O’Connor has written a love letter to our youth, a book that will provoke meaningful conversations between kids and their adults, and a book that will inspire future peacemakers and encourage a new generation of activists.

Paulette Jiles vividly brings to life the lawless Texas frontier of the 1870s and juxtaposes it against the noble Captain and his touching relationship with Joanna. You will want to read it through in one sitting but spare your nerves. There are gunfights and outlaws and villains aplenty in NEWS OF THE WORLD, but you will be heartened by the spirited duo that traverse the four-hundred-mile journey together to find their place in the world.

The horrors of Auschwitz are all here: the sadistic and heartless guards, the gas chambers and crematoriums, the unending cattle cars delivering unbelievable numbers of people, and of course Josef Mengele, infamous for his inhumane medical experimentation on camp prisoners. In spite of these horrors, the story of Lale and Gita Sokolov has something else – something that no one, not Mengele, not an SS officer, not even death, could take from them—love. Lale’s courage, determination, and unflagging hope are inspirational.

As an Emmy-award winning writer for Seinfeld and the Ellen Show, Goldman has an ear for dialogue. His comedic roots show through in the banter between Nils and his partner Ellegaard. He’s created some memorable characters in addition to Nils and Ellegaard: Jameson, a former Canadian football player cum nurse practitioner, is hired by Nils’ ex-wife Micaela to dress Nils’ wounds – and he offers some comedic relief in some of the more tense moments of the investigation.

The North Korean’s in Barbara Demick’s 2009 Nothing to Envy call themselves “frogs in a well” referring to a third-century Tao parable in which the frog at the bottom of the well is perfectly happy living in his dank and dark pit until he meets a sea turtle that tells him of the glories of the ocean. Nothing to Envy chronicles the lives of six defectors: a kindergarten teacher, a university student, a middle-aged factory worker and her daughter, a pediatrician, and an orphan from Chongjin, an industrial and mining center in the north.

Virgil Wander is a story filled with tall tales and quiet ambition and reminded me of the Tim Burton movie, The Big Fish. If you’re a fan of magical realism, second chances, and the power of stories, check out Virgil Wander at your favorite bookstore or library.

Krueger takes a poke at corporate money and politics, as well as mining and the environment. There is action, adventure, and suspense, but woven throughout is a deeper, quieter message: one about family and nature and how closely we are connected to each other and the earth.

Using the evocative backdrop of the Boundary Waters wilderness, Mejia explores the myriad of ways we can become lost – physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She expertly weaves together the back stories of Maya and Lucas to an electrifying and ultimately satisfying conclusion. Mejia’s characters are real – flawed and messy, with complicated families and punk-dyed hair. They make choices that leave you clawing at the air, wishing you could pull them back from the cliff . . . and in the Boundary Waters, there are plenty of cliffs.

Pachinko is a story for our times – the story of a family that rises above the limitations placed upon them by people and governments, to make not only a home, but a life.

Painter is a dreamer and a realist. Anyone who has ever had a dream deferred, anyone who appreciates art or wants to learn more about art, will enjoy Painter’s memoir, Old in Art School.

In Tara Westover's Educated, A Memoir, she recounts her fundamentalist Mormon upbringing in the shadow of Buck's Peak in Idaho. She grew up hearing stories of families being gunned down by federal agents, and her father's proselytizing about the impending end of the world.

As always, Stonich’s descriptions of the landscape are richly drawn and imbued with the scents, sounds, and sights of the northern Minnesota landscape. She is at the height of her powers in describing a rent in the Divide where Alpo escapes to fish one last time before his wedding: “The cavern opens to a dank bowl of low wetland anchored with hooked cedars. One end of the pool spills down into it, a sheet of water the width of a car. It foams upon impact but settles smooth a few yards into its course. Where the stream meets a boulder, it splits neatly in two to flow in opposite directions.”

In Warlight, Ondaatje examines a theme that occurs throughout much of his body of work – “The lost sequence in a life,” he writes, “Is the thing we always search out.” He reminds us that often it is only through the refracted lens of adulthood, that we can truly understand the past.

O’Farrell’s point is clear. Any of us could be one breath away from dying, and it is in recognizing this, that Maggie O’Farrell has learned to appreciate living – breath by breath, moment by moment, day by day. And after her daughter survives yet another brush with death, she whispers, She is, she is, she is.