5.  Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio.  Outrageous, amusing, and surprisingly thoughtful. There is one more in this series and I will read it.  Maybe one more will be enough for me; I don't want to get hooked on another series. The author shows himself as imaginative and funny.  I hope he thinks about a non-Poldi book before long, though.

6.  The Book of Lost Friends, by Lisa Wingate, who also wrote Before We Were Yours. 

     Like Before, this fiction book is good at letting people know about a chapter of history. It is one of those with every other chapter being a different story, and you know they're going to come together in the end. After the Civil War, people who had been separated by slave owners used newspaper ads to look for their folks.  She has internet addresses for a couple of databases at the end. 

    The writing is very accessible and I think a lot of people would get something out of it.