For the mom who likes dishy family sagas

Vantage Point, by Sara Sligar

An unthinkably rich brother and sister — heirs to a steel fortune — are haunted by a family curse and by compromising videotapes (possibly faked) that upend the brother’s Senate campaign.

Also consider: “A Reason to See You Again,” by Jami Attenberg; “Playworld,” by Adam Ross; “The God of the Woods,” by Liz Moore

For the mom who loves history

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, by Rick Atkinson

There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Atkinson, who is able to transport readers to a different time and place without minimizing the differences of the past from the present. This book — the second in his planned trilogy about the American Revolution — is so compulsively readable that it’s hard to put down.

Also consider: “Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age,” by Eleanor Barraclough; “The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens,” by Nicola Clark; “The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West,” by Shaun Walker

For the mom who just wants to read thrillers