Adjoa Andoh performs much of Housegirl, Michael Donkor’s accomplished, affecting debut novel, in sparkling Ghanaian English, immersing listeners in the world of Ghana and the Ghanaian diaspora. At 17, Belinda leaves her village and her mother behind to work as a housegirl for a wealthy couple who returned to their native Ghana to retire in luxury after making their fortune in London. Belinda finds solace in the daily domestic grind and in Mary, the charming, irrepressible 11-year-old housegirl-in-training who becomes like a little sister to her. But Belinda is uprooted again when close Ghanaian friends of her employers take Belinda to London, where she is tasked with befriending and providing a positive influence on their sullen teenage daughter, a student at an exclusive, mostly white private school. Surprisingly, their friendship blossoms after a few bumps, just as tragedy takes Belinda back to her homeland. At its core, Housegirl is a warmly perceptive look at female friendship as well as the angst, melodrama and confusion of coming of age in two clashing cultures.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At some point in every person’s life, the question of a legacy arises. What will be left for those to come, and what for those left behind? For some, this translates as possessions; for others, simply memory is enough. Wyatt Hillyer’s legacy is the truth of his own life, set down in a letter to a daughter he never knew. The only thing he can leave her is the key to a tangled web that surrounds her earliest moments and the time leading up to her creation. The tapestry of Wyatt’s profound letter is woven from complicated threads, including two parents driven to simultaneous, but separate, suicides over the love of one woman; an itinerant German student’s arrival during a time of intense xenophobia; an uncle driven mad by the coming war; a ferry sunk by a German U-boat; and an unrequited love for an adopted cousin. 

Mainly set in the years immediately prior to World War II in the Maritime Provinces of eastern Canada, Wyatt’s stirring tale is at once human and grand. Visited by unthinkable tragedy, brief glimpses of joy and the slow grind of life, Howard Norman’s tale washes over the reader like the sea laps at stones on a beach as the tide comes in. Slowly drawn deeper into the life of a man forced to do the best with what he had, the reader finds suddenly that, like Wyatt, he is treading water while everyone else has moved further up the shore.

The quiet power of this book comes on slowly and unrelentingly, offering a mesmerizing look into one man’s past. Creating one of the most captivating and effective uses of the retrospective letter format in recent memory, Norman’s prose is understated, eloquent and perfectly chosen, and his novel paints a picture of one man’s legacy that will not soon be lost.

Except for John le Carré, there is really no worthy competitor for the master of the historical spy novel, Alan Furst. Like his other espionage novels, Spies of the Balkans is rich with historical detail; this time, Furst’s setting is the port city of Salonika, Macedonia, at the time Greece was at war with Mussolini.

Costa Zannis, a senior police official, is our protagonist, and he doesn’t disappoint. Although not the stereotypical hero, he is charismatic, smart and humorous when the time is ripe. Despite a less than perfect appearance, Zannis has a romantic streak, and occasionally falls into passionate trysts with Demetria, an incredibly beautiful woman he cannot have. Less interesting to him is Roxanne, who turns out to be a double agent.

The one girl he can always count on is Melissa, his faithful, soulful dog. Even spies need nurturing, especially when Zannis is called up for a brief period of active duty to protect his people from the Germans. Zannis risks his life many times to help rescue a sliver of Germany’s Jewish population, and in the course of the novel, at least 40 individuals who otherwise would have been tortured and killed are saved.

Zannis’ police role makes him instantly recognizable to most people, whether friend or foe, but he keeps his ego in check. Mostly, his life is lonely, though it is always filled with danger and foreboding. Besides the tragedies of war, he deals with everyday police matters, and he frequently travels to achieve small miracles for people at the expense of his personal life. He is one of the more likeable spy characters created by the talented Furst, and Spies of the Balkans is another fast-moving, nuanced novel that will keep you up at night.

Anna Quindlen’s previous novels have all been centered on families—whether average, non-traditional or dysfunctional; she even calls herself “hyperdomestic.” It comes as no surprise, then, that her sixth novel, Every Last One, begins with a lengthy description of the minutiae of the everyday life of Mary Beth Latham—wife, mother of three teenagers and owner of a successful landscaping business.

Her husband Glen, an ophthalmologist, eats the same thing every morning and leaves for work at the same time. Ruby, their “beautiful and distinctive” 17-year-old daughter, is a free spirit who aspires to be a poet. The 14-year-old twins, Alex and Max, are complete opposites of one another, manifested by the line painted down the center of their bedroom, dividing it into halves of light blue and lime green. Every day, Mary Beth tells us, is “Average. Ordinary.”

But looking beneath the placid surface of their lives, we learn of a few worrisome details. Ruby has been through a bout of anorexia—which is now, with a therapist’s help, in the past—and she has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend Kiernan, who is not taking the ending of their relationship well. Max is finding it increasingly difficult being the nerdy, moody twin of the handsome, popular Alex, proficient in three sports. All three children go away to camp that summer, but when Max has to come home early with a broken arm, he becomes depressed enough to see Ruby’s therapist. Kiernan begins showing up at the house again, ostensibly to keep Max company, but his presence feels creepy to Mary Beth, and she asks him to end his visits. The situation becomes increasingly awkward over the fall, with Ruby asking Kiernan to just leave her in peace. On New Year’s things take a violent turn, one which Mary Beth relives over and over, wondering if she could have prevented the horrific outcome.

Quindlen explores Mary Beth’s altered life with such acute empathy that readers can palpably experience her anguish and agonize over each step she takes in her slow recovery as if it were their own. She has penned an unforgettable novel about one woman realizing her worst fears, and then somehow finding the strength to survive.

This fall, the fourth Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-screenplay, Nights in Rodanthe, will open in theaters nationwide. The love story stars film greats Diane Lane and Richard Gere, reunited for the first time since the sizzling 2002 film Unfaithful. Their onscreen chemistry should help lure Sparks' fans back to the theater for the movie's October 3 premiere.

Sparks' novels have become a lucrative franchise for movie makers during the past decade. A Walk to Remember earned a respectable $47 million in 2002, and blockbusters Message in a Bottle (1999) and The Notebook (2004) grossed more than $100 million each at the box office. Sparks has also reportedly sold the film rights for novels True Believer and At First Sight and is currently working on an unsold screenplay for The Guardian. With an additional $100 million in DVD sales for the first three movies, an excellent turnout at theaters for this fall's film could send Sparks' work toward the half-billion mark in movie earnings. Avid fans certainly wouldn't be disappointed to see all of Sparks' 14 books come to life on screen someday, and it is safe to say that Hollywood wouldn't mind either.

Based on the 2002 novel Nights in Rodanthe, the upcoming movie is another of the love stories skillfully imagined by Sparks. Most of the novel is set in 1988, the same year Sparks and his wife Cathy first met. Protagonist Adrienne Willis, played by Diane Lane, is a middle-aged librarian and divorced mother of three. When her errant spouse seeks to return to her, and her teenage daughter grows ever more indignant, Adrienne escapes the chaos to an inn owned by a friend on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where she tries to gain clarity and a moment of peace. Just as an ominous storm begins to roll into the coast, Dr. Paul Flanner, played by Richard Gere, arrives at the inn as a guest, also searching for respite from an inner crisis and a troubled past. As the two lone guests find consolation in each other, they embark on a romance that will echo long after their separation.

Readers who want to savor the full romance of the novel before seeing the movie have several options to choose from. Nights in Rodanthe is available in hardcover and paperback editions, with a new movie tie-in paperback set to go on sale in August. In audio, the book is available unabridged on CD.

Directed by George C. Wolfe, the film will also star James Franco, Scott Glenn and Christopher Meloni. The movie was filmed at various locations along the North Carolina coast, including Rodanthe, a small community on Hatteras Island. The locations are not far from the home in New Bern, North Carolina, where Sparks and his wife Cathy live with their five children.

Skeptical readers have suggested that the characters and plot for the novel were influenced by The Bridges of Madison County, though Sparks, who acknowledges similarities, has denied any such connections. In fact, he has revealed that the novel is not entirely fiction, with certain events having been inspired by his own romantic pursuit of his wife. Much of the novel is, in fact, a parallel to their real-life courtship.

Nicholas and Cathy met in a small coastal town while on spring break during their college years.

For the novel, however, Sparks was inspired to write about middle-aged characters for the first time. The names of Paul and Adrienne are actually the names of Sparks' in-laws, who asked for the gesture as a Christmas present.

Like Paul, Nicholas admitted to Cathy the day after they met that he wanted to spend his life with her, and like Adrienne, Cathy was dubious of his declaration. After spending five days together, Nicholas and Cathy left the small town where they met, but continued to call and write to each other daily. Several of the letters included in the novel contain excerpts from Sparks' original love letters to his future wife. "Love comes at any age, at any time, and often when we least expect it," reads the novel's flap, a statement which Sparks attests through his own life story and marriage of 19 years.

Sparks' next book is The Lucky One, which features a man who finds a photograph and becomes determined to track down the woman pictured, convinced that she holds the key to his happiness. The novel is due for release on Sept. 30.