Allison Melone

When Heidi Archibald neé Smith relocated from Jupiter, Florida to Lake Forest in 2002 with her then husband, Mike, and their 4-year-old triplets Kate, Belle, and Michael, she cried. The housing market at the time was hot, and Mike had fallen in love with a 1928 Tudor Revival home that had green-painted countertops and unsafe

Faced with the reality of a yearlong recovery following a severe injury in January 2009, national bestselling and award-winning author Katherine Reay turned to her favorite time-tested novels for comfort, reading upward of 70 books in six months from writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. “New stories required too much energy and imagination,” she says.