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Chilean American writer Isabel Allende is known for utilizing magical realism — a literary tool popularized by fellow Latin-American author Gabriel García Márquez — and making it her own. Allende's best-selling, award-winning work is brimming with lyrical sagas and whimsical twists on historical fiction that often center on strong, adventurous women. In 2014, President Obama honored Allende with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and last year, she was awarded the National Book Foundation's medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

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LONG PETAL OF THE SEA

Allende's latest book is a sweeping historical novel that starts in 1930s Spain, heads over the French mountains, and crosses the Atlantic to Chile. In order to flee the duress of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, Roser, a pregnant young widow, is forced to marry Victor Dalmau, her brother-in-law. Though it doesn't contain Allende's signature magical realism twist, A Long Petal of the Sea is a reminder that ordinary human lives can become epics, too.