Little Altars Everywhere first introduces readers to Siddalee Walker, her mother Viviane, and Viviane's unforgettable pals, the Ya-Yas--as wild a bunch of born-and-bred steel magnolias as you will ever run across in literature. Set in Louisiana and narrated by various members of the Walker family, Little Altars tells the tragicomic tale of Siddalee's magnificently dysfunctional clan. There is hard-drinking Viviane, who alternately adores her children and abuses them, and Daddy Big Shep, who is inarticulate, alcoholic, and can't quite say what he means and seldom means what he yells. Sidda's siblings are a mess, the family servants are badly treated, and though Rebecca Wells includes many hilarious set pieces throughout, even the Ya-Yas can't completely overcome the dark core at the center of this novel.

Wells continues the saga of Sidda and Vivi Walker in her follow-up, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and this time the mood is considerably lightened as she takes her characters back in time via a collection of letters, clippings, and scrapbooks--the "divine secrets" of the title. Here a younger, more sympathetic Vivi shares the limelight with her Ya-Ya pals, Teensy, Caro, and Necie. From skinny-dipping in the town water tower to boozing it up at the spring cotillion, these Southern-fried hell-raisers prove what everyone has always suspected--that "it's so much fun being a bad girl!" But you don't have to be bad to enjoy Rebecca Wells's take on family, friendship, and the ties that bind for a lifetime. --Margaret Prior