I’ve got four books on my stack, which I wanted to share with anyone looking for something promising to read. I think I’m on a roll; I have a great mix of fascinating books, some from legends, some from new voices. I gave up writing books but not reading them.

I’ve gotten into the habit of sharing what I’m reading from time to time, the response has been gratifying.

Here are the four; they are an embarrassment of riches:

I’ve finished Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley. I loved it, and Maria is almost done and loves it, also. This is ostensibly a mystery (and blessedly short) about a prostitute who lives in Monterey around the time of the California gold rush. She likes the work, and her madam is honest and kind.

When some of the other prostitutes in the town begin to disappear, our hero and her friend set out to solve the mystery. Smiley handles this mystery genre, new for her, brilliantly. The book is restrained, free of the endless drama that spoils so many secrets, and is filled with compelling characters.

The idea of a prostitute as the excellent guy is original and works here, and Smiley’s writing is direct and pitch-perfect. I highly recommend it. And the two crime-busters, both women, are honorable, brave, and wiley. A very good read.

I’ve been taken over by the book I am reading, The Magic Kingdom, a novel by Russell Banks.

I’m 100 pages into the book and am mesmerized by the life of Henry Mann, a real estate speculator whose early life tracks the land and people of the Shaker Community in Florida that saved him, the Shaker woman he disastrously falls in love with (sex was forbidden in Shaker communities), his leaving the shakers to join the spectacular world of Florida’s land rush.

Mann lived for most of his life on the ground that is now Disney World, and his story is the story of Florida, a story of greed and corruption and the search for the paradise that shaped so much of America. I love every page of this book; Henry knows how to tell a story, and so does Bank. Disney World hovers over the story almost as a ghost – in a way, it is the very story of modern-day Floria, even thought it begins around 1901.

Banks see Florida as a historically greedy and often brutal place, a metaphor for early America.

I couldn’t resist a small paperback book (I generally like hardcovers)  called Lesser Known Monsters Of the 21st Century by Kim Fu. This is a strange and brilliant collection of short stories that are very different. Fu lets her imagination go wild, and from the little I’ve read, it works.

There’s a girl who grows wings on her legs; a bug-infested hour turns your Poe’s nightmare; a group of children steals a haunted doll; a runaway bride runs into a sea monster; and a vendor sells toy boxes that seem to control the passage of tie.

As the cover says, “these visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality. I  read the first story, and the book is a wild and intensely creative trip. I think of it as exploring the boundaries of the real and the fantastic.

I love the whole feeling and buzz around this book.

I just got If I Survive You, the first novel by Jonathan Escoffery.

The stories are about a Jamaican family who flees the political violence in their own country and flees to Florida, where they run headlong into the truth about America as a paradise. I’ve read the reviews, which are raves about his portrayal of life for Caribbean refugees in America.

The book contains short stories about family, love, violence, and race. The critics say it is both funny and heartbreaking, a brilliant debut for a young writer.

The Magic Kingdom is a big book – more than 300 pages – and I can’t wait to read some of the stories in Known Monsters Of The 21st Century and If I Survive You. I might go back and forth and read some of the short stories in between reading the Banks book.