Daily newspapers shuttered. Radio and TV networks swimming in red ink. Reporters and editors enduring widespread buyouts and layoffs.

This was the landscape of the news business that Boston University professor Christopher B. Daly confronted as he began researching the history of American journalism about eight years ago. It occurred to him that he just might end up having to write the obituary of American journalism.

SQuire Rushnell’s latest book, Divine Alignment (2012, Simon & Schuster Inc.), is the fifth book in his Godwink series, the term he coined to describe how life’s un-coincidental coincidences all come together to create a purpose in our lives. Once again he rejects the idea that we are all “twigs floating down a river to destinations unknown.” Instead, he believes these coincidences, or godwinks, have divine underpinnings.

There are all manner of real-world characters who escape to Martha’s Vineyard — to start a new life, to get away from their old one or simply to enjoy the Island. Some are accomplished lawyers, some are alcoholics, some are philanderers, some failed husbands. Jake Dellahunt, Vineyard Lawyer, with an office on the Cape, happens to be all of those.

How does one end up writing a book about a star child? For that matter, what is a star child?

Author Kay Goldstein was wondering the same thing a few years ago when she started writing the first pages of her newly released novel, Star Child, a process which caused her to delve into the depths of human experience.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAVED IN: An American Mining Tragedy. By Joan Quigley. Random House. 2007. Hardcover. 223 pages.

Before he began sinking into the ground, 12-year-old Todd Domboski noticed a wisp of smoke floating from the ground “like a smoldering match buried under damp leaves.”

In Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an abandoned coal mine had been burning beneath the town for 19 years, the book explains, tiny fissures often punched through the topsoil, trailing bands of sulfurous steam.

The Journals of Constant Waterman, Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It. By Matthew Goldman, Breakaway Books, Halcottsville, N.Y. 2007, page 336. $14.

Matthew Goldman has sailed into Vineyard waters with his book The Journals of Constant Waterman. Boat enthusiasts and especially wanna-be boat enthusiasts will enjoy the short stories assembled between the cover. His trade is boat repair and maintenance and a lot of other crafts. He lives in Stonington.

REGGAE SCRAPBOOK. By Roger Steffens and Peter Simon. Insight Editions. San Rafael, Calif.. 2007. 154 pages. $45 hardcover with DVD.

The disclaimer found at the front of political novels is generally trivial boilerplate. It implies that the novelist, or his publisher at least, is a bit chicken. Coy allusions to real people and events may be made but vaguely and behind the blast wall of imagination.

LETTER ON THE WIND: A Chanukah Tale. By Sarah Marwil Lamstein. Illustrated by Neil Waldman. Boyds Mills Press, Honesdale, Pa. 2007. 32 pages. $16.95 hardcover.

GOOD LITTLE WIVES. By Abby Drake. HarperCollins. August 2007. 304 pages. $13.95 softcover.

Good Little Wives is a good little chick-lit read. I read it in a day. Granted, there were no distractions because it was one of those rare I-don’t-feel-very-good-I-think-I’ll-stay-in-bed-all-day days. And Good Little Wives, by Abby Drake, was just what I needed.