Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email bellis@denverpost.com. — Barbara Ellis

“Educated,” by Tara Westover (Random House, 2018)

Tara Westover grew up in a fundamentalist Morman household of nine, with a volatile father and a mother who failed to protect her seven children from physical and emotional abuse. Her father was a survivalist who was paranoid and convinced the government was evil. The children were ostensibly homeschooled, but they spent most of their days working for the family-owned scrap metal business. Due to their distrust of the medical establishment, only their mother was allowed to tend to their injuries, which were frequent and sometimes severe. Westover’s father convinced the family that the government would come and try to remove them from their house, and shoot them all if they didn’t let the children attend school. But evil often exists within the walls of a home rather than outside: her sadistic brother Shawn physically abused her for years while her parents looked the other way. It took great courage for Westover to leave the house and, having never set foot inside a classroom, attend Brigham Young University. She eventually earned a PhD in Intellectual History from Cambridge University in England. It would take many years to reject her lifelong indoctrination, and eventually accept that estrangement from her family was inevitable. — 4 stars (out of 4); Karen Goldie Hartman, Westminster

“Exposure,” by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime, 2024)

No. 2 in the Rita Todacheene mystery series. Cameras are still Rita’s lodestar, as well as an honored connection to her mother in this latest installment. The pressures and psychic toll from her job as a forensic photographer start to become too much. Soon, the spirits of a serial killer’s victims harass her to uncover their truths. Todacheene realizes she has to find a way to balance finding justice for those spirits with healing her own spirit. She wants to do good, but she must also be well. (I can’t wait for No. 3 in this series.) — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

“Among the Lesser Gods,” by Margo Catts (Arcade, 2017)

Texas author Margo Catts sets her debut novel primarily in fictitious Hat Creek, Colo., a small mining town near Leadville. Recent college grad Elena Alvarez, at loose ends and with significant troubles, comes for the summer to assist her beloved grandmother. Over the course of these few months, Elena matures evolves considerably. Catts writes a fine story. I found myself warming toward Elena, especially as she matured and transformed. The setting evokes Colorado accurately and sensitively. The ending is not as neatly resolved as one might hope, but that’s a minor concern. — 3 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker

“A History of the Big House,” by Charif Majdalani, translated by Ruth Diver (Other Press, 2024)

This multi-generational novel set in Lebanon depicts the rise and fall of a family, its influence and wealth, symbolized by the large, two-story house built by the family’s patriarch. World War I and shifting power alignments within Lebanon force the family into exile and trigger its demise. We also see how religious and tribal sectarianism dominated political, financial and social dealings throughout the region’s history and set the stage not only for Lebanon’s civil war but also today’s precariously fragile democracy there. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

“Also Here,” by Brooke Randel (Tortoise Books, 2024)

This Holocaust story is an “as-told-to” memoir, which makes it more terrifying and poignant than fiction. Golda Indig was taken prisoner in Hungary, 1944, when she was about 14, along with her big sister. The rest of her family perished. Years later, when sharing a pleasant life in Florida with her granddaughter Brooke, she suddenly decided “You should write about my life. What happened in the war,” and together, they did. Her Bubbie’s recollections were muddled and hazy, magnified by illiteracy evidently caused by long-term trauma, but enough came through and could be verified by legitimate sources that it makes for a soul-shaking saga. Is a life stripped of contacts with family and friends, permanently warped and causing irreparable damage, worth living? Golda and Brooke would answer “Yes!” — 4 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver (bonniemccune.com)