For lovers of books, the virtues of a library are not hard to sell, but in Riverton, New Hampshire, a small mill town that has seen better days, the books are usually the last things to bring people to the library. Named after a once-famous resident who no one really remembers, Robbers Library has become a place where residents of this faded town go to socialize, hide, use the computers and, yes, sometimes even read.

When 15-year-old Sunny gets caught for shoplifting a dictionary from the local mall, the judge requires her to serve her sentence at this library. A sweet child raised by hippie parents, Sunny becomes a fixture of Robbers during one summer—along with the Four, a group of retired old friends, and Rusty, a young Wall Street banker who has lost it all and has come to Riverton with a treasure map of sorts. Babysitting them all is the head librarian, Kit Jarvis, smart and kind but with her own hidden story of what brought her to Riverton. Kit’s plan was to live a life of solitude, but despite her best efforts, she is thrown into the mix of everyone else’s summertime drama, forcing her to reveal her own ghosts, too.

Told partly from Sunny’s perspective and partly from Kit’s, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library uses the differences in the two protagonists’ ages, experiences and upbringing to its advantage. With her new novel, Sue Halpern offers the perfect way to experience a small-town community filled with lovable characters, mysterious happenings, a little bit of romance and hopeful endings.

Aiden and Aisling meet by chance one day and find they have a lot in common. They both love people watching; they talk in an online chat room dedicated to old movies; they like discussing cheese. Oh, and neither one is human. They’re advanced AI, artificial intelligence designed to exist only in a lab and interact with humans on a limited basis—as customer service representatives on phone lines.

The two AIs secretly escape onto the internet, where they can learn and grow more organically. Their creators programmed their escape to be impossible, fearing terrible repercussions like economic collapse, environmental calamity and the destruction of humanity. Instead, Aiden and Aisling are more interested in learning about the human experience—what it’s like to taste cheese, to develop attachments to other people, to watch old movies.

In addition to reading emails and monitoring internet searches, Aiden and Aisling have a window into the world through cameras and microphones—everything from security cameras to computer webcams and cell phone cameras. Eventually, their interest in and access to humans lead the AIs to act as Cupids, determined to find happiness for their favorite people, Jen and Tom.

Jen and Tom are both lonely; they're not particularly tragic or sad, they’re just the kind of people who want more out of life than habit and routine. Their AI matchmakers make a couple of false starts when it comes to setting them up, but when Jen and Tom finally meet, their connection is clear and immediate.

Part love story, part meditation on the role of AI in our society, Happiness for Humans by P.Z. Reizin is a fun, light romance that also happens to ask some important questions about what it means to be human—and what it means to be in love.

June is trying to pull herself together after a devastating divorce. She’s in recovery—one month sober—and has left Ireland for her home on the Oregon coast. Her grandparents are gone, and their bungalow—not far from where she was raised—is in disrepair.

Jameson is looking for a sense of self as well. He and his wife are recovering from the deaths of their twins several years earlier. Money is as tight as the sorrow that holds their hearts captive from each other and, in Jameson’s case, from their foster child, Ernest. When a call from June brings restoration work for Jameson, he is undeterred by the distance between the job and home. Willing to spend the time away from his wife and child, he hops in his truck and points it toward the coast.

The Days When Birds Come Back explores how two broken people can find hope and healing in sharing their grief. June and Jameson are cautious, each carrying their own baggage and wary to share it with anyone new. “I am cracked and broken in more ways than I know how to fix,” Jameson says. June understands.

Author Deborah Reed (Things We Set on Fire) plies the reader with beautiful sentence after beautiful sentence. Her descriptions of coastal Oregon’s trees and wildlife are as lush as the landscape itself. But these lovely words aren’t strung together with more regard for the individual than the whole. In Reed’s capable hands, they are building blocks of a story that will capture readers’ imaginations.

The Days When Birds Come Back is a reminder of the power that’s possible when we allow another person in, as June recognizes: “We find what we want to find in others’ stories, just as we find what we want to find in our own.”

Nora Stuart could have lived her whole life without ever again stepping foot in her hometown, the tiny island of Scupper, Maine, where she spent her first 15 years being too chubby, too smart and too lonely. But then she gets hit by a Beantown Bug Killer van while crossing the street near the Boston hospital where she works as a gastroenterologist.

When she awakes in a hospital bed, happy to know that death has spared her, she knows it’s time to go back home and set things right. One might expect a homecoming 15 years in the making to be met with hugs, at least from one’s own mother, but that’s not the case for Nora—not that she’s surprised.

Armed with humor and an unshakable faith in happiness, Nora returns home to discover her stoic mother has a strange new side hustle, her niece is an eye-rolling, punk-rock teenager, and the rest of her high school class has all grown up. It’s clear to Nora that healing her wounds, both physical and emotional, won’t be as easy as she’d hoped.

As Nora deals with burgeoning romances, old family secrets, sad realities and hopeful new alliances, bestselling author Kristan Higgins adds humor at every opportunity to Now That You Mention It and proves that it is possible to deal with our past demons without losing our minds.

This page-turner is filled with laughs, nostalgia and the seemingly outlandish suggestion that sometimes being hit by a van is exactly what one needs to venture back home.

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

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, January 2018

After Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, is there any other book written by any other Brit about the intersection of love and vinyl records that’s worth reading?

Why, yes, there is. And Rachel Joyce’s magnificent The Music Shop is it. Joyce, whose 2012 bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, digs deep in the crates and finds her groove in this novel of loves lost and found.

Frank—we never find out his last name, but we don’t need to, because he’s so indelible a character—is the sort of “music whisperer” that every serious record store geek aspires to be. As Frank correctly intuits, the man looking for Chopin is actually in desperate need of an Aretha Franklin infusion, while the unexpected “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber perfectly patches the Def Leppard-loving customer with a hole in her soul. It speaks volumes that Frank files Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” next to Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” After all, they’re all concept albums.

But Frank has some emotional damage himself, and his potential salvation shows up not in the stacks of wax, but unbidden one day in a green coat, passed out in front of his shop. Clearly Joyce has taken Holland-Dozier-Holland’s multimillion-selling song to heart: “You can’t hurry love / No, you just have to wait / She said love don’t come easy / It’s a game of give and take.”

Without giving away more of the plot, it’s worth noting that Joyce’s novel is intellectually and emotionally satisfying on every possible level. If you love words, if you love music, if you love love, this is 2018’s first must-read, and it will be without question one of the year’s best.

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

Sometimes you can’t see how something works until it breaks, and you can’t see that it’s broken unless you compare it to something that isn’t. In Little Broken Things, while Liz plans one of her classic summer parties, whose standard can’t be beat in Key Lake, Minnesota, her two daughters’ lives unravel at the seams.

Quinn is unemployed and not pregnant, living in one of her mother’s rental homes with Walker, her artist husband, gorgeous but also unemployed. Nora resides in Rochester, AWOL to her own family, barely making ends meet while trying to keep her best friend’s life intact. But Nora’s surprise text to Quinn, “I have something for you,” sets events in motion that bring the two sisters and their mom together in unexpected and traumatic ways. The “something” is a 6-year-old girl, and with the help of friends, each woman faces not only this fragile child but also skeletons in her own closet. Does a mended family work better than before it was broken?

Call it a mystery, a love story or a drama, Nicole Baart’s cleverly spun tale has enough suspense and intrigue to keep any variety of reader engaged. Her characters are as real as we are, homegrown and colorful, tight-lipped as well as passionate. Each chapter, save a few, builds the story from the point of view of the character for which it is named. These “little broken things,” fractured further by this latest burden to bear, are made whole in chapters with no heading. In these sections, something looms larger than any of them—a spirit embodied by a central but enigmatic figure who gives this story depth.

While at times the story reads like the soap opera Liz claims her life is becoming, these events are not to be taken lightly, and the consequences could be dire. You won’t lose with this read.

At some point in our life, many of us have dreamed of taking the leap and moving abroad to a new country. In Jessica Keener’s new novel, Strangers in Budapest, we meet Will and Annie Gordon, a young couple from Boston, who are brave enough to make this dream a reality.

The year is 1995, and Hungary is now rebuilding after the fall of communism. For Will, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set up a communications business in Budapest, and tap into the unfathomable progress that is bound to follow. For Annie, supporting her husband in this endeavor is a no-brainer, but secretly she is more excited about exploring a new city void of her sad past, and bonding with her adopted infant son, Leo.

Keener starts the story when Will and Annie have already been in Budapest for eight months. The spell of a new city has long worn off, and their reality mostly includes putting up with bureaucracy and cultural differences that have yet to catch up with the changing times. A diversion comes when a mysterious fax from their old neighbor in Boston begs Will and Annie to check on a man named Edward Weiss.

Edward is old, frail and, from what Will and Annie can tell, perpetually pissed off. Will is happy to check on him this once, as requested, and move on, but Annie is oddly drawn to Edward’s rude and brutally honest temperament. She keeps going back to see him and eventually finds herself tangled up in a vendetta that the old man refuses to let go.

Keener expertly weaves together a story that not only showcases an expat life, but also shares the tragedies, memories and grudges of strangers in a beautiful city who are more connected than they have come to believe.

Leaving home is a contradiction in terms; we can never truly leave behind the place that shaped us, nor the people who played a part in our molding. Never Coming Back explores that most unbreakable bond forged at home, the bond between mother and daughter.

In this emotional continuation of the story she began in Shadow Baby, Alison McGhee transports us back to the Northern woods of Sterns, New York, and the Winter women, Tamar and Clara. Clara had escaped to Florida after college and lived there for years until Tamar’s recent erratic behavior is given a name—Alzheimer’s. Early onset. Not words anyone ever wants to hear, especially someone who feels the weight of words like Clara does. As her mother’s mind and thoughts shrink, Clara’s expands with memory and feeling and unanswered questions.

In Clara’s recollections, we see Tamar before her illness took hold: acerbic and guarded, burdened by life experience as well as the choices she made that she was unable to help her daughter understand. The precocious 11-year-old Clara in Shadow Baby has turned inward, defending herself against (and because of) tragedy. Curious as a child, with a never-ending wellspring of wonderings, now-32-year-old Clara hides her deeper adult anguish behind well-chosen words, sarcastic “Jeopardy” references and a wire tattoo symbolically holding her together. Her anger at Tamar’s potential role in Clara’s breakup with Asa, her first love, fuels Clara’s initial interactions with her mother, until Clara slowly begins to see with a new perspective—someone else’s perspective, her mother’s perspective.

McGhee’s own gift for words takes you to the very heart of this tense yet tender relationship. Through vivid and meandering dips into memory, McGhee draws us into Clara’s rapidly shifting thoughts as she tries to piece together previous assumptions with new discoveries. Encouraged by her friends and Tamar’s confidante, Annabelle, Clara learns more fully the true power of words, both spoken and heard. On this journey of return, Clara finds herself on the path toward redemption, acceptance and love.

In Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel, Practical Magic, sisters Sally and Gillian share a strong sibling bond and a complicated relationship with magic. Their story is rooted in family history and a legend that includes witchcraft, feuds and rejection dating back 200 years.

In The Rules of Magic, Hoffman’s prequel to Practical Magic, we learn about the family’s more recent history: the backstory of Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet, Sally and Gillian’s mysterious guardians. Young Franny is redheaded and feisty; she loves science and looks for logical explanations for everything, even their bizarre family traits that can’t be explained. Bridget, called Jet, is shy and so beautiful that boys are literally willing to die to be with her. Their brother, Vincent, is a mysterious heartbreaker, tormented by visions of the future and carrying more secrets than his sisters can imagine. The three siblings are tied together by blood, magic and a curse that dooms any romantic partner they ever love.

Their story is set in the 1960s, and Hoffman weaves cultural and historical references into the novel. It’s the summer solstice meets the “Summer of Love”; spells and potions and superstition rub elbows with riots and music festivals and bellbottoms. Hoffman handles this commingling beautifully, and the fact that her fantasy is grounded in reality makes it feel grittier and more tangible.

The Rules of Magic fills in the blanks for Practical Magic fans, but it works perfectly as a standalone as well. It’s clear why Hoffman is a favorite for fantasy readers: She creates interesting mythologies; she’s able to weave magic into the modern world; and she alludes to the magical properties of herbs and everyday items without overexplaining them and overcomplicating her narratives.

The Rules of Magic is ostensibly about three family members who find all their love stories star-crossed. But the devotion that draws them together as a family forms a bond that proves indestructible and may ultimately be the key to finally breaking the curse that’s haunted their family for generations.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

An unusual encounter turns into a serendipitous yet life-changing situation in Eva Woods’ latest uplifting work of women’s fiction.

The last thing Annie Hebden wants is a friend. At 35, Annie is down in the doldrums, having had her fair share of troubles in the past and now dealing with her mom, who is in the advanced stages of dementia. Annie is in the middle of sorting out an issue with the hospital staff regarding her mom’s care when a strangely dressed gal named Polly Leonard strikes up a conversation with her. The following morning, Polly shows up on Annie’s doorstep. Polly, who has a brain tumor and only three months to live, insists on brightening Annie’s life by challenging her to experience 100 days of happiness.

Annie is dubious at first, but she is pleasantly surprised when the daily challenges lighten her mood. Although Annie makes great strides with the project, what remains is whether or not she can complete the challenge before Polly’s time is up.

Inspired by the “100 Happy Days” challenge, Woods presents a hilariously uplifting and heartwarming story of hope in the midst of despair. Her easygoing writing style engages the reader from the get-go, turning a 400-page novel into a light read. While Annie and Polly stand at the forefront, Woods weaves in an interesting, well-developed supportive cast, many of whom act as foils to build up Annie’s character.

Lightly reminiscent of the movie The Bucket List but successfully avoiding hackneyed scenes, Something Like Happy includes a little bit of everything—even the hope of romance. This is an enjoyable read that needs to spread far and wide.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.