The Size of the World by Silber, Joan Joan Silber's new novel, The Size of the World, comprises six stories with linked themes, families and political realities, in settings ranging from Sicily during World War I to Siam in the 1920s, from Mexico during the Vietnam War to Bloomington, Ind., at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. To illustrate what she calls "the elusive connection between place and happiness" requires perfectly calibrated psychological insight and near-photographic descriptions of daily life in far-flung places, and Silber is a genius at this…No matter if, metaphorically, Silber reduces the world to the size of a marriage bed or of a letter announcing a death, her measured tone allows readers to see life as intimately knowable yet essentially mysterious…What's more, she is unwavering in her sympathies toward her characters, no matter how they've handled their lives. An hour after finishing The Size of the World, I was homesick for them. - Reviewed in the Washington Post

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Dean, Debra Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories--the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild--yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind--a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Horwitz, Tony Tony Horwitz fills in the blank (and decidedly bloody) century of American history between the voyage of Columbus in 1492 and the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620, breathing life back into forgotten Spanish conquistadors, Elizabethan colonists, and massacred Indians, dispelling historical myths and giving an additional nod to the Vikings, who settled briefly in Newfoundland around 1000 AD.--Arlene Cook, Watermark Book Co. (Anacortes, WA)