In Help, Thanks, Wow, popular novelist and spiritual writer Anne Lamott offers three simple prayers that can make a world of difference in the life of a believer. In this slim volume (just over 100 pages) Lamott includes personal reflections and amusing anecdotes to illustrate her insights, celebrating the divine and explaining our need for a higher power. Her three “essential prayers”–seeking help and offering thanks and praise–will resonate with many readers during the Easter season.

Can’t get enough of the TV hit “Downton Abbey”? Readers looking for fiction in a similar vein should try Fay Weldon’s Habits of the House. The novel begins in 1899 when the Earl of Dilberne’s privileged existence is threatened by the debts he can no longer ignore. The only way out is for his son or daughter to marry into wealth, but neither his suffragette daughter nor his mistress-keeping son seems up to the task of finding a spouse. An American family with new money and an eligible daughter could be the family’s only way out of collapse, but as the new couple gets to know each other, the secrets they are keeping could ruin everyone’s plans.