This is like a Scottish 'Catcher in the Rye.' You actually feel you're inside this women's head, it is that visceral. And having experienced a downward spiral myself I so admire her accuracy in every detail.

Joy Stone, a drama teacher, struggles with a depression that causes her to blame herself for all her problems and to find each day more and more difficult to survive

Again it's all about the visceral! She understands yearning like no one else. And also I love a good historic European romp.

Jeanette Wintersons novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venices compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.

Margaret Atwood is so clever and brilliant just reading her book and keeping up with it made me feel like a genius. But to engage a reader emotionally over so many different story lines is awe-inspiring.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. These words are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, married at eighteen to a wealthy industrialist but now poor and eighty-two. Iris recalls her far from exemplary life, and the events leading up to her sisters death, gradually revealing the carefully guarded Chase family secrets. Among these is The Blind Assassin, a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, it was a pulp fantasy improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet secretly in rented rooms and seedy cafes. As this novel-within-a-novel twists and turns through love and jealousy, self-sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real narrative, as both move closer to war and catastrophe. Margaret Atwoods Booker Prize-winning sensation combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding tale. From the Hardcover edition.