A PRISONER OF BIRTH by Jeffrey Archer

I heard Archer speak here in Toronto in the Spring. He was charming and thoughtful and unflinchingly honest about his time in prison: apparently nothing quite focuses the writing mind like a 6 by 10-foot cell you share with a stranger.

This most recent novel follows the fate of the wrongfully convicted Danny Cartwright who is sentenced to 22 years in the highest-security prison in England for the murder of his best friend, who just happens to be his fiancee Beth's brother. Danny shares a cell with the erudite and kindly Nick Moncrieff who helps him to navigate his way through the prison hierarchy to a safe job in the prison library.

Brimming with insider allure, and enough red herrings to make your head ache, Archer's latest book will have diehard fans clamoring for more of the same.

THE BOOK OF AIR AND SHADOWS by MIchael Gruber

A fire damages a rare bookshop in NYC and the calfskin covers to one of the water soaked collectibles reveals what appears to be an authentic 17th letter written by a spy to his wife on his deathbed. In a sad and bizarre game of "finders-keepers" several people are prepared to kill for the potential to find the most valuable literary find in history--a previously unknown Shakespeare play about Mary Queen of Scots that is penned in the bard's own hand.

There are twists aplenty in this thriller that involves a wannabe film student, a bookbinder, an intellectual property lawyer, a Swiss heiress, a former Polish spy and an NYC librarian. I couldn't put it down. Gruber knows how to pace a narrative and to drive it to the brink.

THE MAN WHO FORGOT HOW TO READ by Howard Engel

Though Engel is known more for his Benny Cooperman detective novels, this little memoir covers the time following a stroke Engel suffered one midsummer morning and the rare condition he suffered from called alexia sine agraphia: while he could still write, he could no longer read. When he picked up the copy of the Globe and Mail, the letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves together.

In addition to not being able to read--a lifeline to the outside world since he was a young boy-- Engel's memory failed him. Names of old friends, the street names in his neighbourhood, the difference between appels and grapfruit all eluded him.

Engel contacted renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks for advice and began to learn how to read all over again.

CHEATING AT CANASTA by William Trevor

Though I do not typically reach for collections of short fiction, I did pick up this copy at the library because Trevor is a master of the genre and the title intrigued me. In this particular group of stories you travel around the world, alighting briefly in Paris or at the infamous "Harry's Bar" in Venice.

What Trevor does most impressively is inhabit the characters about whom he writes. He can be equally convincing as a recent widower or as the cuckolded wife observing her husband's tryst.

3 mysteries worth your while

Ian Rankin, Donna Leon and Minette Walters have all established themselves as superb crime fiction writers. If you want to visit another country without leaving the comfort of your favourite oversized armchair pick up any one of their novels where place plays a character and establishes mood as much as their detectives.

SET IN DARKNESS follows Rebus through Edinburgh as it is set to become the home for the first Scottish parliament in three centuries. As Queensbury House is being renovated, builders uncover a body behind a fireplace wall, that has been there for some time. However, at the same time there are two fresh kills, one of whom is a previously hopeful candidate for a parliament seat, and Rebus has to figure out if any of these crimes are possibly linked. Fast-paced and brimming with Rankin regulars like Rebus's nemesis Big Ger Cafferty, SET IN DARKNESS will make you a surefast Rankin fan.

In Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti confronts the grisly sight of the corpse of a young foreigner as he is dragged from the canal in Donna Leon's DEATH IN A STRANGE COUNTRY. All clues point to a violent mugging, but Brunetti believes the truth is far more sinister. And, as usual, he's right.

Minette Walters's THE TINDER BOX is set in a small Hampshire village where an elderly villager and her live-in caregiver are brutally murdered and where one of the neighbours is immediately accused because of his past history and because of the built-in animosity that the locals have towards the Irish immigrants. Lies unite all of the suspects, but the truth is even more frightening in this psychological thriller that you will polish off in one sitting.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE by Mary Lawson

I loved Mary Lawson's first novel CROW LAKE, so was pleased to find her second one staring at me from the Best Bets shelf at my local branch of the Toronto Public Library yesterday.

Again set in Ontario's northern landscape, in a small fictional town called Struan, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE bridges generations in its dual narratives in the years of WWII and then in the 60s. You get to know well the rivalry between Arthur and Jake Dunn, brothers who are distinctly different in the way they view their world and the way they treat the people in it.

In the present of the novel you begin to understand the nature of that rivalry through the eyes of an outsider, Ian Christopherson, the town doctor's son, who goes to work as a farmhand for Arthur in order to be close to his beautiful and gentle wife Laura with whom he has a typically teenish obsession. It is there over the course of several summers that Ian discovers the secret that will ultimately tear the Dunn family apart.

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by MItch Albom

MItch Albom, by chance, is flipping the t.v. channels when he hears the voice of his undergraduate professor Morrie Schwartz talking about his diagnosis of Lou Gehrig's disease. He gets in touch with Morrie after two decades and what emerges is this little book about "life's greatest lesson,"--how to live and how to die.

Albom records all of his visits with Morrie and the discussions they had about love, marriage, children, dancing and dying. He decides to publish the pieces to help pay for Morrie's health care and the little book about their conversations and their friendship was translated into 31 languages, becoming an international bestseller spreading millions of copies around the world.

If you want to feel good about being human and the beauty of life especially in its frailty, read TUESDAY'S WITH MORRIE, and be prepared to weep.

THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls

I picked this memoir up in the airport on my way to New York a couple of weeks ago. It is a remarkable achievement. Walls manages to write about the extreme poverty in which she and her siblings were raised by two very eccentric parents. Their lives were deeply dysfunctional and extraordinarily vibrant.

What astonished me about the Walls children was their resilience and their sure belief in each other that they would eventually escape the shocking depravity they were forced by their parents to endure.

THE GLASS CASTLE is an unflinching and brave account without an ounce of self-pity. It is on my list of top ten books I've read this year.

HOW TO BE GOOD by Nick Hornby

I've been a fan of Hornby's novels for years, long before his work attracted new readers who saw the film adaptations of HIGH FIDELITY, ABOUT A BOY and FEVER PITCH.

HOW TO BE GOOD examines the breakdown of a marriage that seems completely stable from the outside. Kate is a successful MD with a thriving practice and her husband David is a freelance writer known for his irascible columns in the local paper. The story is told from Kate's perspective and explores how she struggles with the notion of goodness. She is the one who compromises the marriage by having an affair, and then watches as her husband follows his own path of self-destruction on his intended road to enlightenment with a different kind of interloper metaphorically sharing their marriage bed.

Hornby writes convincing characters, plausible plots and authentic dialogue that will have you believing every word of it.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo

Russo is considered one of the finest contemporary American novelists who has accomplished with small town America and its locals what Alice Munro has achieved with her stories set in southwestern Ontario. His characters are so real, they could be your neighbours.

The story is Louis C. Lynch's to tell as he attempts to write a history of his hometown and his own life. He has spent all of his sixty years in Thomaston, New York, where he has remained an optimist like his father before him who established a little empire of convenience stores on the right side of the tracks. "Lucy" is married to Sarah Berg, a one-time visual artist who studied in NYC, who is generous of spirit and kind of heart and a recent cancer survivor. They are planning a trip to Venice where Lucy's oldest friend from boyhood is now a renowned painter.

That painter friend, Robert Noonan, has remade himself in Italy and it is his connection to both "Lucy" and Sarah, independent of each other, that reveals truths about everyone.

BRIDGE OF SIGHS is a magnificent read.

SAILING TO CAPRI by Elizabeth Adler

Although Adler is shelved as a mystery writer, this novel borders on romance. Billionaire tycoon Sir Robert Hardwick (often described as looking like Shrek) dies mysteriously in a car crash. In his will he names six people who he suspects of wanting to kill him and entrusts private investigator Harry Montana, and his personal assistant Daisy Keane to take those six as well as six "red herrings" on a luxurious Mediterranean cruise that will end up at his villa on Capri where the contents of his last will and testament will be read publically with the intention of unmasking the killer.

It is pure trifle, but marvellous escapism as the yacht calls at Monte Carlo, Saint-Tropez, Sorrento and Capri.

DeNIRO'S GAME by Rawi Hage

This first novel by Montreal's Rawi Hage won this year's Dublin IMPAC literary award--the richest prize for English language fiction. It was snatched out of the slush pile at Anansi, a small Toronto publisher, and found its way to the short lists for fiction prizes at home before it gained recognition in Ireland.

DeNIRO'S GAME chronicles the madness of the Beirut civil war and does not flinch from graphic violence. It is not an easy read, but Hage is a voice to watch.

THE SCULPTRESS by MInnette Walters

Teenager Olive Martin pleads guilty to killing and dismembering her mother and her sister, earning herself the nickname "Sculptress." She's already served several years of a life sentence when journalist Rosalind Leigh decides to accept the contract to write a book about the notorious murderess.

What Rosalind doesn't expect to discover is that Olive is an intelligent and rather ordinary woman, and something doesn't quite fit about her admission to the heinous crimes.

Walters delivers a fast-paced and gripping tale that creates sympathy where before there ought to have been none.

THROUGH THE CHILDREN'S GATE by Adam Gopnik

In this memoir of returning to New York to build a life for his young family (recently transplanted from Paris and its sensibilities), Gopnik writes convincingly of the thrill of being there. In spite of the ongoing game of the apartment hunt, Gopnik embraces everything that is steretypically associated with the Big Apple--its foibles and its joys in equal parts.

I have always coveted the idea of moving to New York, fantasizing a 3-bedroom walk-up on Riverside Drive, and with Gopnik's memoir it feels like it could be almost in reach.

LOOK ME IN THE EYE by John Elder Robison (2008)

Writer Augusten Burroughs received the most requests on his website for a piece written by his older brother John, one of the returning characters in Burroughs' memoirs RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, DRY, MAGICAL THINKING and most recently WOLF AT THE TABLE, first launched in the essay "Ass Burger."

Robison has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of Autism, and was only diagnosed as an adult--the great eureka moment of his life where the window to the past enabled him to see why he had felt so marginalized.

LOOK ME IN THE EYE is compelling and unflinching in its honesty. It's also entertaining, because Robison, as a teen-aged dropout genius found himself tinkering with electronics and modifying sound equipment, a talent and drive that led him to fixing amps for rock bands like Pink Floyd and April Wine.

His biggest rock n' roll gig, however, was touring with KISS, because he designed and crafted special effects for Ace Freheley's Fender guitars for their over-the-top performances. When he tired of the touring circuit, Robison worked for Milton Bradley designing games, including the immensely popular "Simon."

His son, whom he calls "Cubby" since his mother is "Little Bear," also has Asperger's though a milder form. His predisposition for nicknaming people he is close to (he called his little brother "Varmint" for many years, never his given name Chris) is also typical for Aspergians, a notion that amuses him.

Robison keeps his day job as the manager of his own company that refurbishes high end automobiles like Jaguars, Rolls Royce and Land Rovers and continues to write.

THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS by Roddy Doyle

Paula Spencer tells her own story of falling in love with Charlo, a bad boy, and her early married days of complete devotion and bliss. The present, however, is far less romantic. Mother to four children, a single parent of a year, Paula learns that her estranged spouse has been killed by the Garda, having murdered a bank manager's wife. The detail that upsets her the most, is not his death, but the fact that the woman's autopsy revealed that he had slapped her face twice. That gesture opens up a chasm of past abuse that Paula recounts matter-of-factly until she leads up to the day that her husband considered beating their own daughter. That was the tipping point for Paula.

Doyle creates tremendous sympathy and writes a convincing portrait of this working class woman who endured years of spousal abuse because she believed her husband still loved her.

THE DEPORTEES by Roddy Doyle (2007)

This collection of short fiction resurrects one of Doyle's earlier characters, Jimmy Rabbitte (of The Barrytown Trilogy). Here, in the titular story, Jimmy's got an idea for another band in post-Celtic Tiger Dublin. Every player has to be an immigrant--no white faces aloud, bejeesus.

Throughout the stories here Doyle explores race and prejudice and roots for the underdogs all the while.

A WOLF AT THE TABLE by Augusten Burroughs

Burroughs's most recent creative nonfiction is about his memoires of his father, a math professor at an east coast university. Slowly, the narrative wends its way to the kernel of truth that depends on whether or not you believe the lead that as a small child Augusten traipsed with his father into the woods to bury a body.

Typically unsentimental Burroughs reveals this story sentence by sentence and creates a sympathetic portrait of his older brother Chris, who when it matters most teaches the young Augusten a lesson he'll never forget.

BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS by Lola Jaye (forthcoming 2008)

Lola Jaye's debut novel confronts grief and the notion of continuing bonds with the deceased in a fresh voice.

Opening in 1990, seven years after the death of her young father, Lois Bates is at her mom's wedding to "some prick she met down the bingo." Lois is a typical twelve-year-old who receives an unexpected and atypical gift: "The Manual" her dying father wrote for her projecting the kind of advice he would have liked to have given her face-to-face as she grew up.

His instructions are clear: read each entry on your birthday from age 12-30; don't peep ahead; please flip back through past entries.

Through the course of the entries Lois learns a lot about her father's adolescence and young adulthood as he projects that his own preoccupations (like a first kiss, burgeoning sexuality, the job interview) will be hers as well. By having access to her father's narrative voice, Lois feels his presence all the more palpably in her life. His words begin to fill the void he created between them when he died when Lois was only five, an age when there "is the strange luxury of not recalling the actual moment it happened...the realization that the man who'd read me stories at night, kissed me good night, every night, was no longer breathing in the same air as me."

Lois is a plucky protagonist and it's a bit dreamy to snoop over her shoulder in By The Time You Read This.

AWAY by Amy Bloom (2007)

I haven't read anything by Amy Bloom, but picked up AWAY because my friend Joe (a discerning reader and all round nice guy) recommended it.

Protagonist Lillian Leyb comes to America in 1924 after her family has been destroyed during a pogrom in Russia. Determined to make a new life for herself, Lillian finds work as a seamstress in a Yiddish theatre company in New York. Soon she finds herself living with the handsome, but gay, leading man to serve as a cover for him while she beds his own father who is fully aware that his only son is a fagola.

Lillian's life is turned upside down once again when her cousin arrives and tells her that her 4 year-old daughter Sophie is believed to be alive and living with former neighbours who rescued her. That news leads to Lillian's determined departure and journey to find her Sophie that finds her relying on the kindness of strangers including a prostitute in Seattle, a widower in Alaska and self-proclaimed bachelor who tends to her wounds.

Lillian encounters such tenderness in the most unexpected places and it is that emotional truth that kept me turning the pages to the satisfying end.