The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

 This is a story about the 1930's but if you trade homeless for Okies, climate crisis for dust bowl and socialist fears for red scare - it could be today.  In fact such a comparison is at the root of the author's incentive to write the book.  It is also a story of incredible strength in the face of horrible conditions. Elsa comes from a wealthy but restrictive family in Texas. Circumstances find her in love with farming and the land.  The drought forces her and her two young children to head to California hoping for a new chance.  What they find is abject poverty, cruel land owners, and a local community that resents them.  They respond with friendship, resiliency and bravery.  Elsa's fierce determination to provide for her children must be duplicated numerous times in today's world of severe economic inequality. It makes you ask, "Have we learned nothing?"

The Maid by Nita Prose

I couldn't put this book down but can't tell you why.  The writing isn't brilliant.  It feels like a mystery but some things are pretty predictable.  I think it is just because you really want Molly to win.  Molly is a maid at the Regency Hotel - a job she loves.  Molly has always been "different" - "on the spectrum" maybe.  Life can be mostly negotiated using the rules laid down by the boss she admires and her gran who has been her guiding light all of her life.  The death of her gran has made her life lonely and difficult but it is the shock of finding one of the hotel's residents dead in his bed that sets her life spinning.  Molly's very literal interpretation of the world makes her the prime suspect and you, as the reader,  just keep pulling for her - ready to throw the book across the room if the world doesn't make this right.  Reader Alert - I was able to return the book to the library unharmed.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

 As much as this sounds like a 1950's road trip adventure, it is not - although at moments it does have a bit of a Three Musketeers feel.  It is all about the delightful characters and a little about the plight of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and vice versa.  Emmett Watson, 18 years old, has been released from a juvenile work camp where he was sent for accidentally killing another young man in a fight.  His release has followed the death of his father and the loss of their Kansas farm.  Mom disappeared long ago so Emmett is now the sole caretaker of his very precocious brother Billy whose guiding hope for the future is a book -  Professor Abernathy's Compendium of Heroes, Adventures, and Other Intrepid Travelers - stories that stretch as far back as Ulysses.  The plan - to head to California on the Lincoln Highway in the only thing they own - a baby blue Studebaker.   Unfortunately two of Emmett's bunk mates turned escapees arrive to derail that plan.  Duchess, son of a former vaudevillian, operates under a questionable moral code but a clear sense of balance between right and wrong.  Woolly is a gentle, confused soul who has drifted far from his wealthy Northeastern roots. They get in trouble.  They get saved.  They head east instead of west.  They make mistakes.  They meet heroes.  And there are many more interesting characters to meet along the way including Professor Abernathy himself. Towles has an amazing ability to draw you into his world.  This is a  novel worthy to follow the wonderful Gentleman in Moscow.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

 So if we can agree that race is a social construct and not a real thing, how do we feel about color? 
An ex-slave created the town of Mallard, Louisiana where only light-skinned blacks may live.  Twins Stella and Desiree Vignes are raised there.  Both run away to New Orleans - one bristling at the absurdity of color discrimination - the other hoping to "pass".  They go on to lead very separate lives very far away from each other.  Then Desiree returns to Mallard with her very dark skinned daughter Jade.   As it turns out the world is a very small place and no matter how far you run, it is never really "away".  Which raises the next question - How much about who we are is about who we have been? Identity, abuse, family are all explored in the 50 some years of this family saga but for me as the reader, exploring identity from the inside of these two sisters was eye opening.  I don't know how many times I said to myself, "I never thought about it that way".  I have always maintained that every book is a conversation between the author, the characters and the reader.  This conversation was definitely worth having.

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

 This might be the most romantic book ever!  Floating down the rivers and canals of France in a book store on a barge - sign me up!  Jean Perdu's floating bookstore is called The Literary Apothecary where books are organized by the emotion they evoke - and Perdu has the uncanny knack of matching the book with the reader.  He has not been so successful in his own life having lost his one great love.  Then events require that both the barge and Perdu break free from their Seine River moorings and adventure and self discovery begin.  Within the main story is the diary of Manon, Perdu's lost love.  Such sadness! Such joy! Such scenery.!  Such food!  An unopened letter, a mysterious author,  love lost, love found - pure escapist delight!  You cannot be sad at the end of this book.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

 It is hard to imagine actually creating a dictionary and that very process imagined in this story is mind boggling. Just the dates alone hint at the monumental task: 1857 - a call for a new dictionary to replace Samual Johnson's 1755 version; 1879 - James Murray named editor; 1888 - first volume, A and B, is published; 1928 - V to Z is published, 71 years later.  

This is the story of all the years in between the beginning and end of that first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary but mostly the story of Esme.  Her father was one of the men working on the dictionary.  Her mother had died so Esme spent many hours under the writing tables of the "Scriptorium" watching the slips of paper filled with words drift around her.  Later she would become part of the dictionary creating team.  But the events of her life outside the world of words brought her to the realization that the words and definitions that went into the dictionary were greatly dependent on who put them there.   The lives of the underclass,  the demands of the suffragettes, women of all classes - this was a vocabulary that was easily overlooked by a committee of educated white men.  That connection between words and the world they describe - that one might shape the other - well, those are just some things to think about.  There is a lot of real history in this work of fiction.  It is a great companion read to Simon Winchester's The Madman and the Professor. By the way, the second edition of the OED wasn't published until 1989,  61 years after the first. 

The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli

 The portrait in question is "Portrait of a Lady with Ermine" by Leonardo da Vinci.  One story takes place in Milan in 1492 when the Duke of Milan commissions a portrait of his 16 year old mistress.  Think court intrigue, artistic drama and one feisty young woman.  The other story begins in Munich in 1939.  Edith is a talented but shy art conservator at the Alte Pinakothek Museum.  She is honored to be ask to make a presentation about the art collection owned by single family.  Her audience turns out to be  a group of important men in Hitler's inner circle but when the unthinkable becomes the reality of Hitler's Germany, she feels responsible for what she fears is a great mistake.  At great risk she makes a connection with an American soldier who is one of the Monuments Men and so begins a new chapter in the story of this very famous painting.  Wonderfully imagined historical fiction.