The year is 2020, and not much has changed. Human beings are still killing each other over religion, and evidence of life on other planets, if exposed, would certainly rock some fundamentalist boats. So when Lucy Bergmann’s astrophysicist husband Thom tenderly hangs a computer memory stick storing irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial life around her neck, Lucy is both moved and nervous.

Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women --- mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends --- view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor and hope, THE HELP is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

A number of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture," where they are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer.