Bridal expert Parker "Legs" Brown meets her perfect match in Roberts's delicious ode to weddings and happy endings, the charming conclusion of the Bride Quartet (after Savor the Moment) about four childhood friends who as adults form a Connecticut wedding planning company. In the palatial Brown estate, a multitude of marriages have been celebrated while each wedding planner in turn has found her heart's desire. Cupid's target for Parker is her brother...

This meticulous inquiry into the ways that ideological evil can infect, and ultimately destroy, the intimacies and small pleasures of daily life is beautiful, thoughtful, and almost unbearably sad. A widowed grandmother, mother, and daughter are facing starvation. Since the foreign doctors have been driven away, the mother's employment at the hospital ends. Thus the young daughter, at the risk of being discovered and killed, masquerades as a boy in...