human language. The Sign for Drowning is a poignant story of loss and the unexpected occasions of grace that enable us to heal from it and grow beyond it. About the Author: Rachel Stolzman received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing has won several awards and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals.

Signora: A Child of the Opera House. Gustav Kobbe. 1902. 205p. RH Russell. A novel written about an opera house focussing on the backstage characters and the story of a girl who is abandoned at birth, adopted by the stage manager and grows up at the theatre.

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880). 1861. 265p. Harper & Brothers (originally published in England by William Blackwood & Sons). After suffering betrayal and rejection, Silas Marner leaves his community to settle in a strange place. There the lonely weaver becomes obsessed with accumulating money, until one day a little golden-haired orphan girl wanders into his home. Set at the beginning of the industrial revolution, Silas Marner weaves a telling social commentary into an inspiring tale of love and redemption.

Silence. Christopher Brookhouse. 2009. 152p. Permanent Press. From Kirkus Reviews: A quiet novel of personal and seasonal change set in a small town in New Hampshire. Nicki Groh seems to have it all. She’s about to graduate from high school, and although she just missed being valedictorian, she’s off to Princeton in the fall. But a week before graduation she agrees to attend an evening boat party with Willie Boots, a hot-shot pitcher for the baseball team and son of a prominent businessman. Willie tries to rape Nicki, who barely escapes. She swims to shore and is rescued by Russell Blatt, a former classmate who’s about to leave for greener-or at least warmer-pastures. Nicki decides to go with him, not simply to escape the Willies of the world but also to get away from a heated but dead-end sexual relationship she was having with the high-school math teacher and the pressures of going to an Ivy League school she’s not at all sure she wants to attend. Nicki and Russell, who much to Nicki’s chagrin is gay, travel to North Carolina and find jobs waiting tables at a summer resort. Back in New Hampshire, village life begins to unravel. Nicki’s adoptive parents are at first concerned about and then resigned to her absence. Meanwhile, Willie’s father grows estranged from his wife, who in a spasm of midlife unpredictability decides she wants to become an actress. Willie gets a summer job as a security guard and finds himself entangled, both literally and metaphorically, with Joan Doyle, who casually dispenses sexual favors to local high-school boys. When Nicki comes back at the end of the novel, she’s serene, mature and pregnant. Brookhouse (Dear Otto, 1995, etc.) writes confidently and unobtrusively about authentic issues. About the Author: Christopher Brookhouse has published eight works of fiction and two volumes of poetry. His early novel Running Out was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2005 he won the biennial New Hampshire fiction award for FOG: The Jeffrey Stories. He is founding editor of the film journal Hitchcock Annual. Mr. Brookhouse lives in Asheville, NC, and Sanibel, FL.

Silent Adoption, A. Gordon Gerick. 2007. 238p. PublishAmerica. Gordon Gerick, author of The Bungling Angel, has written a soul-searching novel about adoption. A Silent Adoption was written for anyone who has a passion and love of children. Patricia Akins is coming of age in the eighties where a small Southern town offers the setting for a family fraught with turmoil. Patricia discovers she’s pregnant two weeks after her fiancé’s death. Later, due to a fall, Patricia delivers her daughter, Noel, prematurely. Under unusual circumstances, and against Patricia’s wishes, Noel is adopted. Nineteen years later, Noel begins a search for her mother, but the reunion is not what either expects. Faced with questions, doubt, and second guesses, both women search for healing.

Silk. Linda Chaikin. 1993. 352p. Bethany House. Adventure and romance on India’s northern frontier in the late 1700s, an exotic land of tropical beauty and majestic wildlife. Coral Kendall, heiress to a silk plantation in India, shuns the scorn of the wealthy Kendall dynasty and adopts an orphaned boy—an “Untouchable” from the bottom of the rigid Hindu caste system—only to have him abducted from her by Indian soldiers.

Silk Lady. Gwen Davis. 1986. 440p. Warner Books. There are more rumors about celebrities in this commercial novel than in a Hollywood tabloid, but none of them are as outrageous as what the characters disclose about themselves and each other, and the low-down and dirty of Davis’s fictitious jet-set is by far the book’s most entertaining aspect. When the story of Fred Masters’s and Miranda Jay’s double suicide is splashed across the nation’s front pages, Lou Salerno, a detective with the LAPD, is struck by certain similarities the case bears to one in his own district. He heads for New York, believing he can prove that the newspaper tycoon and his svelte mistress were murdered. As Salerno discovers Miranda’s involvement with the founder of an aerospace firm, he also uncovers evidence of a conspiracy among the company stockholders to install untested microchips in the computers of the nation’s defense system. Equally shocking is the revelation that Miranda was the star of an elite bondage and domination club. Though unabashedly erotic, the sex scenes are subtly drawn, and Davis’s probing of Miranda’s psyche provides an unusual slant on the power plays of the rich.

Sin. Josephine Hart. 1992. 164p. Knopf. Ruth is seething because her parents adopted Elizabeth, her 9-month-old first cousin, and now she has to share her birthright as only child with someone else. Driven by her obsession with Elizabeth, Ruth awaits the moment at which she will be able to destroy her nemesis.

Singing Bird. Roisin McAuley. 2004. 312p. HarperCollins. Twenty-seven years after she adopted her baby daughter in Ireland, Lena Molloy receives a mysterious call from Sister Monica, the nun who set up the adoption. She claims that she wants merely to tie up loose ends before she retires, but Lena, who feels both anxious and frightened after the call, is tempted to probe deeper into the meaning of their conversation. Against her husband’s wishes, and accompanied by her best friend, Alma—who is nursing a broken heart—Lena travels to the west of Ireland on a secret mission to trace the birth parents of her daughter, Mary, an up-and-coming star in the world of opera. At first the trail seems to have gone cold. Saint Joseph’s home for unmarried mothers has become an old people’s home, and Sister Monica is dismissive and unforthcoming. Then a chance meeting sets Lena on a journey through Ireland and into the past, taking her through many twists and turns to an outcome she could never have anticipated. Singing Bird is a story about deeply rooted secrets, the unshakable bonds between family and friends and the constant human struggle to unearth the truth about our own personal history.

Singing Fire, The. Lillian Nattel. 2004. 336p. Knopf (Canada). Lilian Nattel, the acclaimed author of The River Midnight, masterfully brings to life a vanished world—the lanes boiling with the steam from kettles of laundry, the smokestacks belching coal dust, the chatter of tailors, piemen, and thieves. This is where Nehama arrives with her dreams of independence, not realizing the dangers that a girl on her own must face. Tricked into prostitution and with only the whispers of her deceased grandmother to guide her, she escapes into the alleys of the East End, where bustling market stalls and penny seats at the theater are just a handsbreadth away from the criminal warrens. In the Jewish ghetto Nehama makes a new life, remembering the lessons of the street to help another runaway, Emilia, pregnant and unwed. But Emilia refuses a hardscrabble life and, relinquishing her baby to Nehama, re-creates herself in the chic streets of the West End. Nattel intertwines the stories of these women as they build their lives in two sides of the city. With stunningly vivid prose Nattel writes of the chaos of this rich city life; she tells the stories of whores and rabbis, street vendors and artists, sweatshops and Yiddish theater, and she beautifully renders the courage of mothers and sisters navigating dangerous realms. This is a remarkable tale of two unforgettable women and the child that unites them in the maelstrom of fin de siècle London.

Sister Light, Sister Dark. Jane Yolen. 1988. 244p. Tom Doherty Associates. In this fantasy story and its sequel (White Jenna) by Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Caldecott Medal winner Jane Yolen, an Amazonian mythology is brought to life, complete with anthropological entries from a later time and the ballads and songs that carried the legends on. Jenna, who loses first her mother, then the midwife who rescues her, and then the warrior woman who raises her, reluctantly comes to accept that she is the prophesied savior of her people. The story also tells of her dark sister, Skada—her mirror image and other half—of Jenna’s lover King Longbow, and of their spirit mother Great Alta.

Sisterhood of Blackberry Corner, The. Andrea Smith. 2006. 320p. The Dial Press. Canaan Creek, South Carolina, in the 1950s is a tiny town where the close-knit African-American community is united by long-term friendships and church ties. Bonnie Wilder has lived here, on Blackberry Corner, all her life, and would be content but for her deep desire to have a child. She and her husband Naz cannot conceive, and he refuses to adopt. Even the support of her outrageous best friend Thora—to whom Bonnie tells everything—can’t help fill the emptiness inside her. Then Naz finds a blanketed infant on the banks of Canaan Creek, and suddenly Bonnie’s life is transformed. She has found her calling. Together with Thora and the rest of the hilarious, tough, and all-too-human women from her church group, Bonnie creates an underground railroad for unwanted babies. But one of these precious gifts will come back to haunt her: a deception begun in good faith comes full circle, ultimately forcing Bonnie to find the courage to confront a difficult truth at the center of her own life. Filled with compassion, humor, and tenacity in the face of almost insurmountable odds, here is a rich, inspiring tale of friendship and family, sisterhood and mother love…and of finding grace where you least expect it. About the Author: Andrea Smith has received fellowships from the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and The New York Council on the Arts. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and now lives in Atlanta with her son. She is currently at work on her next novel.

Sisters, Ink. Rebeca Seitz. 2008. 352p. (Sisters, Ink Series #1). B&H Publishing Group. Sisters, Ink marks the first in a series of novels written by, for, and about scrapbookers (Coming Unglued [2008]; Scrapping Plans [2008]; and Perfect Piece [2009]). At the center of the creativity and humor are four unlikely young adult sisters, each separately adopted during early childhood into the loving home of Marilyn and Jack Sinclair. Ten years after their mother Marilyn has died, the multi-racial Sinclair sisters (Meg, Kendra, Tandy, and Joy) still return to her converted attic scrapping studio in the small town of Stars Hill, TN, to encourage each other through life’s highs and lows. Book one spotlights headstrong Tandy, a successful yet haunted attorney now living back in Orlando where she spent the first eight years of her life on the streets as a junkie’s kid. When a suddenly enforced leave of absence at work leads her to an extended visit with her sisters in Stars Hill, a business opportunity, rekindled romance, and fresh understanding of God’s will soon follow. About the Author: Rebeca Seitz is the author of Prints Charming and the founder and president of Glass Road Public Relations, a company dedicated solely to representing novelists who write from a Christian worldview. She has previously worked with authors including Ted Dekker, Frank Peretti, Robin Jones Gunn, and Brandilyn Collins. Seitz lives with her husband and son in Fulton, KY.

Sky Bridge. Laura Pritchett. 2005. 298p. Milkweed Editions. A supermarket clerk in a small dusty town, 22-year-old Libby is full of dreams but lacks the means to pursue them. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby convinces her not to have an abortion by promising to raise the child herself. When Tess takes off after the baby is born, Libby finds that her new role only increases the challenges she faces. Her already haphazard life becomes ever more fragmented. The baby’s father, a Christian rodeo rider, suddenly demands custody, Libby loses her job, her boyfriend abandons her, and her own mother harps on how stupid she was to make that promise to Tess. More than a story of a single mother overcoming obstacles, Sky Bridge, with its painfully honest observations and complexity, leaves readers with a fresh feeling for what it means to inhabit a world in which dreams die, and are sometimes reborn.

Sleepwalking in Daylight. Elizabeth Flock. 2009. 368p. Mira Books. Once defined by her career and independence, stay-at-home mom Samantha Friedman finds that her days have been reduced to errands, car pools and suburban gossip. What was an easy decision for Sam years ago has become a nagging awareness that this life was her choice. Now she deals with a husband who shows up for dinner but is too preoccupied for conversation, and a daughter swathed in black clothing and Goth makeup who won’t talk at all. Believing she’s an adopted mistake, seventeen-year-old Cammy has fallen into sex and drugs and pours herself into a journal filled with poetry and pain. On parallel paths, mother and daughter indulge in desperate, furtive escapism—for Sam, a heady affair with her supposed soul mate, fueled by clandestine coffee dates and the desire to feel something; for Cammy, a secretive search for her birth mother punctuated by pills, pot and the need to feel absolutely nothing.

Smoking Jimi. Chad Peery. 2009. 254p. CreateSpace. It was 1999, the year we were supposed to party, but for Guitarist Brad Wilson, it brings the ultimate dare. His ex-manager shows up with a bizarre offer—reunite the band and play at a South American ranch for one million apiece. Once there, Brad finds their host to be a sadistic trickster whose dark perversions could cost his band their lives. Smoking Jimi is the ultimate road story—a euphoric journey that becomes a headlong dash for survival. Chad Peery’s writing could be described as carrying the descriptive paint of Dean Koontz, the magic dust of Carlos Castaneda, and the honest grit of Sherman Alexie. At the heart of Smoking Jimi is one man’s desire for that which is impossible, until the powerful current of Smoking Jimi returns him to his sharp-edged past. About the Author: Chad Peery played bass guitar in the ’70s and ’80s with John Kay and Steppenwolf, Bob Welch (Fleetwood Mac), Peter Banks (Yes), Frankie Banali (Quiet Riot), Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and many others. Chad has been a professional broadcaster for 25 years, and has published one other work of Rock Fiction, Stealing Margo. He currently lives near Chico, CA. By the Same Author: StealingMargo (2009). Visit the Author’s website.

Smudge. Nicholas Armfelt. 1975. 207p. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd (UK). From his job as classics master in a Surrey public school, Veale moves to the headmastership of a grammar school, soon to turn comprehensive, in Cornwall. With him go his new young wife, Red, and his 12-year-old adopted daughter, Smudge. Veale, a religious man who has lost his faith, had been shattered by the death of his first wife, and even more shattered to realize thereafter that he could not trust himself alone with his adopted daughter.

Snow Island. Katherine Towler. 2002. MacAdam/Cage Publishing, Inc. Sensitive debut novel about a young woman’s coming of age during WWII on an island in Narragansett Bay. Snow Island, off Rhode Island, is not especially remote, but in the 1940s it is still without telephones and only recently has gotten electricity. There’s only one store, run by Evelyn Daggett-or, rather, by Evelyn’s infinitely more efficient daughter Alice. The Daggett shop, like most of Snow Island, lives off the summer trade and gets by on credit for the rest of the year, for there are fewer than a hundred full-year residents to make up their trade. These include a fair share of oddballs, like the quahogger Owen Pierce, who practically lives on his boat and has a personal anecdote on just about any subject. There are also the usual dark scandals, like that of the Tibbits sisters, Grace and Bertha, who were found dead (one by suicide, the other of natural causes) in their twin houses one day in 1919 by their nephew George, a mainlander who has made an annual pilgrimage back ever since. It’s not a very exciting place to grow up, but Alice enjoys running the shop and acting as postmistress, and she finds herself more and more drawn to handsome Ethan Cunningham, an island boy who went off to college and returned to look after his sick mother after his father died. Alice’s best friend is Lydia Giberson, whose brother Pete is in love with Alice. But Alice becomes Ethan’s lover instead, discovering only after he moves away that she’s pregnant. Pete offers to marry her, but Alice arranges to give the child up for adoption. Eventually she discovers that Ethan is married, while Pete is soon to ship off with the Navy. Should shereally give the baby up? Almost like an offshore Peyton Place at times, but also a well-crafted tale, subtle and memorable, that should have a broad appeal. — From Kirkus Reviews. Copyright © 2001, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. About the Author: Katherine Towler completed an M.A. in writing at John Hopkins and an M.A. in English Literature at Middlebury College. She has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and received the George Bennet Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy. A freelance writer, she also serves as an editor for the Mars Hill Review.

So Many Ways to Begin: A Novel. Jon McGregor. 2007. 352p. Bloomsbury USA. In this potent examination of family and memory, Jon McGregor charts one man’s voyage of self-discovery. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, So Many Ways to Begin is rich in the intimate details that shape a life, the subtle strain that defines human relationships, and the personal history that forms identity. David Carter, the novel’s protagonist, takes a keen interest in history as a boy. Encouraged by his doting Aunt Julia, he begins collecting the things that tell his story: a birth certificate, school report cards, annotated cinema and train tickets. After finishing school, he finds the perfect job for his lifetime obsession—curator at a local history museum. His professional and romantic lives take shape as his beloved aunt and mentor’s unravels. Lost in a fog of senility, Julia lets slip that David had been adopted. Over the course of the next decades, as David and his wife Eleanor live out their lives—struggling through early marriage, professional disappointments, the birth of their daughter, Eleanor’s depression, and an affair that ends badly—David attempts to physically piece together his past, finding meaning and connection where he least expects it. About the Author: Jon McGregor lives in Nottingham, England. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was nominated for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the 2003 Times Young Writer Award, and won the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award.

Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, A. Kaylie Jones. 1990. Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub. The daughter of James Jones here offers a discerning, brightly written, apparently semiautobiographical Bildungsroman. Channe Willis, the daughter of an eminent American novelist and his loving wife, grows up happy and spoiled in Paris. One day, her idyllic bubble is burst when her parents adopt a young French boy her own age, whose foster mother has committed suicide. Jones (Quite the Other Way) captures Channe’s waspish jealousy of Billy and her protective feelings for him that blossom against her will. A sexually promiscuous loner who is too dependent on her Portuguese nanny, Channe gropes her way through an adolescence whose pain is exacerbated by her father’s heart disease and the Willises’ return to America when Channe and Billy are 15. Although it explores Billy’s sexually repressed birth mother’s motives for giving him up for adoption, this novel is, above all, an elegy to a father-daughter bond that transcends death. Channe’s father is almost too good to be true: he celebrates with Channe her first menstrual period, lets her high school boyfriend sleep with her under the Willis roof, and turns Channe on to literature (“My father told me about the souls of books, how they came out of the writer whole, like babies with their own separate souls”).— Publisher’s Weekly

Some Go Haunting. Brian Edward Hurst. 2004. 367p. Bookman. Meet adopted English teenager Richard Buchanan who not only has to rescue his girlfriend Debbie from an abusive father, but is troubled by nightmares in his new home. Unhappily adopted, can he discover the identity of his true parents? Meanwhile, Barbara, Richard’s older sister, must deal with the tragic loss of her young fiance John, killed in a motor cycle accident. Can a medium make spiritual contact with him? Menopausal Edith Buchanan hates the isolation of her hilltop country home, is angry with Richard, traumatized by her husband’s ill-health and totally skeptical when spooky events occur at “High Hearty.” Don Kramer, American schoolteacher from the local US Airbase, becomes intrigued by the haunting and by Barbara. Can he touch her grieving heart and also assist the family in their pain? Debbie’s mother, Win Mayhew, is trapped in an abusive marriage to a gambling, alcoholic farmworker. How can Stanley Mayhew, lusting for his own daughter, deal with his demons? And can beautiful, fifteen-year-old Debbie, desperate to escape her violent home, open Richard’s heart to an unselfish and caring love? What secrets lie in the blocked up basement of the house and who was the mysterious woman resident there in 1916? What strange power does she still exert over the occupants, and why is she one of the unquiet dead? Does a member of the family have to pay for mistakes made in a previous life? Don’t miss this enthralling psychic mystery set in the real location of Huntingdonshire, England. Written by an experienced and practicing spiritual medium, this emotional and dramatic story is certain to delight the many readers of this genre. About the Author: Brian Edward Hurst is an internationally known Spiritualist medium who has worked during the past 24 years in Southern California. Hurst was the teacher and mentor of famous American medium James Van Praagh, star of the TV show Beyond. Hurst also worked with Doris Tate, mother of the murdered movie star, Sharon Tate, and with many parents of murdered children. He has been consulted by police, judges, doctors, teachers and several famous movie stars, as well as being the host and friend to many who were grieving deeply. His television appearances include The Other Side, Hard Copy, Extra, Beyond Death (A&E), and Best Kept Secrets of the Paranormal (Discovery). His great success in contacting “the other side” has been documented in a number of books.

Somebody Else’s Daughter. Elizabeth Brundage. 2008. 352p. Viking. At the center of Elizabeth Brundage’s new novel lies an adoption under stressed and tragic circumstances. Willa, brought up in elegant prosperity, is now a student at the prestigious Pioneer School. But her biological father, a failing writer and former drug addict, can’t live with himself without seeing her again. In this idyllic Berkshires landscape, Willa’s adoptive parents have fled a mysterious past; a feminist sculptor initiates a reckless affair; teenagers live in a world to which adults turn a blind eye; and the headmaster’s wife is busy keeping her husband’s disastrous history and current indiscretions well hidden. The culmination of these forces is the collision of two very different fathers—biological and adoptive—and a villain whose ends and means slowly unfold with the help, witting and unwitting, of all around him. Somebody Else’s Daughter delivers an electric, suspenseful tale of richly conflicted characters and the disturbed landscape of the American psyche. About the Author: Elizabeth Brundage is the author of The Doctor’s Wife and holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a James A. Michener Fellowship. Before attending Iowa, she was a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness magazine, and New Letters.

Somebody’s Baby. Elaine Kagan. 1998. 256p. William Morrow & Co. Somebody’s Baby offers a stirring look at destiny and adoption, legacy and the power of true love. In 1959, if you lived in a wealthy Jewish neighborhood in Kansas City, gentile boys were off-limits. Especially a boy with tattoos, a drifter from California who had spent time in jail, who worked in a gas station, and who would fight a man for looking at you the wrong way. Jenny Jaffe knew the rules, but when she saw Will McDonald for the first time, everything she knew about right and wrong disappeared. What was left was a passionate, once-in-a-lifetime love that no social constraints could hold. Will and Jenny became inseparable, in every way, and by the end of Jenny’s senior year in high school, she was pregnant. They made a plan to run away; Jenny waited at the spot where Will was to pick her up but he never showed. What follows is the story of true love that spans three decades—between man and woman, parent and child. Jenny is forced to give up her baby for adoption, and when that child, Claudia, becomes a parent herself she begins a search for her biological parents at the risk of destroying the love of the adoptive parents who have raised her.

Somebody’s Daughter: A Novel. Marie Myung-Ok Lee. 2005. 288p. Beacon Press. Somebody’s Daughter is the story of nineteen-year-old Sarah Thorson, who was adopted as a baby by a Lutheran couple in the Midwest. After dropping out of the University of Minnesota, she decides to study in Korea for a summer, more by happenstance than actual design, but as the summer progresses she becomes more and more intrigued by her Korean heritage and eventually embarks on a crusade to find her birth mother. Paralleling Sarah’s story is that of Kyung-sook, who was forced by difficult circumstances to let her baby be swept away from her immediately after birth, but who has always longed for her lost child. The two stories are told side by side: Kyung-sook’s is the remembrance of her childhood involvement with an American who eventually abandons her when she refuses to have an abortion, while Sarah’s is the contemporary story of her deepening involvement with the culture and language of Korea, with Doug, her Korean American classmate, and with her search. These two narratives converge in one poignant moment, when the two women literally pass each other like ships in the night.

Somewhere South of Here: A Novel. William Kowalski. 2001. 340p. HarperCollins. With his first novel, Eddie’s Bastard, William Kowalski brought to the literary scene an engaging and original voice in fiction. With appealingly offbeat characters, a narrative steeped with imagery and threaded with lyricism, and a story filled with unexpected surprises, Eddie’s Bastard earned such praise as “a grand debut” (Gail Godwin), “exuberant” (The New York Times) and “appealing” (People magazine), and marked the emergence of an important writer. Kowalski now fulfills that promise in Somewhere South of Here, the tale of a young man’s search for the mother he’s never met. As Billy Mann grew up, his only link to the father who died in Vietnam and the mother who deserted him was his hard-drinking grandfather, Thomas Mann, who raised him on a diet of fried bologna sandwiches and mythic tales of the Mann family ancestry. With Grandpa gone, Billy has lost his only known blood relation and sole link to his heritage. The lone clue he possesses to his mother’s whereabouts is her last-known address, somewhere in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Propelled by hope and heartache, Billy sets off on a cross-country odyssey from his home in upstate New York. Arriving in Santa Fe, carrying every possession he owns on the back of his motorcycle, Billy has taken the first step of an intoxicating journey of the heart as he courageously completes his rite of passage into manhood. Filled with vividly drawn characters, each of them with secrets and secret longings of their own. Billy’s world is suddenly rich with possibility—the chance for love, friendship, and, finally a family to call his own. Somewhere South of Here is a lyrical exploration of the stories that make up our lives, the redemptive power of love, and the faith that compels us to go on.

Son of a Wanted Man. Louis L’Amour. 1984. 161p. Bantam. In a remote corner of Utah lies the secret outlaw kingdom of Ben Curry. For fifteen years Curry has ruled supreme, as his men have pulled jobs from Canada to Mexico. But the king is getting old. He wants to turn his legacy over to someone younger, tougher. Mike Bastian is Ben’s adopted son, a young man who can handle a knife, a gun, his fists, but a man who’s never broken the law. Now, as treachery explodes among Ben’s riders, and two honest lawmen—Tyrel Sackett and Borden Chantry—begin to zero in on the gang, Mike must choose--between his loyalty to Ben and his yearning for a different life. Yet when the guns start echoing off the Vermilion Cliffs, the time for choosing is over—and the time for battle has begun.

Song of Sixpence, A. A(rchibald) J(oseph) Cronin (1896-1981). 1964. 278p. Heineman (UK). Set in the beautiful western highlands of Scotland, the story revolves around the innocent youth whose very naivete is a target for the complex currents of his social surroundings—the bigotry of the Scottish Protestants, the rigid class consciousness. Laurence Carroll (“Laurie”) is an outsider. The only child of a middle-class Catholic couple, he suffers the pangs of isolation in a staunchly Puritan town. The young boy’s fortress in the bittersweet days of youth is his sensitive and attractive mother, until the press of circumstances separates the two. With his father’s death, Laurence finds himself launched onto a new phase of forced independence. Into the story enters a cast of relatives who, willingly or out of a sense of obligation, take the boy into their lives. There is the well-intentioned Bernard and his raucous family; the eccentric but kindly Miss Greville; and Uncle Leo, living like an ascetic but hoarding a fortune. The longings of adolescence, triggered by the dashing image of his cousin Terence and the provocative but unpredictable Nora, are also woven into the thematic scheme. The boy’s unsophisitcation leads him through a comedy of errors which is his undoing, yet which saves him ultimately from a lamentable existence in the aisles of Leo’s warehouse.

Songmaster. Orson Scott Card. 1980. 277p. Dial Press. Card’s Songmaster postulates fantastic musical skills, where trained virtuosos communicate in “Songspeech,” where vocal performances overwhelm the listeners with memories and emotions wrenched from deep inside them, where a young boy singing of deep rage and pain and grief can kill a man who loves torture and death. The book which tells this tale is written with a style worthy of its subject—in a word: poetic. On one of many planets in the empire is an institution called the Songhouse. The leaders of the Songhouse, called Songmasters, scour the planets for great singing talent among the neglected and deserted children of the empire. These they adopt and bring to live in the Songhouse, a castle-like behemoth constructed of chilly stone. The children receive training in singing, training unknown to humans of today. They advance from Groans to Bells to Breezes, until they achieve a level of mastery where they are prepared to go out into the universe and fill the worlds with beautiful music. Most only achieve the level of Songmaster, but occasionally one child comes along with such great ability that he or she becomes a Songbird. Songbirds are rare and will only be placed with patrons who can truly appreciate their music. It’s a truism within the Songhouse that no one who loves killing can ever appreciate a Songbird. Yet when the emperor of the galaxy, Mikal Imperatur, comes and demands one, and breaks into weeping at the sound of one, the Songmasters realize that he is one such person, in spite of his violent road to the throne. They fear that the integrity of the Songhouse will be questioned, because it will appear to citizens of the empire that the Songhouse bowed to the demands of the emperor and allowed him to have a Songbird when he didn’t deserve one. But they must be true to their philosophy, and so a search for the perfect Songbird for Mikal begins. Decades later a young boy named Ansset is found and adopted to the Songhouse. As he is trained, it becomes clear that he will be the first Songbird in many years. Furthermore he will be Mikal’s Songbird. When Riktors Ashen, the aging emperor’s right-hand man, comes to collect Ansset, he is privileged to be a witness to the boy’s parting performance: And he sang. His voice filled every part of the hall, but there was no resonance from the walls to distort the tone. He rarely sang words, and those he sang seemed meaningless to Riktors. Yet the emperor’s envoy was held spellbound. Ansset’s hands moved in the air, rising, falling, keeping time with the song so that even Riktors, at a distance, could see that the song came from Ansset’s soul... . And when Ansset at last fell silent, the song lingered in the air and Riktors knew he would never forget it. He had shed no tears, felt no terrible passion. Yet the song was one of the most powerful experiences of his life. Mikal has waited a lifetime for this, Riktors thought. By the time Ansset is turned over to the emperor, Mikal is very old. The young boy and the ancient ruler of worlds grow to love each other deeply. Ansset gets caught up in the vicious politics of the imperial court. He is kidnapped, used as an unwitting weapon for an assassination attempt, and suffers great loss and pain because of the machinations of evil men. The book follows Ansset throughout his life as he grapples with power and suffering and the breathtaking powers of his voice.

Sound of Coaches, The. Leon Garfield. 1974. 216p. Viking. Story of a rugged old coachman and his even more rugged wife who rides shotgun on the Chichester-London coach; Sam, their adopted son, who struggles to discover his origins; Jenny, the London chambermaid who loves Sam and who is determined to keep herself clean; and Daniel Coventry, actor and supreme egotist. Young Sam weaves fantasies about his legacy and his unknown father as a series of climaxes manipulated by Fate’s cruel hand lets Sam finally realize that his own nature is more important that that of his parentage. A blend of comedy with robust romance.

Sound of Summer Voices, The. Helen Tucker. 1969. 256p. Stein & Day. Set in the rural South, this story is an account of an 11-year-old orphaned boy’s search for the identity of his long-dead mother. Deciding that he has been lied to about his supposedly dead mother, he begins—with the dedication of a superspy—to untangle the whole fabric of his life by the only means available to a boy growing up in a sheltered southern family: eavesdropping.

Southern Courage. Neal Alexander. 2005. 348p. Authorhouse. Ruth Kilmer has a secret. She has hidden and tried to ignore a very painful event for over 35 years; the agony and uncertainty that have followed her have become too much to bear any longer and she’s standing at a crossroads in her life. In her hands she holds a letter. If she mails it, a door to her past will open and maybe the pain and deprivation she’s tried to ignore since 1963 will subside. The letter might also open a door and inflict pain and confusion on two families, hers and the family who adopted the infant she walked away from 35 years ago. In 1963, an unwed Ruth became pregnant. As the daughter of a Methodist minister in rural Mississippi, the expectations of and for her life were high. Pregnancy out of wedlock was frowned upon in those days and usually went badly for the mother and her family. Some times jobs were lost, people were blackballed, and families became the object of scorn. Ruth had a tough decision to make. What of her parents? What of the man she loved who got her pregnant? What of the child she already had? She had to make an excruciating decision in the early 1960s that would protect her and her family. Now, in 1998, she has to make one to protect herself and maybe even regain her own peace of mind. About the Author: Neal Alexander was born and raised in Louisiana. His family adopted him from the Methodist Children’s Home in New Orleans, and reared him in a small town near the Sabine River. He, his wife and two children currently live near Williamsburg, VA.

Spin. Donald Everett Axinn. 1991. 321p. Station Hill Press. Spin is a bittersweet coming-of-age tale set in the 1950s reveals the emotional life of an orphaned boy overcoming the loss of his parents through his passion for flying and his love for a local Mexican-American girl. Eight-year-old Eddie’s parents are killed when the plane his father is piloting crashes into the highest peak in the Huachuca Mountains near their home. Eddie’s uncle Frank, who is also a pilot, is left to care for the boy. Shortly thereafter, Frank takes a long-term job abroad and Eddie is left to be raised by ranch manager Ernesto and his school-teacher wife Margaret. When Frank returns ten years later and fulfills his brother’s wish that Eddie be taught to fly, Eddie struggles to find his bearings as a young man with mixed emotions toward his uncle, his love for the couple who raised him, the loss of his birth parents, and his blossoming first-love with Francesca. As children, Francesca and Eddie are school-mates, but separate when her family moves away. She and her father return to the town when she is in high-school. Now teenagers, Francesca and Eddie are on the verge of becoming more than friends until Francesca flees to Mexico after she experiences a life-altering incident. (Plot synopsis refers to 2004 film version).

Spinning Forward: A Novel. Terri DuLong. 2009. 352p. Kensington. Sydney Webster’s comfortable New England life comes crashing down when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her penniless and evicted. She had no idea about his huge gambling debts, and is getting no sympathy from her hurt and angry twenty-something daughter. With nowhere else to turn, Sydney takes shelter at a college friend’s B&B in Cedar key, FL, where she begins to form a plan. As Syd turns her talent at spinning wool and knitting into a retail venture, other doors begin to open. She steps into the embrace of a community rich with love, laughter, friendship...and secrets. And soon she faces a choice: spin a safety net, or spin forward and never look back. Entertaining and heart warming, this superb debut will win readers over with its real-life challenges and quirky and compelling characters.

Spirit Rider. Cotton Smith. 2002. 288p. Liesure Books. Now a successful Denver businessman, Vin Lockhart was adopted and raised by the Oglala Sioux when he was orphaned by a cholera epidemic. Revered as one protected by their ancestors, suddenly, they want him to return and save an old friend captured by a gang of outlaws. To rescue him, Lockhart must hear the stones sing or die. Only the chosen can hear the stones sing their wisdom, the most ancient of beings and the wisest. So believe the Oglala Sioux. But Vin Lockhart never heard the stones sing, not even when his young bride was murdered by a vicious Crow war party—or when he goes after them alone and kills them. His fellow tribesmen believe their ancestors rode beside him in the battle. As he recovers from his near-death wounds, they come to believe he is a spirit himself. It is too much to bear with his grief and he leaves the village forever. On his travels, he meets an eccentric miner who talks with an imaginary friend and who teaches Lockhart the white man’s ways. Together they find gold and become rich businessmen. But his new happy life is interrupted by Oglala messengers sent by his adopted father, Stone-Healer, a shaman of prominence. They come to ask him to return and find his former brother-in-law who has been captured by an outlaw gang. Lockhart greatly resents the presence of the Oglala warriors, reminding him of a life he has long ago left. If he returns, he must deal once again with their belief that he is a spirit. He must hear the stones sing and face the likelihood of death ... again. By the Same Author: Return of the Spirit Rider (2008).

Stealing Margo. Chad Peery. 2009. 340p. CreateSpace. Passions collide when ’80s rock singer Margo Capolini is abducted by a West Virginia fan who hears messages in her song lyrics. This Rock Fiction road trip is an all-access pass to a shadowy world of rock music, unyielding desires, and a life-or-death music competition. Chad Peery makes full use of his experiences with Steppenwolf and other top-tier bands to craft vivid images from the other side of the stage. Stealing Margo lets us peek through doors most of us would never open, and discovers a unique spirituality in the most unexpected places. About the Author: Chad Peery played bass guitar in the ’70s and ’80s with John Kay and Steppenwolf, Bob Welch (Fleetwood Mac), Peter Banks (Yes), Frankie Banali (Quiet Riot), Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and many others. He is a nationally recognized radio programmer, and currently lives near Chico, CA. Stealing Margo is Chad’s second published novel. By the Same Author: Smoking Jimi (2009). Visit the Author’s website.

Still Summer. Jacquelyn Mitchard. 2007. 320p. Grand Central Publishing. From Publishers Weekly: Bestselling Mitchard offers the harrowing tale of four women lost at sea and pitted against nature and a cohort of contemporary pirates. Tracy, Holly and Olivia have known each other since high school, when they were glamorous, popular troublemakers. Twenty-five years after graduation, the three women, plus Tracy’s 19-year-old daughter, Camille, set out on a “reading, sunning, gossiping” trip aboard a luxe sailboat helmed by a two-man crew. But a storm leaves the women adrift with no sail or engine and their co-captains gone overboard. With limited sailing experience, failing radio equipment and a rapidly diminishing cache of food and water, the women are vulnerable to the worst threats the Caribbean can offer—the elements, sharks and, most troublesome, pirates. This fast-paced novel borrows qualities from several genres—suspense, survival epic, coming-of-age—and mostly succeeds in melding the better aspects of each, though Mitchard has a surer hand in creating women characters than men. Mitchard’s fans will appreciate this high-stakes adventure. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stone Diaries, The. Carol Shields. 1994. 361p. Fourth Estate (UK). This Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, captured in Daisy’s vivacious yet reflective voice, has been winning over readers since its publication in 1994. After a youth marked by sudden death and loss, Daisy escapes into conventionality as a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful garden columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy’s life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life—from her memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death. Shields’ sensuous prose and her deft characterizations make this, her sixth novel, her most successful yet.

Stone Garden, The. Mary Rosenblum. 1995. Ballantine/Del Rey. Artist Margaret Spinoza believes her father is the renowned stone sculptor Michael Tryon. But in trying to contact him, she discovers he is in grave danger: Tryon’s fellow artists are being murdered ... and the meteorites they had impressed with human emotions seem to be the killers!

Stone Upon His Shoulder, A. Helen Butler. 1953. 272p. The Westminster Press. Novel set in the Wyoming Territory in 1886, and revolving around a full-blooded Araphoe Indian who had been adopted and raised by a U.S. Army officer and his wife after his father had been killed in a fight with another tribe, and his mother had left to get help but had never returned. Now a grown man (and an ordained minister!), he is reunited with his mother, and takes up residence on the Araphoe reservation.

Storm Riders. Craig Lesley. 2000. 352p. Picador USA. Young Wade drops into Clark’s life like a disobedient Skylab. Wade, a Tlingit boy, is Clark’s ex-wife’s cousin—hardly a close relation. But the mild-mannered Clark, an Oregonian professor trying to make his way in the East, becomes foster father to Wade by attrition; there is simply no one else to care for the boy. In Craig Lesley’s humane and beautifully competent fourth novel, Storm Riders, no romance is attached to the notion of saving a Native American child. Lesley makes both his heroes ornery and unlovable—and desperately real. Mysteries accrue around Wade. At the opening of the book, a neighbor girl drowns and he is blamed for the accident. In fact, throughout Wade’s time with Clark, violent events crop up, and Lesley has the guts to leave these events unexplained. This deepens our sense of the core mystery of the story: Wade’s damaged childhood remains unknowable. A string of therapists toss about theories—abuse, a learning disability, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome—and Lesley (who was foster parent to such a boy for a decade) shows how meaningless such theories are in the face of the day-to-day reality of Wade’s difficulties. As Wade makes his way back to his tribe, Lesley spins his novel outward into a meditation on the way families are made and the way children are lost. A Tlingit elder describes to Clark the mythical “land otters” who make off with Tlingit children. Clark thinks he knows what the old man is talking about, and remarks that the land otters are a good metaphor for drugs and alcohol. “The old man shook his head. ‘Sometimes there are real land otters.’” And that’s the grace of Lesley’s writing: Wade is a metaphor for all endangered children, and at the same time he’s his own distinctive story, no more and no less.— Claire Dederer

Strange Beginning. Naomi Ellington Jacob. 1961. 288p. Robert Hale (UK).

Suffer the Little Children: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery. Donna Leon. 2007. 272p. Atlantic Monthly Press. Donna Leon’s charming, evocative, and addictive Commissario Guido Brunetti series continues with Suffer the Little Children. When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men—a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town—have burst into the doctor’s apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and taken away his 18-month-old adopted baby boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent it has left the doctor mute? Who would have authorized such an alarming operation? At the same time, Brunetti’s colleague Inspector Vianello discovers a money-making scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. But it appears as if one of the pharmacists is after more than money. Donna Leon’s new novel is as subtle and fascinating as ever, set in a beautifully-realized Venice, a glorious city seething with small-town vice.

Sugar. Merla Zellerbach. 1989. Ballantine Publishing Group. In Exotic Hawaii on the eve of Pearl Harbor for that one breif night Margorie Grannon gave in to her passion for the soldier she loved. The bombing changed everything. When Marjorie, unwed, gave birth to twins nine months later and gave one up for adoption. So begins the sweeping story of two brothers who never knew the other existed until many years later.

Sunset in St. Tropez. Danielle Steel. 2002. 240p. Delacorte Press. As Diana Morrison laid the table for six at her elegant Central Park apartment, there was no warning of what was to come. Spending New Year’s Eve together was a sacred tradition for Diana, her husband of thirty-two years, Eric, and their best friends, Pascale and John Donnally and Anne and Robert Smith. The future looked rosy as the long-time friends sipped champagne and talked of renting a villa together in the South of France the following summer. But life had other plans. Just two weeks after New Year’s, tragedy strikes the heart of their close circle, as Robert Smith suffers a sudden, unexpected loss. Without hesitation, Diana and Eric, Pascale and John rally to his side, united in their support, love, and shared grief. Convinced that a change of scenery is just what Robert needs, they urge him to join them on the Riviera in August. But as they soon discover, the ramshackle old mansion they rented in St. Tropez—sight unseen—is far different from the exquisite villa and sun-drenched gardens touted in the brochure. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. Beds collapse beneath them. All while a would-be housekeeper in a leopard-skin bikini and six-inch heels sashays through the house with a trio of yapping poodles at her heels. But the biggest surprise of all is the woman Robert invites to the villa as his guest—a lovely, much-younger film actress with mile-long legs and a million-dollar smile. Diana and Pascale hate her on sight. But the men are dazzled. And amid the crumbling furniture and the glorious sunsets, the strained relationships and the acts of forgiveness, more surprises are in store for the villa’s occupants. With the last days of summer fast approaching, each couple finds themselves changing in unexpected ways, as old wounds are healed, new love discovered, and miracles unfold...all beneath the dazzling sun of St. Tropez. By turns wise and moving, heartbreaking and wickedly funny, Danielle Steel’s new novel is about forgiving without forgetting, about the sorrow that shadows our lives and the hope that saves us. And it is about once-in-a-lifetime friendships...the kind that heal, sustain, and change us forever.

Surrogate, The. Judith Henry Wall. 2006. 352p. Simon & Schuster. To a penniless twenty-year-old like Jamie Long, surrogate motherhood seemed both an act of altruism and a financial opportunity. But once pregnant and under contract to Amanda Hartmann, the head of a famous evangelical family, Jamie realizes that she’s getting more than she bargained for. Whisked away to the vast, isolated family ranch, she’s closely supervised and carefully cut off from the outside world. She learns the family’s dark secrets —and sees the enormity of their ruthlessness. When Jamie hears Amanda’s plan to claim the baby as her natural-born child, she begins to suspect that her own life is in danger and resolves to flee. Alone with a tiny newborn, she calls on the one man in the world she can trust—her high school crush, Joe Brammer. Their love unites them in a struggle to escape, and soon enough their flight becomes a fight for their lives.

Survivors, The. Kristin Hunter. 1975. 308p. Charles Scribner’s Sons. A middle-aged, respectable black woman and a thirteen-year-old street kid—the story of how they adopted each other. About the Author: Born September 12, 1931, in Philadelphia, PA, Kristin Eggleston Hunter Lattany is the daughter of George Lorenzo Hunter, a school principal and U.S. army colonel, and Mabel Hunter, a pharmacist and school teacher. Kristin married John I. Lattany, June 22, 1968. In addition to being a novelist, a wife and a mother, Lattany has worked as an elementary school teacher, advertising copywriter, television scriptwriter, and professor of creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her degree. Lattany has been a writer for the Pittsburgh Courier, and an information officer for the city of Philadelphia. As of 2002, she is the author of ten published works of fiction, four for children and six for adults. Most of Lattany’s novels have been widely translated and well received. After a very prolific writing and teaching career, including 23 years as a professor in the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania, Lattany retired in 1995. Lattany now lives with her husband and children in Camden, New Jersey.

Swedish Tango: A Novel. Alyson Richman. 2004. 352p. Atria. Octavio Ribeiro is a rising movie star in Chile when, at the request of his literary hero, Pablo Neruda, he agrees to serve as a media trainer in the presidential campaign of Salvador Allende. This involvement exposes Octavio and his family—especially his wife, Salome—to the ruthless kidnapping and terror tactics of Allende’s rival, Pinochet, until they escape to political exile in Sweden. Kaija and her husband, Dr. Samuel Rudin, are also living as expatriates in Sweden, where Kaija had been sent by her Finnish parents during World War II to be adopted. Rudin, a psychiatrist, specializes in treating people like Salome who have been traumatized by war and political upheaval. As the couples’ destinies intersect, they must each confront the secrets they have kept and acknowledge the painful truth that personal choices can result in tragic, irrevocable consequences. Richman deftly explores the complex landscape of lives shaped by political events beyond their control in a deeply moving and beautifully rendered second novel. From the author of the critically acclaimed The Mask Carver’s Son comes Swedish Tango, a powerful story of two couples from opposite ends of the earth who seek refuge in Sweden, where their lives intertwine in a poignant dance with destiny.

Sweet Edge, The. Alison Pick. 2006. 284p. Raincoast Book Distribution. From Kirkus Reviews: A couple separates for the summer to ponder their relationship, among other things. Ellen and Adam are at a crossroads. Though they have been dating for years, they are just coming to understand their fairly sizable differences. Ellen, the product of an urbane, upper-crust upbringing, is pretty, practical and bored. Adam, solidly middle class, has no desire to ever own a suit or attend a function that would require him to do so. He is inspired by obscure philosophy, intellectual banter and, above all, nature. Ellen halfheartedly follows Adam to Toronto, where he is enrolled in a nebulous Master’s program, and gets a job in an art gallery to pass the time while she dreams of an engagement ring. Meanwhile, Adam becomes close to Cara, a brash, brilliant lesbian he meets at school. When summer comes, Adam embarks on a solo 50-day paddling trip in the northern wilderness, leaving Ellen to fend for herself in the stiflingly hot city she has come to resent. It is a challenge for both-and one that will either save or end their teetering relationship. At first, Ellen is in denial, fantasizing that Adam will return ready to make a real commitment, but she finds herself swept up in a bustling social circle championed by an intriguing new coworker, Deborah, who is still haunted by a baby that she gave up for adoption years ago. Simultaneously, Adam, in the wilderness, fantasizes about a woman who would understand his relationship with nature, and tries to deal with his feelings for the two real women he has left behind-Ellen and Cara. Pick is adept at chronicling the details of a relationship in a believable way. But that’s also her problem: We all have enough Adams and Ellens in our own liveswithout turning to fiction. Like a friend complaining about her love life, this novel, while resonant, is ultimately pretty boring.

Sweet In-Between, The. Sheri Reynolds. 2008. 224p. Shaye Areheart Books. Kendra, or “Kenny,” has grown up in a family that’s not really hers. Her momma died of cancer when Kenny was very young, and “Aunt” Glo is, in fact, her daddy’s girlfriend, who took her in when her father was sent to jail for drug trafficking. Nearing eighteen years old and facing confusion over her sexuality, Kenny binds her chest with ACE bandages and keeps her hair cropped short like a boy’s. Her gender ambiguity makes her an outcast at school and, even at times, at home, where her adopted family isn’t really sure what to make of her. When a senseless murder occurs in their run-down coastal town—a college student mistakenly entering the wrong home is killed—Kenny becomes obsessed with thoughts of the dead girl and with her own fears that she will be alone in the world when she turns eighteen. She makes it her mission to become indispensable to Aunt Glo in the hopes that she can win the older woman’s love, despite their not being bound by blood. A lyrical tale of a family of misfits in a town that’s seen its best days come and go, The Sweet In-Between is also a poignant story of an unforgettable character’s coming-of-age. About the Author: Sheri Reynolds is a professor of writing and literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She is the author of five novels, including the Oprah Book Club selection The Rapture of Canaan (1995), which was a New York Times No. 1 bestseller. She lives in Cape Charles, Virginia.

Swimming Across the Hudson. Joshua Henkin. 1997. 230p. Putnam Publishers Group. “When you’re adopted, everything’s contingent.” So says Ben Suskind, the narrator of Joshua Henkin’s debut novel, Swimming Across the Hudson. Ben knows what he’s talking about: the sons of different birth mothers, he and his brother Jonathan were both adopted by Orthodox Jewish parents and brought up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a religious/intellectual/political hothouse that left them gasping for air and the opportunity to figure themselves out. For Ben, claiming an identity means meeting his birth mother, an event that is both shocking—she informs him he wasn’t born a Jew—and depressing—he’s bored by her. For Jonathan, it means admitting his homosexuality to his family. Exploring serious issues of identity, family, and where you turn when the chips are down, Swimming Across the Hudson is filled with perceptive insights and told in quiet, fluid prose. This auspicious first novel augurs well for Joshua Henkin.