At sixteen in rural England at the start of the 1960s, Laurel Nicolson hides in their tree house to avoid the family outing in celebration of her baby brother’s second birthday.  From there she witnesses a horrible act that involves her mother.  Innocently, she attests to the fact that her mother’s response was to protect her two-year-old child and herself. Years later in 2011, Laurel, an acclaimed actress now in her sixties, visits her ninety-year-old mother in the hospital in Suffolk, England, where Laurel and […]

Five young men meet in college, become fast friends, and remain so long after graduation, having now become established in their careers. They make an annual trip to Las Vegas, and in this tenth year for the first time one of the friends is missing.

The Philosopher’s Kiss, a work of historical fiction by Peter Prange, was set in France in the 18th Century in Paris during the height of the Age of Enlightenment when all print was under the scrutiny and censorship of the Catholic Church. Denis Diderot, the title character, was a famous philosopher and writer whose idea it was to compile all knowledge under what became the Encyclopedia.

Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous is Gloria Loring’s way of validating God in her life. When her son was diagnosed with diabetes, she joined JDF (Juvenile Diabetes Foundation). Attempting to offer her support to JDF, she came up with the idea of compiling a cookbook made up of recipes contributed by her fellow cast members of Days of Our Lives—where she at the time played Liz Chandler—as a way to raise money.

Throughout this first book I kept thinking to myself that books and movies like this are contributing to the increasing violence of our young people. In fact, I was nearing the end of Book I when at 11:00 p.m. I inserted my bookmark, closed the book, and turned on the TV to the news. There I learned of the Colorado massacre.

Kate Morton’s second novel, THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN (copyright 2008), is a beautiful mystery “. . . of unknown parentage, family intrigue and generational secrets that keeps the reader turning pages into the wee hours of the night.”

Told from the points of view of two sisters, A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman is a novel of love and loss, conflict and triumph. The narration alternates between Sky, the older sister, and Tara, some years younger and the child of her mother’s second marriage after Sky’s father dies at the age of thirty-four.

Through her memories, ninety-eight-year-old Grace Reeves Bradley tells the riveting, touching, and tense love story of her life and the lives of the aristocrats who employ her. The novel is set in England, primarily between World War I and World War II.

This is a coming-of-age story, told through the eyes of 13-year-old Hob (Robert), who by the end has matured into the young man Molly and her granddaughter knew he would become when on their travels eighteen months before they met him in the monastery where he, an orphan, had been raised and tutored by Father Athelstan.

Modelland Book CoverTookie De La Crème, AKA Forgetta-Girl, who aspires to become a Rememba-Girl, is the main character of Modelland, Tyra Banks’s first novel. It is set in the make-believe world of Modelland in Metopia. Tookie is a fifteen-year-old girl who longs to be noticed by anyone. One way she attempts to get attention is by lying down in the hallways of her school (B3), just hoping someone would step on her, proof she existed.