Islands are magical places, no doubt about it. Whether you live on one, as I do, vacation on one, or read about them, islands stir some deep core of fantasy. Island Justice is a satisfying island book. Elizabeth Winthrop understands and better still, makes us understand the feeling of a close-knit community that knows everyone else’s business and personal life, that pulls together when it needs to.

When Maggie Hammond’s godmother, Nan, dies and leaves her island home to Maggie, a sophisticated world traveler, a furniture conservator who works with museums in London, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Prague, Maggie sets about selling the cluttered Victorian house. The task of getting the house ready for sale takes longer than she expects, and Maggie gets caught up in off-season island life. The body of an island man, missing for several days, washes up on her beach. Islanders rally around his daughter and give Maggie, who found the body, the support she needs. “You’re entitled to fall apart,” she is told. She learns about a serious problem in one of the families. Should she remain silent, closing her eyes the way the islanders have been doing? Should she call in authorities from the mainland? What role should she play? In Island Justice, Winthrop packs onto her small island (12 miles long, three miles wide) adventure, romance, mystery, and humor. We learn a bit about furniture conservation, a bit about training Vishlas, hunting dogs. When Randy Baker spots a school of fish off the beach: “ÔHallelujah,’ he shouted, and got on the radio with a single call. He knew he was breaking the cardinal rule of the island. The radio was to be used only for emergencies. But the fishermen had come up with a simple code. . . . Within twenty minutes, there were twelve fishermen lining the beach, calling news of lures and catches to one another.” Kasha, Maggie’s Siberian husky, is hurt badly and must get to the mainland. The word goes out, “Get down to the ferry will you, and try to convince Dan to hold that boat.” Besides being a good yarn, the story has the feel of an island. We hear the bell buoy, the fog horn, the gulls, we struggle along with Maggie to back a car onto the ferry. I was sorry when I finished this wonderful, rich book. Now that I’ve discovered Elizabeth Winthrop, I am off to my favorite island bookstore to order her previous novel, In My Mother’s House.

Reviewed by Cynthia Riggs.

Barnaby Gaitlin is no prince. A quasi-reformed juvenile delinquent, Anne Tyler’s anti-hero in her new novel, A Patchwork Planet, has just celebrated his 30th birthday alone, swilling beer in his dank basement apartment. Still, Barnaby is a disheveled handyman with a heart, and Tyler’s 14th novel will not disappoint die-hard fans who cherish the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s knack for plainspoken storytelling.

Like most of Tyler’s novels, A Patchwork Planet is set in a Baltimore suburb, capturing a year in the life of an eclectic array of characters, primarily, the Gaitlin family. Barnaby, the proverbial black sheep of the bunch, has never managed to overcome his tarnished teenage years, when he soiled the Gaitlin name after he was arrested for burglary. His affluent family orchestrates a charitable foundation, but Barnaby is not impressed. His ill-fated marriage to the wholesome girl-next-door ended in a divorce after the birth of their daughter, Opal. Now, his ex-wife has married a wealthy Philadelphia lawyer, and Barnaby has grown estranged from his only child.

A Patchwork Planet could have easily fallen into a predictable pattern, portraying the travails of a divorced dad who longs to be closer to his daughter. Tyler will have none of that with Barnaby, who is less than enthusiastic about his sporadic drives to Philly in his grandfather’s old Corvette. Indeed, Barnaby is passionate about two things: searching for his angel a mythical Gaitlin tradition and helping his elderly clients at Rent-A-Back, where he tackles odd-jobs alongside his co-worker, a scrappy, anemic-looking waif named Martine. Of course, Barnaby is searching for love, which arrives in the form of a plump, sweet-faced banker named Sophia. At last, Barnaby seems to have settled down, as Sophia’s hearty crock-pot meals and stolid serenity lull the former felon into a homespun nirvana. Even the Gaitlins approve of Sophia, and the romance blossoms with the blessing of Barnaby’s persnickety mother, Margot. But A Patchwork Planet is not a love story, and Tyler is too talented to serve up a neat and tidy conclusion. A common thread running through all of Tyler’s novels is the minutia of everyday the trips to the grocery store, the lace doilies and dusty furniture, and, above all, a deep respect for an average life. While many of Tyler’s prior novels have revolved around the struggles facing couples with teenage children (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Ladder of Years), at 57, the novelist seems to be taking a long, hard look at the so-called Golden Years.

It is a reflection that is alternately comedic and tragic, and Tyler does not shy away from the raw truth. As Barnaby’s aging clients whisper their fears and share their fading memories, he begins to believe that perhaps his search for a soul mate is pure folly. “At Rent-A-Back, I knew couples who’d been married almost forever. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person.” With A Patchwork Planet, Tyler has once again served up literary comfort food for the soul. While those who crave action and demand resolution may be frustrated by Tyler’s character-driven plots, even the most cynical reader will be charmed by Barnaby, and above all, an assortment of silver-haired saints.

Reviewed by Karen A. Cullotta.

Reading Susan Gregg Gilmore’s debut novel is almost like being introduced to the author herself. The former journalist writes Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen in a conversational Southern dialect that includes frequent use of words like "dad-gum." The reader is instantly immersed in a world of chigger bites, berry picking, comfort food and Sunday school.

The small town of Ringgold, Georgia, is home to nearly 2,000 people in the early 1970s, and one of these citizens is a girl with big aspirations. Catherine Grace Cline, the preacher’s daughter, dreams of moving to the big city—Atlanta—as soon as she turns 18. She and her younger sister, Martha Ann, lick Dilly Bars at the Dairy Queen every Saturday and plan what excitement their lives will hold in Atlanta. The difficult part is that Catherine Grace must leave her father, sister and high school boyfriend behind. She embarks on what she hopes is a great adventure as an independent young woman, but soon returns to Ringgold because of a devastating tragedy. A surprising series of events, including revealed family secrets, causes Catherine Grace to question where she really belongs: working at Davison’s department store in Atlanta or growing her own crop of tomatoes in Ringgold? Maybe what she was seeking could have been found in her hometown all along.

The tight-knit Cline clan lives in a home of Baptist values and Georgia football, but the most significant component of this family is their confidence in one another’s dreams. That kind of love and support is even more appealing than a diet of Dilly Bars, and Gilmore’s novel is a meal well worth the consumption.

(This review refers to the hardcover edition.)

A title wave of beach paperbacks Whether you’re contemplating a trip to an exotic beach, or planning to spend the warm weather months in the back yard, you’ll want to bring along that most necessary of seasonal accouterments. No, not sunscreen. We’re talking summer reading. Especially the easy-to-tote paperback variety. A hardcover sensation, John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story, literally spent years on bestseller lists. This month the 1994 title at last debuts in soft cover (Vintage, $12, 0679751521). Never mind that Clint Eastwood’s movie version has come and gone. If you haven’t read this account of life and death and murder Savannah-style, replete with its parade of beguiling eccentrics, you’re in for a mint-julep-flavored treat. Southern accents and sensibilities also abound in Rebecca Wells’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (HarperCollins, $14, 0060928336). Flashing back and forth from the 1990s to the 1960s, the book explores Siddalee’s efforts to understand her seemingly incomprehensible mother, the Louisiana magnolia Viviane, and her three chums. Booted out of a Shirley Temple lookalike contest when they were just six, the girls spent their college years blazing a bourbon-splattered trail, buffered by the motto (from a Billie Holiday tune), smoke, drink, don’t think. As much a paean to sisterhood as it is a mother-daughter tale, Ya-Ya is a kind of follow-up to Wells’s much darker first novel, Little Altars Everywhere, (HarperCollins, $13, 0060976845), and is being developed for a movie by Bette Midler’s production company. Yet another girly story is recounted in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Helen Fielding’s book which originated as a column in a London newspaper is the first-person odyssey of the thirtysomething Bridget, who is obsessed with such ’90s issues as learning to program her VCR, finding Mr. Right, and, of course, weight loss (in one year she manages to lose 72 pounds . . . and to gain 74). The producers of the quirky Four Weddings and a Funeral plan a movie version of the quirky Bridget.

Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel, by first-time novelist Arthur S. Golden, may also be headed for the screen with Steven Spielberg’s involvement. For now, enjoy it in print (Vintage, $14, 0679781587), as the geisha Sayuri details her metamorphosis from peasant child she was nine when her widowed father sold her to a geisha house to her prewar rise as a leading geisha and on to her role as mistress to a power-broker. Golden spent nine years researching and writing this intricately detailed saga, which takes us on a memorable, eye-opening journey.

And last but not least, we mustn’t forget Margaret Mitchell’s monumental (and perennially best-selling) classic, Gone with the Wind (Warner Books, $7.99, 0446365386).

Hollywood journalist Pat H. Broeske is also a biographer who has chronicled the lives of Howard Hughes and Elvis Presley.

Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant’s latest novel, Far From the Tree, is about three difficult women in the Frazier family: the proud Della and her daughters, Celeste and Ronnie, who find themselves, to their dismay, breathing the same air in the same house when they gather for the funeral of the family patriarch.

The title of the book is appropriate, since both sisters are as stubborn and unforthcoming as their mother, a woman whose tightlipped grief over her husband’s death is made worse when she discovers that her daughters have inherited a house in North Carolina that Della long ago signed over to her late husband. Della doesn’t want to think of this house ever again, and she considers disinheriting her daughters for wanting to go down South to check the place out. As the novel proceeds, we learn the reasons behind Della’s rage and witness the slow unfolding of the terrible memories the house holds for her.

On the way, the reader is treated to keenly drawn characters, including the three Frazier women and the people around them. Celeste, control freak and social climber, is a high school counselor known for the insight and compassion she gives to her students but withholds from her long suffering husband, college-age daughter, and her mother. Ronnie is a bitter, failed model whose moment of glory was on a billboard nearly two decades earlier. The authors give a remarkably adept description of Ronnie’s sad, struggling life in New York. Their portrayal of cramped, dingy, overpriced apartments, crazy or dangerous roommates, and the near-panic of a model whose looks are fading and who is always a paycheck away from eviction are realistic enough to make the reader cringe.

The three women treat each other with an almost reflexive incivility that makes the reader want to line them up against a wall and smack them, another mark of the authors’ skills. We even wonder how the recently deceased Will Frazier, who seemed a bumbling, gentle, and responsible man, put up with them. At the end, the women learn better, but their evolution is gradual and incomplete. That two authors could have put together such a seamless work is intriguing in itself. Far From The Tree is a convincing look at realistic flawed characters.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

For most readers of Nora, Nora, the title character will steal the show. A whiff of scandal accompanies Nora’s arrival in Lytton, a sleepy, rural Georgia town. She smokes, cusses, and wears a T-shirt that says, “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” It’s 1961 and Nora wants revolution. She wants it now. She tries to railroad Lytton with change, teaching Tropic of Cancer in a public high school barely ready for To Kill a Mockingbird. Nora’s seeming cynicism masks a more fundamental naivete. She believes that if she shows people the new horizons they hunger for, they will guard her secrets. That she is betrayed from almost every side is the novel’s central heartbreak.

Siddons has written a string of bestsellers, including Low Country and Outer Banks, whose titles reflect their Southern settings. The author’s finest achievement in her new book may be with the character Peyton, a 12-year-old girl hovering unwillingly on the brink of adulthood in an era when gender dictated more rigid roles than it does now. Siddons accurately captures the impulse that leads even the best-hearted adults to make children over in their own image.

One of the novel’s funniest and most painful episodes is Peyton’s trip to the beauty parlor, where tomboy Peyton is made over into a southern belle, complete with heavy makeup, under her aunt’s iron hand. The next day, Peyton gets transformed, yet again, into the image of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s by her nightclub hopping, feminist cousin Nora.

Nora, Nora effectively explores the extent to which people fail to change. The novel’s three principle characters are trapped not only in the mores of a small southern town, which the civil rights movement threatens to leave behind, but also in their own individual comfort zones. Even Peyton’s likable father, Frazier, a lawyer and advocate of integration, presses only so hard for badly needed reforms to Lytton’s school and class systems.

Change and transformation don’t come as easily to people in real life as they do in the movies, and Siddons shows us that reality.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

With the summer’s heat still upon us, wouldn’t it be nice to take a break and read about someplace cool and inviting? After a five-year absence from the bookstore shelves, beloved Scottish author Rosamunde Pilcher offers her readers a refreshing respite with her latest offering, Winter Solstice.

Pilcher’s delightful tale is set amongst her favorite places London, Hampshire, and Cornwall, England, and the great highlands of Scotland. Her story, which begins as fall turns to winter, follows the lives of five distinctly different people and their search for happiness.

The main character, who binds the entire story together, is Elfrida Phipps, a gently eccentric former actress who has retired to live out her life in a comfortable fashion. When her dear friend Oscar Blundell loses his wife and daughter to a tragic car accident, Elfrida steps in to help Oscar get on with his life. Oscar owns half of an old estate house in Scotland, and it is here that he and Elfrida start their lives anew. As they settle in to a life of quiet contemplation, their plans for a solitary Christmas are interrupted when Elfrida’s cousin, Carrie Sutton, comes to visit along with her young niece, Lucy. It seems Carrie is quietly recovering from the heartbreak of a failed love affair with a married man, and Lucy’s self-centered mother and grandmother have abandoned the teenager during the holidays. The house party becomes even livelier with the arrival of Sam Howard, a handsome textile-company executive who has unexpectedly come to buy the estate house.

While each character is plagued with loneliness and regret, it seems as if fate has united them in the dilapidated old house. And it is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that these five people will find each other, and ultimately find happiness for themselves. As in her previous bestsellers, The Shell Seekers, September and Coming Home, Winter Solstice is filled with the grace, warmth, and sentiment Pilcher’s legions of fans have come to expect from her books. But it also delivers an extraordinary tale of tragedy and intrigue, with a powerful testament of love’s healing ways that will undoubtedly draw a whole new audience to this remarkable novel. Winter Solstice was well worth the five-year wait.

Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Patricia Gaffney has done it again. In The Saving Graces, she wove characters so real you felt a part of their friendships. Now, in Circle of Three, she spins a tale about a family so genuine you will swear you know them.

Like her first novel, Circle of Three has women at its center: a grandmother, Dana; a mother, Carrie; and a daughter, Ruth. Gaffney has the women take turns telling their stories so that, chapter by chapter, the threads of their lives braid into a multi-leveled plot.

Each woman is struggling with the constraints of her generation. Dana, facing the physical frailties that come with growing old, has fought to build an illusion of the life she would like and is afraid it will somehow evaporate. Carrie, adapting to the death of a husband she did not love, is 42 and reestablishing a relationship with Jesse, a man she has loved since high school. Ruth, in the midst of teenage angst, decides the way to grow up and retaliate against her mother for being with Jesse so soon into widowhood is to get a tattoo. Each character will remind you of someone you know, someone quirky and likable, but annoying. There are men in the lives of each woman, though all but one are more observers than doers. Dana’s George barely speaks and is content to go outside and smoke in solitude. Raven, Ruth’s boyfriend, dresses like a vampire and ignores Ruth after a make-out session in the graveyard. Even Carrie’s dead husband Steve is notable only in his dying. It is Jesse who takes action, and it is because of Jesse that the circle of three is stretched almost to the breaking point.

It is in the pushing and pulling of each generation against the others that they are tied even more tightly together. The commitment they feel for each other is as much a part of them as the genes they share, and it is this commitment and shared history that provide the strength to move forward. It is also what will remind you why you continue to remain tied to your own family.

Jamie Whitfield writes from her homes in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Connie Green wasn’t bargaining for trouble when she arrived in Blackpool for a networking conference. In fact, she would have preferred to stay at home with her loving husband Luke and invite their equally loving friends over for dinner. So when she finds herself flirting with John Harding and they wind up at another conference in Paris, Connie finds the lines between adultery and fidelity blurring. It doesn’t take long before she can no longer tell the difference, nor does she care.

In the meantime, Connie’s friends Sam, Daisy, Rose, and Lucy are leading hit-or-miss lives of their own. Connie’s life is something of a fairytale: She left the carefree days of many lovers (which eludes the noncommittal, ruthless Lucy); found a wonderful husband (which eludes Daisy and Sam); and still manages to have fun (which eludes Rose, an ex-corporate up-and-comer now saddled with children). So why would Connie even look at another man? Connie isn’t sure of the whys either, but very quickly arrives at a point of obsession. John feeds this obsession, and soon discretion is dismissed as well. One by one, Connie’s friends uncover the truth, with varied opinions about her behavior: Lucy coaches her, Sam tolerates her, and Daisy is mortified. Then there’s Rose, who ultimately finds herself in the same vulnerable position as Luke. The most unlikely source of confrontation, Rose helps Connie reassess what is important to her and how far she’ll go to retrieve it. It is then that Connie finally realizes the magnitude of her sin.

Readers will find the first half of Playing Away disturbing; the idea that Connie is getting away with blatant adultery without repercussion is shocking. Ironically, readers will also like Connie; she truly is a likable character, making it very difficult to hate her or turn a deaf ear when she explains her actions and feelings. Wanting to hug her instead of thrash her is even more disturbing than Connie’s actions, but Connie does eventually pay, and she pays dearly. Adele Parks mingles humor with dark, realistic themes of boredom and isolation. Some may regard the ending as sappy, but after all the suffering, no other ending would suffice for such an endearing crew of friends.

Abbey Anclaude is a former schoolteacher.

Thirty-six-year-old Patty Murphy has waited patiently for her husband and children. Unfortunately her patience has not paid off. Patty is essentially a homemaker disguised as an unmarried real estate salesperson, a distinction she would not deny. As the narrator of Elizabeth Berg’s latest novel, Until the Real Thing Comes Along, Patty makes these points perfectly clear within the first few pages.

She readily admits that she has, in her two years at Rodman Real Estate, managed to sell one house (which happened to sell for $3.2 million). Despite her less-than-ambitious career, she enjoys the real estate business; her desire to be a wife and mother, however, overshadows any joy that she receives from showing houses. As Patty’s story unravels, the reader/confidante is taken through a maze of scenarios and reflections that center around a fictitious husband and a multitude of make-believe children.

Patty has known since the sixth grade who would make the perfect husband and father: Ethan Allen Gaines. She and Ethan are very close, and have even been engaged. Their engagement was broken when Ethan confessed that he is homosexual. The good news is, they have remained good friends, though the relationship is often frustrated by Patty’s lingering love and blind hope that Ethan is simply going through a phase.

Two things that both Patty and Ethan desire are the right man and many children. And since neither have any prospects in either area, they decide to have a child themselves. Though Patty’s pregnancy does not match the daydreams that had danced in her head for 36 years, she is happy with their decision . . . right? Factored into the Patty Murphy equation are an elderly couple whose days are numbered, a love her/hate her beautiful best friend, and two worried parents. And while Patty’s encounters with each character are amusing, there is an underlying, inexplicable sadness that tends to permeate each relationship. This sadness culminates when Patty discovers that her mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Amid these trials of life, Patty begins to focus on what the real thing actually is. A self-proclaimed runner-up in the pageant of life, Patty realizes that perhaps the real thing includes loving someone or something despite itself. Because of itself, actually. A warm-hearted story that gently offers insight rather than answers, Until the Real Thing Comes Along would especially appeal to those who have survived loss and crisis.

You won’t find the women in Faith Sullivan’s new novel wringing their hands and moaning What’s a woman to do? Sullivan turns that phrase on its edge and renders it a call for action in the title of her latest novel, What a Woman Must Do.

But life doesn’t always neatly dictate where duty lies. Kate, Harriet, and Bess, Sullivan’s trio of related main characters, struggle inwardly with their personal dilemmas. Each knows her actions will affect the others, and their choices, though individual and honest, are not made easily.

Bess, the youngest, has been raised by her aunts and yearns for adventure beyond the streets of Harvester, Minnesota. But just before she is to leave for college, Bess risks her future by falling for a local married man. Harriet is the middle-aged cousin who wants desperately to have a home of her own, and though it may mean losing her beloved Bess’s approval, she goes to the Dakota dance hall to kick up her heels with a widowed farmer. And then there’s the aging but spirited Kate, fighting with ghosts from the past and reproaching herself for things she should have done as a woman despite her fears and the conventions of her youth.

Though separated by generational differences, each cares deeply for the other, for regaining and maintaining their family’s respectability, and for the men they come to love. But it is Kate’s fervent longing for the farm she has lost, her love for the land she once lived with so intimately, that becomes the narrative’s overriding passion and its idyllic backdrop. Heaven will be a farm, she tells herself. And we will own it outright. Sullivan uses a condensed time frame a mere three days and like a play, the story moves swiftly through its web of conflicts to its crisis. A variety of techniques flesh out the characters and bring the past into relevancy with the present; flashbacks, dreams, and Kate’s ability to conjure her beloved farm to the point where she is not simply imagining, but there, give us insight into the characters’ motivations.

If you are looking for an intriguing tale of love and relationships mixed with distinctive female characters and a dash of family scandal, get Faith Sullivan’s new book and find out What a Woman Must Do.

Linda Stankard writes from Cookeville, Tennessee.

Filled with romance, intrigue, revenge, and salvation, Lake News, the latest novel by best-selling author Barbara Delinsky, is a gripping tale sure to please her legions of loyal fans and earn her quite a few new ones.

Lily Blake is a quiet young woman leading a quiet life in Boston. She teaches music appreciation at a private academy, but her real love in life is playing piano and singing the old favorites at the Essex, an exclusive dining club which boasts among its members the newly installed Cardinal Fran Rossetti. Having known the cleric all her adult life, Lily considers the Cardinal one of her closest friends and advisors. But when Terry Sullivan, a devious newspaper reporter with a secret agenda, accuses her of having an affair with her dear friend, Lily becomes a pariah overnight.

Lily finds herself unable to return to her Boston apartment, where reporters are permanently camped out. Embarrassed by the false revelations, friends, neighbors, and employers begin to shun Lily, and she soon realizes she has no alternative but to escape to her hometown of Lake Henry. Vulnerable and wary, she makes the trip home. Once there, she must dodge sneaky reporters and confront old demons in the face of a cold and unloving mother and a town still whispering gossip about her youthful indiscretions.

John Kipling, the editor of the Lake News, knows all about the emotional trauma Lily Blake is going through. He used to be one of those rumor-mongering reporters in the big city himself, until one day it just got to be too much and he too retreated homeward, with trust issues and family problems of his own. But John knows just what to do to help Lily exact her revenge on the reporter who ruined her life and, in the process, gets a little redemption himself. He just didn’t plan on falling in love with Lily along the way.

Lake News has just enough mystery to keep readers on the edges of their seats, and just enough romance to make them all sigh.

Sharon Galligar Chance is senior book reviewer at the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Cheaters is a 368-page Jerry Springer moment. Both of Dickey’s main characters, Chante and Stephan, are poster children for dysfunctional people. Stephan is a self-described player although his game is a bit off. In fact, he gets caught at his own game and finds out what the wrath of a woman scorned can be. Chante, on the other hand, finds herself in between being dumped and being the other woman. Needless to say, these two misfits meet, feign disinterest, and fall rapidly into fledgling, drama-packed romance. The secondary characters are particularly intriguing. Dawn is an unsupportive wife. Darnell is her misunderstood husband and a struggling writer. Tammy is a creative spirit who captures Darnell’s imagination. What will happen? Will Darnell and Tammy cheat? Why? Why not? Readers will want to find out. Dickey’s best attribute is his ability to effortlessly capture the language of the Hip Hop generation. For example, after visiting a museum with Stephan, Chante says, We checked out Rhapsodies in Black, a phat [superb] showcase of art from the Harlem Renaissance. It’s this almost perfect intonation in this case, the right balance between colloquial and proper speech that makes Cheaters feel and sound real. Also, unlike many of his contemporaries, Dickey doesn’t rely on cheap tricks like placing Chante in designer clothing to signal her social status. Instead, we get class-based tension between Chante and her friend Karen, which allows for a richer narrative.

While Dickey opens interesting doors, readers are not always pulled through them a slight frustration. Issues such as class and cast are mentioned but not aptly dealt with. Still, Mr. Dickey didn’t set out to formally address such serious issues. Instead, Cheaters reads like a beach book it’s fun, full of raunchy behavior and great one-liners. One hopes real people don’t be have so badly. But, this reviewer will admit, it’s enjoyable to read about characters who do. Jerry Springer would gladly pay these characters to be on his show.

Crystal Williams is a poet in Ithaca, New York.