ALTERNATE ENDING From Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” to Monica Ali’s “Untold Story,” veteran novelists have long tinkered with real-life events. (Roth imagines Charles Lindbergh as president; Ali imagines an alternate life for Princess Diana ... in the American suburbs.) Curtis Sittenfeld is the latest to practice Jenga storytelling in her sixth novel, “Rodham,” which considers how the pieces of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life might have fallen differently if she hadn’t married Bill. Like its namesake, the book wins the popular vote, landing at No. 8 on the hardcover fiction list.

Alka Joshi’s debut novel, “The Henna Artist,” grew out of a question that was closer to home: How would her mother’s life have been different if she hadn’t had an arranged marriage at 18? Joshi explains, “My mother was studying psychology at college in Agra. Her father called her back home to Rajasthan and said, ‘It’s time for you to get married. You’re getting really spinsterish.’ My mother comes into this room, she is introduced to my father, who is also young and didn’t want to get married either. They both had hopes, things they wanted to accomplish in their lives, but their families had decreed, This is the time.”

Within four years, Joshi’s parents had three children; and five years later, the family moved from India to the United States so her father could pursue a doctorate. “My mother never had the decision-making powers, but she gave me so much latitude, so much freedom. I wanted to give her that gift back,” Joshi says. “I can’t change her life, but I can change it in fiction. I can create a character who leaves her marriage and goes off and finds herself and finds her destiny, and her financial and emotional independence. That’s where ‘The Henna Artist’ came from.”

Joshi worked on the book for 10 years. She says, “We lost my mother about two or three years after I started, but during that period I was going back and forth with her to Jaipur, which is where the novel takes place. It was a wonderful time for me to share with my mom. I was able to read portions to her. I’d say, ‘Does this feel real? Does this feel like something that a woman in your time would have done?’ She said, ‘Absolutely! Honey, this is good, keep going!’ I just wish she were here now, so she could see the fruits of her labors and mine.”

“The Henna Artist” was the May pick for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club and appeared at No. 14 on last week’s hardcover fiction list.