The very best thing about Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies: It doesn't end with Thomas Cromwell's thick neck on the chopping block after he loses Henry VIII's favor. Instead, there will be a third novel. Titled The Mirror and the Light, it will complete the story Mantel began with the sensational Wolf Hall, which won the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
Trying to convey the magic and majesty of these two Tudor-era novels leaves a reviewer burbling with superlatives. Riveting! A page-turner!
The funny part: The ending is no mystery. Henry the multi-married had the once-invaluable Cromwell beheaded in 1540. Nor is the subject — Tudor court sexcapades — unexplored in popular culture. Thanks to the TV miniseries The Tudors, movies like The Other Boleyn Girl and best sellers by Philippa Gregory, Alison Weir and the superb C.J. Sansom, it practically feels like TMZ has set up a videocam in Henry's bed chamber.
Mantel's secret is her ability to make the reader identify heart and soul with Cromwell. You want the blacksmith's son to rise in the world the same way you want Mario Puzo's Godfather to triumph. You simply don't care that the skill set required for their career advancement requires murder and corruption.
Cromwell rose to power thanks to three things. One: His extraordinary knowledge of how the world worked, which he gained as a mercenary in Europe. Two: An Einstein-level IQ. Cromwell wooed aristocrats and mentored the young and ambitious.
Most of all, he was ruthless. Cromwell's job description was simple: Keep Henry happy. No room for scruples at this palace.
The plot revolves around Henry's disenchantment with the bold but aging Anne Boleyn. Having broken with the Catholic Church and much of Europe in order to put Wife No. 2 on the throne and in his bed, Henry finds himself drawn to the demure Jane Seymour.
Read Wolf Hall first — it's non-negotiable in terms of understanding Bring Up the Bodies. And if you're someone who devours business books about snaring that corner office, you'll discover that Mantel's novel brims with timeless career advice about the grabbing and keeping of power, even though codpieces are no longer de rigueur.
By Forrest MacCormack, for USA TODAY
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
By Thibault Camus, AP
Her own family was "poor," she says, "but we were never degraded." Her dad, who assumed "all whites were unredeemable," worked as a welder, among other jobs. Her mother, "the most non-racist person I knew," worked as a restroom attendant "so she could send me $5 a week when I was at Howard. Back then, that made a difference."Morrison, who worked as an editor at Random House from 1967 to 1983, says she has followed her own advice to write about what you don't know: "I write to find out something. I write with questions in mind. 'What would it feel like if …' Or, 'What would happen if…' "The plots are simple to construct, she says. "The characters are complex." She says they talk to her, like ghosts: "On a good day, they shut up and let me work."In Home, told from multiple viewpoints, she does something she's never done before.Her main character, Frank "Smart" Money, who harbors a terrible secret from Korea, talks back to the author, challenging what she knows and doesn't.Money is summoned home to Georgia, to a "no-count, not-even-a-town place," to save his naive sister, Cee, who's been abused by a white doctor. That part of her plot was inspired by Harriet Washington's 2007 book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present.Morrison's novels, which often blend reality and myth, arise from her imagination and research. They are not autobiographical. One book she won't write is a memoir. She's canceled plans to do so after deciding, "A) I don't remember everything anymore, and B) as a subject to write about, I'm not that interesting to myself. I'm more interested in my imagination. Fiction is my place."On Lorain, Obama, OprahThat doesn't surprise Carolyn Denard, a dean at Emory University in Atlanta and president of the Toni Morrison Society, a group of 600 scholars and fans. "She has been so generous with her life story in appearances and in countless interviews," Denard says. "And she has now written 10 novels. She has always told me that everything we need to know about her is there — in the works."Morrison doesn't discuss her 1964 divorce from Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect she met at Howard. (As a single mother, she raised two sons. Ford, 50, is an architect in Princeton, N.J., where his mother used to teach. Slade was an artist and illustrator, who collaborated with his mother on several children's books and died in 2010 at 45 from pancreatic cancer.)But in an interview, on a variety of topics, she's funny and biting:•Growing up in Lorain: "All those immigrants. I thought it was typical. It helped me feel comfortable in the world at large. There wasn't a ghetto sensibility."•Her mother: "Whenever a new place or store would open in Lorain, she would go just to check it out and see how we were treated. When the Dreamland movie theater opened, all the black kids sat on the left side. My mother deliberately made us sit on the right side. I was furious because my friends were on the other side. But my mother wanted to make a point."•President Obama: "As good as it gets … I think what drives some of his critics is not that he's black, but that he's such a smart, articulate black … and that causes all this vulgarity about his birth certificate or the Muslim thing." She's "thrilled" that she's one of 13 recipients of this year's Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, and is eager to meet Obama for the first time at a White House ceremony to be scheduled soon.•E-books: She likes reading books on her iPad — to a degree. She recently found that Hilary Mantel's 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, set in Henry VIII's England, "was so good, I had to go buy the book book, or whatever it's called now. When I like a book, I want to add my notes. Exclamation points! And questions marks! I want to corrupt it with my responses."•Her friendship with Winfrey: "I adore her. She sends me flowers every year on my birthday. She did what they said was impossible: She used TV to get people to read books." (Morrison says Winfrey's embrace of three of her novels, Song of Solomon, Paradise and Sula, did more for her sales than the Nobel Prize ever did.)But no, Morrison hasn't urged Winfrey to revive her televised book club. "We stay friends because I don't ask her for anything. Everyone else does." (Winfrey likes to say that when she told Morrison she often has to reread parts of her novels to understand them, Morrison replied, "That, my dear, is reading.")•Home as a place: These days, it's mostly Morrison's riverfront house in Grand View-on-Hudson, N.Y., which lives up to its name, 20 miles north of Manhattan on the west bank of the Hudson. "I love the river. As a girl, I loved Lake Erie. There's something about water."•Home, her new novel, set in the '50s: "I wanted to rip the scab off that period. There's all this Leave It to Beaver nostalgia. That it was all comfortable and happy and everyone had a job. Oh, please. There was violent racism. There was (Joe) McCarthy. There was this horrible war we didn't call a war, where 58,000 people died."•The length of her new novel (just 147 pages): "Some reviewers say it's too short. They used to say my novels were too long. Someone called it a novella. What's the ella? It's a novel. The better I can do with less is more."The reviews have been generally good: Entertainment Weekly (A-) and People (four stars) loved it, but The Los Angeles Times called it a "thin book with some beautiful writing."The dedication page on Home reads simply "Slade," her son who died."Sometimes you just don't have any words," she says. "Sometimes, it's just clichés and tired old words, and there's nothing really to say."After a long pause, Morrison adds two words about her son: "He knows."For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com. 
3. You reread old journals for research?There were lots of stories about how my mouth has gotten me into trouble. There was a time when I was an intern at CBS News and someone pulled me aside to tell me to "tone it down." I was just like, well, this is hilarious.4. Dream guest on Watch What Happens Live?A great female politician like Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama or Sarah Palin.5. What advice do you want to give readers?Follow your passion. Be yourself, but check yourself before you wreckyourself.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.