Arthur, Ill., native Suzanne Vitale, who graduated from Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Mo., moved to Bowling Green in 1978. She is the proud mother of three children, Robert Vitale, Michael Vitale and Mary Vitale Bryant, and has six grandchildren who bring her the greatest joy of her life.

Vitale, a dedicated advocate for children with autism, spent several years raising money to build the Suzanne Vitale Clinical Education Complex at Western Kentucky University, which was named in her honor in 2006. She also volunteers five days a week in the Bowling Green Junior High School library, where she processes the new books and enters them into the computer before they go to the stacks. It is a great way to stay current with what her grandchildren are interested in and want to read.

Mystery-thrillers, historical fiction, romances by Nora Roberts and medical thrillers are some of Vitale’s preferred categories. She respects any author who can tell a good story; a few from her long list of favorites are Pat Conroy, Jeffrey Deaver, Greg Iles, Sandra Brown, Tess Gerritson, Stephen White, Michael Connelly and Phillip Margolin. Right now she is reading Lee Child’s “Worth Dying For” and admires the way bigger-than-life hero Jack Reacher “rides into town, corrects a wrong or saves a damsel in distress, then moves on, usually in the same clothes in which he arrived.”

Vitale learned to love reading from a librarian in her hometown, who was, she remembers, “older than God’s sister and recognized that my way out of there was through books.” Now Vitale owns three different electronic reading devices but prefers using her iPhone because it is so small and easy to hold. To choose either new e-books or hardbacks, she checks bn.com and amazon.com, reads reviews and asks friends for recommendations. A favorite she suggests is Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth,” an engrossing historical novel about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England, which was made into a TV miniseries last year.

— By Libby Davies, Barnes & Noble Booksellers