Lippman, Laura. Every Secret Thing.

NY: HarperCollins, 2003.

Six years ago, when sort-of best friends Alice and Ronnie were eleven years old and were sent home from a birthday party in disgrace, they kidnapped an infant from someone’s front yard on the spur of the moment. The baby died and the girls went to juvenile prison until they were legal adults.

McDermott, Alice. Child of My Heart.

NY: Farrar, Straus, 2002.

It’s around 1962 (I think) and Theresa, a fifteen-year-old only child, lives out at the end of Long Island with her older, Irish middle-class parents. They’ve moved as close as they could get to the Hamptons in the hope their daughter could somehow enter the wealthy upper classes by sheer propinquity.

Stallard, Patricia Y. Glittering Misery: Dependents of the Indian Fighting Army.

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992 (Ft. Collins, CO: Old Army Press, 1978).

In 1972, Stallard was completing a master’s degree in social history. Partly because of her family’s more than two centuries of involvement with the American military, and partly because of her own interest in the then-new field of “women’s studies,” she wrote her thesis not on the Regular Army itself during the post-Civil War conflicts with the Indians, but rather on the situation and experiences of the families that accompanied so many officers and even NCOs to their posts on the frontier.

Marsh, Ngaio. Surfeit of Lampreys.

London: Collins, 1941.

In the Golden Age of British mystery writing, the Big Three were Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Ngaio Marsh. I’ve always enjoyed Sayers, though I’ve equally found Christie nearly unreadable. But it baffles me that readers today who (like my wife) own all the works of the first two in paperback reprints and reread them regularly often haven’t even heard of Marsh,

Heyer, Georgette. Frederica.

London: Bodley Head, 1965.

This is one of Heyer’s later Regency romances and the plotting is somewhat more sophisticated than in many of her early works. It’s also one of her funniest books.

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette.

NY: Knopf, 2011.

The first two books in what seems likely to become a classic series were first-rate and it would have been easy for the author, now that she has gotten the attention of her adolescent market, to just crank out another half-dozen according to formula. Happily, she appears to be more interested in growing her characters and telling her readers things they need to hear.

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street.

NY: Knopf, 2008.

This is the second book about the four Penderwick sisters of Cameron, Massachusetts — Rosalind, Skye, Jane, ages twelve, eleven, and ten, and little Batty (short for Elizabeth), age four. It’s only a month since their return from their summer holiday, the story of which was told in the first book, and school is now upon them.

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks.

NY: Knopf, 2005.

I have a granddaughter just turned nine who has always read well beyond her theoretical level, and this book and its two sequels are presently her favorites. In fact, she insisted I read them. Probably not many adults without kids in the house read children’s books, but having been a public librarian all my life, I’m well used to reading almost anything and everything. (How else can you make suggestions to patrons?)

Munro, Alice. Selected Stories.

NY: Knopf, 1996.

To my mind, there are three great Canadian literary figures of my generation (more or less) — or, better, three giants of literature who happen to be Canadian. And that’s Richardson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro, all of whom brought Canadian literature onto the world stage. Munro is widely regarded, with complete justification, as possibly the best living creator of short stories in English. She’s been doing this stuff since the 1950s and is still going strong. She’s won all sorts of awards and she may yet snag a Nobel one of these days.

Hughes, Kathryn. The Victorian Governess.

London: Hambledon & London, 1993.

For Americans reading 19th century English novels, or modern historical novels set in that place and time, there are three British institutions that are foreign to one’s experiences and which often produce puzzlement: The public school, the gentleman’s club, and the governess. In the centuries before the reign of Queen Victoria, the upper classes in Britain fostered the notion of home education for the daughters of the family (since they weren’t destined for university), and the person who oversaw that education was the governess. With the coming of the Industrial Age and the rise of the (mostly) mercantile middle class, the use of governesses spread.