Isn't it sad to be so privileged?

Deliciously dark and dangerous.

How being unseen can help you be heard.

A sitcom-ish tale of a mixed-race family obsessed with British royalty.

A sharp and funny romantic tale.

Asks the question many long-marrieds barely dare to contemplate.

This tale of a politician's sex scandal is witty and smart, as expected from the author of In Her Shoes.

Will she have her own baby this time? Stay tuned....

Ginny Selvaggio, avid amateur cook and devotee of online culinary community Kitcherati, realizes that there's something different about her. She may never be officially diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome, but in The Kitchen Daughter (Gallery), 26-year-old Ginny is known by friends and family to be challenged as well as challenging. Then her parents die suddenly, and Ginny takes refuge in her favorite room—not to mention solace in the meals she can make there. Jael McHenry writes passionately about food and foodies—"If it had to be an olive his skin would be a cured Arbequina." More impressive, not one of her novel's plotlines—whether about an enraged ghost, an act of charity, or a fumbling flirtation between Ginny and her housekeeper's grief-stricken son, David—ends predictably. While Ginny is wonderfully single-minded about cooking, her fresh, sharp story has as many layers as a good pâte à choux.

"Everyone is somewhere else," declares the 14-year-old narrator of Jo Ann Beard's In Zanesville (Little, Brown). She's not just talking about the goings-on in her hometown (which her best friend, Flea, calls Insanesville); she's talking emotional displacement, too, as she attempts to navigate the tenuous territory between the weight of her parents' generation and what are supposed to be the most exciting years of her life. It's the 1970s, and the world is changing; everything she once took for granted begins to fall apart. Seriously, who would've thought she'd find herself estranged from Flea and schmoozing with the cheerleaders? Despite the unsettling and intriguing nature of this turn of events, our nameless narrator finds solace in Shakespeare—"'Tis new to thee"—and resolves to look forward. Masterfully wrought, in such a way as to make an oft-told tale feel new, this novel is at times downright hilarious and often hold-your-breath-and-hope-for-the-best suspenseful. The restraint with which Beard deploys moments of tension and humor makes each page glimmer like the frozen cornfields at dusk in which the narrator wanders and thinks, "We're on the moon out here, except the moon is up there."

In Caroline Leavitt's suspenseful ninth novel, Pictures of You, two women flee their marriages on the same September day.

Girls go wild for David Cassidy in this funny, tender novel about first love—and whether we ever really grow out of it.

Set in suburban California, this witty debut novel features bed-hopping parents who get into more trouble (and have more fun) than their kids.

Desperate to keep his teenage daughter out of trouble, a man looks up the woman who abandoned them both years earlier, in the latest novel by the popular author of The Pilot's Wife.

When a baby's mother dies, a Dublin community bands together to care for the infant and keep her out of foster care. Joyful, quintessential Binchy.

The Dominican-American woman at the center of this engaging novel finds her peaceful suburban life interrupted when an old lover tries to win her back.

Michele Owens reviews The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton for O, The Oprah Magazine

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Cathleen Medwick reviews The Piano Teacher, Janice Y.K. Lee's intensely readable debut novel about an attractive Englishman and a Hong Kong socialite.

Pam Houston reviews Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout for O, The Oprah Magazine

Cathleen Medwick reviews Beginner's Greek by James Collins for O, The Oprah Magazine

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Vince Passaro reviews Lush Life by Richard Price for O, The Oprah Magazine

Cathleen Medwick reviews One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell.

Cathleen Medwick reviews The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer for O, The Oprah Magazine

Cathleen Medwick reviews Appassionata by Eva Hoffman, an eloquent, insightful love story.

A wry, raw roller coaster of a memoir about a marriage gone kaput.

Pam Houston reviews In the Kitchen by Monica Ali, a steamy bouillabaisse of a novel.

Patricia Volk reviews What Was I Thinking?, a funny and smart collection of dating horror stories.

Cathleen Medwick reviews Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton, a lightly literary tour de farce.

Cathleen Medwick reviews The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller for O, The Oprah Magazine

Cathleen Medwick reviews Goldengrove by Francine Prose.

Cathleen Medwick reviews The Widows of Eastwick, a mischievous updating of Updike's 1984 book, The Witches of Eastwick.

Cathleen Medwick reviews The Women by T.C. Boyle, a novel deconstructing the private lives (and wives, etc.) of the revolutionary 20th-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Cathleen Medwick reviews Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter for O, The Oprah Magazine

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