Recently I completed a terrific book, Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen. It left me alternately laughing and crying, but most of all feeling quite contented by the story of the two sisters, the author's vision of the true meaning of success, and of the qualities in life that matter most. It probably does sound a bit corny, but Quindlen makes it work and very well, too.

Quindlen is one of our most versatile writers. Her work has appeared in America’s most influential newspapers and magazines and on both fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists. As a columnist for The New York Times, Quindlen became only the third woman in the newspaper’s history to write a regular column for its prominent Op-Ed page when she began the nationally-syndicated Public and Private. A collection of those columns, Thinking Out Loud, was a national bestseller. In 1992 Quindlen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.She left The Times and journalism in 1995 to pursue a career as a full-time novelist. However, she returned to the newsworld in 1999 as a featured Newsweek columnist. In Loud & Clear, a collection of her Newsweek and New York Times columns, she combines commentary on American society and the world at large with her thought and experiences on being a woman, a writer and a mother.

Quindlen's other non-fiction books include Imagined London : a tour of the world's greatest fictional city about Quindlen's love of English literature and its London legacy and Thinking out loud : on the personal, the political, the public, and the private, a collection of essays from her syndicated New York Times column.

She has authored four novels in addition to Rise and Shine:
Object Lessons - her first novel,
One True Thing -- made into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Rene Zellweger,
Black and Blue - a selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club,
Blessings - made into a TV movie starring Mary Tyler Moore.

Quindlen has also penned two children's books: The Tree That Came to Stay, a tale about family finding a way to preserve the feeling of Christmas into the new year by filling a basket with pine needles from their Christmas tree. and Happily Ever After, about a girl who loves to read fairy tales and is transported back to medieval times to discover that the life of a princess is not as magical as she had imagined. Quindlen has also published some coffee table pictorials. Naked Babies and its sequel Siblings, which she published with photographer Nick Kelsh, are intriguing books with perceptive and personal essays about children growing up plus some marvelous photographs.

So whatever your cup of tea, Anna Quindlen has probably written a book you may enjoy. I know I have enjoyed them all.