This is an entertaining collection of irreverent (and “naughty,” as the cover claims) bits of history, easily digestible in small chunks and perfect for sampling over the lunch hour.

In ATSS, Hosseini weaves together the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila. Mariam grew up in a rural hovel, the illegitimate child of a wealthy man in the city. Her lifelong dream is that her father would one day acknowledge her as his daughter. On the other side of the country, Laila lived with her progressive and erudite parents, who supported her education and had hopes of a bright future in which she could make her own choices. The Afghan Civil War dashes Laila’s dreams, but brings these two women together as they both find themselves unhappily married to the same man.

My initial impression was that the story was somewhat predictable, but the climax was pleasingly surprising. Hosseini’s works, in addition to being engaging reads, provide enthralling peeks into Afghan history.

Having spent a great deal of her career as a journalist in Islamic countries, Geraldine Brooks has had the opportunity to get to know the cultures intimately, especially from a woman’s perspective. Her accounts of both intriguing and appalling aspects of Muslim women’s lives are frankly presented. Although the reader is at times made to feel an agenda lurking behind, even one to sympathize with, the author does a decent job of simply presenting the facts as she has experienced or observed them. Recommended.

As Breaking Dawn begins, Bella is about to get all she’s been waiting for: marriage to Edward, and then, finally, conversion to a vampire in order to join him in immortality. The first goes off without a hitch, but something wholly unexpected occurs during their honeymoon in paradise.

This conclusion to Bella’s story was worth reading, but ultimately a disappointment. Every loose end or uncertainty was tidily wrapped up into a even-better-than-perfect package, and everyone was blissfully happy. It was just too much to swallow. I’d hoped for more grit. And “Renesmee” ranks up there with “Jonayla” among the most gag-inducing invented names in literature.

When Jane was a little girl, her imaginary friend Michael kept her company and provided the love and support she never received from her mother. But on her ninth birthday, he disappeared. Now in her early thirties, Jane catches a glimpse of someone in a bar who looks uncannily like her imaginary childhood friend. Impossible!...?

This was my first James Patterson experience. I had higher hopes for the story given its unusual premise, but everything simply came together too smoothly to be satisfying (aww, it turns out her mother really did love her!). Passable fare for a fluffy beach read.

Quintus, a Roman soldier in Britain in 60AD, has two missions: to conquer Britain in the name of the emperor Nero, and to find the ancient remains of his great-grandfather, murdered by Druids during the invasion of Julius Caesar many years earlier. However, the Roman military doesn’t count on warrior queen Boudicea uniting the Celtic tribes in revolt, and Quintus doesn’t count on falling for Regan, a fetching young Briton woman.

This is a fairly light-hearted story, given the subject matter. I found it enjoyable, and consider it a decent jumping-off point for a reader new to Roman history in Britain.

Sookie is back! Major change is afoot in leadership in the vampire community of Louisiana, and Sookie Stackhouse, your average, run-of-the-mill telepath, is once again in the middle of it whether she likes it or not. Sookie’s romantic interests are also increasingly complicated since her boyfriend Quinn is MIA, her ex-boyfriend Bill seems to be trying to win her back, and she is having trouble denying an attraction to Eric.

I was unimpressed by the first 1/3 of this book, but thankfully the story picked up satisfactorily after that. I never cared much for Quinn, so I’m glad he’s out of the picture!

All her life, high school senior Amy Delatour has had “dreaming true” sequences, moments or dreams in which she seems to be channeling scenes from a previous lifetime. Her new English teacher, Mr. Stone, is interested in using hypnosis to dig deep into her subconscious in order to determine the source of and possibly resolve Amy’s past inner conflict.

I was engaged in this short novel for the first half, but then it simply became uninteresting. Everything was resolved just a bit too pat for my tastes. Definitely not one of Seton’s better works.

Although somewhat fanciful and largely conjecture, this “anthropology of the future” is also based on science and what we know of evolutionary history up until now. Some of these future humans are hard to swallow, but nature has already created bizarre variations that surprise us. It’s good lunchtime entertainment, and although the book was written nearly 20 years ago, we are still experiencing many of the same social and environmental concerns today that are mentioned in the book.

Beginning with her childhood in her native Somalia, she candidly recounts her life and relationship with her family as they flee their war-torn country for Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and finally Kenya, where she spent many of her teenage years. Ayaan escaped an arranged marriage by fleeing to Holland, and eventually became a Dutch citizen and member of Parliament.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography is amazing and difficult to put down, and learning about Somali culture through her eyes was intensely fascinating.