The Good Wife of Bath

Karen Brooks (Harpercollins, $32.99) England, 1364. Married off at 12 to an elderly farmer, Eleanor Cornfed is constantly told to seek redemption for her sins. Aided and abetted by trusty god-sibling Alyson, the counsel of one Geoffrey Chaucer, and with a good head for business, Eleanor fights to protect those she loves from life’s vagaries, her husbands’ character deficits and the brutalities of medieval England, in pursuit of control of her own life.