By Mary McGarry Morris (Crown: 2011)

Poised on the brink between childhood and adolescence, 13 year old Nellie Peck sees the people and events around her with unusual clarity and honesty. Her “normal” family is filled with tensions: the family business is failing; older sister Ruth is intent on

 By Clyde Edgerton (Little Brown, 2011)

One of the funniest books I have ever read was Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton. That’s a tough act to follow, and although the jacket blurb for The Night Train indicates that the book is funny, it doesn’t even come close to Egypt. That said, Night Train is a pretty good book.
Larry Lime Beacon of Reckoning Breathe on Me Nolan, Larry Lime for short, is a 16-year old

By Michael Brandman (G. P. Putnam’s: 2011)

After a long run, most authors get tired of characters they have created and decide to kill them off. Agatha Christie, for example, tried to kill off Hercule Poirot, but he wouldn’t die. Jesse Stone’s creator, Robert Parker, died this past year, and the character of Jesse Stone was taken over by

By J. A. Jance (William Morrow: 2011)

You can count on Jance to provide a good, solid mystery novel. In Betrayal of Trust J. P. Beaumont and his partner and wife, Mel Soames, are faced with finding the body of a 15-year old girl who is filmed being killed by suffocation, a “snuff film.” In the process of

By Carla Neggers (MIRA Books, 1999)

Penelope Chestnut is one of those irrepressible types who make good heroines in mystery novels. While lost in the mountains of New Hampshire near her home, she discovers the remains of an airplane that crashed 41 years before. Soon she is involved in a web of perilous events that

By Audrey Hamilton

Nostalgia is particularly prominent around the holidays and it can have a significant psychological effect on people, both good and bad. Psychologist and American Psychological Association. (APA) member Krystine Batcho, PhD, is a professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., and an expert on nostalgia.
Her research found that people who are prone to nostalgia excel at maintaining personal relationships

By Phyllis Picklesimer

URBANA — For many families, the holidays mean running from one house to the next to participate in family events, purchasing the latest and greatest gifts, sending out cards or notes, and eating all sorts of food. But these families may be missing the boat, said Janice McCoy, a University of Illinois Extension family life educator.
“Remember that young children can become stressed

By Joan Hess (Thomas Beeler: 1997)

At the library this looked like a Christmas book, and in a way it was because all the action took place just before Christmas, but Claire Malloy was up to her elbows in

By C. C. Benison (Delacorte: 2011)

You’d think this would be a Christmas book. It’s not, but the main character is Father Tom Christmas, a priest at the Episcopalian church in Thornford Regis, Great Britain. The town is getting

By Thomas Lynch (W.W. Norton:2000)

You don’t expect funeral directors to be poets or essayists, although, when you think of it, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be. Thomas Lynch is a thoughtful person who

By George Pelecanos (Little Brown: 2011)

Those of us who like serial thrillers are going to enjoy reading Pelecanos’ new series featuring Spero Lucas. Spero is recently returned from Iraq and not really suited to ordinary employment, so he sets himself up as

By Gary D. Halbert of Investorsinsight.com

The so-called Misery Index – which is simply the sum of the country’s inflation rate and the unemployment rate – rose to 13.0, the highest since 1983. The Index was pushed up by

By Susan Wittig Albert (Berkley: 2011)

China Bayles, owner of Herb and Seasons shop in Pecan Springs, Texas, happens on a blazing trailer and hears a woman screaming for help. Unable to save the victim, China has her eyebrows

By James Bradley (Bantam: 2000)

How do you turn one-fourth of a second into a 562 page book? James Bradley did it by exhaustively investigating the events around the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. The WWII flag-raising image has become an icon that

By T. Davis Bunn (Doubleday: 2001)

T. Davis Bunn writes a thoroughly good book.
He’s adept at several genres, and this one is a superior thriller. Since we are in the midst of the marches in opposition to Wallstreet, the book is especially topical.
Wynn Bryant is tapped to take over the seat in

By John Dunning (Scribner: 2004)

Ex-cop and current rare book seeker Cliff Janeway buys a very valuable book at auction, paying over $29,000 for a signed copy of a first edition by the legendary nineteenth-century explorer Richard Francis Burton (not the actor). Soon afterward a very old and nearly blind

By Morgan Llywelyn (William Morrow, 1992)

Every century or so there seems to be an event of gargantuan proportions that simply boggles the mind. The odd thing is that many of these events are unknown to all but a few historians.
The Last Prince of Ireland is a fictionalized version of a 15-day forced march of

By Mary Daheim (William Morrow: 2011)

I think this is a case of finding a clever title and then trying to find

by John Dunning (Simon and Schuster, 1995)

It’s good to find a novel that not only provides an entertaining mystery to solve but also gives you some  information you didn’t even know you wanted to know. The Bookman’s Wake sets

By Philippa Gregory (Touchstone: 2005)

Henry VIII’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, has long been a sympathetic figure. Most history students know only that she was Spanish, Catholic and the mother of Mary who became queen just before Elizabeth I. Philippa Gregory set out to add flesh to the bones of the story, and she accomplished her goal….maybe a little too well. The historical facts of

by Fannie Flagg (Random House, 2006)

Elner Shimfissle, age 86, is probably the most liked person in Elmwood Springs, Missouri. She’s also one of the strangest people in town. Always excited about new experiences, Elner insists on watching the sunset from her porch every day, because

By Condoleezza Rice (Crown Archetype, 2010)

For those of us who lived through the 1960s, an account of the events from a black viewpoint is always interesting. Condoleezza Rice was an only child of a couple who wanted their daughter to have more than they had had. They were, however, restricted