Eater's Digest

Eater's Digest: 400 delectable readings about food and drink by Lorraine Bodger, is a great treasury of food facts, fun and tidbits. It is a fun fact book that is meant to be referred back to and it is hard to read straight through. Want to know the best cookbooks of a decade - come on down. Want to read excerpts from other foodie classics? Take a peak in here. Want the definition of Soul food. It is in here. Full of info guaranteed to amuse at your next dinner party.

A perfect gift or read for the fact loving foodie.

The Manor House Mysteries - Part Two

This mystery series by Kate Kingsbury is great fun, and she is pretty good about knowing her stuff from the World War II homefront. Lady Elizabeth is still trying to save the village, and gets help from her staff and from a certain Major in the American Forces. See the prior review.

These are the ones I have completed so far:

For Whom the Bell Tolls - murder in the bellfry and illegal goods.
Dig Deep for Murder - body in the victory garden.
Paint by Murder - spies in the village
Berried Alive - someone is poisoning red- headed service men.

The sad part is that there are only two more left. The author really did not have a chance to tie things up before they cancelled her book contract. Bummer. It is always disappointing when characters you like end up with unresolved endings...

Polar Dream

Do you think it is cold in your neck of the woods? Try reading Polar Dream: The Heroic Saga of the First Solo Journey by a Woman and Her Dog to the Pole by Helen Thayer. Thayer who is 50 when she makes the trek to the North Magnetic Pole, is a native New Zealander who has plenty of mountaineering experience. She decides to ski to the North Pole. As she prepares for her journey by learning from the local Inuit, they suggest that the Polar bears might get her and that she needs a native dog. She meets her new companion the day before she sets out - a black Inuit dog, who doesn't have a name, but knows how to chase Polar bears. She names him Charlie and their adventure begins. Lots of cold and wind, and Polar bears. And a story of a human and an animal learning to trust and care for each other. You might want to read it on one of the hottest summer days. A great story.

Some fun romances

Some short reviews

Seducing Sir Oliver
- Nicole Byrd
This historical gets complicated. Her family finds that they are related to a Vicount. He's their half brother. The Vicount decided to take one of his sisters to London. Juliana ends up staying with Lady Sealey because of illness in the Vicounts' home. Lady Sealey's godson Sir Oliver is already staying there. He is a budding zoologist. She helps him with his animals and they discover a plot to blackmail Lady Sealey and start looking to unravel it.

Great characters - very relatable. Fun plot. Worth a look.

Confessions of a "Wicked" Woman
Carr, Susanna
If you have escaped from a small town, the last thing you want to do sometimes is go back to another one. She tries to find her business partner who has gone home to her little hometown. The weather decides not to cooperate and washes out the bridge and her with it. She looks very L.A. and gets her self arrested on decency charges. Then she meets the town's trouble maker turned sheriff. And due to the bridge she is trapped.

Fun characters make a fun read.


Christmas Kisses for a Dollar
- Laurie Paige

This contemporary title was reissued this year. A great quick read for the holidays. She is the small town florist involved in everything. He comes back to town to run his family's floral business. And the sparks fly. Read as they work their way through the problems - both outside and internal.

Quick read and fun.

Her Scandalous Marriage

Leslie La Foy has a great book on her hands. Her Scandalous Marriage is a very fun book about how the pressures of society can really play havoc on perfectly wonderful people.

Drayton MacKenzie has just become a Duke. He never expected to inherit the title. He was a military man. However he has a duty to perform left to him by the old Duke's will. He has to find the old Duke's by blows - who happen to be all girls and turn them into ladies. Sounds simple? The girls are very different. Caroline is really not a girl- but a young woman who resents being told what to do - she is not so sure she wants to be a Lady. She has a decent dress business. The other are much younger. Simone lived in a whore house and is very savvy to the ways of the world, and is not hesitant to say it (much to the other's dismay and the reader's great amusement). The youngest barely talks and becomes the protected one of this newly formed family.

And so this group lands on the old Duke's estate. They find it in tatters and work to make the place livable once again - Caroline's sewing skills become very handy. And Drayton finds he really can't get Caroline out of his mind. He keeps trying to remember he needs to aspire to marry money. And everyone tries to find their place in this new society that fate has flung them into.

A great book about finding out who you are and being perfectly comfortable with yourself. Oh yes - and romance too. If she does a sequel about Simone - a really funny character - that will be worth the wait. A great read.

Ghost Hunter

Jayne Castle - better known to her fans as Jayne Ann Krentz- wrote the book Ghost Hunter. Ghost Hunter is a paranormal and futuristic romance. I do not read many of those, but the world that Castle creates is an interesting one. Harmony is the planet that was colonized by people from Earth, but the passage way there has been sealed for over 400 years, so the colonists have had time to evolve into their own community. (A great way to have similar "earth" things with a mixture of the totally different and bizarre.) One of the power sources of the planet is amber. The humans here have had time to evolve their paranormal skills, to the surroundings of the planet. The planet's alien past and mysteries are still being discovered.

Enter Elly St. Clair - she is engaged to a paranormal who really is not spending a lot of time with her. (Seems to be some of the same problems on Earth!) He seems to be a workaholic and she thinks he is marrying her for the importance of her family position. She breaks it off and moves on her own to the big city. When Cooper shows up out of the blue - it works out well - he can help find her missing friend with his abilities. And that is where the mysteries begin... who is smuggling drugs through the catacombs? Who else is going to be found dead on Elly's block, and why is Cooper really there? Guild business or to see her?

This book is a great balance of the familiar and the fanciful. As usual, she has great characters who you want to root for. And anyone who makes dust bunnies come alive as a very unusual pet - they have 2 sets of eyes - one set only comes out when upset - and they can bite - is okay in my book. A very fun read.

Digging for the Truth

Digging for the Truth by Josh Bernstein is the book to accompany the cable television show of the same name. Do you like history, archeology, mystery and a bit of anthropology thrown in? Are you curious about the legends of the past and what are the realities (if any) behind them? This is the behind the scenes book for you.

The topics of DFT shows run from the background behind the Da Vinci code theory, to location of the Ark of the Covenant to the mysterious Queen of Sheba or missing cities of the Amazon or Mississippi Valley. There is a little something for every history buff. And the series makes the effort to bring in experts in the field and the latest theories on the topic.

Bernstein writes about his background and how he got the hosting position and the adventures it has taken him on. And considering it is one of the most popular shows on the History channel helps a lot too.
Having seen many of the shows and knowing his hosting style, this is a great book for fans of the series. And he's not bad to look at either!