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For those Kindle readers who, like myself, read for entertainment, perusing the book reviews in People magazine are good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the February 7th issue of People:

Separate Beds, by Elizabeth Buchan. Viking, 2011. Print Length: 384 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (4 reviews). People's slant: "Buchan keeps things lively and true with her spot-on observations, richly drawn characters and dry British humor..." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For middle-class Londoners Annie and Tom Nicholson - she's a hospital administrator, he's a BBC exec - the abrupt departure of their eldest daughter, Mia ('I won't be forgiving you and Dad anytime soon,' she writes), exposes more than the fissures between parents who've drifted apart. It puts unbearable strain on Mia's twin, Jake, a single parent with a foundering business, and sister Emily, a struggling writer. This good-natured, misguided family stumbles haplessly toward a breaking point when Tom loses his job, and Jake, baby Maisie, and Tom's mum, Hermione, all move in...Buchan masterfully captures the Nicholsons' personal story with her richly drawn characters..." - Publishers Weekly.

You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon. Putnam, 2011. Print Length: 240 p. SHORT STORIES. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (14 reviews). People's slant: "In this collection of linked short stories, Fallon, the wife of an army major, provides poignant portraits of lovers struggling to keep relationships intact through deployments, loneliness and the strain of reunion." Kindle edition $10.99; Hardcover $16.29. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls... You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life. There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families - intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches." - Amazon.

The Red Garden, by Alice Hoffman. Crown, 2011. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (35 reviews). People's slant: "...an absorbing portrait of a town, told through its unforgettable people." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (35 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $13.54. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives. In exquisite prose, Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions. From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives..." - Amazon.

Briefly Mentioned:

My Father at 100, by Ron Reagan. Viking, 2011. Print Length: 240 p. BIOGRAPHY. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.09. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"February 6, 2011, is the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. To mark the occasion, Ron Reagan has written My Father at 100, an intimate look at the life of his father - one of the most popular presidents in American history - told from the perspective of someone who knew Ronald Reagan better than any adviser, friend, or colleague. As he grew up under his father's watchful gaze, he observed the very qualities that made the future president a powerful leader. Yet for all of their shared experiences of horseback rides and touch football games, there was much that Ron never knew about his father's past, and in My Father at 100, he sets out to understand this beloved, if often enigmatic, figure who turned his early tribulations into a stunning political career. Ron Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan. A political commentator for MSNBC, he was formerly a talk-radio host and chief political analyst for KIRO radio in Seattle and the host of Air America's The Ron Reagan Show." - Amazon.

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back , by Todd Burpo, with Lynn Vincent. Thomas Nelson, 2010. Print Length: 208 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (263 reviews). Kindle edition $6.16; Paperback $8.98. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear. Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how 'reaaally big' God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit 'shoots down power' from heaven to help us. Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle." - Amazon.

Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide, by Linda Sexton. Counterpoint, 2011. Print Length: 336 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $15.98. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Despite experiencing the agony of witnessing her mother’s multiple suicide attempts, the last of which was successful, Linda Gray Sexton found herself gripped by the same strong tentacles of mental anguish. Falling into the familiar grooves of her mother’s relentless depression, Sexton tries once, twice, three times to kill herself - even though she is a daughter, sister, wife, and most importantly, a mother. Sexton unsparingly describes her struggle to escape the magnetism of her mother and the undertow of depression that engulfed her life. Her powerful prose drags readers into her imperviously dark mental state. It conveys her urgent need to alleviate the internal pain, a need that becomes compulsive and considers no one. But unlike her mother, hers is a story of triumph. Through the help of family, therapy, and medicine, Sexton confronted deep-seated issues, outlived her mother, and curbed the haunting cycle of suicide she once seemed destined to inherit." - from the publisher.
Linda Gray Sexton is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton.