A very good book by one of my favorite authors, Last Light over Carolina is set in South Carolina.  It is the story of the Morrison Family; Bud, Carolina and Lizzy.  Bud and Carolina are about 30 years into their marriage.  Lizzy is a divorced, single mother of a little boy.  They all live together and help each other out.  Bud runs a shrimp boat, Carolina is a housewife, and Lizzy works at the local diner to make ends meet. 

The story of the relationship between Bud and Carolina is told in a series of flashbacks after Bud goes shrimping alone and gets his hand caught in the winch of his boat.   Trapped with no help, he must hope that the townspeople and his wife figure out where he is and that he needs help.  Can they realize that Bud is in trouble and find him in time?

Set in California, this book is about Tracy Potter and her son, Matt.  Her husband, Glenn, has just passed away and left her a mountain of debt from his business dealings and the Heartbreak Hotel, an old run down inn that Tracy decides to remodel and sell.  Tracy can't figure out where Glenn's money has gone, but she sells her home and moves into the hotel.  During the renovation, a man on a Harley stops and checks in to get out of the rain.  Wade MacAllister, unknown to Tracy, is a world famous author whose last book inspired a killer to copy the methods in his book and kill 12 people.  Wade is just trying to get some peace in his life.

The book is full of twists and turns.  Wade begins to dream about a ship's captain who returned from being shipwrecked for a year, to find that his wife died in childbirth and his child was still born.  The dreams are so real that he stays on at the hotel to find out about the story of the captain and his wife.  Tracy works on the hotel, discovers she is strong, then finds out a terrible thing about her dead husband; he had an affair with her best friend and fathered a child. 

The writing is very good but a little predictable.  I enjoyed the book. It mixes historical fiction with present day lives.  Mystery lovers will like it, too.  There are several mysteries to be solved in the story.

I liked this book.  It is a series of short stories about a small town in Maine called Crosby.  The inhabitants of ths small town are somewhat sad to see progress come to the village, including Olive, a math rteacher and her pharamacist husband, Henry.  The short stories revole around the town's people and the Kitteridge family.  Olive, a grumpy, frumpy stick in the mud type lady, has something to say about all the goings on in her town and most of it is not pleasant to hear.  She is  appalled at what goes on and the problems that seem to visit Crosby. 

Although each story is not about Olive and Henry, she plays a part in each section.  Although she is not an overly friendly favorite in the town, she gives sound advice and guidance and seems to at times, be the town guardian.  At the end of the book, the reader will find a softer, gentler side of Olive and she becomes more likable,

After I read the book, I saw a lot of Olive in me and in others.  Olive may have been an old, opinionate grouch, but her advice is usually sound and she is a strong shoulder to lean on.  I guess every small town needs an Olive to look out for it.

This is a collection of women’s stories of Americans who have chosen to live in other countries.  Most of them chose to live elsewhere.  One woman wrote of when she was a child, and her family moved from Brooklyn, NY to Sydney, Australia.  I was intrigued by the book because since going to Guadalajara I have given some thought about retiring to Guadalajara, particularly the Lake Chapala area.  There are several thousand Americans and Canadians living there.  I met a woman at the Dallas airport who lives there, and she loves it.  Anyway, it was interesting to read about the adjustments the women had to make to deal with the cultural differences.  Also, I liked reading about what the women did to help them feel more at home.  One woman had moved to China to teach English.  She decided to have baked chicken like her mother made.  It was not available in a store under cellophane.  She had to buy a live chicken.  At least she didn’t have to kill it.  The poultry vendor killed it for her.  He also had a device for removing the feathers.  She cooked it with seasonings like her mother used, and cooking it helped her feel more at home in China. 

Most of the women were single, but one woman was married with a young family.  She and her husband decided to sell everything and move to Morelia, Michoacán in Mexico and live with their baby daughter.  She writes that they enjoyed living in Mexico, but after living there for four years, they decided to come home.  They wanted their daughter to know her cousins, and they wanted to live among Americans again.  She said that they always felt like outsiders.   I thought this book was interesting.  I highly recommend it.

Here's some books from our Digital Library that haven't been found yet. Take a look, you might find a great read for the cold weather!

L.A. Blues, by Maxine Thompson

Growing up in foster care, Zipporah "Z" Saldano never dreamed of becoming a police officer, but after she's rescued from a hostage situation during the LA riots, she chooses a career in law enforcement. After ten good years on the force, Z is involved in a domestic homicide case gone awry. Her partner is killed, and Z is fired when alcohol is detected in her system. It's two long years before she gets sober and opens her own private investigation firm. Now Shirley, her former foster mother, is in need of Z's help. Soneone has murdered her grandson, a high school basketball star, and she wants Z to find out who did it. Z soon finds herself in deeper trouble than when she was kicked out of the LAPD. What she discovers is a conspiracy much deeper than anyone would believe, and she finds her own life is in danger.

Spoonin', by Kimberly T. Matthews

When his marriage falls into turmoil due to lack of intimacy, Malcolm takes matters into his own hands by getting back into the dating game, but he soon discovers that his quasi-single status isn't all he'd imagined it would be and must earn his wife's forgiveness to repair their marriage.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground breaking mediation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O'Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, by David Sheff

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of Sheff's journey through his son Nic's addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers

With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is considered McCullers finest work and an enduring masterpiece. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for variouis types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine, finds solace in her music.

Watch for more undiscovered gems, coming soon.

This book is a memoir of Condoleezza's family's life and an account of her political triumphs.  Ms. Rice began taking piano lessons at a very early age as her mother was a piano teacher.  Her father the Rev. Rice was a Presbyterian minister and enjoyed sharing sports with Condoleezza.  They watched football together and she really understood what she was watching.  Church figured very prominently in their lives.  They lived in Birmingham, Alabama when segregation was very much a problem.  In order to complete his graduate degree so he could hold a faculty position, Rev. Rice moved the family to Denver, Colorado permanently.  Condoleezza was pursuing her education at the same time and received a master's degree from Notre Dame and later a Ph.D. from Denver, Colorado.  Her speciality was Russian studies and she traveled to Moscow.  Stanford University in California recruited her and she became one of their faculty.  Ms. Rice would take sabbaticals work at the Pentagon.  Stanford granted her three sabbaticals in four years.  Not long afterward, Ms. Rice became provost of Stanford.  She was asked to help George Bush with his campaign for the presidency.  After Bush became President she was made his National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State.  I really enjoyed reading this book.

Once Upon a River is the story of Margaret Louise or Margo, who lives near the Stark River in Michigan.  She is a tomboy who idolizes Annie Oakley.  He mother has left her with her father and she lives and hunts and fishes along and in the river.  Her grandfather gave her his boat, which she takes with only a few supplies and her bio of Annie Oakley and sets off down the river after her father is brutally murdered and she is raped. 

Margo fishes, hunts and takes up with men as she travels the river, trying to stay away from her relatives.  She tries to contact her mother but her mother won't see her and she ends up living with a sucession of men along the river in their houses.  She is very strong but niave about her relationships, so she ends of pregnant after an encounter with an Indian from California.  Her mother finally agrees to help her get an abortion, but Margo decides, in the end, that she wants the baby.  She becomes friends with a man who lives along the river named Smoke and his friend Fishbone, who help her find shelter and become positive influences on her. 

Margo was a strange character. She loved to shoot things, men and animals.  She was almost a hermit, because she never really liked relationships with others.  She was also strong because she was self-suficient, but almost scary in the way that she could shoot anything and anyone with no regrets. 

A somewhat confusing book about several generations of a family.  The book is hard to read because it skips around and is set in multiple times: 1944, 1961 and 2000.  It is about a secret and a family living in Blackberry Ridge, a very small town in Minnesota.  I did like the characters, Violet, Julia, Alice, Lena, Grace and Jago a lot.  Part of the story is about the women in the book, who get jobs at the shipyards and end up welding boats for the war effort.  There were many hardships involved in taking on this work. 

The more I read, the more confused I became.  There are many, convoluted relationships among the characters.  Although the men dominated the women during this time, the women were very strong.

This is a book by Nina Sankovich, an author I had never heard of, but somebody I will be on the look-out for in the future.  I picked it up as a professional tool- something I needed to read for my job (as a librarian). Reading the jacket, I was expecting this book to chronicle some possible reading preferences.  I was hoping for some insights to share with co-workers and patrons, but what I got for my time was much, much more.  This is an extraordinary book about a woman who is heartbroken over the loss of her sister to cancer.  She takes on the biliophile pilgrimage to read a book a day for a year.  She does this as a homage or dedication to her sister- someone who always took time for the pleasures of life.  The unexpected insight and philosophical brevity that the author brings to her readers as they take this journey with her is as startling as the emotion that comes leaping off the pages.  Ms. Sankovich is able to tantalize us with her selection of books without sharing too much...all the while giving readers an abundance of wit and wisdom. Great stuff!

Serge and Coleman are back with all the gang in Tim Dorsey's new Christmas story When Elves Attack. Our favorite anti-hero decides it's time to celebrate the holidays in a big way and recruits City and Country to help out. With G-Unit along for the ride, you know there's going to be plenty of sparkle. Unfortunately, all these old characters make When Elves Attack a poor choice for newcomers to the Serge mythos. They'll be completely lost. Of course, there's lots of mayhem as Serge deals with bad guys, Grinches and naughty elves using his own special style. Along the way, he helps the Davenports (Jim and Martha) handle some family crises and defends them from thugs with pain in mind. He even guides their daughter Nicole through teenage angst and the pitfalls of young love.

Many people believe Serge is a psychotic serial killer, but in reality he's so much more. He's our collective id, doing battle with 21st century evil and stupidity. Serge is, dare I say it, a new Dark Knight with Coleman as his (literally) dopey Boy Wonder. He's also one of the great philosophers and commentators of our time.

"But why are we wearing elf suit?"

"To spread good cheer."

"What for?"

"Because of the War on Christmas."

"Who started the war?" asked Coleman.

"Ironically, the very people who coined the term and claim others started the war. They're upset that people of different faiths, along with the coexistence crowd who respect those faiths, are saying 'Seasons Greetings' and 'Happy Holidays.' But nobody's stopp;ing anyone from saying 'Merry Christmas.'"

"And they're still mad?"

Serge shrugged. "It's the new holiness: Tolerance can't be tolerated."

Forget what I said earlier. Read the book even if you've never read any of Dorsey's others. Sure, you'll be confused, but that's a common state in Dorseyland. Despite your confusion, you'll discover a great series with quirky, enjoyable characters and wonderful plots, and you'll love the ride.

Season's greetings, merry Christmas, and happy holidays.