Sometimes, it's hard to be a woman

SECRETS TO HAPPINESS
By Sarah Dunn
Little, Brown, 288 pp., $23.99

LOVE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
By Deirdre Shaw
Random House, 242 pp., $22

ETTA
By Gerald Kolpan
Ballantine, 336 pp., $25

This month's Pop Lit lineup begins with an engaging oddity, an old-fashioned adventure story with a feminist twist. The second is a sharply funny comedy of manners set in contemporary Manhattan. The third is a thoughtful, well-written story about a young woman prevailing over a difficult past. The last is a sweeping fantasy about the mysterious outlaw Etta Place of Hole-in-the-Wall gang fame.

In Elaine diRollo's delightful first novel, "A Proper Education for Girls," clever twins Alice and Lilian Talbot find ways to escape their repressive upbringing in Victorian England. The girls have been reared by their eccentric, tyrannical, widowed father, an insatiable collector of oddities. As Alice and Lilian grow to adulthood, their father enlists them to care for and catalog his vast, ever-growing collection of strange stuff, stashed in the isolated and forbidding family mansion. When the novel opens, Lilian has been banished after having been seduced and abandoned by Mr. Hunter, a dashing botanist invited by her father to study the exotic contents of the Talbot hothouse. Her father's friend, the evil Dr. Cattermole, arranges for the disgraced Lilian to marry a missionary set to embark for India. Alice, forbidden to correspond with her beloved sister, misses her terribly. The story unfolds in England and India, where Lilian, a talented artist, does her best to ignore her tiresome husband and defy the restraints placed upon Englishwomen. Her erstwhile lover, Mr. Hunter, turns up by chance and courts her surreptitiously, as Alice plots to reunite with her sister. In England, Alice assists Mr. Blake, a photographer recording her father's collection. Blake is drawn to Alice, who sees in him a possible means of escape from her father. Meanwhile, the twisted Dr. Cattermole has convinced Alice's father that she is a hermaphrodite and arranges to operate on her without her consent. "A Proper Education for Girls" is an inspired fantasy, a light-hearted adventure that nevertheless addresses such serious topics as Victorian hypocrisy, sexual repression, and the second-class status of women.

Sarah Dunn's "Secrets to Happiness" zips along hilariously, fueled by pitch-perfect dialogue. Promotional material describes Dunn's heroine, Holly Frick, as a modern Emma Woodhouse, "compelled to give advice with unwavering moral certainty." There's actually something to the comparison if you can imagine Emma as a contemporary New Yorker advising her friends about extramarital sex, condom protocol, and the abuse of ADD drugs. Holly is 35, recently divorced from Alex, and still in love with him. Her first novel tanked, and she has returned to work writing an "embarrassing" after-school TV program called "The Mighty Moppets" with her gay co-writer, Leonard. Cathleen, Holly's ex-boyfriend Spence's current girlfriend, has just read Holly's novel, which includes a scathing portrait of Spence. She calls out of the blue seeking advice about his philandering. Holly is sleeping with her friend Betsy's 22-year old brother, Lucas. And she's just adopted a dog with a brain tumor. "Secrets to Happiness" is an antic urban comedy, with enough neurotic characters to fill the cast of a Woody Allen movie. It's great fun.

Deirdre Shaw's "Love or Something Like It" is a wryly funny, refreshingly honest story about an emotionally damaged young woman muddling through young adulthood. Lacey Brennan marries Toby Friedman, a comedian and TV writer. She's sure that a happy marriage and a new life in Los Angeles, far from home in New York, will heal the wounds of her childhood, when she and her twin brother, Sam, were pawns in a contentious divorce. The wedding doesn't go well, and neither does the Paris honeymoon. Back in L.A., Toby loses his job and retreats to the sofa to watch TV. Lacey quits her reporting job when her editor cans her exposé of financial chicanery at a celebrity charity event. She gets a job as an assistant writer on a sitcom. Her co-workers treat her like dirt; her boss's dog, a rescued abused pit bull named Attilla, stalks her. Within a year of being married, Lacy and Toby get divorced. Lacey's post-divorce struggle to achieve self-understanding and peace of mind has the ring of truth. Shaw writes convincingly, with insight and wisdom.

Almost nothing is known about Etta Place, although it's not for lack of trying on the part of historians. She evaded the law for years in the company of Butch Cassidy and Harry Longbaugh, the Sundance Kid. There is the famous studio photograph of Etta, demure and beautiful, with her lover, Longbaugh. Where did she come from? What did she do before she took up with the outlaws? What happened to her? Lacking facts, Gerald Kolpan has imagined her life in his first novel, "Etta." He gives her a privileged background. She was born Lorinda Jameson, daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia sportsman, who taught his only child how to ride and shoot as well as any man. After her father loses everything, the debutante is forced to flee, pursued by gangsters. She acquires a new name and life as a Harvey Girl, working in Grand Junction, Colo., in one of Fred Harvey's famous railway restaurants. Kolpan enlivens his narrative with diary entries, Pinkerton National Detective Agency reports, Longbaugh's letters, telegrams, excerpts from dime novels, and newspaper stories. Kolpan has Etta fall in with famous people. She is befriended by the young Eleanor Roosevelt, stands in for Annie Oakley in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, is photographed by Alfred Steiglitz, and travels with Leon Trotsky. Kolpan tells a lively story but doesn't succeed in bringing his creation to life. Readers looking for Etta Place won't find her here or, it seems, anywhere.

Diane White writes every month about new light and popular fiction.