Thus begins the dreamlike meeting that changes Pasquale's life in Beautiful Ruins.  When Dee smiles at him, Pasquale falls in love, and "would remain in love for the rest of his life -- not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment."  However, Dee has a mysterious illness that may doom her to an unknown fate, and Pasquale realizes that he must take another path to do what is right in his life. 

      We next jump to the present time, when Claire, assistant to Michael Deane, Hollywood director, puts up with crazy film proposals on "Wild Pitch Friday." Her latest wild pitch is for "Donner!" based on the Donner party's last days, with a young wannabe screenwriter.  In the middle of the meeting, an older Italian gentleman shows up looking for her boss, in hopes of finding a film star he met many years ago, named Dee Moray.  Michael's long-ago connection to her is revealed, and it's a rather shady one.  Is she still alive?  

      The two sagas, of Pasquale's life in Italy and of the fate of the American actress, thus become intertwined in chapters alternating between the two time periods. This book is full of stories, richly peopled by colorful characters, all striving to find love and success, despite their failures and missed chances.  Along the way, Walter skewers aspects of modern culture, the current rage of reality TV shows, and Hollywood vanity,

      The theme of loss of beauty with the passage of time flows through the book. The beautiful ruins of Roman civilization, the lost town of Porto Vergogna, the ruined lives of once-famous stars Burton and Taylor, all must pass. Set in Italy, Hollywood, and the Pacific Northwest, Walter meditates on what is still left in the end, in this tragic, comic, and yet ultimately romantic novel. 

Told in loosely connected chapters, Girls in White Dresses follows Isabella, Lauren and Mary, along with a few of their friends, as they navigate the romantic and professional minefields in New York City while struggling to make meaningful lives for themselves.  The quirky characters are laugh-out-loud funny even as they discuss their fears of loneliness and failure and readers will likely relate.  While this is certainly familiar territory, first time author Jennifer Close brings highly capable writing, intelligent humor, and a fresh perspective.  A must read for fans of Carrie Bradshaw and Hannah Horvath.

Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

Now I did spend two weeks in Birmingham, Alabama awhile ago and learned a lot although I do realize that does not make me an expert on the South (that takes three weeks).  But I believe that the author has captured what small town life in the South was like.  Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society is about a particular time in Florida; the early 60s.  The story takes place in Collier County, near the Everglades, when Florida was still mostly the South and not a Northern retirement community.  In fact, at this time the Southerners were still suspicious of Northerners and other troublemakers; just ask Dora, a divorced woman working at the Post Office.  When Jackie Hart moved from Boston to Florida, she really stirred things up. Her husband was the business manager for the richest family in the area and even though she had children (which with a husband she had everything a decent woman needed), she was bored and unhappy.  So she decided to start a literary society.  Seven people showed up, all an outsider or outcast in some way.  Dora was divorced; Plain Jane wasn't even married; Mrs. Bailey White was a convicted murderer finally out of jail; Priscilla, a young black maid; Miss Lansbury a librarian, a newcomer to town, (only been there ten years); Robbie-Lee Simpson, a handsome gay man, and Jackie the Northerner.  The Literary Society with the books they chose to read were the catalysts for change.  The titles were The Feminine Mystique, Silent Spring; Their Eyes were Watching God, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Little Women.  I'll leave you to decide what the changes were in the characters and the little Florida town. Miss Dreamsville...is a funny, charming story that doesn't shy away from the difficult and volatile issues of the early sixties.  Enjoy.

Another popular book to retell is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  Sharon Shinn did a great sci-fi retelling several years ago called Jenna Starborn and now we have a new one:  Ironskin by Tina Connolly.

After the Great War between the humans and the fey, Jane Eliot was forced to wear an iron mask on her face to contain the fey curse she was struck by during the fighting.  When she goes to the household of enigmatic Edward Rochart as governess to his daughter, she discovers that not only is his daughter similarly cursed, but that there is much more going on in his artist studio that she originally supposed.

This gothic tale has the mysterious feel of Jane Eyre as well as some fantasy and steampunk thrown in.  It is a sort of reverse Beauty and the Beast tale--Jane's terrible scars are hidden behind an iron mask and Edward may be the only one who can release her from its curse.  If she dares, that is...

        Cheryl was only 22 when her mother died, much too quickly, of a fast-growing form of cancer. Cheryl had been very close to her mom, and the loss caused her life to unravel.  Her stepfather remarried; her brother and sister grew distant; and her own marriage began to disintegrate as she began casual affairs with other men. Four years later, her downward spiral brought her to the depths of drug abuse, when she made an impulsive decision. Despite little hiking and no backpacking experience, she planned a solo hike of the PCT from Mojave, California to the Oregon-Washington border. 

        Strayed's memoir is a highly revealing and intimate account of her solo odyssey.  Her lack of preparedness resulted in a back-breakingly heavy pack, too-small hiking boots that caused her feet to blister and bleed constantly, and near-disastrous lack of water and food. Her story is told with humor, grit, and suspense as she encounters snow, cold, hunger, fellow hikers, and creatures of the wild. She even lost her boots down a mountainside and hiked for miles with flimsy sandals duct-taped to her feet.

      Cheryl does indeed get lost, but always ends up found, due to the kindness of strangers and to her own intrepid nature, forging ahead despite setbacks. Her journey is a personal odyssey to pull herself from the depths of drugs and despair to find new strength. The exhilarating experience of the wilderness, the beauty and loneliness of the trail, are able to heal her and bring her back to the true self she had lost.

Alaska, 1920. 

After Mabel and Jack's only child died at birth, Mabel was desperate to flee from her grief, the pity of her extended family, and the haunting presence of other children. She talked Jack into leaving their farm in Pennsylvania for a homestead in Alaska, hoping that the isolation would provide relief.  It did not. Indeed, without the friendship and practical help of a neighboring family, they might have perished altogether.

At winter's first snowfall, a rare moment of levity brought a child into their lives, in a way.  Jack and Mabel made a snow girl that night, adorned with a red scarf that Mabel had knitted.  In the morning the scarf was gone.  They began to notice a girl in the woods, wearing the scarf, always accompanied by a red fox. Gradually they came to know this wild girl, named Faina.  Jack grew close to Faina, but Mabel wavered, remembering the old Russian folk tale of the snow child.  Faina seemed real enough, but nobody else in the area had seen her, and their friends worried for Mabel's sanity.   Was Faina real? Would she share the fate of the snow child in the folk tale?

These questions puzzled Mabel, and puzzle the reader as well, all the way through to the satisfying conclusion.  Robert Goolrick, the author of A Reliable Wife, summed up the tenor of this wonderful book: "If Willa Cather and Gabriel García Marquéz had collaborated on a book, The Snow Child would be it."

In Etgar Keret's story "Lieland," we meet Robbie, who has woven a web of lies since his childhood.  Those lies literally come back to haunt him, when his dreams become a reality.  As a kid, he told his mother a lie about getting beaten up by a mean red-headed boy who stole the money she gave him to buy cigarettes.  He'd really bought candy, and then buried the change under a rock in his back yard.  Years later, he dreams of his mother discovering his lie, and goes back to his childhood home to check under the rock.  And there he finds a portal to another world - Lieland, peopled with all the characters he made up in his lies.  The mean red-haired boy, a crippled dog, a sick aunt, and many other ones invented by others' lies. 

Etgar Keret's collection of stories, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, is an intriguing, slyly comic, and often haunting foray into the darker side of our lives. Keret, an Israeli author and filmmaker, has published six bestselling short story collections. The theme of a sudden knock on the door echoes throughout the book.  In the first, eponymous story, a writer is held captive by a Swedish bearded guy, a pizza guy, and a pollster, who he lets in after knocking, only to be forced, at gunpoint, to tell a really great story.  

And the writer does indeed tell some original, and often surreal stories.  In "What, Of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?" Yonaton comes up with a brilliant idea for a documentary film.  He decides to knock on the doors of everyday citizens and ask them what three wishes they would ask of a magic goldfish. With camera in tow, he goes door-to-door, questioning and filming people who open their doors to speak to him. Fortunately, most are cooperative, and tell him of their wishes for health, good fortune, or long life.  But he gets a real surprise when he knocks on the door of Sergei Goralick, a Russian emigre who had many unpleasant encounters with KGB spies, and is fiercely protective of his personal space and privacy.

 Short, darkly funny, original, and always thought-provoking, this is a collection of stories you won't want to miss.  

As Bit grows into adolescence, he is smitten with his companion and cohort, Helle.  She's rebellious and surly, and Bit is fascinated by her beauty and spunk.  As teenagers, they experiment with boundaries, but little authority is keeping watch over them.  As adult personalities clash, the commune foundation starts to crack.  Utopian ideas are not congruent among their leaders, and the future of Arcadia is up for debate.

While Bit's parents decide between staying and leaving their dream society, Bit ventures out into the real world.  How does his childhood in a commune prepare him for work and responsibilities of mainstream society?  Bit's sensitive side is overdue for a harsh reality, and his undying devotion to Helle, may prove to be more heartache than it's worth.

The tone in this novel is fascinating.  When Bit is young, and living in the commune, his thought processes are loose and fluid.  When Bit leaves the commune to join society, his perceptions are tight, concise and matter-of-fact.  Groff's ability to shift Bit's emotions, based on his environment, is clever and mesmerizing.