Pam Jenoff brings to life an incredible tale of love, loss and thrilling adventure in her new novel, The Things We Cherished. A tragic mystery that alternates between World War II and present day, The Things We Cherished is a captivating historical fiction piece.

With fall semester well under way, it seems prudent to recall a line of Emily Dickinson’s: “There is no frigate like a book/ To take us lands away.” Perhaps you’ve blithely sailed into the semester only to wake up stunned, lying on a narrow papery deck and not at all liking the place your first sociology text is taking you. Never fear! Like the friendliest of shipmates, we have laid out a veritable armada of choice books and book-related events for a pirate adventure or pleasure cruise. You will find no tortured metaphors like this one. We promise.

J. Courtney Sullivan, the author of the best-selling novel Commencement, is a Smith alum. Casting aside all prejudice of her alma mater, I grabbed her newest book Maine with enthusiastic interest.

The Foreigners by Maxine Swann is a tale of three women, Leonarda, Isolde and Daisy, all with different personalities, different backgrounds and different desires, as they unknowingly unravel the power that lies in the heart of Argentina.

Lisa Kleypas’ latest series is centered on the middle-class Hathaway family. After surviving a series of unfortunate events, namely the death of both their parents, scarlet fever, and several other deaths in their distant family, the eldest brother becomes a Viscount—Lord Ramsay—and inherits the Ramsay estate in Hampton. There are five living members of the Hathaway family (from oldest to youngest): Leo, Amelia, Winifred, Poppy, and Beatrix. At the beginning of the Hathaway series, Lisa Kleypas opens the doors of the Ramsay estate, where we get to meet a unique, quirky and incredibly intelligent family.

If the pea-green cover of David George Gordon’s The Secret World of Slugs and Snails appeals to you, with its alliterative title and its mottled banana slug rearing up in a sunburst above the subtitle “Life in the Very Slow Lane”, you’ve probably found the right book.

If you are searching for a poignant and heartfelt memoir of an emotionally fragile women making her way from humble beginnings to a blossoming career in showbiz, you should probably pick up a book written by one of the Housewives of New Jersey. Bossypants, the new book by writer and actress Tina Fey, shuns the heartwarming, gooey trappings that usually plague show-business memoirs, and instead adopts the kind of self-deprecating, biting humor that gained Fey attention way back on SNL’s Weekend Update.

Rainbow Rowell’s first novel falls short of meeting reader’s expectations for a romantic comedy. An exceptionally strange love story about two women and the man who spies on them, Attachments is unlike any book I have ever read.

On Thursday morning, just about 10 a.m., I had the rare opportunity to accompany a certain Professor Don Weber to fetch perhaps an even more certain Professor Zakes Mda of South Africa, visiting the Valley from Athens, Ohio, where he works as visiting professor. I must confess: I was incredibly nervous about this minor voyage to Bradley Airport because well, I didn’t like Mda’s book.

Jodi Picoult, famous for her best-selling novels My Sister’s Keeper and Nineteen Minutes, writes about controversial topics, such as school shootings, the death penalty, and contentious issues surrounding religion. Her newest novel, Sing You Home is no different. Written in the narrative voices of three prominent characters, Zoe, Vanessa, and Max, Jodi Picoult unravels a tale of gay rights and questions the “ordinary” life.