I discovered Julia Spencer-Fleming and her wonderful series just after the first book was published.  I Shall Not Want, the sixth title in the series proves that this author is getting better with every book.  The plots are becoming more involved and all the characters, not the principle ones, are finely drawn. All the books titles are taken from hymns - (the most unusual title being A Fountain Filled with Blood).  The  books take  place in upstate New York, in the Adirondack mountains, in the mythical town of Millers Kill.  Clare Ferguson is an Episcopal minister and Russ Van Alstyne is the chief of police.  They strike up an unlikely friendship even though they appear to have little in common.  Clare is young and single and compassionate and Russ is older, married and suspicious.  Somehow they manage to remain just friends although there is a growing attraction between them.

In this book, Clare puts herself and her church on the line to help provide the basics to the Hispanic migrant workers in the area.  When one of the men stumbles across a dead body and then two more bodies show up in rapid succession, Russ and his deputies work overtime to find out what’s going on before more bodies appear.  Clare in the meantime is trying to protect the migrant workers while getting information that may be helpful to the police.    I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but the characters are the real stars of the story.  Start at the beginning of the series to watch Clare’s adjustment to being a minister in a small northern town as well as the growing friendship and affection between Clare and Russ.  I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Karen - Fort Mill                                               ISBN 9780312334871

 Do you like science fiction and Christian fiction?  Well, this book smashes both together!  I didn’t think it was possible but Robert Hughes did.  This book is about a man (Jack) who is a preacher and helps a boy (Ben) who can read minds.  Twenty years later Jack sees Ben again but Ben has not aged and both are beamed into a spaceship by aliens.  To see how this is intertwined with scripture you must take a peek.  Not the best book out there but a really neat change of pace. 

Ramona - Fort Mill                        ISBN  0805461388

I haven’t read a book that features a debutante in a while.  In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that’s featured a debutante.  This month I have found myself reading two such books.  I’m not sure if it’s a new trend or a coincidence but let me tell you about both of them. 

Girls in Trucks is the first novel by Katie Crouch.  Sarah Walters is a debutante in Charleston, SC.  We follow her from Cotillion Training School in the seventh grade, through her debut at eighteen and the next 17 or so years of her life.  Sarah, as the cover reads, is a debutante of questionable manners.  She heads to New York for college and continues to stay there even after she graduates.  With every trip home she is less at ease and she never really thinks of South Carolina as home again.  Sarah is an interesting character and Ms Crouch skims her life, from man to man and job to job.  The end of the book is clearly not the end of Sarah’s life, she has miles to go before she is done but there is a perception that she is on the right track.

The Ex-Debutante by Linda Francis Lee is a much lighter book with humor and romance and ridiculous family situations at every turn.  Carlisle Cushing the ex-debutante is now almost thirty and has moved away from Willow Creek, Texas, as much to run away from her past as she is running away from her family.  She is from one of the best families in town and is tired of having her every move discussed.  She takes her new law degree and goes to Boston.  There she allows everyone to think she is a poor hick who has pulled herself up by her “bootstraps”, enjoying the anonymity that comes from being like everyone else.   When her mother’s fifth marriage falls apart, she insists Carlisle come home and represent her in the divorce proceedings and while she’s home she agrees to take over this year’s crop of dubious debs and meets up with an old boyfriend that she’s never quite forgotten.  This is a fun read with good characters and a “happy” ending.

Karen - Fort Mill                   Girls ISBN 9780316002110      Ex ISBN 9780312354961

Betts and JD were childhood sweethearts and both from old southern families in Charleston .  Once they announce their engagement—tragedy strikes, lives are changed, the engagement is broken and Betts runs away to New York .  Twenty years later, Betts returns to Charleston under duress.  Her job as a top investment bank executive leads her back to Charleston to work with JD on a development project on Bulls Island . She hasn’t returned to Charleston or seen JD since she left.  Betts is estranged from her family.  Emotions run high—Betts will struggle with revealing a secret that could threaten everything that is important to her. This is a great story with romance, family honor and southern wit and a crazy gator to boot! This is Dorothea Benton Frank at her best!

Robin - Lake Wyllie                                    ISBN 9780061438431

I don’t usually read historical novels.  I like my fiction firmly rooted in the present, but even though An Incomplete Revenge is set in 1931, I enjoyed the interesting plot and the strong, independent, intelligent protagonist.   This is the fifth book in the series by Winspear all featuring Maisie Dobbs, a young woman who grew up in a poor working class family but got a chance at a first rate education and is now a psychologist and investigator working on her own in London.  In this book, she is called upon to investigate a small village that is plagued with minor acts of vandalism including a string of fires.  She must break through the silence that surrounds the town and find the secrets they are hiding.  Maisie walks a fine line between where she came from and how she lives now.   Her experiences as a nurse in the war has made her sensitive to many different people in many different situations and she is able to command respect in a time that single women were often dismissed.  I think if you try this series you will enjoy meeting Maisie Dobbs and reading about her life in London almost eighty years ago.

Karen - Fort Mill                                  ISBN 9780805082159

When 28-year-old Willie Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton NY on a dark summer dawn, a 50-foot-long body of a monster just happens to float up from the depths of the town’s lake.  This mysterious coincidence is the beginning of Lauren Groff’s intriguing tale about the people of Templeton.  Willie is a descendant of the town founder, Marmaduke Temple.  Returning home pregnant and miserable, she plans to hide there, recovering from a distastrous affair with her graduate school professor.  From clues hinted at by her mother, Willie begins her search to untangle the roots of the town’s greatest families in order to discover her own father’s identity.  Through Willie’s investigation, she uncovers a wealth of fascinating people, both in the town and among her ancestors.  I found the accounts from generations of Templetonians delightful and witty…you won’t want to miss this book.  The author also borrows some characters from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, who named an upstate New York town Templeton in The Pioneers.  Spanning two centuries, the story is told through a variety of voices including Templeton residents, ghosts, masters, servants, natives, interlopers, and more.  You’ll enjoy reading about all the predicaments in which these characters find themselves.  Place a hold on it today!

Jennifer L. - York                                   ISBN 9781401322250

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 

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

I like Deborah Smith’s books.  She writes sweet stories that make you feel good but she fills with complex characters and interesting plots.  Her latest books is no exception.  Ben has been the sole provider for his down syndrome brother since his parents died when he was sixteen.  Now an owner of a ranch in Florida, he employs the “unemployable”.  His employees are autistic and mentally challenged individuals with big hearts and plenty of spirit.  Kara, searching for a purpose in her life,  happens upon the ranch and stays.  Not a big story, there’s an illness, a romance, a conflict, all the ordinary ingredients of a book of this type but the book will make you think and should lighten your heart, if only for a little while.

Karen - Fort Mill                                           ISBN  9780976876076

C.J. Box has departed from his Joe Pickett series to write this stand alone novel set in Idaho.  Idaho is no longer the home to every militia group in the country.  If this book is to be believed, it is home to everyone who wants to get away from Los Angelos and can afford to do so.   

Annie, 12 and William, 10 have a early release from school one Friday and decide to go fishing.  Annie is angry at her mom and has decided she has a perfect right to hitch a ride with the mail carrier and take off through the woods to the river for a little fishing.   Instead of fishing, the children witness a murder and they go on the run hoping to keep ahead of the killers.   Retired L.A. police, living in the area,  offer to help find the children when they don’t return home.  Their worried mother, an inept sheriff and an old rancher all figure into what happens over a long weekend.  I’ve never read the Joe Pickett series so I can’t compare this book to them, but I really enjoyed this book.  It had goods guys and bad guys, an interesting plot line, a fast pace and a lot of suspense.

Karen - Fort Mill                              ISBN 9780312365707