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Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes (winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 2002), The Whole World Over, and I See You Everywhere, but she may have surpassed them all with The Widower’s Tale.  Again, she weaves a web of interconnected characters, creates a beautiful and believable setting, and writes with emotional truth about the people she has brought to life – in this case, the Darling family. Seventy-year-old Percy Darling realizes that while you can retire from work, you cannot retire from life, or from your family – in Percy’s case, his workaholic daughter Trudy, his floundering daughter Clover, and his high-achieving and beloved grandson Robert. Through these characters, Glass explores the bonds of family and friendship, and the strength of personal and political beliefs. Fans of fairytale endings, however, might want to skip this one: the ending is sadder and less uplifting that one might expect.

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This book was one of my book club reads about three years ago and whenever we talk about a good beach read, this book still bubbles up to the surface as a good example. It is a well written, humorous account of one man’s pursuit of the “iconic symbol of fashion, luxury, and wealth”, the Hermes Birkin handbag.  The author is a Massachusetts native, who on a whim moved to Barcelona, Spain and found himself in need of money.  For quick cash, he decided to sell a Hermes scarf on eBay. That sale sparked the idea that he could sell the much-in-demand Hermes handbags on eBay if he could find a way to buy the coveted items from Hermes stores that tended to only sell to select buyers.  In finding a way to do this, the author takes the reader on a fun romp around the continent enjoying a quest worthy of Don Quixote.

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“At every possible turn, she saw, they'd chosen the path that would keep her weak and dependent. And the fact that they wouldn't see it that way, that they sincerely believed they'd acted in her best interest, didn't make it any less true, or them any less culpable....” Hannah Payne has been marked as an outcast from society: through a process called melachroming, her skin has been turned bright red, so everyone who sees her knows that she is a criminal – a murderer. Set in a future Texas where the right wing prevails, Roe v. Wade has been overturned, and melachroming is part of the justice system, When She Woke is the gripping story of one woman’s survival as she learns to question all she has been taught, and to think for herself.

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Winner of the Man Booker Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award in 2009, the novel Wolf Hall is large in every sense of the word. Hilary Mantel tells the familiar story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn with a fresh perspective: through the eyes of the much-maligned Thomas Cromwell, a common man who rose to become the adviser to the king. Cromwell is practical and strategic; he is loyal to those he serves, and to those who serve him. He is also intelligent, observant, and calculating, and possessed of a quick, dry sense of humor. Readers gain a unique perspective on life in London and at court in the 1520s-1530s (the book ends in 1535, but a sequel is in the works). This is an excellent read for those already somewhat familiar with this era, and those willing to adjust to Mantel’s grammatical style (nearly every “he,” “him,” or “his” refers to Cromwell).