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"  1. FRANCES DE PONTES PEEBLES  THE SEAMSTRESS  (HARPER)  Peebles&amp;#039; richly woven tale takes us to a small, mountainous village where two teenage sisters, Em\u00EDlia and Luzia, share a bedroom and spend their days sewing linens and lace for wealthy land-owners. Their dreams at once shatter and begin to take shape as bandits come to town and leave with Luzia. Each girl finds fame of sorts, and they track each other&amp;#039;s progress in the newspapers\u2014one of them feared and reviled as an outcast and a merciless killer, the other following a shallow path in high society. This is the best book I&amp;#039;ve read in the past year.\u2014Jennifer Henson, Austin This saga of motherless sisters unfolds against a panoramic back-drop of drought and political unrest. While historical detail never overwhelms the story, The Seamstress could have been pinned, tucked, and shortened by a couple of hundred pages; fans of Isabel Allende will find much to recommend in this saga, with its fully realized characters, gripping moral quandaries, tense drama, and lyrical descriptive prose.\u2014Katherine Turman, New York City 2. BRUNONIA BARRY  THE LACE READER  (WILLIAM MORROW ) Like the other odd women in her family, the not-especially-likable Towner Whitney can &amp;quot;read&amp;quot; the future in lace\u2014though she chooses not to until near the end of this tale. As she returns from California to Salem, Massachusetts, after the disappearance of her great-aunt Eva, old friends, enemies, and her quirky forebears populate the plot. Especially lively is Barry&amp;#039;s depiction of modern Salem\u2014its kitschy tourist traps and &amp;quot;witches&amp;quot;; some zealous modern-day &amp;quot;Calvinists&amp;quot;; and a nearly impenetrable women&amp;#039;s refuge off the coast, the mysterious Yellow Dog Island. Past and present mysteries merge in a fast-moving narrative that builds through numerous small dramas to a theatrical conclusion.\u2014Katherine Turman, New York City Barry weaves a suspenseful tale of witchcraft and dark mystery. As the story unfolds, so does the truth about Towner and all the other Whitney women. Though Barry&amp;#039;s depictions of time and place are marvelously descriptive, we&amp;#039;re left wishing for more personable characters.\u2014Roxanne Price, Thompsonville, IL 3. DAVID EBERSHOFF  THE 19TH WIFE  (RANDOM HOUSE)  In The 19th Wife, which is as timely as it is engaging, two stories are inter-twined: one from the archived journals of early Mormon-leader Brigham Young&amp;#039;s youngest wife, the other a contemporary account of a &amp;quot;lost boy&amp;quot; cast off from a cult that adheres to Joseph Smith&amp;#039;s dictates about polygamy. The boy embarks on a dangerous return to his roots to prove that his mother\u2014also a &amp;quot;19th wife&amp;quot;\u2014is innocent of the murder of her husband. Fascinating in its documentary detail, this fiction reads like a memoir and ultimately serves to enlighten more than it condemns.\u2014Narci Drossos, Valdosta, GA This book&amp;#039;s snappy pace and easy-to-read prose allow us to fall deeper and deeper into the world of a modern Mormon polygamous cult and the twisted logic of plural marriage. It also blurs the line between fact and fiction enough to leave us confused about what the real Mormon church does and does not believe\u2014and especially about the figure of Brigham Young, who is cast as the antagonist in the historical narrative of this novel.\u2014Kaarin Moore, Washington, DC "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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