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Betsy's New Favorites

“Faithful” by Alice Hoffman is penetrating tale of redemption after tragedy. Shelby is a fun loving, popular teen who is in an accident in which her friend is injured so severely that she is in a permanent comatose state. Shelby, who was driving the car that crashed, is nearly destroyed by her guilt. She hides out in her parent’s basement and shaves her head. She spends three months in a mental institution. Then she goes to Manhattan to live with a boy she doesn’t love and gets a job in a pet store where she meets Maravelle, a single mom with three kids. Maravelle believes in Shelby and—But I’ve told you too much already! Read it—there’s so much more to the story! And it’s beautifully written! 

“The Mothers” by first time novelist, Brit Bennett, is compelling story of a black community, observed by a group of older women members of the Upper Room chapel. The pastor’s son gets Nadia, a local teenager, pregnant and decides that, to save her and his future, she needs to get an abortion. He gets her the money and takes her to the clinic and then abandons her. Nadia is still reeling from her mother’s suicide only month’s before and her father hasn’t a clue about helping Nadia deal with any of it. Nadia leaves town and achieves her dreams, always with the painful questions, “What would my child have been like?” Only long after, do the members of the town find out their secret wasn’t really secret from “The Mothers.” 

“Ballroom” by Anna Hope is a book that will haunt you. The setting is an asylum in 1911 Britain. The principle characters are John and Ella—both of them committed against their will. They only meet once a week when the staff permits them to attend a dance in the ballroom. Their secretly delivered letters fan the love that sparked in the ballroom. The supporting characters include a fellow inmate who reads the letters to Ella and then composes “her” responses and a doctor who is smitten with the idea taking hold that year in London—the castration of the poor and mentally unstable. The suspense is almost unbearable and the writing is superb. 

“The Mistletoe Secret” by Richard Paul Evans will keep you in suspense until its predictable happy ending. Hey! It’s Richard Paul Evans! Alex Bartlett, a travelling salesman living in Florida is still at loose ends after his marriage ended in divorce a year before we meet him in the book. He browses the Internet for something to take his mind off his loneliness and comes across a blogger who seems as lonely as he feels and expresses it in a series of blogs that move him to try a connect with her. He takes a few clues from her blogs that lead him to believe she must live in a small town in Utah. He goes there and, after a series of miss-starts, they meet and...well, you know the rest. It’s a sweet and satisfying Christmas story. 

“Fates and Traitors” by Jennifer Chiaverini is well researched historical fiction about John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Lincoln, and the women who loved the murderer. His mother, who indulged his moods, his sister who tried and failed to understand him, the senator’s daughter who believed in him, and the landlady who helped him escape—all these are depicted convincingly in “Fates and Traitors.” It’s hard to believe how suspenseful this book is—even when we all know the outcome.