Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

What you first need to know about HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is it’s nothing like TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, the author’s blockbuster breakout book. TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE is romantic and heartbreaking and amazing. It is one of my favorite books of all time.

HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a modern ghost story. It’s told in the same rich, details that Audrey Niffenegger’s fans have come to love. But it’s not about an epic love across time. It’s about an ensemble of flawed people who are all stuck. The two identical twins are stuck with each other. The grieving widower is stuck with memories. The woman he loves died and is now stuck in her old apartment as a ghost. And the man upstairs is stuck too because of his own obsessive-compulsive disorder that keeps him inside.

The characters weave and dart around each other and London and this apartment building until the day the ghost learns to move objects and communicate with the living. That’s when the story really takes off and turns spooky. Because she can do other things. Stranger things, freakier things. If I tell you what she does, it would spoil the ending. But remember this — Niffenegger is not your typical writer. She likes twists and turns and she delivers on them in her second novel too.

“Pieces of Happily Ever After” is addictive. I literally “sneak read” this novel. I say “sneak read” because I was in the middle of a couple other books, but kept dipping into this one when the other books weren’t looking. Ince I finished the others, I devoured “Pieces of Happily Ever After.”

The premise is familiar — Los Angeles-based mom is dumped by husband for another woman. But it’s what happens next and with whom that is refreshing. Zutell’s cast of characters are layered and detailed. Even those with bit parts are well-developed. And Zutell doesn’t let her characters take the easy road as heroine Alice navigates her way back to happiness and maybe a bit of happily ever after. This book is a breeze, but it’s not light. I’m relucant to call it chick lit, because Zutell defty handles some very complex situations in her story — a mother with Alzheimer’s, an angry daughter and a long-lost love.

Check it out and you’ll be sneak reading it too.

I believe in passing books along, letting others share in the reading pleasure. So with that in mind, I’m pleased to offer a giveaway of my advanced reader copy of Julie Buxbaum’s ‘AFTER YOU,’ which releases today in stores. You can read more about Julie and the book here on my site. For now though, let’s have a contest!

First, the disclaimer: the ARC does not have the official cover of the book. The copy I have is an advanced copy, so the cover is paperback and very plain and says it’s an advanced copy, which I think is kind of the coolness of it! But if you like pretty covers and pictures, then buy the book! (Well, buy it anyway!)

Now, the story is about how Ellie drops everything to help a friend’s daughter after the friend has died suddenly. And ultimately the novel is about the quest for home, what home means and how to find it. In honor of that deeper theme in the novel, let’s do a five-word contest on the theme of home.

In FIVE WORDS only, please write in the comments what “home” means to you. The winner gets my ARC!

I am a big-time fan of Julie Buxbaum. Her debut novel “The Opposite of Love” was one of my favorite books of 2008 and remains on my all-time top reads list. It’s fresh and riveting. What is best about Buxbaum’s writing is just that — the writing. She is a master of words, clever with verbs and inventive in her descriptions. I will never forget how the heroine Emily in “The Opposite of Love” described her emptiness: “The opposite of love isn’t hate; it isn’t even indifference. It’s fucking disembowelment. Hara-kiri. Taking a huge shovel and digging out your own heart, and your intestines, and leaving behind nothing.”

Now her second novel “After You” is due to hit the shelves on August 25 and the writing remains inimitably Buxbaum-ian. Consider how the main character Ellie describes her complicated affection for her god-daughter: “A feeling of love rushes through me like vertigo, an overwhelming, sharp tilt, and then just as quickly, a righting, slamming, shaming pain when I catch myself, for just a moment, pretending that Sophie is mine.”

I love the cadence of Buxbaum’s words, the way she describes a character thinking as “riding out the carnival in his head,” how you feel the harsh weight of truth as she juxtaposes words like “destructive” and “confession.”

“After You” is the story of how Ellie comes to terms with her own marriage, potential parenting and willingness to love by caring for a grieving child.

I remain a devoted member of her fan club and will be eagerly awaiting her next book as well!

One of my favorite books recently is Allison Winn Scotch’s New York Times Bestseller “Time of my Life,” which I recommended earlier this year. It’s just been released in paperback this week, so to celebrate the launch and to support an author I adore, I’m having a contest to giveaway a copy of this delicious novel! The rules are simple — describe the best time of your life in five words or less in the comments section below. I’ll pick a winner — along with input from Allison hereself — and announce it here by this weekend. So weigh in on why you should get a free copy of a novel you’ll gobble up in a night or two!

When I was on girls getaway vacation in Mexico two years ago I finished reading Water for Elephants on the beach one afternoon. I read the last line, closed the book, and immediately picked up the next book I had with me and started reading The Next Thing on My List. My girlfriend Michelle gave me a shocked look. How could I move on so quickly — with literally no time in between — from one book to the next?

It’s just what I do. I love reading so much that if I’m in a reading state of place or mind I want to keep doing that. So I move on to the next one. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love a book. That doesn’t mean it didn’t linger with me. It just means there’s a hell of a lot of books in the world and I want to get to more, more, more!

What do you do? Can you move seamlessly from finishing one book to starting another without skipping a beat? Do you need a day or two, an hour or two, or a second or to to let it linger?

While we’re on the topic of affair novels, here’s another one that turns the sub-genre on its head. In Getting Rid of Matthew, Helen finally convinces her lover to ditch his wife, but as soon as he moves out – whoops! She doesn’t want him anymore. So rather than chronicle falling in love and winning the guy, this clever novel recounts the all-too-real ways we lose interest in people – did he really leave his socks on the couch again? Has his hair always looked that bad? – and how we kick them out. But what if you happen to develop an unexpected friendship with the wife, the woman you made a cuckold of? Well, then you’ve got a tasty set of ingredients for a quick, smart, dramatic and unexpected read.

By their nature affairs are designed to be dissatisfying. They scratch an itch that can’t fully be scratched. That’s why they’re a tricky proposition in fiction too. How do you write a satisfying ending in an affair novel? Which relationship do you break up and at what cost? Most affair novels opt for an easy way out – no one gets caught or someone gets caught but then she’s pregnant by her husband so all is forgiven. Lauren Fox’s Still Life with Husband doesn’t take the easy way out. Fox uncovers a fresh ending and a new twist to the affair story, one that is uniquely rewarding for the reader, especially because of the fine writing in which it’s wrapped.

What if you could do it all over again? Or maybe just the last seven years? The what-if promise is a tantalizing one for many of us; Allison Winn Scotch breathes fresh insight into what might happen when you get your “what if” in “Time of My Life.” A young suburban mom, Jillian Westfield can’t stop wondering what happened to the one who got away. Then one day she doesn’t have to wonder. She gets to find out because she wakes up seven years in her past with the chance to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and which path to choose. Scotch keeps you wishing and wanting different outcomes for Jillian with every twist and turn of this story – that’s the brilliance in “Time of My Life,” because getting what we think we want isn’t always what we want.