Tabula Rasa. Shelly Reuben. 2005. 304p. Harcourt. Meet arson investigator Billy Nightingale and his brother-in-law, Officer Sebastian Bly, who are called in to investigate a house fire that killed two young children. Suspicious details at the fire scene—and the discovery of a baby hiding underneath the porch—put Billy and Sebastian on the trail of a murderous mother while Sebastian and his wife, Annie, raise baby Meredith without revealing her dangerous and frightening past. Meredith grows up to be a promising young ballerina—her ambitions fueled in part by the fictional past that Sebastian and Annie have invented for her. But the truth threatens their charmed family circle as Merry’s biological mother returns to finish what she started. Tabula Rasa is not only a gripping and entertaining crime novel but also a sensitive, warm exploration of the deeper issues of what defines a family and an individual.

Tale of Two Sisters, A. Anna Maxted. 2006. 368p. Dutton Books. Lizbet and Cassie are sisters and, though they’ve always wanted different things, best friends as well. But that’s about to change. Cassie is skinny, clever, charismatic, successful—every not-so-perfect girl’s worst nightmare. The one defect in her quality-controlled life may be her marriage. Lizbet is plumper, plainer, dreamier. She’s desperate to make her name as a journalist, but is stuck writing embarrassing articles on sex for a men’s magazine. Her one achievement is her relationship with Tim, who thinks she’s amusing and smart—even when she asks ditzy questions. Confronted by challenges that they never asked for, enticed by new loves, and forced apart by mistakes not their own, will Cassie and Lizbet ever figure out how to get back to the simple goodness of their sisterhood, even as their lives take them on a collision course of heartache and new beginnings? About the Author: Anna Maxted is a freelance writer and the author of the international bestsellers Getting Over It (2000), Running in Heels (2001), Behaving Like Adults (2002), and Being Committed (2004). By the Same Author: Rich Again (2009).

Tale Out of Luck, A. Willie Nelson, with Mike Blakely. 2008. 256p. Center Street. Retired Texas Ranger Captain Hank Tomlinson intends to spend the rest of his days raising cattle on his Broken Arrow Ranch, and nurturing his frontier town of Luck, Texas. But when the brutal murder and scalping of a mysterious drifter leads to a clash between cavalry soldiers and a band of Comanche Indians suspected of the killing, a full-scale Indian uprising seems likely. Worse yet, the murder of the drifter bears a disturbing resemblance to a string of killings Hank remembers from his distant and violent past as a Texas Ranger. Meanwhile, Hank’s twenty-year-old son, Jay Blue, and his adoptive brother, Skeeter, find themselves on the trail of a valuable Kentucky mare who vanished under their watch. The trail leads them into the dangerous haunts of outlaws and vengeful Comanche warriors. Now Hank must attempt to keep his sons safe while trying to catch a murderer who he knows will soon strike again. His ace-in-the-hole is beautiful Flora Barlow, the tavern owner with a knack for detective work. Though rival lawman, Matt Kenyon, and competing rancher, Jack Brennan, complicate Hank’s investigation, he and Flora slowly begin to uncover a crooked web of crime, deception, and murder. Dark secrets emerge, and everyone must choose sides as lawmen, outlaws, soldiers, and Indian warriors converge for a final, bloody confrontation. About the Authors: Willie Nelson was born April 30, 1933 and grew up in Abbott, TX. A country singer/songwriter, he developed his own style of music combining rock and roll, jazz, western swing, and folk. In the 1970s he partnered with Waylon Jennings to form an offshoot genre of country music called “outlaw country.” Willie’s chart topping songs include “Good Hearted Woman,” “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time,” “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and “On the Road Again.” Mike Blakely is the acclaimed, Spur Award-winning author of several historical western novels. A singer-songwriter with six CDs of his own, he lives in Marble Falls, TX.

Talking Leaves, The: An Indian Story. William O Stoddard. 1910. 250p. Harper & Brothers. Few sisters are more devoted than wee Rita and Ni-ha-be, one a captured white girl and the other the daughter of a great Apache chief. For Rita had been adopted by the chief and raised as Ni-ha-be’s sister. Still when the strange, unknown magazines of white men were found, these “Talking Leaves” brought memories crowding out of Rita’s early childhood. She longed for the kind laughing Daddy whose face she now remembered clearly.

Tame Cactus, The. Esperanza Zendejas. 1999. 284p. Ojo Por Ojo. Raised by adoptive parents on a southern California farm, Millie Wolf is loved but lonely. Who were her birth parents? What happened to them and the rest of her Meixan family? Then a budding romance illuminates her identity and reveals the miracles of love and friendship—for yesterday, today and tomorrow. About the Author: Esperanza Zendejas was born in Michoacan, Mexico. The youngest of nine children, her family immigrated to California’s Imperial Valley in the early 60’s. A graduate of San Diego State University, University of San Diego, and Stanford University, She has been a teacher, principal and is currently a school superintendent. She is the mother of Baleria, a teacher in Brownsville, Texas and Xchel, a junior at Arizona State.

Teardrop Story Woman, The. Catherine Lim. 1998. 329p. Overlook Press. The Teardrop Story woman is Mei Kwei, born in Malaya in 1934 and doubly cursed—not only is she female, she also has a tiny teardrop mole in the corner of one eye: a sign of bad luck that presages disaster. Fate proves kinder to Mei Kwei who inherits her grandmother’s extraordinary good looks and gift for storytelling. As she grows up, Mei Kwei must cope with the attention of the men who begin to encircle her, attracted by the intensity of her beauty and by her spirit. She runs from these men to a man who cannot love her back—the charismatic Father Martin, a French Catholic missionary—and the demands of the flesh and the s pirit come into fearful collision. Set in Malaya in the turbulent 1950s, this is an irresistible story of passion and obligation where no one is safe, least of all those watched by jealous men or exacting gods.

Tell Us of the Night. Coningsby Dawson & Barton Browne. 1941. 350p. Jefferson House. Novel about a surgeon, his wife, French assistant, and adopted daughter.

Tender Victory. Taylor Caldwell. 1956. 374p. McGraw-Hill Book Co. This is the story of a minister named Johnny Fletcher who moves to a mining and industrial community after he does his stint in the military. He brings with him a new family, five orphaned refugee children whom he adopted while an Army chaplain in Europe. Far from being welcomed, he and his family are treated with hostility and fear. With kindness, love, and the help of God, Johnny gradually rebuilds security for his shattered brood. He also wins the confidence of a few townsfolk. But there remains the apathy and hostility of his congregation, and beyond this, far more powerful forces rage against the minister. In an attempt to drive the minister from the town, an angry mob sets fire to the parsonage on Christmas Eve. With the story of Johnny Fletcher, Taylor Caldwell has created a vital and inspiring picture of courageous faith at work.

Then She Found Me. Elinor Lipman. 1990. 320p. Pocket Books. What happens when a well-adjusted adult is found by the birth mother she never sought? In Lipman’s deft hands, the relationship between high school teacher April Epner and her newly discovered mother, talk-show hostess Bernice Graverman, is often strained, replete with humorous misunderstandings, but ultimately a warm and positive experience for both. Lipman’s depiction of a 1980s family is a skillful rendering of the morals and manners of our time. Each character displays his or her human contradictions, whether it’s Bernice frantically inventing preposterous stories concerning April’s birth father, or April tentatively moving toward romance with the school librarian. This is a delightful addition to public library fiction collections.— Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson County Community College Library, Overland Park, KS (Library Journal)

Theory of Relativity, A. Jacquelyn Mitchard. 2001. 368p. HarperCollins. “They died instantly.” When it comes to first sentences, it’s hard to beat the car-crash immediacy of A Theory of Relativity. What follows, alas, is even more wrenching, if not nearly as black and white. Having perished in the wreck, Georgia and Ray McKenna leave behind an orphaned one-year-old girl named Keefer—and handsome, self-involved Gordon McKenna decides to adopt his adored sister’s child. Unfortunately, that’s not what his affluent in-laws have in mind. The ensuing custody battle turns into a protracted legalistic horror show: a kind of Bleak House for the Oprah age, complete with appeals, retrials, PR campaigns, and even last-minute legislation. The case is all about what’s best for Keefer—right? Actually, it’s also about what constitutes a family, how much genes determine our fate, and the precise meaning of blood relative. Author of the gripping family dramas The Deep End of the Ocean and The Most Wanted, Jacquelyn Mitchard is no stranger to this fictional territory. To her credit, she has created a story without heroes or villains—but also one that could have used a little more editorial nip-and-tuck. The narrative is strongly weighted toward monologue and exposition, and as a result, a compelling story ends up hampered by an awareness of its own consequence. (There’s also an abundance of dialogue like “no wettie!” and “uckie,” which reminds us that fiction is one place where toddlers should be seen and not heard.) Still, Mitchard is a canny student of the human heart, and in the age of cloning, in vitro fertilization, and alternative families, the nature versus nurture debate seems more relevant than ever. The author may be no Dickens, but you could call her sentimental in the same way: unafraid, that is, to appeal to her readers’ strongest emotions. — Chloe Byrne

These Lovers Fled Away. Howard Spring. 1955. 573p. Collins (UK). These Lovers Fled Away moves freely in space and time. The career of Chad Boothroyd, the narrator, begins in the South of Cornwall in the last years of Queen Victori’s reign. It ends in the Home Countries at the close of the Second World War. Thruogh this long period of momentous stress and change—from the horse-drawn cab in which Uncle Arthur makes his first appearance, to the atomic bomb which Chad’s friend Billy Pascoe helped to develop—the narrative moves from Cornwall to the dales of West Riding, to Oxford, Manchester and London. The three friends of Chad’s life—Billy Pascoe, the physicist, Gregory Appleby, the economist, Eustace Hawke, the poet, represent three attitudes to existwence; and surrounding them is a crowd of men and women of whom perhaps the fantastic stick-in-the-mud Uncle Arthur is the most amusing, and May Ingleby, Chad’s first wife, the most pathtic. Finally, Chad finds peace with the mysterious and beautiful Rose Garlan,d the ward of the formidable land-owning Miss Orlop-Rose, who already had been the wife of one of his friends and the mistress of another. As is usual in Howard Spring’s larger novels, what carries the reader on is not contrived “plot” or complication of incident so much as human life itself, rolling along with its even tenor broken by humour and pathos, by beauty and sadness, and now and then shaken by tragedy. So it is here, in full measure.

They Call It Sin. Alberta Stedman Eagan. 1932. 315p. Macaulay Co. Novel about a rebellious girl adopted by a family from an orphanage. Pictured: First Photoplay Edition, illustrated at front dustjacket panel with a scene from the First National Picture starring Loretta Young, George Brent and Louis Calhern. Movie plot summary: With time on his hands during a business trip, Jimmy Decker (who’s engaged to his boss’s daughter) romances small-town church organist Marion Cullen, who follows him to New York only to learn Jimmy’s true colors after she’s burned her bridges. Marion’s looks and talent get her a job with theatrical producer Ford Humphries. Will she succumb to her boss, take up with now-married Jimmy, marry honest suitor Tony Travers...or become a full-fledged gold digger?

Things Happen for a Reason: Even Foster Care & Adoption. Kimberly Snodgrass. 2008. 82p. PublishAmerica. On May 12, 1986, Amber was brought into a world in which she had no control. Amber was in and out of the foster care system due to parental neglect as well as alcohol and drug use. Due to an unstable environment, Amber did not steadily go to school until the middle of her sixth-grade year. At age eleven she was placed with her new foster family, the Sanderses. Five years passed with her foster family as her birth mother slowly lost all of her parental rights. She was finally adopted her junior year in high school by the Sanders family. From living unsteadily in motels and shelters to a loving adoptive family, Amber successfully made it to the University of California of Los Angeles. She managed to exhibit a positive outlook on life no matter how many obstacles she had to endure.

Things I Know Best, The. Lynne Hinton. 2001. 176p. Harper San Francisco. The author of Friendship Cake takes readers to tiny Pleasant Cross, North Carolina, where everybody knows everybody else’s business—and some know more. Eighteen-year-old Tessa Ivy, for one. She has second sight, like all the women in her family: Grandma Pinot can foretell the weather; Aunt Doris interprets dreams; and Tessa’s twin sister, Liddy, reads palms. Townsfolk fear the supernatural skill the Ivy women call “Knowing,” although some see it as a strange gift from God. It certainly hasn’t made them rich: the local undertaker pays a monthly allowance to the twins’ Mama Bertie, who can predict who will die next, but aside from that small windfall the Ivys just get by like everyone else. When Liddy takes a job at a seedy bar on the outskirts of town, Mama Bertie is furious, but she’s got other things to worry about. Tessa is injured in a car crash, slips into a coma, and awakens to find that her ability to perceive what others can’t has intensified. She drifts through her days, seeing the mundane world around her in a very different light, then falls in love with a young man she barely knows: Sterling Renfrow, the adopted son of a traveling black preacher. Sterling is biracial, but no one seems to know who his parents were. Tessa doesn’t care, even though it’s risky to cross the color line in rural North Carolina. She is beset by visions and nightmares that provide tantalizing clues to the identities of Sterling’s parents. Reverend Renfrow, a charismatic and powerful man, dies of a stroke before he can enlighten her, but Tessa understands at the close that the reverend had a Knowing all his own. Lyrical and light, with an appealing small-town cast. — From Kirkus Reviews

Things We Do for Love, The. Kristin Hannah. 2004. 388p. Ballantine Books, Inc. The youngest of three daughters, Angela DeSaria Malone was always “the princess” of the family, a girl who thought she knew how her life would unfold. High School. College. Marriage. Motherhood. That was how it had gone for her sisters, her cousins, her friends. But it didn’t work out that way for Angie. She and her husband tried desperately to have a child; year after year, their perfectly decorated nursery remained empty. Finally, their marriage collapsed under the weight of lost dreams. After the divorce, Angie moved back to her hometown and rejoined her loud, loving, slightly crazy family. In West End, a place where life rises and falls in time with the tides, she will find the man who once again will open her heart to love ... and meet the girl who will change Angie’s life. Lauren Ribido lives in a rundown apartment in a bad part of town with a mother who cares more about her next drink than about her daughter. At seventeen, Lauren knows that her aspirations in life may never come to pass. From the moment they meet, Angie sees something special in Lauren. They form a quick connection, this woman who is desperate for a daughter and the girl who has never known a mother’s love. When Lauren is abandoned by her mother, Angie doesn’t hesitate to offer the girl a place to stay. But nothing could have prepared Angie for the far-reaching repercussions of this act of kindness. In a dramatic turn of events, she and Lauren will be tested in a way that mothers and daughters seldom are. Together they will embark on an intensely moving, deeply emotional journey to the very heart of what it means to be a family.

Third Identity, The. Rosemary Gatenby. 1979. 340p. Dodd, Mead.

Thirteen Moons. Charles Frazier. 2006. 432p. Random House. From Publishers Weekly: When Frazier’s debut Cold Mountain blossomed into a National Book Award–winning bestseller with four million copies in print, expectations for the follow-up rose almost immediately. A decade later, the good news is that Frazier’s storytelling prowess doesn’t falter in this sophomore effort, a bountiful literary panorama again set primarily in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. The story takes place mostly before the Civil War this time, and it is epic in scope. With pristine prose that’s often wry, Frazier brings a rough-and-tumble pioneer past magnificently to life, indicts America with painful bluntness for the betrayal of its native people and recounts a romance rife with sadness. In a departure from Cold Mountain’s Inman, Will Cooper narrates his own story in retrospect, beginning with his days as an orphaned, literate “bound boy” who is dispatched to run a musty trading post at the edge of the Cherokee Nation. Nearly nine mesmerizing decades later, Will is an eccentric elder of great accomplishments and gargantuan failures, perched cantankerously on his front porch taking potshots at passenger trains rumbling across his property (he owns “quite a few” shares of the railroad). Over the years, Will—modeled very loosely, Frazier acknowledges, on real-life frontiersman William Holland Thomas—becomes a prosperous merchant, a self-taught lawyer and a state senator; he’s adopted by a Cherokee elder and later leads the clan as a white Indian chief; he bears terrible witness to the 1838-1839 Trail of Tears; a quarter-century later, he goes to battle for the Confederacy as a self-anointed colonel, leading a mostly Indian force with a “legion of lawyers and bookkeepers and shop clerks” as officers; as time passes, his life intersects with such figures as Davy Crockett, Sen. John C. Calhoun and President Andrew Jackson. After the Civil War, Will fritters away a fortune through wanderlust, neglect and unquenched longing for his one true love, Claire, a girl he won in a card game when they were both 12, wooed for two erotic summers in his teen years and found again several decades later. In the novel’s wistful coda, recalling Claire’s voice inflicts “flesh wounds of memory, painful but inconclusive”—a voice that an uncertain old Will hears in the static hiss when he answers his newfangled phone in the book’s opening pages. The history that Frazier hauntingly unwinds through Will is as melodic as it is melancholy, but the sublime love story is the narrative’s true heart. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This Child is Mine: A Novel. Henry Denker. 1995. 330p. William Morrow. In This Child Is Mine, Denker tells a riveting tale of two couples locked in a desperate custody struggle. Inspired by today’s headlines, the trial explores complex and timely problems. Lori Adams, a young, unmarried actress, reluctantly gives up her baby boy for adoption. Although in love with the baby’s father, Brett Manning, Lori feels they aren’t capable of providing their boy with the life he deserves. Having recently lost their firstborn son, Christie and Bill Salem adopt the newborn baby. The Salems raise little Scotty for the next two years with all the love and care he could possibly need. But in the meantime, life has improved dramatically for Lori and Brett, and they want their child back. The resulting courtroom battle threatens to ruin the lives of all involved. When the ratings-hungry media become embroiled, it looks as if Scotty’s fate will be determined by which parents play best on the evening news.

This Heavy Silence. Nicole Mazzarella. 2006. 240p. Paraclete Press. Spite and loyalty, not affection, prompt Dottie Connell to adopt her best friend’s daughter. But as she struggles to farm her family’s 300 acres, she grows to love the child as her own. When the farm is put on the block, she faces a difficult choice—either buy back the property or betray her daughter. A luminous first novel shedding light on the mysteries of grace.

Thousand Voices, A. Lisa Wingate. 2007. 336p. (Tending Roses Series). NAL. Adopted at thirteen, Dell Jordan was loved, mentored, and encouraged to pursue her passion for music. Now, at twenty, after a year abroad with a traveling symphony, a scholarship to Julliard is within reach. But underneath Dell’s smoothly polished surface lurk mysteries from the past. Why did her mother abandon her? Who was her father? Are there faces somewhere that look like hers—blood relatives she’s never met? Determined to find answers, Dell sets off on a secret journey into Oklahoma’s Kiamichi Mountains, drawn by the only remaining link to her origins—-a father’s Native American name on her birth certificate. In the voices of her Choctaw ancestors, she’ll discover the keys to a future unlike anything she could have imagined. About the Author: Lisa Wingatelives with her husband and two sons in central Texas, where she is a popular writer and inspirational speaker. She grew up in Oklahoma and studied writing at Oklahoma State University. Visit the Author’s Website. By the Same Author: Tending Roses (2001) and Drenched in Light (2006), among others.

Three Children of the Holocaust. Sol Chaneles. 1974. 192p. Avon. The war ended and Auschwitz was liberated. Adopted by a wealthy New York family the three children who once fought over a crust of bread stood to inherit millions of dollars. A novel of power and beauty, haunting sadness, and sharp irony.

Three Continents. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. 1987. John Murray (UK). Three Continents is Ruth Jhabvala’s most far reaching novel; it is also her most sensational. Set in New York, London and India, it has as its narrator Harriet Wishwell who With her twin brother Michael believes there should be something more in their lives than their wealth and heritage. They become followers of the Rawul, an Indian Prince with a dubious title and a small derelict kingdom, who is the founder of a movement for world unity. Inseparable from their belief in the Rawul and the cause are Michael’s blind idealism and Harriet’s equally blind passion for the Rawul’s adopted son, Crishi, of murky origins but charismatic charm. Slowly it becomes clear that he and others of the movement are engaged in suspect and even criminal activities. Only when in India does Michael’s allegiance falter and with horror and fascination the reader watches Harriet’s acquiescence, under the impetus of love, in the threatened destruction of all she should hold dear, uncertain if she will be able to draw back in time to save Michael and herself. This subtle portrayal of the interplay of motives and emotion between characters of different race is an art at which Ruth Jhabvala excels, and she exercises it with great power. About the Author: Ruth Prawer Jhabvalwas born in 1927 of Polish parents and came to England at the age of twelve. She was educated in England, took her degree at London University and is married to an Indian architect. They lived in Delhi from 1951 to 1975. Since then they have divided their time between Delhi, New York and London. Ruth Jhabvala has written nine novels and five volumes of short stories: in collaboration with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant she has written scripts for films and television including Shakespeare Wallah, Henry James’s The Bostonians, for her own Booker Prize winning novel Heat and Dust and, most recently, the script for E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View, which won an Academy Award in 1987. She has also received the Neil Gunn International Fellowship in 1979 and the MacArthur Foundation Award in 1986. 

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye. CJ Box. 2009. 352p. Minotaur Books. Jack and Melissa McGuane have spent years trying to have a baby. Finally their dream has come true with the adoption of their daughter, Angelina. But nine months after bringing her home, they receive a devastating phone call from the adoption agency: Angelina’s birth father, a teenager, never signed away his parental rights, and he wants her back. Worse, his father, a powerful Denver judge, wants him to own up to this responsibility and will use every advantage his position of power affords him to make sure it happens. When Jack and Melissa attempt to handle the situation rationally by meeting face-to-face with the father and son, it is immediately apparent that there’s something sinister about both of them and that love for Angelina is not the motivation for their actions. As Angelina’s safety hangs in the balance, Jack and Melissa will stop at nothing to protect their child. A horrifying game of intimidation and double crosses begins that quickly becomes a death spiral where absolutely no one is safe.

Thursday’s Child. June Drummond. 1961. Victor Gollancz (UK). About the Author: June Drummond was living in London when she started her writing career. She was Secretary to the Church Adoption Society and in her time there saw over 1,000 children adopted. She enjoyed the work and used it for the basis of this, her second novel. It was a time, before the Pill or legalised abortion, when there were many unwanted babies.

Reprint (facsimile) Edition

Tides of Barnegat, The. Francis Hopkinson Smith. Illustrated by George Wright. 1906. 422p. Charles Scribner’s Sons. The novel follows two sisters, Jane and Lucy Cobden. Jane, the older by ten years, had vowed alongside her father’s deathbed long before to raise and protect Lucy. When Lucy returns from boarding school in Philadelphia, Jane gives her younger sister all she needs and desires with a caring hand, but does not find in Lucy the same forthright and dutiful character that she possesses. Misled by her love, Jane protects Lucy at the expense of her own life’s happiness and a marriage to a man who loves her. About the Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith was born in Baltimore in 1838 to a distinguished family. He was a great grandson of Francis Hopkinson, poet and signer of the Declaration of Independence for New Jersey. Raised in an artistic and intellectual household, Smith planned to go to college until family financial reverses made this impossible. He worked at a number of jobs eventually becoming an engineer specializing in marine projects. Writing was, in fact, Smith’s third career and one he did not begin until he was over fifty. By then, he was not only a very successful engineer but also an acclaimed and popular artist. Smith believed that anyone who loved art for its own sake should have another career to provide a living and then in his evenings and on his Sundays, take down his Aladdin’s lamp and give it a rub. His writing career began when he decided to capitalize on his skill as a raconteur and put some of his after-dinner stories into print, illustrating them with sketches. When his first novel, Colonel Carter of Cartersville, proved successful, Smith gave up his engineering career and retired to a life of travel, painting and writing in Spain, Italy and Constantinople. He produced a long line of travel books, short story collections and longer works of fiction. He died in New York in 1915.

Time to Search, A. Linda Shands. 1995. 224p. InterVarsity Press. Television is brand-new. Elvis Presley is rocking America. And Celia Summers has just read a shocking letter from her long-lost mother. This is Book Three in Linda Shands’ series, Seasons Remembered.

1922 Photoplay Edition

Timothy’s Quest: A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It. Kate Douglas Wiggin. 1890. 201p. Houghton Mifflin. Hard heart is softened as a woman takes in orphan foster kids to work on her farm. Timothy seeks a place where he is wanted, a long hard quest. Happy ending, adoption, tears.

To You Alone. Tania Piper. 1996. Aquila Press (Australia). Tania Piper’s novel To You Alone looks at the choices open to an unmarried and uncommitted couple facing unplanned pregnancy, and the resulting consequences, creating a most timely book. Abbey and Carl are two young students, totally unprepared for the crisis which catapults them from youth into adulthood. Their confused emotions and reasoning are conveyed with great skill and sensitivity as they examine their apparent choices. Issues of abortion, birth, adoption and single parenthood are dissected. But the book goes deeper than the birth and its aftermath, vividly portraying the pain (and it’s denial) of the relinquishing mother and father and how this affects Abbey’s subsequent marriage to Steve, a caring, supportive partner. Choices honestly made can produce unforseseen consequences later in life. All who have made difficult choices in similar circumstances need our empathy and support, yet only now is the subject discussed openly in society. Adoption seemed such a sensible and caring solution to a girl’s (never the boy’s) problem and softened the pain of couples unable to conceive. We are beginning to realise that all with a stake in the adoption contract find it a complex and painful experience, never completely resolved. Relinquishing mothers have remained silent, stoically getting on with their lives, burdened with grief and guilt. Tania Piper’s contribution to understanding their hidden pain is most welcome. Written from a contemporary point of view, the book describes the effects of unplanned pregnancy on the two students and their immediate family. It traces the later outworkings of their decision as it affects relationships, faith in God, marriage, families, open adoption and other issues. Relinquishing parents, adoptive families, adoptees, close family and friends can draw insights and encouragement from this book. So too can professionals working with those who have faced or are facing these painful decisions. The story is told without moralising, and the author holds out hope that the relinquishing parents, children, and others close to them will be able to accept decisions made with the best of intentions, and forgive themselves and others, even when reality is less than they had desired. Abbey shows that love, stability and joy can come out of painful experiences. Tania Piper writes economically and well. The book’s biggest market will be in Christian circles but deserves a wider audience as the issues touch all of society. The characters of Abbey, husband Steve and former partner Carl have much to teach us about hidden pain, love, acceptance and forgiveness.— Reviewed by Rena Pritchard.

Together For Good. Melanie Dobson. 2006. 320p. Kregel Publications. Twenty years ago, Abby Wagner lost her baby. Now, at the pinnacle of her career, the repressed pain from that loss surfaces when she is assigned to design a publicity campaign for Heartsong Adoptions—the very organization that separated her from her son. The panic she feels opens her deepest wounds as the past rises up to haunt her. To find some peace of mind, Abby returns to her family’s cottage on Orcas Island. As she slowly releases her grip on the past, Abby discovers a miracle in the most unexpected place. Author’s Comments: At the same time we were trying to finalize the adoption of our oldest daughter, some close friends of ours were also adopting. A week after they welcomed their baby boy home, the birth mother showed up at their front door to say she’d changed her mind. They were devastated when they had to return their son. What would happen to this baby? How would I respond if someone tried to take Karly from me? And how could God use this awful situation for good? I sat down and began writing Together for Good. Fortunately, we celebrated the finalization of Karly’s adoption over two years ago, and our friends received another precious boy. While their pain birthed the idea, it was their faith that inspired this story of a woman’s search for her son. — June, 2006

Tracing Iris. Genni Gunn. 2001. 268p. Raincoast Books (Canada). Commonwealth Prize nominee Genni Gunn has penned an ingenious psychological novel, placing at its dark centre a flawed but redeemable heroine, Kate Mason, a thirty-something social anthropologist returning to the emotional crime scene she reluctantly calls home. While Kate mercilessly unearths the remnants of a life littered with evidence of abandonment, lies and loss, she also unravels the coil that binds her to Iris, the mother she never knew. Iris’s haunting disappearance lurks on the periphery of Kate’s strained relations with Joe, her taciturn father; Rose, her benevolent aunt; Angie, her childhood girlfriend; and Ray, her not-so-estranged ex. Like the endangered cultures she researches, Kate faces extinction through contact with poisonous knowledge and must weigh the price of truth or risk annihilation at the hands of those she so desperately wants to trust. About the Author: Genni Gunn is a writer, musician and translator. Born in Trieste, she came to Canada when she was eleven. She is the author of two novels—Tracing Iris and Thrice Upon a Time, two short story collections—Hungers and On The Road, one poetry collection —Mating in Captivity, and an opera libretto—Alternate Visions (music by John Oliver). As well, she has translated from Italian two collections of poems—Devour Me Too and Traveling in the Gait of a Fox—by renowned Italian author, Dacia Maraini. Visit the Author’s Website.

Tracks. Louise Erdrich. 1988. 226p. Henry Holt. Set in North Dakota at a time in the past century when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands, Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance—yet their pride and humor prohibit their surrender. Narrated by compelling characters like Nanapush, the patriarch and tribal elder who “guided the last buffalo hunt ... saw the last bear shot ... trapped the last beaver with a pelt of more than two years’ growth” and Pauline Puyat, whose fascination with witchcraft and religion leads her down treacherous and unstable paths, Tracks follows the epic story of Fleur Pillager, who has been described by The Los Angeles Times as “one of the most haunting presences in contemporary American literature.” About the Author Louise Erdrich is the author of ten novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel Love Medicine won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Transit of Venus, The. Shirley Hazzard. 1980. 337p. Viking. The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard’s most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women—seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal—becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard’s novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.

Travels of Annie T Hastings, The. Michael Hastings, ed. 2008. 252p. Lulu.com. With a gun, a typewriter, and a wolf-hound, Annie fires up her junker and embarks on a journey across America seeking a long-lost daughter. At seventy years old, driven mad with guilt, alienated from her family, angry at the world, Annie has little time to make it right. It all happened so fast — the infant ripped from her arms at birth, then hustled away, the forcing of her signature on the adoption papers... Annie aches for her daughter’s understanding, forgiveness, and love. What she gets is, redemption. Neurotic, funny, and enduring, Annie Hastings narrates the conflicts she confronts, and at times creates. They must all be conquered and overcome before finding her daughter and facing a truth buried in Annie’s past... A birthmother on a mission and an oldster on a mission!

Treehouse: A Novel. James Morrison. 1972. 181p. The Dial Press. Sam and Nell Barnes are two bright, vital kids in a loving and happily disposed suburban family, both adopted before the unexpected coming of their adoptive parents’ only blood offspring, a boy of maximum aplomb named Magruder; two children who discover at a fairly advanced point that they are very much in love. [Photo by Ken Carmack; Jacket design by Paul Bacon]

Trip to the Stars, A. Nicholas Christopher. 2000. 512p. The Dial Press. Loren, 10 years old and orphaned twice, is kidnapped one day at the New York Planetarium by a man who he later finds out is his uncle Junius, an eccentric, wealthy collector. Loren becomes Enzo (his birth name) and is brought to Las Vegas to live in the hotel owned by Junius and populated by sojourners equally as eccentric and often fiercely intelligent. Meanwhile, Alma, Loren’s caretaker, searches for him, shedding her past and her name (changing it to Mala). She embarks on a peripatetic journey through the South Pacific, falling in love along the way. When this love disappears mysteriously, as Loren did years before, Mala becomes devastated and enters into a destructive lifestyle, only to be changed by a near death experience. The perspective of the novel alternates by chapter from Loren/Enzo to Alma/Mala. Both of their strange journeys are interconnected in mystical ways that are made known only in the last several chapters. A captivating magical tale of destiny, love, kinship, stars, and spiders. — Michael Spinella; © 2000 American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Trouble: A Novel. Kate Christensen. 2009. 320p. Doubleday. From Kirkus Reviews: Christensen, who wrote about passionate septuagenarians in the Pen/Faulkner Award-winning The Great Man (2007), turns her attention to wilted 40-somethings. Manhattan therapist Josie realizes her long marriage to her professor husband Anthony is over. It’s all very civilized. Anthony is sad but agreeable while their precocious 11-year-old daughter Wendy, adopted as an infant from China, decides to stay in the apartment with Anthony. Despite Josie’s claims that Wendy hates her, Wendy seems remarkably supportive. Meanwhile, Josie’s half Mexican college friend Raquel, now a major singing star, is targeted by scandal blogs after her affair with a television hunk half her age. Hiding from the media in Mexico City, Raquel asks Josie to keep her company, and Josie, on a two-week Christmas break from her practice, agrees. Raquel, who has been through drug rehab more than once, shows Josie a good time heavy on tequila, cigarettes and spicy food, with some church and museum visits thrown in. On the plaza they meet David, a one-armed native artist raised in Chicago. Through David, Josie and Raquel join the Mexico City bohemian artist scene. Tragedy will ultimately separate the women. Christensen couples a romanticizing, tour guide approach to Mexico City with cardboard Mexican characters for an uncomfortable effect. Despite lively sex and some clever early scenes, the novel has a tepid half-baked quality. By the Same Author: Jeremy Thrane (2001).

Trustee From the Toolroom. Nevil Shute. 1960. 312p. Heinemann (UK). This was Neville Shute’s final novel, and perhaps derives much of its mood due to this. Best known for the depressing nuclear holocaust story On the Beach, Shute wrote this as a celebration of the simple pleasures in life. The protagonist Keith is an unassuming, married, but childless, middle-aged man living in suburban London (Ealing) with his working wife. He has forsaken a more lucrative engineering career in order to pursue his love of miniature modeling and a very meager income as a columnist for Miniature Mechanic magazine. When his sister and brother-in-law die in a shipwreck near Tahiti, he becomes the guardian and trustee for his 10-year-old niece. Next thing you know, Keith, who has never left the country, has to find a way to make his way to a remote Pacific island to recover a box of diamonds that was on the wreck. Shute writes convincingly of the things nautical and engineering Keith encounters on his adventure. Along the way he is aided by a somewhat improbable number of people who know him from his reputation in he world of miniature mechanics. It teeters on being trite and corny, but ultimately works as a celebration of karma. Keith has been a good, selfless man, and so other good, selfless men are willing to help him--and he ends up doing what he loves. At the end of his life, Shute returned to this basic message on how to live and love life, and it works. — T. Ross

Truth About Marvin Kalish, The. Martin Samuel Cohen. 1992. 288p. Ben-Simon. What is the truth about Marvin Kalish? Find out in this exciting mystery-novel set in present-day New York City, Italy and 1940s Germany. This is a mystery with a child adoption theme. The story blends Jewish mysticism with humor, pathos and everyday life. Author Information: In addition to his rabbinic ordination, Martin Samuel Cohen has a Ph.D. in the history of ancient Judaism and has published widely on Jewish mysticism. He serves as rabbi to a congregation in Richmond, British Columbia.

Tumbling. Diane McKinney-Whetstone. 1996. 340p. Morrow. In this deeply textured debut novel, the feel and rhythm of a close-knit African-American community is evoked. Set in South Philadelphia during the 1940s and 1950s, Tumbling combines the mood of an urban community with the vitality of its inhabitants to tell a story in which sorrow and joy come in equal measure. At the heart of the story is Herbie and Noon, who care deeply for each other but have been unable to consummate their marriage because of a vicious sexual attack in Noon’s past. While Noon finds comfort and solace in her church, club-hopping Herbie finds friendship and sexual gratification with jazz singer named Ethel. Herbie and Noon are blessed with daughters when, on two separate occasions, children are left on their doorstep. On the advice of the community, they take the children into their home, where the girls become inseparable, as if blood sisters. When a devastating city proposal threatens to put a road through the area, the community must pull together to avoid being pulled apart. Noon becomes the unexpected leader in the struggle to keep both her home and her family whole.

Tunnel of Love, The. Peter De Vries. 1954. Little Brown & Co. Augie Poole, referred to by some as a “shallow Poole,” is a cartoonist who can’t sell anything but his gags. Nevertheless, he claims all the prerogatives of the Artist, including a home in the suburban bohemia of Avalon, Connecticut, and a freewheeling sex life. Poole’s neighbor, privy (reluctantly) to Augie’s tales of sexual adventures, is our guide through the foibles and fantasies of the artists and intellectuals of Connecticut. Chosen as a character reference when Augie and his wife decide to adopt a child, the narrator—beset with envy, moral indignation, and a passion for puns—copes with the conflict between Friendship and Truth in a hilarious expose that only Peter De Vries could have devised.

Twisted Mind: A Pedophilia Adopted the Young, Poor, & Innocent for Sexual Pleasures. MM Wilson. 2006. 256p. AuthorHouse. The book is about an invisible crime that is so widespread—sex trafficking and Internet child pornography—that men of eminence are willing to risk it all to go after young children because there is a very slight chance of getting caught. It brings awareness that there is no limit regarding age, ethnicity, and economic or educational rank of the men who would turn up just to have sex with young girls and boys. It places the onus on responsible adults to be vigilant by not allowing their children to access the Internet in their bedrooms, and to work together to help the younger generation not bto be caught up in an adult world. Twisted Mind also gives a new name to pedophiles who adopt children under false pretences: global adoption trafficking. It is certainly a book that brings you up to date on what is happening out in cyberspace, and how to protect children. About the Author: Morley Wilson is the author of two other fictions, A Modern Day Prince and Fire and Ice. She has also written two non-fictions, Who is Supervising the Supervisor? and Rich God Poor Christians. A native of Canada who now writes from Westbury, NY, she is on a mission to save one child at a time from Internet predators. Before writing full-time, Morley worked in corporate, as a office services manager and is also certified in telecommunications. The author would like you to send your e-mail to siea@yelromusa.com, if you know of anyone who is suspected of, or involved in, such behaviors. Stay tuned for my next upcoming non-fiction: Bread, Milk and Love Have Expiration Dates, and my fiction: Murder by Deception and Echoes of Passion, slated for the fall and winter of 2006. Also my non-fiction: Border Crossing and Women Leaders Around the World, due out in the summer of 2007.

Under the Glacier. Halldor Laxness. Translated from the Icelandic by Magnus Magnusson. 2005. (Originally published in Iceland in 1968). 256p. Knopf Publishing Group. From Kirkus Reviews: Christian doctrine gets a riotous, increasingly cryptic comeuppance in the Icelandic Nobel laureate’s whimsical 1968 novel, previously unavailable in the US. It’s narrated by “unordained priestling” Embi, sent by the Bishop of Iceland to investigate unseemly activities rumored to be ongoing at the remote parish of Snaefellsjokull Glacier, tended by unconventional minister Jon Primus-who shoes horses and repairs machinery while letting his church fall into ruin and failing to give the dead Christian burial, among other abominations. Embi’s report documents his meetings with the unflappable pastor, and with the local and itinerant eccentrics who comprise his isolated little world. These include: pastoral housekeeper Miss Hnallpora, who plies the emissary with cakes while recalling her vision of a golden-fleeced “fairy ram”; querulous builder and sometime poet Jodinus Alfberg; a trio of “Winter-Pasture Shepherds” who quote Buddhist wisdom while pursuing suspiciously unspiritual agendas; and the self-styled patron saint of the community “at Glacier, ” Professor Doctor Godman (!) Syngmann. He’s a Falstaffian Christ-figure, an entrepreneur and philosopher devoted to saving humanity through the practices of “epagogics” and “cosmobiology” (which he explains in deliriously funny conversations with the obliging Pastor). When Syngmann dies, and the issue of proper burial is (so to speak) reborn, Embi falls into the quasi-maternal clutches of middle-aged siren Gudrun Saemundsdottir, who drops by claiming to be Pastor Primus’s long-absent wife (and Syngmann’s adopted daughter), revealing her own lavishly picaresque history, and explaining to the distracted Embi logical connections between Catholicis and brothel-keeping, while carrying him off “to the end of the world.” Embi recovers; but whether this impishly chaotic novel does depends on how you read it. Is it an overextended anticlerical joke, a boisterous folk comedy, or, indeed, both?Readers familiar with Laxness’s earlier works shouldn’t overlook this fascinating appendage to them. Those unfamiliar might do better to begin with Independent People or World Light.

Unexpected Child: A Novel. Patricia Grossman. 2000. 256p. Alyson Publications. Meg Krantz is searching for a lot in her life, but not for a child. She has never known what kind of mother she’d be, selfless or purely acquisitive, and she hasn’t been particularly eager to find out. Enter 4-1/2-year-old Kimble Toffler. Soon to be orphaned, Kimble comes into Meg’s life through Meg’s volunteer work. Before long Meg wonders if, and then how, she can forge a future with this child to whom she’s grown so attached. The women in her life, her mother, the child’s grandmother, two former lovers, and her therapist, each offer a different perspective on motherhood as they are drawn into Meg’s efforts to gain custody of Kimble. In this provocative novel, her third, Patricia Grossman gracefully tackles the complex issues of adoption and lesbian parenting and blends them with the ageless and universal themes of motherhood and rescue. About the Author: Patricia Grossman is the author of two previous novels (Inventions in a Grieving House and Four Figures in Time). Two of her children’s books, The Night Ones and Saturday Market were ABA Pick of the Lists. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The. Maggie O’Farrell. 2006. 256p. Headline Review (UK). In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless—sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But she’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit? A gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox will haunt you long past its final page. About the Author: Maggie O’Farrell is the author of three previous novels, including her acclaimed debut, After You’d Gone. Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie grew up in Wales and Scotland. She now lives in Edinburgh.

Veiled Journey, A. Nell Brien. 1999. 400p. Mira (Canada). From Publishers Weekly: A five-year stay in Saudi Arabia inspired this powerful debut novel, set in a land where, as depicted by Brien, women are virtual prisoners in their own homes, decision-making is based on ancient customs, and social and judicial infractions are met with swift and often harsh punishment. A respected Los Angeles surgeon searching for her Circassian heritage, Liz Ryan experiences a heavy dose of culture shock when she accepts a medical position in Saudi Arabia. Brien’s spare, realistic narrative follows Liz’s search for justice and romance in a politically unstable Islamic country. Ultimately unable to reconcile cultural differences with her lover, Abdullah, Liz turns her attentions elsewhere, risking her own life to give the gift of freedom to a young woman condemned to death. This romantic thriller, complete with detailed descriptions of Arabic customs and royalty, explores the complexities of culture as well as those of the human heart. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Velvet Horn. Andrew Lytle. 1957. McDowell. “This is a novel of Cropleighs and the Crees who, soon after the Civil War, lived in the still wild forests of the Cumberland. An uncharacteristic novel that examines the universality of the human predicament, the imperfections of loves and the denials of man’s aspiration to be fullfilled are all felt, and the main points are made in action before the reader’s eyes.” “A novel of a man’s search for wholeness.”

Vinegar Jar, The. Berlie Doherty. 1974. 244p. Hamish Hamilton (UK). Unwanted and unappreciated by her parents, Rose leaves home and falls for glossy, graceful William, the tap-dancer in a local jazz club. When he abandons her and his small baby, Edmund, to his self-pitying grandmother, Rose takes the baby as her own and moves away in search of a husband and a father for the child. She meets Gordon and, with a terror of loneliness and a desperate need for the security of a home, moves into his house under the shadowy wedge of a railway embankment. Frustrated by the coldness of her marriage to a sexless husband, and sensing that she is losing her adopted son to him, Rose feels herself to be in a kind of coma, waiting for the kiss of life. She is intrigued by Paedric, whose movements she follows in the house next door, and she gets to know him she becomes drawn into his world of myth and storytelling. Her fabular imagination is awakened out of the claustrophobia of her existence, and the grey shells of both their lives are transformed into a sensuous, colourful and expansive world. In this secret sphere of their imagination they create a baby; as Rose learns that the baby cannot live outside her mind, she slowly loses touch with reality. The Vinegar Jar is a psychic journey weaving in and out of reality and the storytelling tradition. It is a novel written with visceral power and luminous imagination from the prizewinning author of Requiem.

Virgin of the Rodeo. Sarah Bird. 1993. Doubleday. The author of The Mommy Club (1991), etc., ventures deep into farcical territory with a Pecos-Bill-style tale—about a Texas misfit who joins the rodeo to find her long-lost father. Sonja Getz would always be out of place in a town like Dorfburg, Texas—the spot where her mother, minuscule Tinka Getz, washed ashore and shortly afterwards gave birth. An adorable blond Fräulein whose fascination with noble savages led to an unwise affair with a quarter-breed American serviceman in Germany, Tinka landed in Texas unwed and pregnant, but was embraced nevertheless by the sentimental German-Americans she found there. Big-boned, book-addicted Sonja, on the other hand, was left to grow up in utter solitude, comforting herself with fantasies of her absent father, whom she assumed from a publicity photo found in her mother’s dresser to be a Navajo trick roper, stoically referring to herself as a woman of color, and operating a faltering pest-control business. When Tinka remarries and kicks 29-year-old Sonja out, the dour young woman marches off to the local rodeo, where she hires quarrelsome trick roper Prairie James to help her find her dad. The mismatched pair rumble across Texas and New Mexico in James’s rusty van with his horse, Domino, riding in back, ducking into various rodeos along the way to chat it up with such satisfying potential fathers as wizened old Cootie Ramos and Prairie’s former roping mentor, El Marinero. In the end, Sonja learns the horrible truth behind her parentage—but since by that time she’s discovered her own amazing talent for rodeo announcing, fallen in love with a refreshment-booth proprietor, and helped rescue Prairie James from his muddled past, the bad news has little effect. Bird’s extra-broad, cartoon-like humor here may disappoint “Mommy Club” fans—but it’s probably safe to say that no one’s ever invented a rodeo gal like this before. — Copyright © 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Voss. Patrick White. 1957. 478p. Eyre & Spottiswoode (UK). Set in 19th-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a young orphan. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent; as hardships, mutiny, and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura increases in force. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality. From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White’s novel is one of extraordinary power and virtuosity. — From the Penguin Books Edition, 1987

Waiting Womb, The. Jill Sayre. 2007. 286p. BookSurge Publishing. The Waiting Womb is a dark comedy about the struggle through infertility and adoption. Julia Leary and friend, Alex Martin battle Pergonal psychosis, hostile vaginas, pompous infertility doctors, depression, and husband nonsense, all without losing their minds or sense of humor. In The Waiting Womb, Jill Sayre aptly conveys the torment and heartache of what a woman experiences when her body fails to produce her heart’s desire. This book is based on a actual events and is a telling portrait of one woman’s battle with herself to accept her fate and find promise in a joyous alternative to an otherwise hopeless situation. Jill Sayre delivers strong female characters and lots of laughs to warm your heart. About the Author: Jill Sayre is a former teacher and adoptive parent who felt compelled to shed light on the pain of infertility and the wonder of adoption. She lives in Bucks Co., PA.

War Chief, The. Edgar Rice Burroughs. 1927. 383p. AC McClurg & Co. The first novel of the two-part Apache series. It chronicles the adventures of Shoz-dijiji, a white youth raised as an Apache (the adopted son of Geronimo) since infancy. He must battle not only the white race from which he sprang, but also certain enemies among the Apaches who resent his background, to make a place for himself as a war chief.

Warm on a Cold Night. GE Lapington. 347p. St Martin’s Press. Everyone liked Bella. Quick-witted, beautiful, shrewd, with eyes that could transfix you and a tongue as cutting as a lash, she brought a touch of glamour and a hint of scandal to the lives of all who knew her. And heaven knows, even the smallest glimmer of excitement was welcome in the terraced streets of that small, ordinary town, in the cheerless days of 1943. Perhaps Bella was not the perfect mother to her children, Rita and Ronnie, perhaps she did walk out with a GI from the camp while her husband was fighting in North Africa, but who else would give away black market American cigarettes on impulse, or act as second mother to her friend June’s illegitimate daughter?

Watch & Ward. Henry James. 1878. Houghton, Osgood & Company. “The story of an effete young Bostonian, who wears lavender gloves and consoles himself for failure in love by adopting a twelve-year-old girl [and] nourishes the private hope that, on attaining womanhood, she will marry him. His cousin, a worldly clergyman, shows an unusual interest in the young lady.”—Leon Edel. She is also pursued by her own cousin. James called the novel “something slight; but I have tried to make a work of art.”

Water Dancers, The: A Novel. Terry Gamble. 2003. 275p. HarperCollins. The Water Dancers is the story of Rachel Winnapee, a poverty-stricken, sixteen-year-old Native American orphan who goes to work at the opulent March family summer home on the shores of Lake Michigan in the post-World War II summer of 1945. A young women with no delusions about her place in this world of privilege, she quickly adapts to her role as an obedient servant expected to remain silent and unobtrusive while catering to her employers’ wishes. Surrounded by a wealth she never imagined, she strives to remain invisible, until she is assigned the task of caring for the family’s tragically scarred, emotionally shattered young scion, Woody March. A veteran who lost a leg in the Pacific conflict, Woody is haunted by his injuries and battlefield experiences—and by the loss of the older brother he emulated—and now desires only relief from his twin agonies of pain and memory. He recognizes a kindred spirit in this gentle and mysterious child-woman who is so unlike anyone he has ever known yet who understands the depths of human suffering. In Rachel’s eyes, Woody is a noble, tortured prince, and her fervent wish to help ease his torment soon metamorphoses into more intense and irrevocable feelings of love and need. But if Rachel is a young woman with no future, Woody’s has already been mapped out in intricate detail: as the last surviving March son, he is to run a successful banking business, marry the well-bred Elizabeth, and raise a family who will carry on the March name with distinction. Yet the obligations he never questioned prior to the war are becoming increasingly odious to him—especially now, as he feels himself becoming irresistibly drawn to Rachel in ways no one else in his world would understand or tolerate. As the relationship between two lost and damaged souls intensifies, they move toward the one pivotal event that will alter their lives in ways both heartbreaking and profound.

Way of Light, The. Storm Constantine. 2001. 493p. Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. Solid end to Constantine’s Chronicles of the Magravandian Empire. The British author’s many iconic publicity photos on the Web show a leaning toward dreamladen Pre-Raphaelite costumery for her writing. In Sea Dragon Heir (2000), she told of the fall of Caradore, realm of the sea-dragon Foy, and the rise of the fire god Magradore. Centuries later, the ruling Palindrakes of Caradore, led by Valraven and his incestuous twin sister Pharinet, serve Leonid II. Pharinet, however, joins the Sisterhood of the Dragon and raises Foy from the ocean depths. The Crown of Silence (2001), the breadbasket of the trilogy, always a difficult area in which to maintain suspense before the wrap-up, brought onstage 14-year-old Shan, whose village is destroyed and he left beaten and a victim of homosexual rape. Shan is adopted by the ancient magus Taropat, also known as Khaster Leckery, the vengeful half-human brother-in-law of Valraven Palindrake. Taropat teaches Shan both magic and worldly cunning and shapes him for recovery of the Crown of Silence and then the overthrow the hated Magravand king. Now, in The Way of Light, the tormented Valraven grows ever more deeply complex, as do all characters, who seem to think and weigh matters on their own, below the flow of Constantine’s rich dialogue. Recovery of the Crown of Silence remains the goal, with many on the quest, including Shan, and Khaster’s brother Merlan, and Almorante, the mystically educated son of Tatrini of the Malagashes. Says Tatrini about this holy artifact recovered from Lake Pancanara: “[It] has remained inaccessible for centuries, [and,] recovered from the most mystical site in our country at this time of flux, will possess magicalproperties ... We must have it ... Our family is emperor. Our blood is empire.” Even Valraven and Pharinet hope to save Caradore with the Crown, and it’s the Dragon Daughters who at last fill Valraven with the brilliant green radiance of Foy. Trance-inducing. — From Kirkus Reviews

When the Crow Sings. Jacqueline Wales. 2007. 360p. Pantulan Press. Abandoned children, tattered dreams, silent survivors... Questions too dangerous to ask...answers too shameful to voice... One proud Scottish woman crosses the ocean carrying a manuscript that holds her family s only hope for redemption. Three generations of women share a heritage entangled with secrets and unspoken sorrow. The unlikely parcel on Agnes lap is the fearless telling of their story that will finally bring redemption to this tragic legacy. About the Author: Jacqueline Wales is a story-teller, coach, motivational speaker and the founder of Fearless Fifties, an international consulting company. She lives in New York with her husband and youngest daughter.

When the Roses Bloom. Alfred James Phillips. 2007. 292p. Aventine Press. Could a white family living in the South in the 1940s honor their Negro friends’ last request by adopting their son after the child’s parents are killed in a fiery automobile accident? And was this the child that was promised to Eunice Miller or was her out-of-body experience not really a visit to heaven after all, but only a dream? Experience the drama, suspense and humor of this wondrous and exciting wholesome family story which honors the triumph of the human spirit. When the Roses Bloom is a heartwarming adventure of love and faith that will make your heart sing praises to the Lord. About the Author: Alfred James Phillips spent years honing his story telling skills as an information author and marketer, a radio personality and an investment advisor, talents that helped during the incubation phase of this fictional story as it developed over the years. Phillips lived in the South during the ’50s and ’60s, and saw the consequence of bigotry and prejudice. But he also witnessed another side of that story. A story seldom told about the many white families that were saddened and outraged by those vicious acts of hate. The Lord spoke to his spirit to tell another story one day, a story of hope and love. And now after years of incubation that fictional story is ready to be told. When the Roses Bloom is the first episode about one family’s struggle to show a better way, while hoping to heal men’s hearts.

When You Come Home. Matthew Dee Meadors. 2008. 300p. Lulu.com. What happens when forgiveness, adoption and reconciliation converge in the form of a tiny baby? Miracles occur and lives are changed. A baby is left on an orphanage doorstep in Chongqing, China. Born with a heart defect and no chance of survival without surgery, her only hope is an elderly caregiver named Chien, a God of love and his son Yesu. A world away, in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, a woman named Katie Phelps has dreamed of becoming a mother her whole life but there are two problems: she can’t get pregnant and her husband Aaron isn’t convinced he wants to be a father. Growing up fatherless in the inner city left a hole in Aaron’s heart that he’d blocked off from everyone—including God. As they stumble through the trying and expensive world of fertility, then into the equally complex world of foreign adoption, emotional battles and heart-wrenching decisions threaten to rip their marriage apart until God moves to bring them together in unforeseen ways.

Whispers of Hope. Marcie Anne Jenson. 2000. Covenant Communications. Adopted as young children, Dennie and Thes are raised in a home filled with love and the light of the gospel. Bright, beautiful, and outgoing, Dennie flourishes in this safe and caring environment. Yet her brother, Thes, is haunted by memories of his painful early-childhood years in Chile. He seems driven to run faster, to test the limits of his endurance—to race the clouds and the sky. His untimely death devastates the family, burdening each of them with grief and guilt. What could they have done differently to reach out to Thes and prevent this tragedy? Over time, as the family learns the truth about his accident, hearts begin to mend as they forgive themselves and each other by embracing the Savior’s Atonement Author Marcie Anne Jenson’s sensitivity and insights will touch your heart and give you reason to rejoice and to find hope in the healing power of love, friendship, acceptance, and forgiveness. This is a book you will want to read more than once—a book you will want to share with friends and family.

White Male Infant. Barbara D’Amato. 2002. 333p. Forge. Surgical pathologist Dooley McSweeny and his wife dearly love the son they adopted from Russia four years ago. But when medical tests indicate that their little boy could not possibly have come from Russia, the couple is plunged into the dark, complex, and emotionally fraught world of international adoption. Who is their son? Where did he come from? How did he come to them? The answers to these questions threaten to destroy their marriage, their happiness—and their lives—as they explode a powder keg of political intrigue. About the Author: Barbara D’Amato is the author of Authorized Personnel Only, which recently won the first Mary Higgins Clark Award, and Good Cop, Bad Cop, which won the Carl Sandburg Award for Excellence in Fiction. She has received high praise for her many novels and a non-fiction book. She lives in Chicago with her husband.

White Sky, Black Ice. Stan Jones. 1999. 256p. Soho Press. White sky (“a high film of opalescent cloud... that leached all contour and distinction from the snowy landscape”) and black ice (“black and perfect like ice when it was new and thin and deadly”) are two aspects of the physical life in the remote Alaskan village of Chukchi, where young and ambitious state trooper Nathan Active is starting his police career. Nathan has decidedly mixed feelings about Chukchi, despite its often stunning beauty. He was born here to a 15-year-old Eskimo girl, who quickly fostered him off to a white family in Anchorage. Also, within its boundaries it contains all the problems facing native Alaskans. Entrapped by poverty and alcohol, too many of them end their lives with suicide. Even an enterprising local leader, Tom Werner, who has fought to ban alcohol and to keep a nearby copper mine open to provide jobs, can’t stop two more men from killing themselves in the book’s first few pages. But to Nathan, with his outsider’s sensibilities, these last two suicides look suspicious. Even though his politically disgraced superior and the local police warn him off, he stubbornly digs into the circumstances of the deaths and finds connections to the international consortium that owns the Gray Wolf copper mine. Nathan is a fascinating character, bristling with anger against his birth mother for abandoning him, but still drawn to her and the native life. His feelings about a determined young woman called Lucy Generous are equally ambivalent: part of him loves her sexual frankness, while the other part warns him that a native wife might not help his career. About the Author: Stan Jones, an environmentalist, journalist, and bush pilot, obviously knows and loves the people and territory he writes so well about in this, his first mystery. —Dick Adler

Why She Left Us: A Novel. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. 1999. 295p. HarperCollins. Why She Left Us revolves around an intriguing mystery: a Japanese American woman’s abandonment of her illegitimate child during World War II. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto reveals the reason for her act—and its effect on four generations of her family—in a series of alternating narratives. A son, daughter, mother, and brother all chime in, and the author’s sophisticated interweaving of their tales is what gives this debut novel much of its power. Rizzuto’s book includes its share of violent and disturbing incidents. A daughter helps her mother give birth on the floor of a shack; a son accompanies his senile grandfather to the toilet; a brother delivers a swift kick to his pregnant sister’s belly. Yet Why She Left Us never relies on mere sensationalism. For one thing, the author’s prose is strong and vivid, and she’s particularly good at evoking the passage of time: “My life doesn’t come to me in any order,” notes one character. “Moments flip-flop, overlap—sometimes they come only in splinters.” This isn’t, it should be said, a big-canvas portrait of wartime life. But Rizzuto has produced a minute and successful investigation of the moments that define what a family is. That leaves the initial mystery. To her credit, Rizzuto doesn’t come up with a pat solution: instead, she offers up a collage of perceptions, which fuse into a kind of answer as the story progresses. In other words, this is the latest addition to a growing canon of diplomatic, Rashomon-like novels. Why She Left Us is a true study in perspectives—and a kaleidoscopic lesson about the nature of memory and forgiveness. — Alex Rucker (Amazon.com)

Wife in the Fast Lane. Karen Quinn. 2007. 336p. Simon & Schuster. From Kirkus Reviews: Ex-Olympic sprinter trades life as a CEO for life as a spoiled Manhattan mom. Christy Hayes cashed in on her fame as a medal-winning Olympic sprinter and founded Baby G sneakers. Now at the helm of a multimillion dollar business, Christy’s inexperience starts to show. The gorgeous runner is a born leader, but lacks the formal schooling and experience necessary to run her organization. Christy’s biggest mistake is placing too much trust in her #2, Katherine. When Christy jets off to Davos to hobnob at a global business conference and perhaps glean some leadership pointers, Katherine stays back in the U.S. to hatch a plot to oust Christy. Unaware of the trouble brewing at home, Christy is star-struck by the leaders who surround her. One night over a magnum of champagne, Christy connects with Michael Drummond, a media mogul. The romantic evening of soul-baring leads to a wedding and the creation of another New York power couple. Michael and Christy vow to stay childless and devote themselves to their marriage and their businesses. Christy was barely able to stay on top of her business before Michael; the responsibilities of married life cause her to blindly leave her company in the hands of her nemesis. As Katherine goes into full attack mode, culling board support to oust Christy, Christy’s beloved maid, Maria, dies. Maria’s last request was for Christy to adopt Maria’s granddaughter. In the blink of an eye, Christy has gone from single to married with children. Christy decides to relinquish her leadership role at Baby G and tend to her family. Thinking her new job will be rewarding, Christy is devastated when she flounders at being a trophy wife and perfect mother. Quinn (The IvyChronicles, 2005) tosses everything into this clunker. It’s impossible to relate to any of the deficient, poorly developed characters, and the jumbled plot is tangled with knots. Unappealing.

Wind in the Stone. Andre Norton. 1999. 280p. Avon. Once the Wind united the Valley with the Forest, enveloping them in the strongest of magics which protected the land and banished the threatening Darkness. And there was peace for many centuries..Until the Dark returned. A mage, seeking to enslave the Valley and destroy the Forest, has brutally sundered a family. A mother has fled into the woods with her infant girl-child, while the depraved sorcerer holds the babe’s twin—a boy—captive in a black tower. The mother dies but the girl survives. Adopted by the strange denizens of the Forest—safe from the mage’s malevolent influence—she grows to young womanhood, cultivating a cherished skill that has been denied the others of her kind: the ability to truly hear the sounds of her world. But her future will be fraught with trial and terror, for only she can smash the chains that shackle the Balley and its inhabitants. It is her destiny to confront sorcerer and demon minions, and to oppose the one she must conquer and free: the magician’s protege and her most powerful adversary. Her bane and blood. Her brother.

Wind Shifts, The. Alan Sharp. 1967. 349p. Michael Joseph (UK). A Green Tree In Gedde, the first volume of Alan Sharp’s trilogy, was one of the most successful and controversial novels of 1965. In The Wind Shifts the separate strands are bound closer together; some of the latent relations of the first volume are realized. The focal landscape is primarily London, a London which is both empty and teeming at one and the same time. A London of aimless underground journeys and endlessly unleaving trees. The main characters are here. Moseby, deserted from his wife and beloved daughter, Ruth and Harry Gibbon, still strangers, and the maelovent Cuffee, gnawing at the nails of his conscience. There are also others, further soundings in the shallows and depths of human nature: Terry, one of the hollow men; Sammy, parasite remarkable; Helen, a-stew in her own eccentric broth of religion and sex; Meriel Rose, as remote from life as her name; and in Germany, where Cuffee quests for his grail, the Nemesis of Herr Zimmerman, rationalizing his ruthlessness in the castle that all heroes must approach at some time, in one form or another. As in a kaleidescope everything has changed, yet the pattern is unbreakable. The past is not what is seemed, the present drifts unmanageably along, the future refuses to crystallize. Yet certainties emerge and truths are revealed. Nothing stands still, but some of the characters learn to live with the idea that nothing lasts for ever. About the Author: Sharp was born in Alyth, Scotland, and raised in the tough Scottish port town of Greenock. He was illegitimate and was adopted by a Greenock shipyard worker and his wife when just a few weeks old. At the age of 14, he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a shipyard worker. Four years later, he enlisted in the army. After his discharge, he began his writing career as a novelist, although his first book was five years in the making. The time turned out to be well spent, as it resulted in the award-winning A Green Tree in Gedde, which established Sharp as a major literary newcomer. He confirmed the promise of that first book with his second tome, The Wind Shifts, before turning his attention to writing screenplays.

Window of Sky, A. Geoffrey Morgan. 1969. 127p. Collins (UK).

Wintry Night. Li Qiao. Translated by John Balcom & Taotao Liu. 2001. 320p. Columbia Univrsity Press. Originally written in the late 1970s and published in three volumes, this Herman Wouk-like Taiwanese saga energetically depicts the ordeals of several generations of a Hakka (northern migrant) family, the Pengs. Li Qiao gradually focuses on mercurial adopted daughter Dengmei and her stoical husband Liu Ahan, while charting the family’s difficult assimilation into Taiwanese society during the 19th century, then (following the decades preceding WWII—covered in the original’s second volume, which is omitted in this translation) Liu Ahan’s sufferings as a Japanese conscript during the Philippine campaign. Though this version’s two halves fit together quite satisfactorily, one misses the epic sweep Li Qiao obviously aims for—and wonders how a full translation of his ambitious original might have differed from what we have here. — From Kirkus Reviews

Wise Child. Monica Furlong. 1987. 228p. Knopf. In a remote Scottish village, 9-year-old Wise Child is taken in by Juniper, a healer and sorceress. Though Juniper is unfailingly kind, the simplicity of her life and her insistance that Wise Child work alongside her puts the child off. But when Wise Child’s real mother, a student in the black arts, shows up, she tempts Wise Child with a life of luxury.

Wish You Were Here. Annie P Scott. 2009. 304p. Tauran Publishing. This novel, based on true events, pulls the reader inside the intimate and chaotic lives of soul mates Bella and Alexander. Together they share their darkest demons and brightest dreams and even though life sweeps them down opposite paths, they always gravitate to each other. Music becomes their primary method of communication and regardless of how far apart they are when a tape or CD arrives in the mail, they’re instantly reconnected. Alexander is pulled to the brink of insanity as an early morning phone call opens the possibility that life, as he knew it, was gone. Having lived his entire adult life loving and being loved by Bella he is suddenly forced to question if he could live without her. His resolve climaxes at a gathering of people so foreign to Alexander that he wanted only to escape them, and in doing so, though he thought it impossible, he’d learn even more about Bella...and himself. About the Author: Annie P. Scott, originally from the Washington DC metropolitan area, moved to Southern New Jersey in her early twenties. Since a very young age, Annie has enjoyed the gift of storytelling by entertaining friends and family with adventurous tales that seamlessly weaved fiction with non. Annie put her love for writing aside to raise a family and focus on her career as an adult educator. However, in 2005, she promised to finish the books she never “had time to write.”

Wishing Makes It So. Marilyn Meredith. 2006. 164p. Hard Shell Word Factory. In an effort to make a change in a child’s life, Alyse and Steven take in a four-year-old who has been thrown out of several homes prior to theirs. Because of their successful parenting of three children of their own and Steven’s career as a counselor, they feel sure they can help Belinda and give her a loving home. However Belinda quickly proves to be a great challenge. She is often disobedient and trouble making, hurting the other children and vandalizing their possessions. At times she seems sweet and innocent, easily charming the unwary. Her desire to be the only child takes a deadly turn. About the Author: Marilyn Meredith is the author of Deadly Trail, and Eppie finalist, Deadly Omen, Unequally Yoked, Intervention, a Bloody Dagger finalist, and Wing Beat, best mystery from American Authors Association, all in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series from Hard Shell Word Factory as well as other mysteries. She is an instructor for Writers Digest School, a judge for Writers Digest’s Self-Published Genre Fiction Contests, and a member of EPIC, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of directors of Public Safety Writers’ Association.

Witch of Portobello, The. Paulo Coelho. 2007. 288p. HarperCollins. From Kirkus Reviews: Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym, 2006, etc.) returns to his favored (and incredibly successful) territory of spiritual questing in this tedious account of a young woman’s ascendancy as a guru. Athena is dead, and now a kind of hagiography is being pieced together to better understand this young woman of influence and mystery. A number of testimonies comprise the portrait of Athena, from her adoptive mother, to disciples, to the manager at the bank where she once worked. But instead of creating a rich and varied character study, the assorted narrators repeat the same facile analysis of the meaning of life. We learn that Athena was a Romanian orphan, adopted by a wealthy Lebanese couple. The two dote on their daughter, and turn a blind eye to her youthful visions and prophesies. When Beirut becomes uninhabitable, the family moves to London where Athena attends engineering school. Feeling unfulfilled she forces her student boyfriend into marriage so she can have a child to fill up the vast empty space in her soul; she flits from one endeavor to another to try to fill this unnamable void. She and her husband divorce and she takes up a kind of dervish-style dancing (which she shares with her coworkers at the bank-doubling all of their productivity levels), then moves to Dubai and learns calligraphy from a Bedouin, hoping the patience needed will fix her restlessness. When she goes to Romania to find her birth mother (she’s sure this will help her gain a truer sense of herself), she meets a Scottish woman who becomes her teacher in the search for the universal Mother, a kind of New Age paganism that promises a healing path out of the chaos of modern living. When Athena moves back to London, herpopularity (and skill in prophesy) increases, and she develops a following-as well as detractors: Christians who accuse her of Satanism and being a witch. At turns didactic and colorless, Coelho’s narrative captures nothing of the wonder and potential beauty of a life devoted to the spirit-instead, Athena seems little more than a self-indulgent girl. A disappointing rehash of pretty conventional spirituality. About the Author: Paulo Coelho is one of the most beloved writers of our time. With sales of over 85 million copies worldwide, his books have been translated into 63 languages and published in 150 countries. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards and was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002. Mr. Coelho also writes a weekly column syndicated throughout the world.

Within Arm’s Reach. Ann Napolitano. 2004. 308p. Crown Publishing Group. From Kirkus Reviews: A first novel about the fledgling branches of an Irish-American family tree. Catharine McLaughlin isn’t your typical family saga matriarch-neither rich nor controlling, she does nevertheless possess the one indispensable mark of the grande dame: longevity. On the cusp of 80, Catharine is a widowed mother old enough to have seen many of her children’s children grow up-and now, with her granddaughter Gracie pregnant, to see another generation about to begin. Gracie is an unmarried advice columnist in her 20s who has just broken up with her boyfriend and has a love/hate relationship with her sister Lila, who used to share a house with her. Lila is a classic control freak, a brilliant medical student whose total lack of bedside manner may keep her from making it through residency. Lila, typically, thinks it’s selfish of Gracie to have the baby, though she’s secretly envious. She isn’t the only one: Gracie’s childless Aunt Angel offers to adopt the child, and Catharine herself feels a surge of hope when she learns that a new McLaughlin is one the way. Now in a nursing home, Catharine seems to have begun her final decline: She loses her driver’s license after a minor accident, then breaks her hip in a fall. She also sees and has conversations with dead relatives, but that isn’t a sign of dementia so much as a legacy from the wilds of Ireland, where both of her parents where born. Catharine has weathered enough of life’s hardships (stillborn twins, a dead daughter, a son still traumatized by Vietnam 30 years later) to take sorrow in stride, and her extended family rely upon her for much of their own stability. How will they manage without her? That’s a question only the next generation cananswer. A fresh and exceptionally strong family portrait, mercifully free of the sentimentality that could easily have turned the proceedings into a soap opera.

Wow! I Made It! And So Can You!. Jeremiah A Okoro. 2005. 85p. Ivy House Publishing Group. Based on the author’s own childhood experiences, Wow! I Made It! And So Can You! is the tale of Emmanuel, a seven year-old boy who chooses to leave his family to live with another. Believing he is moving to become a companion and friend to another young boy, Emmanuel’s illusions are quickly shattered when he realizes he has been tricked into servitude. Abused, mistreated and cut off from everyone he loves, Emmanuel must learn to survive on his own. Through sheer force of will, memories of his own family’s love, and the deep belief his Guardian Angel Michael is watching over him, Emmanuel not only survives his bizarre ordeal, but grows into a young man who uses his experiences as tools to face the challenge of adulthood in a restless nation. About the Author: A native of Nigeria, Jeremiah A. Okoro resides in Landing, NJ, with his wife and two children, where he is currently at work on the sequel to his first novel, Telepathic Revelations and Confessions of My Family Goldfish.

Write Letter to Billy. Toby Olson. 2000. 368p. Coffee House Press. PEN/Faulkner winner Olson (Dorit in Lesbos) attempts to marry mystery, self-exploration and self-discovery in this overstuffed novel set in California in the early 1980s. After his discharge from the navy, 40-year-old Bill, a diver, plans to spend a year in the Antilles. But a letter from an old fling living in Racine, Wis., informs him that he is the father of her 15-year-old daughter, Jen—and Jen wants to meet him. Bill was himself adopted by an insatiably curious inventor and his beautiful wife, a theatrical ingenue, and family ties are important to him. To get to know Jen better, he decides to take her on a road trip to California. Once there, they stop in El Monte, where Bill was raised, in order to go through some of his father’s things that have been in storage for 15 years. A quick perusal of the boxes and crates reveals a mysterious list written by his father relating to the unsolved drowning death of Susan Rennert, a hotel chambermaid. Jen helps Bill investigate his father’s past, touring newspaper morgues and old forgotten sections of California cities, working through his father’s list. In the process, the two become very close, forcing Bill to reflect on how empty his life has been. He realizes, too, that he never really knew his parents, as he talks to people who did not hold them in the same high esteem he did. Although the mystery is solved in the end, the plot depends too heavily upon coincidence to truly satisfy. Olson also awkwardly introduces elements of the supernatural and weighs down the narrative with long, drawn-out descriptive passages. Although the novel falls short as a work of self-discovery or suspense, however, it succeeds as an unusual investigation of the nature of fatherhood. — From Publisher’s Weekly; © 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Writing on the Wall, The. Lynne Sharon Schwartz. 2005. 304p. Counterpoint Press. From Kirkus Reviews: Schwartz’s tenth may be her riskiest, as it intertwines her familiar fictional territory with the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Things start on a bright September morning when Renata, a linguist, wakes up in bed with her lover, Jack, a recently divorced social worker. After Jack leaves, Renata decides to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, but, partway across, she hears screaming and looks across the river to see “a huge marigold bursting open in the sky.” With this opening, Schwartz focuses on how the attack evokes past traumas, leaving Renata unmoored and jeopardizing her relationship with Jack. We learn that Renata and her twin sister, Claudia, were close until age 16, when Claudia had a daughter (fathered, it turns out, by their uncle), gave the baby up for adoption, then drowned in a nearby river days later. Renata’s father died in a car wreck within the year, and her mother was institutionalized. When Claudia’s daughter, Gianna, was three, the adoptive parents dumped her on Renata, then 19. At seven, Gianna was snatched from a park merry-go-round, leaving Renata bereft and guilty. Now 34, Renata has trouble trusting Jack, or anyone, to stay in her life. Schwartz describes the emotional flavor of the days after 9/11 with great clarity, using quotes from speeches by the president, the makeshift signs put up by those in search of the missing, the memorials, the connections neighbors made in the midst of tragedy and the exhaustion of those who, like Jack, went to the scene to help. But it all bogs down in backstory, and Renata’s irrational conviction that a mute teenager she finds wandering the streets is her niece isn’t believable. Plus,Schwartz undercuts the emotion in scenes between Renata and Jack with detail about Renata’s linguistic interest in a culture that has many terms for loss. A valiant effort, but Schwartz doesn’t quite pull it off. About the Author: Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of fourteen books, including Leaving Brooklyn (nominated for the PEN/Hemingway First Novel Award); In the Family Way: An Urban Comedy; Ruined by Reading; and most recently, Referred Pain. She lives in New York City.

Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton: The Chronicle of One of the Strangest Stories Ever to Be Rumoured About Around New York. JP Donleavy. 1998. 352p. Dunne Books. Alfonso Stephen O’Kelly, known as Stephen, son of rumored former bootleggers, ex-naval gunner, unemployed composer, student of dairy cattle in Wisconsin and of music in Italy, has little to recommend him as a marriage prospect but his tender heart, his chivalry, and his comprehensible knowledge of the great city of New York. So when the exquisitely pneumatic and extraordinarily wealthy Sylvia Triumphington, adored adoptive heiress to the Triumphington family fortune, sets her sights on him, Stephen is taken by surprise. In marrying into the Trumpington millions, however, Stephen gets rather more than he bargained for. If it where just the gorgeous Sylvia, with her unexpected enthusiasm for rough sex, her obsession for finding her real mother, and her tendency to spend Stephen’s nonexistent money rather than draw a cent from her own, presumably overflowing, coffers, things would be fine. But there is also her unpredictable adoptive father, who responds rather badly to any request for a handout. And then their is Sylvia’s elegant, insatiable adoptive mother Drusilla, to whom Stephen finds himself inconveniently and conspicuously attracted. Shuttling between his marital home—a two-room walk-up on the edge of the Bowery—and the Triumpingtons’ lavish Upper East Side apartment, Stephen has little time or energy to pursue his dreams of achieving musical glory, and he has more misgivings by the day. It would seem to Stephen that the very rich are secretly different, but not exempt from tragedy, or even from wrong information. Featuring fourteen elegant and witty original illustrations by Elliott Banfield, the artist whose drawings so enhanced the colorful antics of The Lady Who Like Clean Restrooms, Wrong Information Is Being Given Out At Princeton is a poem to a great city, an elegy on passion, a glorious, irreverent, picaresque journey—it is J.P Donleavy at his extraordinary best.

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing: A Novel. Allison Bottke. 2009. 448p. (Va Va Va Boom Series). David C Cook. Successful fifty-something, Susan Anderson owns and operates a hip hair salon on the Las Vegas strip, decorated with her collection of disco memorabilia accumulated decades ago when she was one of the beautiful people on New York’s disco scene. Now happily married, Susan is known for her business savvy, her fabulous vintage ensembles, her faith, her big heart and the impromptu disco dance numbers salon staff and clients join in when the spirit moves. If life is a dance, Susan’s mastered all the moves. But an exciting business opportunity and her husband’s impending retirement rock her world, shaking Susan’s foundation and revealing regrets and painful memories she thought she’d dealt with. Will Susan be able to face her past, reinvent her marriage, build her dream … and keep on dancing? About the Author: Allison Bottke is the best-selling author of the God Allows U-Turns anthologies. Now a popular speaker and author of hip-lit fiction as well as nonfiction, she has created a place where fun, fashion, food, family, and faith merge to empower and inspire boomer women all around the world at BoomerBabesRock.com.

You Remind Me of Me. Dan Chaon. 2004. 356p. Randonm House. You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1974, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997, another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving up her child for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. Dan Chaon explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people we become? How do we end up stuck in lives we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of “ordinary” people.

Young Captain Jack: Or, The Son of a Soldier. Horatio Alger (1832-1899) (Story completed by Arthur M Winfield). 1901. 262p. Mershon. Jack Ruthven lives with his mother, and his sister, Marion. Mr. Ruthven had been killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. Jack learns that he was adopted by the Ruthvens. When a stranger named Dr. Mackey claims that he is Jack’s real father, Jack and his mother are suspicious. However, Dr. Mackey possesses documents which allow him to claim that he is Jack’s father and is due, therefore, to a large English inheritance. Dr. Mackey cannot convince the Ruthvens of Jack’s paternity, and kidnaps the boy in desperation. Fortunately, Jack escapes. In the meantime, a wounded soldier named Colonel Stanton is being treated at the plantation by Jack’s mother. Delirious, Stanton speaks of being on a wrecked ship and being fearful for the lives of his wife, and son. Mrs. Ruthven must put the pieces together to solve the mystery of Jack’s identity and reunite a family separated for years. About the Author: Horatio Alger, Jr., was one of the most influential and prolific American authors of the 19th century, who wrote more than a hundred books on the same theme: that honesty, cheerfulness, virtue, thrift, and hard work would be rewarded with success. While his plots and dialogue sometimes lacked creativity, he can be credited with helping to create an uniquely American philosophy, convincing generations that they could triumph over their circumstances and become an Alger Hero. (Pictured paperback edition available from Polyglot Press)

Yours Truly, Shirley. Ann M Martin. 1988. Holiday House.

Zé. Renée Smith. 1996. 196p. 200p. Honno (Wales). A debut novel, which finds Xana on a path to finding her true self. After walking out on an innocuous marriage, she hitches to Wales and finds her way to Indonesia, where she encounters several generations, countries and cultures, and along the way unravels a web of passion, superstition and death, at the heart of which lies the enigma of Ze.

Zipporah, Wife of Moses. Marek Halter. Translated from the French by Howard Curtis. 2005. 288p. Crown Publishing Group. In the time of the Pharaoh, a tiny infant is rescued from the banks of the Red Sea. She is named Zipporah, “the little bird.” Although she is a Cushite by birth—one of the black people of the lands to the south—she is taken in by Jethro, high priest and sage of the Midianites. Jethro adores his adopted daughter, and she is an honored member of his family. But the blackness of Zipporah’s skin sets her apart and will decide her future: she will be an outsider, and the men of her adopted tribe will not want her as a wife. But when she becomes a young woman, Zipporah’s destiny changes forever. While drawing water at a well one day, she meets a handsome young man, a stranger. Like her, he is an outsider, a foreigner. His name is Moses. A Hebrew raised in the house of the Pharaoh, Moses is a fugitive, forced to flee his homeland of Egypt after murdering one of the Pharaoh’s cruel overseers. Zipporah knows almost immediately that this man will be the husband and partner she never thought she would have. At first Moses wants nothing more than a peaceful life with the Midianites. He is content in his role as Zipporah’s lover and the honarary son of Jethro the sage. But Zipporah refuses to let Moses forget his past or turn away from what she believes to be his true destiny. Although he is the love of her life and the father of her children, Zipporah won’t marry Moses until he agrees to return to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and free his people. When God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush, his words echo Zipporah’s, and Moses returns to Egypt with Zipporah by his side. A passionate lover and a generous, thoughful wife, Zipporah becomes the guiding force in Moses’s struggle. With the help of her powerful father, she teaches the rebellious young man about the rule of the law and the force of justice. Because of Zipporah—the outsider, the black-skinned woman—Moses becomes a defender of the oppressed and a liberator of the enslaved.

Zoe’s Tale. John Scalzi. 2008. 336p. Tor Books. From Publishers Weekly: In the touching fourth novel set in the Old Man’s War universe, Scalzi revisits the events of 2007’s The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoë, adopted daughter of previous protagonists Jane Sagan and John Perry. Jane and John are drafted to help found the new human colony of Roanoke, struggling against a manipulative and deceitful homeworld government, native werewolf-like creatures and a league of aliens intent on preventing all space expansion and willing to eradicate the colony if needed. Meanwhile, teenage Zoë focuses more on her poetic boyfriend, Enzo; her sarcastic best friend, Gretchen; and her bodyguards, a pair of aliens from a race called the Obin who worship and protect Zoë because of a scientific breakthrough made by her late biological father. Readers of the previous books will find this mostly a rehash, but engaging character development and Scalzi’s sharp ear for dialogue will draw in new readers, particularly young adults. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author: John Scalzi won the 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his debut novel Old Man’s War was a finalist for the Hugo Award. His other novels include The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and The Android’s Dream. He lives in southern Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Zora’s Cry. Tia McCollors. 2006. 328p. Lift Every Voice. Zora Bridgeforth, is 29 and grappling with identity issues. While in search of for her deceased mother’s bridal veil, Zora happens upon a letter which reveals that she was adopted. Zora is devastated and vows to find her biological family. To find an outlet for her feelings, she joins a multi-church women’s discipleship group. Unexpectedly Zora finds the joy of her friendships with three women in her discipleship group (Monét Sullivan, Paula Manns, and Belinda Stokes) turns out to be God’s hand at work. As the ladies drop their facades and learn to find healing through each other’s testimonies, a series of events unfolds to an outcome Zora could have never imagined. Written from a young, fresh perspective, Zora’s Cry is an inspirational read for the woman who appreciates the power of friendships and the power of God’s love. Includes a discussion guide for readers’ groups. About the Author: Tia McCollors is a native of Greensboro, NC, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the years, she has built a career as a public relations professional and currently works for a private institution. She resides in Atlanta, GA, with her husband.