by Robert Olen Butler

The quiet heartbreak that anchors the novel: The day Michael and Kelly Hayes are supposed to finalize their divorce, they separately mourn—and long—for their shared past.

Where you'll travel: From the French quarter in New Orleans to a hoop-skirted historical ball on a Mississippi plantation.

What not to expect: The usual patient, slow unfolding of a story about marriage. This little novel is a page-turner—right up to the last page.

The sentence that had us at hotel: "They look at each other steadily for a long while and then somewhere about her eyes she shows the tiniest moon-ascension increment of a threshold smile, but it too holds and persists without pushing on and he does not have to deal with it, does not have to smile as well or be forced not to smile in return, it is a simple thing with no demands on him and his chest and arms and shoulders go quiet, his mind goes quiet, he knows he can be good with this woman and she can be good with him."

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