After the emotional power of the last three books, I thought I was ready for something easy and diverting, but I fell upon this great book instead. It’s the story of Oscar Schell, a precocious, on-the-spectrum eight-year-old whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks. There’s great narrative momentum to Oscar’s quest to find the lock that fits a key he found in his father’s closet. Things slow a bit in the sections narrated by Oscar’s grandparents, but that’s because they’re suffering from the disasters and cruelties of their own times, including the firebombing of Dresden. Very sweet and moving ending.

Another great find. Takes place in an Irish immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn in the first half of the 20th century, about a widow, Annie, and her daughter, Sally, who are taken in by an order of nursing nuns. Annie eventually finds love with a married milkman, Mr. Costello. Sally, raised around nuns, believes she has a vocation but is disabused of that when she travels to Chicago and discovers she doesn’t want to serve mankind. There’s a shock at the end, too, when Sally and Sister Jeanne each determine to eliminate Mr. Costello’s invalid wife.

I really liked this book, which has the narrative momentum of a Stephen King story with much more nuanced and interesting characters. It’s about a pair of orphaned brothers who are setting out to seek their fortunes and their missing mother in California, but get diverted into a trip to NYC instead. Takes place in 1954. The little brother, Billy, is a very bright 8-year-old who is obsessed with a book about adventurers and heroes. The elder, Emmett, tries to be responsible at 18, but his reform-school pals, Duchess and Woolly, drag him into their plan. Duchess is an appealing character, too smart and articulate for his years, but with an amoral and violent strain that catches up with him.