Told from the points of view of two sisters, A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman is a novel of love and loss, conflict and triumph. The narration alternates between Sky, the older sister, and Tara, some years younger and the child of her mother’s second marriage after Sky’s father dies at the age of thirty-four.

Through her memories, ninety-eight-year-old Grace Reeves Bradley tells the riveting, touching, and tense love story of her life and the lives of the aristocrats who employ her. The novel is set in England, primarily between World War I and World War II.

This is a coming-of-age story, told through the eyes of 13-year-old Hob (Robert), who by the end has matured into the young man Molly and her granddaughter knew he would become when on their travels eighteen months before they met him in the monastery where he, an orphan, had been raised and tutored by Father Athelstan.

Modelland Book CoverTookie De La Crème, AKA Forgetta-Girl, who aspires to become a Rememba-Girl, is the main character of Modelland, Tyra Banks’s first novel. It is set in the make-believe world of Modelland in Metopia. Tookie is a fifteen-year-old girl who longs to be noticed by anyone. One way she attempts to get attention is by lying down in the hallways of her school (B3), just hoping someone would step on her, proof she existed.

THE DISTANT HOURS by Kate Morton is historical fiction in true gothic style, replete with all of the elements of the genre: setting, plot, characters. The primary setting is Milderhurst Castle in Milderhurst Village, not far from London in England, between 1939 and 1992; a ruined castle complete with a moat that has been filled in, whispering walls, stormy nights; principal characters who are isolated from the rest of the outside world.

In Agenda’s November issue I briefly told you about Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, seven books published between 1991 and 2009, with the eighth and final in the series due out sometime in 2013. Since I started this series in September of last year, 2011, having been introduced to it when visiting my sister, I have not been able to put it down.

In 1945 after the end of WWII, Claire Beauchamp Randall, a nurse during the war, is reunited after six years with her husband, Frank Randall, who fought in the war, for a second honeymoon.

Lately it seems I have a run on unsympathetic characters. Two books I’ve read recently—one fiction and one non-fiction—have main characters that deserve pitying for their less than honest personalities.

Jodi Picoult’s 2011 bestseller, explores the question of same sex parenting. As always, her themes are about issues that can negatively impact the family structure. In this case, Picoult deals with the issue of in vitro fertilization, same sex marriage and adoption, religion, teen suicide, and others.

As always Follett demonstrates his great faith in and respect for women and their intelligence and strength of courage. Lady Maude of England and Ethel Williams, Welsh peasant and former head housekeeper of Ty Gwyn, Maude’s family estate, are two such characters. In addition he demonstrates the intelligence and courage of the young men of these countries, who though formally uneducated, often show greater wit and intelligence than their superiors, both on the battlefield and in the political arena.