If you are a fan of history, historical fiction or fiction -- which covers just about everyone -- Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham is a thriller, a historical account and a character driven novel rolled into one. Written in a novelistic style, the book uncovers a little-known part of World War II in which librarians, scholars and academics were recruited by the Library of Congress to be an elite intelligence unit in Europe.

Alice’s recent FAVORITE read is Lessons in Chemistry, a novel by Bonnie Garmus. Meet Elizabeth Zott, a brainy chemist who loves being in a lab digging into abiogenesis. (Yes, she had to look that up and it’s a real subject about the origin of life).

This historical drama with a contemporary hook stars Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan. Hawkins plays Philippa Langley, an unemployed British woman suffering from a form of chronic fatigue syndrome, who claims she is being haunted by the ghost of King Richard III.