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AMERICAN PASSAGE: THE HISTORY OF ELLIS ISLAND

By Vincent J. Cannato (HarperCollins, 496 pages, $27.99)

Ghosts walk at many a particularly evocative American historic site -- Antietam, Little Big Horn, the Lincoln Memorial, Little Rock, ground zero. They're present, too, at Ellis Island, that little spot of land off Manhattan that served as a gateway to lives in the New World for tens of thousands of our dusty forebears, and now attracts boatloads of tourists in search of national and personal history. Historian Vincent Cannato's sprawling volume is full of fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking stories, but it goes beyond well anecdotes with a meticulously researched history of American attitudes toward immigration during the years Ellis Island was active. Some of what he found rings familiar in our own era, in which immigration remains a hot topic. An absorbing and thoughtful read.

PAMELA MILLER, NIGHT NEWS EDITOR

HAPPENS EVERY DAY

By Isabel Gillies (Scribner, 258 pages, $25)

When Isabel Gillies and her husband, a poetry professor, lovingly redecorated and restored their new house in Oberlin, Ohio, she installed a bench in the kitchen window where she hoped her sons would sit and talk with her through their teenage years. Gillies planned a long, happy future in that family kitchen. Gillies, an actress who plays Detective Elliot Stabler's wife on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," said she would have rated her marriage an eight on a 10-point scale. Then a new 18^th-century-literature professor came to town and her husband abruptly wanted out of the marriage. "In one day I went from living with my partner doing husbandy things to living with a teenager who was head-over-heels in love, but not with me," Gillies wrote. "Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True story" is Gillies' 258-page memoir of the end of her marriage at age 35 with two sons under the age of 3. Even though the outcome is clear from the outset, the book is a page turner. Gillies has changed the names in her book, but a Google search successfully revealed the identities and photos of her former husband and the new wife. Truth is always better than fiction -- especially when it's about someone picking up and moving on.

ROCHELLE OLSON, news reporter