Eight-year-old Tessa Lee wakes to find her drug-addicted mother nowhere in sight in Firefly Cloak, a compelling multigenerational novel by Sheri Reynolds, whose previous works include the Oprah’s Book Club pick The Rapture of Canaan. Abandoned at a campground in Alabama when her mother, Sheila, runs off with her most recent no-good boyfriend, Tessa Lee and her little brother Travis are left with nothing but a firefly-print housecoat and a phone number written in Magic Marker on Travis’ back.

As the plot zooms forward seven years, we find Tessa Lee running away from her grandmother Lil (the owner of that phone number, with whom Tessa Lee now lives) on a quest to find Sheila, who is rumored to work as a mermaid at a rundown carnival on the Massachusetts coast. Tessa Lee succeeds only to be abandoned again when her mother runs after being discovered.

The tale shifts perspective from Tessa Lee to Sheila to Lil, following them on separate quests: Lil’s to find Tessa Lee, Tessa Lee’s to find Sheila and Sheila’s to find whatever it is she needs to turn her life around. The story of addiction and tragedy (Tessa Lee’s brother Travis has died; the details of his death are threaded out slowly) is presented plainly with a na•ve and frank narrative voice, but the simple tale is cushioned with exquisite and unexpected metaphors. A hungry Sheila is empty as a straw. A bush has honeysuckle vine so sweet that it made the made the ants too drunk to bite her. Tessa Lee describes her mother’s laugh as as strong as cheese. It’s hard to resist being charmed by plucky Tessa Lee, and the shifting perspective highlights the fortitude shared by all three generations of women. Reynolds’ ruminations on redemption are so fleshed-out over the course of the book that the feeble ending feels slightly unsatisfying. But like the firefly coat Tessa Lee cherishes, this ordinary-looking novel has something truly magical inside. Iris Blasi is a writer in New York City.

Abby Randolph’s life is forever altered by a chamber pot in Mameve Medwed’s How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life. Reeling from a breakup and her mother’s death in an earthquake in India (where she was vacationing with her late-in-life lesbian lover), antiques-dealer Abby inherits the chamber pot without realizing there is anything unique about it. But a colleague’s inkling of its worth leads Abby to Antiques Roadshow, where an expert identifies it as belonging to the poetess of the book’s title. What Abby initially envisioned as an old pot is actually appraised for $75,000 and potentially could be sold for much more.

Inevitably, such a fortuitous windfall comes with complications. Shortly after being informed of her good fortune, Abby is sued over the ownership of the chamber pot by her mother’s lesbian lover’s children, one of whom just happens to be her ex-best friend and the other the ex-true love who broke her heart. Of course, the battle over the chamber pot becomes a struggle over things much larger as Abby wrestles with her past and fights for what she believes to be hers. Medwed touches on the pressures of being reared in an academic family (Abby’s father was a prestigious Harvard professor, and both academia and the Cambridge social circle surrounding it figure largely into the story), the deep wounds left by young love tainted by betrayal and our often profound relationships with inanimate objects. Nicely threaded through are literary allusions from Browning and others. What’s also particularly delightful about Medwed’s writing is her pace the story connects in a series of nodes before coming together in a satisfying conclusion. Though Abby herself can occasionally be grating (the novel is peppered with a few too many rhetorical questions and self-indulgent whining sessions for the protagonist to be wholly likeable), the story surrounding her is a lovely chronicle of the quest for ownership both of an object and of the self. Iris Blasi is a writer in New York City.

In an age of whiny novels about 30-something singletons whose sole goal in life seems to be snagging a decent man, Must Love Dogs is a refreshing antidote. Yes, 40-year-old Sarah Hurlihy is edging back into dating after a particularly nasty divorce, and yes, she wants to meet the right man. But author Claire Cook flips the same tired story upside down, serving up a hilariously original tale about dating and its place in a modern woman’s life.

Sarah’s life centers around two things: her job as a preschool teacher and her family. Her overbearing Boston Irish siblings walk into her house without knocking to grill her on her love life and grumble about their own. But their efforts to set her up yield consistently gloomy results. A blind date to a family lobster bake ends in an exchange of profanity after her dopey date, all dressed up for the occasion in a sailor hat and shiny loafers, gets a little too familiar.

So sister Carol goes proactive, placing a want ad on Sarah’s behalf. Sarah halfheartedly juggles the responses, furtively donning a pink boa to boost her confidence before she calls a potential candidate. In truth, Sarah admits, she’d rather be watching Brady Bunch reruns and eating macaroni and cheese prepared with wine (a surprisingly good dish discovered after she runs out of milk).

Some of the men she meets are losers, a few aren’t bad and one is quite promising, but Sarah still must decide what it is she’s looking for in a relationship. Is it really as simple as placing an ad and insisting that her soul mate must love dogs? Cook’s previous novel, Ready to Fall, was well-received, partly for its innovative construction: the story was told completely through the main character’s e-mails. Must Love Dogs relies on no such device and doesn’t need it. Reading about Sarah Hurlihy’s travails is like talking to a comedic self-deprecating friend. Cook’s humor breezes through the pages as she details the perils and perks of plunging back into the dating scene. Amy Scribner is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Edie Boyd’s three children are finally grown and living on their own. She should be thrilled, but instead finds herself mooning around her too-quiet, too-tidy house on the verge of a serious funk. On the other hand, Russell Boyd (who loves their children just as much) is exhilarated by the luxury of finally having his wife to himself.

But before you can say "empty nest," the Boyd offspring begin making their way back home. First it’s eldest son Matthew, whose longtime girlfriend buys a fancy apartment that he can’t afford to share. Then Rosa loses her job and her place to stay, neither of which she cared for anyway. And somewhere in there, Edie takes in the vulnerable young co-star from the play in which she’s appearing. Youngest son Ben has moved in with his girlfriend and her mother, but it seems only a matter of time before he’s home, too. Suddenly, the house is once again filled to the rafters, and Edie is left wondering if perhaps she should be more careful what she asks for.

Joanna Trollope’s Second Honeymoon is another wonderful dispatch from the British novelist, who reports from the front line of home and family like no one else. Trollope manages, book after book, to keep her unique take on modern living not just fresh, but intriguing. She is at her most sublime when writing about the most conventional details of and musings on daily life. Consider Edie’s meditation on, of all things, eating breakfast: "He ate like Ben, with that peculiar combination of indifference and absorption that seemed to characterize hungry young men, consuming two bowls of cereal and a banana and four slices of toast as if they were simultaneously vital and of no consequence at all." 

Henry loves Tilly. What’s not to love? She’s beautiful, elegant, does everything to perfection. Henry has lived with her for the past 10 years. But he won’t commit. And Tilly is getting desperate.

Ever wonder why the most irresistible novels often have the most despicable characters? Kimberla Lawson Roby’s latest, Changing Faces, features one of the nastiest creatures this reviewer has encountered in a long time. She’s Charisse Richardson, one of a trio of girlfriends who’ve known each other since school. Charisse is married, a mother and a regular churchgoer who revels in the word of the Lord. She’s also a psychopath: violent, judgmental, hypocritical, sadistic and pathologically dishonest. She wishes that her lovely daughter had never been born and that her husband was dead; as it is she can’t tolerate the fact that he’ll no longer allow her to micromanage his life. Her insistence that their marriage be run her way and her way only is so monstrously childish that it fascinates. Her mother is just about as hateful as she is, and Charisse is tormented, as far as she can be tormented by anything, by memories of dear mama Mattie Lee tossing a pot of boiling water on her father because he came home a little late. Charisse’s friends, the sweet, overweight Whitney and the brilliant Taylor, still love her, sort of she can be generous when she wants to be but even Whitney is running out of patience.

Whitney and Taylor have other problems, of course, almost all of them to do with men, and, in Whitney’s case, food. She falls hard for a handsome chap from her health club, but we know there’s going to be trouble when she sleeps with him within hours of their meeting. Taylor has a fibroid that puts her in the hospital and spooks her already skittish boyfriend will she have to have a hysterectomy and ruin their sex life? And is the partner at her law firm who used to give her such a hard time really changing his tune with those flowers he sends her when she’s laid up? Roby finds much sport in having these people treat each other horribly; her writing is infused with a sort of morose glee. At least one scene of amazing cruelty had this reviewer laughing out loud, guiltily. Changing Faces is vicious, compelling fun.

Reminiscent of Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is, Catherine Landis’ debut novel is a sweet, sassy and tart story about the intersection of two women’s lives.

At 20, Ruth Ritchie wants more from life than she can find in her small-town Southern home. Her goal of leaving without looking back seems realized when she meets Chuck Allen Pirkle at a funeral. She elopes with the stereo salesman, settling into a domestic routine of loud music, beer for breakfast and a steady diet of peanut butter nabs. When Chuck develops a devout attachment to the preaching at The Little White Church nearby, Ruth decides it’s time for her to move on.

After loading up her car and leaving her husband behind, she sets out on her journey, stopping in Lawsonville, North Carolina, for gas, junk food and a nap. In town, she meets Rose at the local five-and-dime. Feisty but compassionate, the aging Rose is a generous companion for the floundering young woman. Rose takes Ruth in, gets her a job and helps her find a place to live.

Rose’s children would like to see her retire from the local newspaper and face the reality of her lung cancer. Rose believes she has time to write one more exposŽ about the way big businesses poison the environment, particularly in poor communities in the South.

With empathy, subtlety and humor, Landis intertwines the stories of Ruth beginning a life of her own, while Rose comes to the end of a life lived on her own terms. The narrative voice is warm, gentle and funny, with just enough bite to keep the story’s sadness at bay.

Landis, a former reporter, has created a memorable novel of friendship based on love, yet free from expectation, obligation or a shared history. The fried pies at the local hardware store are a mouth-watering metaphor for the surprises of life in a small Southern town. Pam Kingsbury writes from Florence, Alabama.

For Anne Rivers Siddons, who counts Up Island and Low Country among the 14 previous titles to her credit, Islands is her first since 2000. Interestingly, though the two books tell very different stories, Islands is also a novel with the theme of connection at its core. Siddons’ protagonist, Anny Butler, is 35 and devoted to her work as director of a “part federally, part privately funded sort of clearinghouse for services for needy children.” When she totes a frightened, clubfooted child through the pouring rain to Dr. Lewis Aiken’s Orthopedic Clinic, she’s unaware that this action will change her life. Siddons’ rich prose and trademark capacity for evoking time and place is evident as Anny describes that afternoon as “humid and punishing as spring can often be in the Carolina Low Country, when the air felt like thick, wet steam and the smell of the pluff mud from the marshes around Charleston stung in nostrils and permeated clothes and hair.” Anny eventually marries Lewis, and their union is a happy and fulfilling one, but it is being accepted into the “Scrubs,” a group of childhood friends (all of whom became involved in the medical industry in some way hence the name “Scrubs”) and their spouses who share a beach house on idyllic Sullivan’s Island, which gives her a true sense of family. Although each couple has their own additional residence, the beach house is where they all meet as often as they can, and where Anny feels she truly “lives.” Like the unpredictable storms that lash the island, life too unleashes tragedy and devastation on the group, challenging the remark by the group’s most faithful member, Camilla Curry, who vows “the center will hold.” Devoted readers and new fans alike are sure to appreciate these two Southern authors who have once again delivered, with their individually distinct flair and flourish, lush and engrossing tales. Linda Stankard writes from Nanuet, New York.

Kaye Gibbons, whose debut, Ellen Foster, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, Divining Women is her first novel since 1999. Darker than Gibbons’ previous novels, Divining Women evolves into an almost gothic tale as the somewhat na•ve and unsuspecting young Mary Oliver heads south from Washington, D.C., to Elm City, North Carolina, in the autumn of 1918 to be a companion for her pregnant aunt, Maureen. Because the war has interrupted Mary’s plans to study abroad, her mother thinks this experience will enrich her. “These next months of your life will always be a blessing,” she says, unaware that her brother, Troop, is a pretentious, cruel man who has not only abused his wife emotionally, but subjected her to excruciating “cures” for her “melancholy.” As a bond of trust develops between niece and aunt, Maureen begins to awaken from her self-protective stupor and realize the full extent of Troop’s crimes against her. The tension mounts as Maureen’s confidence builds, Mary becomes more outspoken, and Troop, in reaction to the threat to his power, attempts to tighten his stranglehold over the women even further. In spite of being isolated, Mary and Maureen become connected to other female family members and friends through letters, and that connection, that safety net, that encouragement to grab onto life, so skillfully handled in Gibbons’ lyrical style, renders the tortuous experience a blessing after all. “This house is full of women,” Maureen says cryptically. “They come and go like nothing you have ever seen.” Linda Stankard writes from Nanuet, New York.

<B>A young widow’s triumphant journey through grief</B> During the first few months of Sophie Stanton’s life as a widow, she goes to work dressed in her bathrobe, finds herself sobbing in the produce section of her local grocery store and is crippled with fear by the pattern on her shower curtain. It is safe to say she is deep in mourning over her husband, Ethan, who died of cancer, leaving behind a 30-something wife with no idea how to move past such a loss and the deep loneliness it has left in its wake. "Now I understand why rock stars wreck hotel rooms," thinks Sophie as she stands alone in her kitchen, contemplating smashing every dish she owns. "To shatter the relentless stillness of a room." <B>Good Grief</B>, the truly extraordinary debut novel by journalist Lolly Winston, trails Sophie through the first year of her widowhood. But this novel is anything but textbook Grief Recovery 101. It’s different, because Winston has the nerve to admit that recovering from the death of a loved one is a ridiculous thing to have to do, and that it often has moments of humor mixed in with all the bad stuff. In <B>Good Grief</B>, we see Sophie through every messy stage, from denial to anger.

At first, she functions at the most primary level, sleeping for days and stuffing herself with Oreos until her mouth hurts. From there, Sophie moves on to bargaining with God. Maybe there was a clerical error, she thinks. Maybe the angel of death grabbed the wrong guy, and Ethan will be returned as soon as they straighten things out Upstairs. Finally realizing this isn’t going to happen, and determined to make a fresh start away from the ghosts of the home she shared with Ethan, Sophie trades her soulless cubicle job in Silicon Valley for a fresh start in Ashland, Oregon, home of Shakespearean festivals and hippies of all ages.

Once there, she rents an overpriced but charming house and sets about her new life, which at first consists mainly of occasional panic attacks and a job prepping vegetables at a tony local restaurant. She spends her days at work and her nights cuddling with Ethan’s old clothes.

But slowly, she settles into her new life. She takes on a teenage girl in desperate need of guidance and works her way up the chain of command at the restaurant. Then she meets a possibly too-good-to-be-true actor who just has to go ahead and complicate her purposefully simple existence.

<B>Good Grief</B> is strikingly original and stunningly brave in its honest portrayal of moving on, warts and all. Winston acknowledges that the real mourning process is not a Jackie Kennedy photo: a perfect, brave widow wearing a wrinkle-free outfit as she says a final farewell to her husband. The details may vary, but in real life, mourning is sloppy and filled with setbacks and anger, too many calories and too little sleep. And, yes, full of humor. Winston gives us such a lively gift of a character in Sophie, who, after her grief-stricken stupor starts to dissipate, turns out to be a touchingly normal person, alternately neurotic and strong. She worries that she’ll betray her dead husband if she sleeps with another man. She finds the nerve to open her own bakery without ever having run a business in her life. In short, she gathers her life back together in a way that is both triumphant and unforgettable.

Good Grief marks the arrival of an exciting and ambitious new voice. Winston’s story sparkles with wit and sympathy, but her musings on what it means to really live even in the shadow of death are the true reward here.

<I>Amy Scribner writes from Washington state.</I>

Some novels leave you wishing you knew people as cool as the characters. Who didn’t want to slip back in time to befriend the wise and witty Elizabeth Bennett after reading Pride and Prejudice? But best-selling author Laura Zigman’s new novel Her will more likely leave you thanking your lucky stars that you don’t know anyone quite like the neurotic bride-to-be Elise.

Her is a sharp, hilarious chronicle of the months leading up to Elise’s wedding. The invitations are ordered, the caterer booked. Elise and fiancŽ Donald are steadily, if not entirely blissfully, working up to the big day. Then Donald’s impossibly perfect ex, Adrienne, moves to town and Elise’s inner jealousy invades. Elise finds herself scrolling through Donald’s cell phone calls at 2 a.m. and cruising past Adrienne’s apartment to peer at the shadows inside.

Most of this is understandable. After all, it is her, the trust fund uber-woman in designer clothes. With a flashy museum job and a brilliant Yale professor father who studied Albert Einstein’s brain, Adrienne is a formidable presence. And she does seem intent on recapturing Donald, whom she so willingly gave up years ago. But there comes a point in the novel when Elise’s incessant obsession with this other woman creeps close to going over the top. Instead of jolting her back to her senses, Elise’s friends go along for the ride, literally. When Elise decides it’s time to find out why Donald has been visiting Adrienne, she doesn’t simply ask him. She enlists her best friend Gayle to slump with her in a car and spy on the pair. Elise represents what women everywhere hope they wouldn’t become if caught in her position, but what we suspect we’re capable of in the end. She isn’t the embodiment of grace under pressure, but she is honest, as is Zigman’s writing. Her is as addicting as Zigman’s previous work (Animal Husbandry, Dating Big Bird). The story is so lively and funny that even when you want to shred Elise’s $500 sweater, you can’t help but hope she and Donald live happily ever after. Amy Scribner is a writer in Washington, D.C.