Pull up your rocking chairs and gather around the porch. This Southern-fried tale of a family filled with beguiling women is as sweet as pecan pie. In The Rock Orchard, the Belle women of Leaper’s Fork, Tennessee, are known for their lust for life and for men. Charlotte Belle is a shrewd businesswoman who spends her days making money and her evenings in the company of a variety of local gentlemen. She has resisted any semblance of settling down, until the day her baby niece is dropped on her doorstep. Charlotte raises Angela as she would her own, so it’s no surprise when teenaged Angela gives birth to her own daughter, Dixie, in the flowerbed behind the house.

Just down the road, Dr. Adam Montgomery is busy setting up his practice and working his way up the local social ladder. He happens upon Angela just as she goes into labor, and helps deliver Dixie. From that day forward, Dr. Montgomery can’t get the beautiful Angela out of his mind, despite his planned marriage to a proper Bostonian who is “as pure as pasteurized milk.” Even though the Belle girls are, as author Paula Wall puts it, wild as barncats, they have a funny way of encouraging their fellow townsfolk to improve themselves and their community. Charlotte gives a local abused wife the determination to start her own business. Angela prods Dr. Montgomery to establish a local hospital. Then a new preacher comes to town; once he is introduced to the Belle women, Leaper’s Fork will never be the same.

The Rock Orchard is endlessly clever and addictively fast-paced. To say that Wall, the author of two humor collections (including If I Were a Man, I’d Marry Me), has a way with words is putting it mildly, and her storytelling is simultaneously sweet and sharp. The Belle women are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but their story shows the power of community and demonstrates that grace can be found in the most unexpected places. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

I don’t know if there is a sound lonelier than the silence of everybody gone. This is the morose frame of mind in which we find Ave Maria MacChesney, heroine of the best-selling Big Stone Gap trilogy. With her young daughter (too young, in Ave Maria’s opinion) newly married and living in Italy, Ave Maria is restless. She doesn’t find her usual fulfillment in her work as Big Stone Gap’s pharmacist, and her ailing husband, Jack, is considering a job with a mining company that could spell environmental catastrophe for the tiny Virginia town. Worst of all, Ave and her best friend Iva Lou aren’t speaking, after a blowout argument over a secret from Iva Lou’s past. Adriana Trigiani has detoured from the comfortable confines of Big Stone Gap in recent years, using her apparently vast imagination on wildly varying subjects: a 1950s male interior decorator (Rococo), an ambitious New York seamstress (Lucia Lucia), turn-of-the-century Italian farmers (The Queen of the Big Time), even a cookbook (Cooking with My Sisters). She’s a consistently appealing storyteller, whatever the subject matter. Still, it must be said: It’s good to come home to Big Stone Gap. Trigiani’s light touch yields a realistic portrayal of small-town life sometimes bucolic, sometimes as constricting as a too-small shoe and a cast of charmingly imperfect characters: Pharmacy employee Fleeta Mullins tartly passes judgment on customers, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. The usually wise Iva Lou fumbles when she has to confront her checkered past. And Ave Maria and Jack just can’t seem to agree on Jack’s new career.

In an attempt to get back on track, they make a trip to Jack’s ancestral home in Scotland. But they soon learn that even the lush green hills of Aberdeen can’t compare to the comforts of Big Stone Gap and readers will certainly agree. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

<B>In McMurtry’s latest, two wild women hit the road</B> When Larry McMurtry is not writing a western, the West is usually lurking somewhere in the background. This is the case with his latest offering, a humorous saga of two post-menopausal free spirits who set off from L.A. to Texas for one last fling.

Maggie and Connie have been best friends since sixth grade and cruising for guys since they were 14. Maggie has three married daughters who no longer need her; after her hysterectomy she is totally at loose ends, and inexplicably depressed. She begins to lose interest in running her "loop group" a cast of motley characters who dub death groans and squeals for movie soundtracks. She tires of listening to her daughters’ endless marital woes, and her affair with her somewhat kinky and married shrink is going nowhere. So Maggie talks Connie into taking a trip to Texas to visit her eccentric Aunt Cooney, a chicken rancher who keeps two million chickens and lives in a house with 32 bedrooms. Mag-gie and Connie pack a snakebite kit, cowboy boots and plenty of black bras, and off they go stopping whenever they need a drink or a little pot, and getting lost only a few times. Unfortun-ately, Maggie’s cell phone gives her little respite from family responsibilities, and she is constantly kept abreast of what’s going on back in L.A., including one teenage niece getting pregnant and all three sons-in-law leaving her daughters for younger women.

Upon their return, things are still not going all that well: the shrink has "passed on," and Maggie and Connie have both lost their jobs. Maggie mulls over her options finding another shrink? Joining a convent? Or should she just try and pull together the loop group again? There are those maxed-out credit cards, after all.

McMurtry obviously had a lot of fun writing about what must be his firsthand experience with the downsides of menopause. This is more of a "chick book" than many of his previous novels, but his biting and insightful humor is still evident in this honest portrayal of L.A., Hollywood and two Valley Girls approaching their "advanced years." <I>Deborah Donovan writes from Cincinnati and La Veta, Colorado.</I>

Has Anna Quindlen achieved more success as a novelist or a columnist? It’s a toss-up. Quindlen earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her acclaimed <i>New York Times</i> opinion column, and her opinions currently appear in <i>Newsweek</i> magazine.

Yet Quindlen also is the author of four best-selling novels, including <i>One True Thing</i>, which was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger. Whether debating international policy on the pages of the <i>Times</i> or writing about the fictional lives of her many colorful characters, Quindlen has carved a niche with her uniquely lucid, soulful prose. In <b>Rise and Shine</b>, sisters Meghan and Bridget Fitzmaurice are best friends despite their very different lives. Bridget works at a Bronx shelter for women battling drugs, poverty and bad choices in men. Meghan is the Katie Couric-esque host of Rise and Shine, the nation’s top-rated morning program. The nation is scandalized when, during a live interview with a repulsive dot-com billionaire who’s left his wife for the surrogate carrying their babies, Meghan utters a few choice curse words sure to make the FCC cringe. Meghan the journalist suddenly becomes the story, and she retreats to Jamaica reeling from her very public fall from grace. Bridget is left to take care of Meghan’s teenage son while trying to contact her sister, who has thrown her BlackBerry into the ocean. The always self-controlled and controlling Meghan has checked out, and Bridget finds herself in a new role.

<b>Rise and Shine</b> is a razor-sharp meditation on our culture’s celebrity obsession. Its uncanny timeliness mirrors the way even serious journalists have become fodder for entertainment: Katie Couric is poised to begin her work as the first female solo anchor of an evening network news program, yet one of the first questions reporters asked was what she’ll wear during her first broadcast. But <b>Rise and Shine</b> also is a poignant story of sisterhood, and the universal struggle to find one’s true purpose. Quindlen’s superb, generous storytelling has never been more rewarding. <i>Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.</i>

What is it with Anglo-Saxon writers and the Mediterranean? For many of them, from E.M. Forster to Elizabeth Bowen, from Elizabeth von Arnim to Henry James (an honorary Brit) and now Irish author Maeve Binchy, the Mediterranean can’t be a normal spot where one goes “on holiday,” and simply comes back with a tan. Something cataclysmic and life-changing must happen because the folks in Greece or Italy are so much closer to nature, and thus to their emotions. Their job is to teach those pale and buttoned-up folks how to loosen up. Fortunately, many of these tales and authors redeem themselves by being quite good, and Binchy’s Nights of Rain and Stars is no exception.

The story concerns four tourists who meet in a Greek village, drawn to a taverna by the sight of a pleasure boat burning in the bay. All four are going through crises partially caused by their inability to, as Forster says, “connect.” Elsa, a German TV reporter, is running away from the love of her life, whose neglect of his daughter reminds her too much of her own father’s abandonment. Fiona, an Irish nurse, is running away from reality with her utter lout of a boyfriend. Thomas, who’s from laid-back California, is running away from his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, and the fear of losing his young son. David is escaping his demanding and dismissive father. Vonni, an Irish expat who came to the village with her Greek lover only to be dumped by him, and Andreas, the owner of the taverna, are the catalysts who pull the others back into life and love. Binchy’s writing is simple and straightforward, surprisingly so, and this is a straightforward, if not simple, tale. Readers used to a certain floridity about modern novels might take up the book with some suspicion. But by the end, you realize that its plainness is exactly what’s needed. Nights of Rain and Stars is an unexpectedly absorbing and striking work from one of Ireland’s best writers. Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Past tense is as important as present tense in Anita Shreve’s delicate story of growing emotional and physical maturity, glimpsed and gained through two painful years of memories and hope.

As Light on Snow opens, 12-year-old Nicky Dillon (telling the story 22 years later) doesn’t realize the unreality of the life she and her father are living after the traumatic loss of her mother and baby sister in a car wreck. After the accident, the grieving survivors moved to another state and began a shadowy existence, separating themselves from all the people and habits that marked their former life. All that changes when, shortly before Christmas, Nicky and her father discover a newborn baby girl left in the snowy woods to die. The police seem to take a quizzical view of their discovery (could the secretive Robert Dillon be the baby’s father?), which opens up the Dillons’ world to vulnerability and change. When a hurting stranger shows up at their door a few days later, Nicky finds herself yearning for connections that promise a return to normal family life once again.

Anita Shreve has written 10 other well-received novels, each one in a deceptively simple style that teases human insights out of straightforward prose. She has a knack for the fortunate metaphor (Robert’s grief is “a hard nut within his chest”; Nicky’s grandmother is ” a good person to hug because her body fills up all the empty spaces”).

Two years of unresolved sadness and anger at fate become part of a useful past, as Shreve details the unwilling, importunate surrender of anguish by Nicky and her father. In return they receive an uncertain but hopeful grasp on the possibilities of Christmases yet-to-come. At long last, the future tense becomes possible once again. Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland

Elinor Mackey’s perfect marriage begins its slow disintegration when she picks up the phone and overhears her husband planning a non exercise-related rendezvous with his personal trainer, Gina. I want to cook for you, Gina says suggestively, and Elinor knows things have spun out of control.

Actually, in her more honest moments, Elinor will admit that the marriage has been in trouble for some time. Endless rounds of failed fertility treatment have left her and Ted numb, retreating to their separate corners. Elinor spends hours in the laundry room, while Ted ostensibly passes his time getting in shape at the gym.

Elinor follows her husband to Gina’s townhouse and watches helplessly as they abandon cooking for more unusual kitchen activities. He doesn’t love you, Gina! Elinor thinks, but it turns out that it’s not that simple: Ted finds himself in love with two very different women. To complicate matters even more, Gina’s troubled young son has come to live with her. In desperate need of a father figure, he clings to Ted as his new role model.

Things are a mess, to be sure. All involved are paralyzed, waiting for one of the others to make the decisions that will untangle this modern-day love triangle. Elinor, who’s long been at the mercy of science and fate in her efforts to have a baby, is unsure whether she has it in her to take charge of her life again.

Author Lolly Winston has an uncommonly deft touch while dealing with some of life’s heaviest topics. In her debut bestseller, Good Grief, Winston won acclaim for her moving portrayal of a young woman finding a new life after her husband’s death. Happiness Sold Separately is one of those wonderfully relatable gems that friends will pass around with a You have to read this recommendation. Sometimes bawdy, sometimes moving, always hilarious, this is a charming, generous book. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

As a newly minted med-school grad, Shelley Green finds herself installed at a pediatric practice on Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side in the hilarious 24-Karat Kids. She quickly finds her lifelong desire to heal at odds with the lifestyles of the newly rich and not-necessarily famous as weekends in the Hamptons and invitations to cocktail parties make her fiancŽ (and her old life) pale in comparison. Seduced by her new lifestyle (complete with a plush apartment and a hot heir-to-a-fortune boyfriend) and physically transformed by the demands of her job from an overweight girl from Queens to a sleek, sophisticated and sought-after physician, Shelley initially revels in her quick jaunt up the social ladder, but comes to realize that things on Park Avenue are rarely as perfect as they seem.

Real-life top doc Judy Goldstein and fiction writer Sebastian Stuart (The Mentor) make a fair pair. In this Nanny Diaries for the med set, they poke fun at the absurdity of modern hyper-parenting from a mother who needs to be taught to use a vacuum after being told that it would soothe her colicky baby, to an ex-actress seeking a nose job for her infant. For readers looking for a laugh, this is just what the doctor ordered.

Ex-model Robin Hazelwood conducts a guided tour down the runways of the late 1980s in her debut novel, Model Student. Before she knows it, Midwesterner Emily Woods finds herself at photo shoots with the same models whose images had previously been plastered on her bedroom walls. When the time comes to choose between college and catwalks, Emily decides she can do both, moving to New York City to attend Columbia University and pursue her dreams. It proves tougher to balance college life with the fashion world than Emily ever imagined. Doggedly pursuing her dual passions makes Emily start to spin out of control, until she finds herself flailing in both arenas and realizes that she may have to make a choice between brains and beauty.

Young Emily becomes an engaging protagonist, as her intelligence and thoughtfulness make the supreme superficiality of the fashion world palatable. Hazelwood’s sharp writing provides a glimpse into a glamorous world, but stays grounded by using college life as a foil to the fashionistas. Her real-life experience as model in the ’80s and ’90s the era that brought us those larger-than-life supermodels Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell gives her an insider edge that lends credibility to events that would be otherwise unbelievable.

When 29-year-old Delilah Darling reads in The New York Post that the average person has 10.5 sexual partners in a lifetime, Delilah decides to do a little counting of her own. She’s holding steady at 19 that is, until the day she gets fired from her production job on a Martha Stewart-esque television show and wakes up the next day hung over and in bed next to her smarmy ex-boss. Refusing to exceed the sexual status quo, Delilah takes her severance check and spends it on a cross-country drive down memory lane, visiting each of her previous partners in hopes she can make it work with one of them.

In 20 Times a Lady, author Karyn Bosnak guides her readers on this tour of past loves with a heaping dose of humor and heart. Her first book, Save Karyn, was an autobiographical account of her successful appeal to strangers (via the Internet) to help her pay off her credit card debt, and Bosnak here proves her ability to create a fictional character every bit as endearing as she was able to make herself. Though the obvious ending can be seen from a mile away (could the love she had been looking for have been in front of her the whole time?), readers will still root for Delilah in her quest to beat the odds.

New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Weiner offers a frank, funny and poignant look at new motherhood, marriage and friendship in her latest book, Little Earthquakes. This follow-up to Good in Bed and In Her Shoes (which became a motion picture starring Cameron Diaz) begins as Lia, an actress, returns to her hometown of Philadelphia from Hollywood to hide out after her baby’s sudden death. Heartbroken and filled with guilt, Lia cannot help but notice pregnant friends Becky, Ayinde and Kelly, three very different women who meet in yoga class and bond instantly. Becky is a wisecracking, overweight chef who worries that people will think she is just fat rather than pregnant. After her baby Ava arrives, she has to contend with the mother-in-law from hell, who tries to undercut Becky’s authority. Cool and elegant Ayinde is married to basketball star Richard Towne. Her own parents generally delegated their child-rearing obligations to nannies and other hired help, but Ayinde is determined to be an involved, loving mother to baby Julian despite her husband’s frequent absences. Peppy, blonde Kelly grew up in a big Catholic family with a mother who drank too much and a father who was content with the status quo. She has set her sights on having a perfect life and a perfect family in their perfect apartment, which they can barely afford even before her husband loses his job weeks before Oliver’s birth.

Each of the women soon discovers what every new mother discovers: babies change everything, including the best-laid plans. Wealth, race and religion notwithstanding, Becky, Ayinde and Kelly all find themselves wondering why it’s all so much harder yet ultimately more rewarding than they thought it would be.

Little Earthquakes will have readers laughing, crying and, if they’re mothers, nodding their heads in absolute understanding. This is a stay-up-all-night read that’s worth a little sleep deprivation.

Jackie Braun is a freelance writer and romance author from Flushing, Michigan.