The Second Life of Mirielle West by Amanda Skenandore

 In the 1920's America's only "leper colony" was in Carville, Louisiana.  Leprosy at the time was still misunderstood, considered highly contagious and reason to force those suffering from it out of society and into the prison like confines of the Carville hospital and residence.  Enter Mirielle West, troubled mother of two and wife of a Hollywood personality whose career could not stand the stigma of a wife with leprosy.  Her gruesome journey from one LA to another LA, the courage of the people she encounters at Carville and the true science and history of the disease form the bones of the story.  She finds friendship, a purpose and even love in the most unlikely of places.  Not very sophisticated writing but the characters are engaging and historical fiction never ceases to surprise me with people and places I never knew existed.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

 Too thoughtful to be called chick lit. Too funny to be a treatise on feminist awakening in the '50s and '60s.  Let's just say the humor is used to expose the hypocrisy and irrational sexism of that period. Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant chemist in spite of a spotty educational path and abuse by her male colleagues. Through workplace theft and then "out on the town" vomit, she meets her soulmate, brilliant chemist Calvin Evans. They make chemistry and baby Madeline, aka Mad.  Because someone steals Mad's much superior lunches, Elizabeth ends up on a TV food program that is mostly a chemistry lesson but really a wakeup call to the hibernating intelligence of the women who watch. Oh and there is a dog named six-thirty who knows about 900 words and everything about humans.  An unlikely but you-wish-it-worked-like this read.

What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad

 Amir is nine when he follows Quiet Uncle onto a boat filled with asylum seekers leaving the coast of Africa and headed to Greece. He is the one person left alive when the bodies wash ashore a small Greek island.  But he must still run. He is rescued by 15 yr old Vanna who hopes to guide him to a safe place.  They do not speak each others language but it does not keep them from understanding each other.  What to do with these books - stories of refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers? Tragic, horrifying, inspiring stories.  What do the authors want of us? Empathy? Knowledge?  Help? A solution? All the positions on the asylum seeker issues are  here. Resentment. Compassion. Ignorance.  The writing is outstanding but the ending is a challenge.

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

 In the 1840's England and Ireland made a practice of emptying the inmates of  prisons like notorious Newgate  onto ships and sending them to the island colonies - in this case Tasmania then called Van Diemen's Island. The story of one such experience begins with Evangeline, falsely accused of theft to preserve the reputation of a wealthy family in London and ends with her daughter Ruby almost 30 years later.  In between we learn of the horrific conditions in prisons, slaver ships, and orphanages. But there is also the gift of friendship. Olivia, tough and big hearted, nurtures baby Ruby.  Hazel, the healer becomes both protector and mother to the child. Dr. Dunne observes the horrible situation of all the women and becomes a reformer.  
But that is just one side of the Tasmanian history examined here.  There is also the story of the Aboriginal people whose culture was destroyed by the British colonists.  We learn about Mathinna.  Although Palawa royalty and English educated, she is kept as a "trained pet" by the local British governor and then discarded - no longer able to fit in either world. 
A large portion of the white population on the continent of Australia is descended from these early convict settlers. Kline has done extensive research to explore the affect this history has had on this part of the world as well as the social injustice inherent anywhere that embraces the notion of social entitlement.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

 Diana and Finn have planned a trip to the Galapagos.  She is a rising star at Sotheby's and he is an exhausted resident at a NYC hospital.  Just as they are ready to leave, Covid is identified.  Finn is told he cannot leave because the hospital is anticipating many cases - little do they know.  Finn encourages Diana to go anyway - why waste both tickets and he will be too busy to play if she stays home.  Diana arrives at the hotel on the island just as the world shuts down.  No way home.  Sketchy communication.  One handsome English speaker to talk to.  Left with lots of time to think, she begins to reevaluate her life, her carefully laid out plans, what in life is really important, And so the story goes - but maybe not really.  There is a catch but I'll not even give a hint here.

The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer

 This looked interesting because it was based on some real facts and. well, it was the Mona Lisa.  However there is a whole lot of fiction happening in an attempt to connect the fact dots.  Luke Perrone is an art history professor who decides to spend a summer in Italy researching his grandfather - the man accused of stealing the Mona Lisa in 1914. It turns out that in the world of rare art dealing, a lot of other people are interested in what he may find.  People are murdered, people fall in love, forgeries seem to be everywhere,  - it's a mystery.  Is the painting hanging in the Louvre the real DaVinci painting?  Maybe - maybe not.

The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman

 One of many novels that will likely draw comparisons between the 1918 flu epidemic and the recent Covid epidemic.  Pia is a 13 yr. old German immigrant.  Her father goes to fight in WWI and her mother dies of the flu.  To try and find food for her infant twin brothers, she places them for safety in a cubby behind a bedroom wall and looks for help.  First stop is the apartment of Finn, an Irish immigrant who is her best friend.  When no one answers the door, she suspects the worse and heads out to the ravaged city of Philadelphia.  While searching, she falls victim to the flu that can strike and kill in minutes.  Six days later she awakes with no idea what has happened to her brothers.  She is driven by her hope that they survived and her need to find them.
Beatrice Groves lives in the same apartment building as Pia.  She is grief stricken by the death of her infant son.  This, mixed with her hatred of the crowds of immigrants entering the country, drives her to unthinkable acts of selfishness and cruelty.  And so their stories begin to intertwine.  There is so much depressing detail - rotting bodies, cruel orphanages, the orphan train, separated families - it was hard to believe there could possibly have been a happy ending.