THE SUMMERHOUSE by JUDE DEVERAUX

It probably sounds dismissive to describe Jude Deveraux’s “The Summerhouse” as perfect airplane reading, but it is. And that is not a bad thing at all. A slightly improbable premise – 3 young women meet briefly on their (joint shared) 21st birthdays, all waiting to get their driving licenses. They …

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS by DAI SIJIE

This slim, charming novel about one of the darkest periods in recent Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution, manages to combine ugliness and brutishness with a life-saving thread of hope and young love and dreams. It is 1971, and 2 young men, teenaged sons of then-reviled intellectuals, are sent off to …