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.

“Endurance: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Ship,” by John Shears, Nico Vincent (National Geographic, 2024)

John Shears was expedition leader and Nico Vincent was subsea project manager on the Endurance22 expedition that ultimately located and documented the submerged wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s polar expedition ship, Endurance, which sank off the coast of Antarctica in 1915. This National Geographic book is much more than a coffee table tome, although you could easily spend hours just poring over the photographs: black-and-white reproductions from Shackleton’s voyage, and color photos from both the unsuccessful Weddell Sea Expedition (2019) location attempt and the successful Endurance22 project. The text depicts what went wrong for Shackleton; lessons learned in 2019; and the flexibility, creativity and perseverance of the crews, as well as the triumph of new technologies in 2022. It’s a great gift for the explorer in your life. —— 4 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver

“The Second Mrs. Astor,” by Shana Abe (Kensington, 2021)

In 1912, the wealthy and powerful Astor family lost its patriarch, John Jacob Astor IV, when the so-called “indestructible” Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, taking the lives of about 1,500 souls. Many stories have been written about the tragedy; this one focuses on Astor’s second wife, Madeleine, who was newly married and pregnant on that voyage, returning to New York from an extended honeymoon abroad. The novel begins with Astor’s recent divorce from socialite Ava, mother of his two children. He courts, marries and impregnates his new bride, 30 years his junior and indeed, still a teenager. The short marriage, shunned by his family and New York society as well, ends in tragedy but creates an heir to the fortune. The visceral, devastating description of Titanic’s last hours, and how it unfolded, will stay with me for a long time. — 2½ stars (out of 4); Karen Goldie Hartman, Westminster

“The Salt Path: A Memoir,” by Raynor Winn (Penguin, 2018)

After a three-year legal battle for their centuries-old farmhouse in Wales, taken over by a cheating lifelong friend, Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, are homeless and penniless except for a weekly stipend of $40. Despite their ages (both over 50) and Moth’s recently diagnosed terminal illness, they decide their only option is to spend summer months camping along the Southwest Coast Path of Cornwall. Luminous writing tempers this memoir of an arduous trail with moments of sublime beauty. Courage and devotion and eventual acceptance bolster the couple through hunger, pain and dangerous weather. The story is inspiring, yet realistic and revelatory of another side of homelessness. “If we hadn’t done this there’d always have been things we wouldn’t have known, a part of ourselves we wouldn’t have found, resilience we didn’t know we had.” — 4 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker

“Devotions, the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver” (Penguin Press, 2017)

This volume contains a superb selection from the poet over the spread of more than fifty years, from 1963 until 2015, four years before her death. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oliver tapped her love of nature and solitary walks to draw insights into living. She presents no borders between her poetry her insights, and her observations, coaxing them together into an exuberant whole. Somehow even topics like death spring to life in her hands. I keep this volume at hand for any time I’m discouraged or depressed. — 4 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver (bonniemccune.com)