Hillary Jordan, MUDBOUND

Wow, what a knockout of a novel. (I'm not the first to say so ... my friend Barbara thrust it at me, insisting it was one of the best things she'd read in a while ... oh, and it won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction.) Set in the Mississippi Delta during WWII, it tells the story of a white man's farm where sharecropping still takes place. Told from five different perspectives ... yes, they all sound different, hooray, the white soldier doesn't sound like the black midwife ... it's a story about money, rage, racism, what war does to people, how war and race intersect, what fathers do to sons, how our private fears and longings can have profound public consequences. The only part that jarred--and this is because the book feels so very fresh and original in other ways--was the part where the black soldier Ronsel liberates Dachau. I've already read accounts, including how Americans gave out chocolate and unintentionally killed people. But that's the one little bit that felt recycled (and I'm not saying it didn't belong) in an otherwise original, suspenseful, brilliant book.

Aimee Bender, THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE

An unusual novel, about a girl named Rose who, beginning on her 9th birthday, can taste people's emotions in her food. So she can taste when her mother is depressed, angry, cannot choose which of her many talents to pursue, begins to have an affair. Her brilliant brother Joe also has an unusual talent--he turns into furniture and disappears. Near the end of the book, the father of this curious duo--whose own father wore a "strap" around his nose because he could smell things about people--admits to Rose the reason he cannot step into hospitals: because he senses that he might discover his special talent. She longs to drag him to a hospital, but he refuses. The book is thick with physical details (tastes, smells, sounds); the effect is strange, both real and allegorical, and I felt a lingering sadness after reading.

Patricia Reilly Giff, WILD GIRL

Tween novel about a girl named Lidie, a talented horse rider, who dreams of racing horses. Her father and brother left Brazil years before to start a life, planning to send for her. The novel begins the day she leaves Brazil to join them in New York. There, she discovers the difficulties of navigating other people's expectations. She must assimilate to a new environment (her English is not fluent, and her teacher doesn't understand that she is advanced in math) and find a way to reintegrate herself with her father and brother, who still think she likes pink and Minnie Mouse and doesn't know how to sit a horse. Told partly by "Wild Girl," a filly her father has bought and partly in first-person by Lidie.

Carolyn Marsden, MOON RUNNER

A brief, delicately drawn book about a girl who learns that she likes to run and then must choose between beating her best friend in a race (and possibly losing the friendship) or losing on purpose. Her coach lets her join the relay and she and her friend can race and win together.

Sherri L Smith, FLYGIRL

An engaging historical YA about a black girl from 1940s Louisiana, Ida Mae Jones, who's light-skinned enough to pass for white and who learned how to fly a crop-duster from her father. After Pearl Harbor, when the Americans join the war, she wants to apply for the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots), ferrying and testing aircraft. But she has to pass not only her qualifying pilot tests in the very Jim Crow town of Sweetwater, Texas but also the "white" test and the "woman" test (in a wholly male Army). Some clumsy bits early on, with scenes that feel a bit inserted to "show" the conflict between her old life and new, vis-a-vis a black boy she knew in school and her best friend Jolene, who is too black to pass. But once Ida Mae reaches Sweetwater, Texas, the story rolls out wonderfully, with Ida Mae courageously trying to found her identity on what she does (fly) rather than her skin color.

Molly Gloss, THE HEARTS OF HORSES

An historical novel about a 19-year-old female "horse whisperer" named Martha Lessen during WWI, who creates a circuit for herself of twelve horses that need to be "broke" among a group of farms in Oregon--but she does it the good way. It's a coming-of-age story, about a young woman finding her somewhat unconventional place in the world, and a romance (with both horses and a man named Henry), but I loved best how some of the minor characters are so well sketched, how Gloss captures voices. She has a wonderful, sometimes wry, turn of phrase, sometimes for the narrator (it's told in 3rd person) and sometimes to give us an immediate feel for her characters. "There was turnip and carrot in the soup, and a chicken may have run through the pot on its way to somewhere else, or more likely this was one of the meatless days that had become patriotic in the last few months." And Louise (whose husband first gives Martha a job): "Well my goodness, I have a sister and a cousin both named Martha, so that's a name will come easy to my lips." An enjoyable read, especially for those who love horses, and clean enough for tweens and up, I think. Gloss's earlier book THE JUMP-OFF CREEK was a finalist for PEN/Faulkner, and I liked this one enough that I'll go find it.

Chris Bohjalian, SECRETS OF EDEN

A literary murder mystery, set in a Vermont small town, in which George strangles and Alice and then kills himself with a gun (or so it seems). The story is told from the points of view of the Baptist pastor of the town (Stephen Drew), the investigator (Catherine), Stephen's new girlfriend who writes about angels (Heather) and whose parents enacted a similar murder/suicide drama, and Katie, the daughter of Alice and George who tells the truth at last. It's well-written and suspenseful; each of the four voices sounds different. (So often multiple points of view sound too much alike.) My only gripe is that Catherine felt like a "stereotypical" woman investigator, tough-talking, sensitive underneath, and willfully wrong about what really happened. But a good read.