In mythology, Alcestis is the model wife, willing to give up her own life for her husband’s. In Katharine Beutner’s lyrical retelling, the truth is more complex.

In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.

Anne Easter Smith’s The King’s Grace builds its plot around the mystery of the Princes in the Tower—and borrows its conceit from Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter in Time. Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen examines the book and the mystery.

Susan Fraser King in her debut novel Lady Macbeth cries “Out, out!” to the blot on her main character’s reputation put there by Shakespeare; Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen seeks to determine if King’s efforts signify anything.