Duma Key by Stephen King

What’s better than a haunted house mystery?  A book about a haunted house on a haunted Florida Key by Stephen King.  Slow to start, this book is vintage Stephen King but better.  His main character is an owner of a very successful construction business in Minnesota until a horrific accident takes among other things, his right arm.  His therapist suggests he take up a hobby and he decides he’d like to paint as he did when he young before family and work got in the way.  He rents a house on Duma Key, one of the smaller keys off the coast of Florida, and he begins to paint.  He hires a young college student to help with driving and with chores and meets the man up the beach who has his own story to tell.  Completely fascinating and almost impossible to put down the 600 page book will keep your interest until the final page.

Karen - Fort Mill                               ISBN  9781416552512 

The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett

Set in the fall of 1916, this story takes place in the isolated community of Tamarack Lake in the Adirondacks.  Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages, and the poor, mostly immigrant, patients fill the larger sanatorium.  Set in a historical period of great progress in science and medicine, I found the references to chemistry daunting on occasion.  Especially intereting are the advances in x-ray technology furing this perios.  However, these references in no way take away from the interesting lives of these recovering patients and their backgrounds, interests and relationships.  To provide stimulation in this community, one of the patients begins a weekly “discussion” group.  As passions and vulnerabilities mix during these regular meetings, his efforts lead to secret attachments, a surprise betrayal and a tragic accident.  I found the author, a national book award winner for Ship Fever, to be an excellent storyteller.

Jennifer L. – York                                     ISBN  9780393061086