Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

I loved Lisa Unger’s Beautiful Lies so much that I had to share it. I gave it to my friend Brett Rounsaville and he loved it so much he gave it away on Twitter to George Poppe, who loved it so much he suggested we create a contest to give the book away to yet another person! So here’s the contest: we want your best 5-word lie. You can post a comment here or send to lies@amtrekker.com by April 24. Brett, George and I will pick the winner and then send the book along. It’s your turn to lie and be rewarded for it!

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.

“The Lovely Bones” popularized undead narrators and not of the blood-sucking variety. Now we’re seeing more books in which the main character has passed on to another world. “Elsewhere,” by Gabrielle Zevin, imagines that world with precise accuracy, down to the roads, the clothes, the jobs, the dogs, even the scuba gear that inhabits the afterworld. But Elsewhere isn’t a novel about the afterlife or ghosts; it’s about understanding how to live your life a new way when everything changes. Because everything does change when 15-year-old Lizzie is struck by a cab while riding her bike. She dies and takes a boat to Elswhere, where she meets the grandmother she never knew (her grandmother died before she was born), develops new friendships and discovers love, all while learning to let go of the living. But Elsewhere has its own set of quirks – you age backwards, getting younger by the day until you eventually become a baby and are sent back to earth to live again as someone else. This novel is a must-read because it’s a testament to the power of imagination. Elsewhere is a place so wholly realized, you might actually find yourself wondering if it really is where we go when we die.