Home Front is a profound exploration of the intimate landscape of a troubled marriage, set against the backdrop of war. Kristin Hannah crafts a provocative and timely portrait of a husband and wife, in love and at war.

All marriages have a breaking point. All families have wounds. All wars have a cost.

Michael and Jolene Zarkades are like many couples, facing the pressures of everyday life—children, careers, bills, chores—even as their twelve-year marriage teeters on the brink of collapse. A deployment sends Jolene deep into harm's way, leaving defense attorney Michael at home, struggling with the role of single parent to their two girls.

As a mother, Jolene is torn apart by leaving her family, yet as a soldier, she understands the true meaning of duty. Through her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of life on the front lines, shielding her family from the harsh realities of war. But war changes Jolene in ways none of them could have foreseen. When tragedy strikes, Michael must confront his darkest fears and fight his own battle—for everything that matters to his family.

This story offers a profoundly honest look at modern marriage and a dramatic exploration of the toll war takes on an ordinary American family. It is a tale of love, loss, heroism, honor, and ultimately, hope.

In Nick Hornby's How to Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be good. That's why she became a GP, cares about Third World debt and homelessness, and struggles to raise her children with a conscience. It's also why she puts up with her husband David, the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway.

One fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds parking lot, having just slept with another man. What Katie doesn't yet realize is that her fall from grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the interstate at rush hour.

Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being angry. He's about to become good—not politically correct, organic-food-eating good, but good in the fashion of the Gospels. And that's no easier in modern-day Holloway than it was in ancient Israel.

Hornby means us to take his title literally: How can we be good, and what does that mean? However, quite apart from demanding that his readers scrub their souls with the nearest available Brillo pad, he also mesmerizes us with that cocktail of wit and compassion that has become his trademark.

The result is a multifaceted jewel of a book: a hilarious romp, a painstaking dissection of middle-class mores, and a powerfully sympathetic portrait of a marriage in its death throes. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry as we watch David forcing his kids to give away their computers, drawing up schemes for the mass redistribution of wealth, and inviting his wife's most desolate patients round for a Sunday roast.

But that's because How to Be Good manages to be both brutally truthful and full of hope. It won't outsell the Bible, but it's a lot funnier.