Florence Gordon by Brian Morton

A finalist for the 2014 Kirkus Award, this was a short and easy read about an interesting elderly feminist.  Here's the Kirkus Review:

Unexpected celebrity and long-absent family members distract a heroically cantankerous 1960s-era activist in the summer of 2009 as she reluctantly confronts the challenges of age.
Morton (Breakable You, 2006, etc.) returns to the world of writers with Florence Gordon, a feisty literary lioness of the U.S. feminist movement. At 75, she has a just-published book that’s languishing, and despite years away from the limelight, she's embarked on a memoir only to learn that her longtime editor is retiring. No matter: She treasures her solitude and “having fun trying to make the sentences come right.” Yet fame befalls her in the form of a top critic’s review of her book in the New York Times. Family matters also intrude. Her ex-husband, a vicious burned-out writer, demands that she use her contacts to get him a job. Her son and his wife are back in New York after years in Seattle. Their daughter, Emily, helps Florence with research and almost warms up the “gloriously difficult woman.” Then the matriarch’s health begins to nag her with strange symptoms. While Florence dominates the book, “each person is the center of a world,” as Emily thinks, and Morton brings each member of the small Gordon clan to life at a time when there is suddenly much to discover about their world. He’s also strewn the novel with references to books and writers and the craft itself, which is appropriate for the somewhat rarefied setting—Manhattan’s historically liberal, bookish Upper West Side, where Morton’s characters often dwell—and a treat for anyone keen on literary fiction.
Always a pleasure to read for his well-drawn characters, quiet insight and dialogue that crackles with wit, Morton here raises his own bar in all three areas. He also joins a sadly small club of male writers who have created memorable heroines.

This was a really good find!

Before, During, After by Richard Bausch

I first read Richard Bausch years and years ago and remember that I really liked his writing. At this point, I am not even sure what the book was (I think Violence) but I do recall that he was an author that I sought out.
This book did not disappoint!

This is "a gorgeously rendered, passionate account of a relationship threatened by secrets, set against the backdrop of national tragedy. When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquility of the nation's summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha's inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into "before" and "after." They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion. In prose that is direct, exact, and lyrical, Richard Bausch plumbs the complexities of public and personal trauma, and the courage with which we learn to face them. Above all, Before, During, After is a love story, offering a penetrating and exquisite portrait of intimacy, of spiritual and physical longing, and of the secrets we convince ourselves to keep even as they threaten to destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America's most distinguished storytellers."

Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer takes a community service position helping an elderly woman named Vivian clean out her home. Molly discovers that she and Vivian are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past.
This book was entertaining, but predictable.
On the subject of orphan trains, I much prefer The Chaperone by Laura Moriarity.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Toibin is a fabulous writer....
The NYTimes describes his talent so well.

The story of a middle-aged widow struggling to remake her life after the premature death of her husband, it is written without a single physical description of its characters or adverbial signpost to guide our interpretation of their speech. The emotional distance between protagonist and reader is so great that at times the title character seems almost spectral. Yet it is precisely Toibin’s radical restraint that elevates what might have been a familiar tale of grief and survival into a realm of heightened inquiry. The result is a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical.

after I read the novel and went back to read this review, I realized that I had NO idea what Nora looks like.  I can imply through passages what she may look like, but it's strictly MY interpretation of her actions and of the narrative that lead my to draw my own conclusions. It's really a remarkable piece of writing. Very different from Brooklyn, which I also loved.

Nothing "happens" in this novel. Rather it is just that Toibin is describing life as it happens to most of us.....little events going on each day that add up to transforming us.  Nora's transformation comes from her interest in music...something that could not happen when Maurice was alive.  But in the end it's what helps her move from that part of her life to the next part...her life without him.

A very interesting read. Quiet, profound, touching....

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Boy, do I love this author's writing....the second book in about a month of hers that I have read. I liked "The Little Stranger," but I LOVED "The Paying Guests."
The story is gripping, the writing impeccable, the characters deep and interesting.
Some quotes:

NPR "One of the year's most engrossing and suspenseful novels...a love affair, a shocking murder, and a flawless ending ... Will keep you sleepless for three nights straight and leave you grasping for another book that can sustain that high."

From Westchester Library System Review:

 It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa-a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants-life is about to be transformed as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. With the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the "clerk class," the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances's life-or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times, Sarah Waters has earned a reputation as one of our greatest writers of historical fiction, and here she has delivered again. A love story, a tension-filled crime story, and a beautifully atmospheric portrait of a fascinating time and place, The Paying Guests is Sarah Waters's finest achievement yetFro

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley

I wanted to love this book.....but I just didn't.  I thought it would be much more about Russia, but it wasn't.  It was highly recommended....but it didn't do it for me. I did finish it, but reluctantly.
Other people really like it so here is a review from Publisher's Weekly:

Nicola Marter has the gift of psychometry-the ability to touch an object and discover information about its previous owners. Her grandfather's adamant instructions to never reveal her abilities, coupled with the negative reactions from those who do not understand her, has Nicola eager to keep her talent a secret. Margaret Ross appears at Nicola's artifacts and art gallery with a small carving of a bird, called the Firebird, and claims the item was given to her ancestor, Anna, by Peter the Great's wife, the Empress Catherine of Russia. Once Nicola holds the Firebird, she sees a vision of Anna with the Empress and realizes the carving could bring Margaret, who is in dire need of money, a fortune. Determined to help Margaret and prove the authenticity of the Firebird, Nicola enlists the help of Rob, who also has the same psychic abilities as Nicola's, only stronger. Following Anna's path, Nicole and Rob find themselves crossing Scotland, Belgium, and Russia, taking the reader on a journey spanning the Jacobite Rising of 1715 and its aftermath. Historical novelist Kearsley (The Rose Garden) wonderfully weaves past, present, and paranormal in this enjoyable adventure. 

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarity

"A murder... a tragic accident... or just parents behaving badly? What's indisputable is that someone is dead. But who did what? Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads: Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline's youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline's teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline's ex-husband over her.  Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn't be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all."

 I was skeptical when I read about this book when it first came out. I read Liane's other recent book and thought it was OK, but this one really was good. Very scathing indictment of the "helicopter parent" scene and a good look at domestic violence and how women rationalize and cover it up.