June Pick/ HOLMES ON THE RANGE

By Steve Hockensmith

The Wild West meets Sherlock Holmes in Steve Hockensmith's mystery, "Holmes On The Range." Now Mr. Holmes does not show up in person in 1893 Montana, but in the stories read by Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer around the campfire. But when the Amlingmeyer brothers sign on to work as ranch hands for the mysterious Bar-VR ranch Old Red feels that something is "afoot." Especially when the general manager of the ranch, an Englishman turns up dead, the apparent victim of a cattle stampede.

Old Red finally gets his chance to put the deductive reasoning to work that he has so admired in Sherlock Holmes and his brother Big Red becomes his somewhat unwilling Doctor Watson. Along with the brothers as ranch hands are a colorful assortment of characters with nicknames straight out of the Old West.

"Holmes On The Range" is a new twist on the classic western tale.

June Pick/ BONE MUSIC

By Lee Moler

Enemies from the Vietnam War. A mutated rabies virus. Chinese Triad gangs. What do all these things have in common? They are all part of the New West in Lee Moler's novel, "Bone Music." The traditional Old West components are here also, ruthless ranch owners, cowboys and cattle, Indians and vision quests, even a beautiful barmaid.

When rancher Judd Jefferson finds 150 of his prize cattle dead from a mysterious poison, he suspects that the new microchip plant borders his land has had something to do with it. He confronts the company manger and is presented with an EPA clean bill of health for the company and assurances that they have done nothing to harm his land or his cattle, but Judd still has his suspicions. Suspicions that are compounded by the fact that Judd is currently dealing with his own personal demons. His wife has left him and something is eating him up inside, some piece of his past that just won't die. As he investigates the factory, Judd's past does come back, C.K. Lone, a Triad crime lord who knows Judd from Vietnam, and whose thirst for revenge has also been eating him up inside for the last twenty-five years.

Set in Montana, "Big Sky Country," and home to Glacier National Park, "Bone Music"
takes the reader on a journey that looks at the evil men do in the name of revenge and love. It also looks at what can happen when your try to manipulate Mother Nature, and how modern day thinking can go hand in hand with the ancient ways. It take you to a place where the ancient spirit of the land can still be felt and can capture you and hold you in all its fierceness and beauty.

May Pick/ The Three Weissmanns of Westport

By Cathleen Schine

Divorce at any age is difficult to say the least, but when seventy-eight year-old Joseph Weissmann tells his seventy-five year-old wife Betty that he wants a divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences," she replies, Of course there's irreconcilable differences, what does that have to do with divorce?"

So opens the novel, "The Three Weissmanns of Westport," by Cathleen Schine. When Betty is left by her husband of forty-eight years because he has fallen in love with his assistant, she is shocked and confused. Betty's two grown daughters are also left confused and anxious, as they suddenly find themselves middle-aged products of a broken home. When Betty is forced to leave her luxurious Manhattan apartment she accepts her cousin's offer to use his beach cottage in Westport, overlooking Long Island Sound. Her daughters' lives also seem to be coming unraveled, as younger daughter Miranda's literary agency is caught up in scandal and and Betty has the idea that Miranda should come with her to get away from the public eye. Practical library director and elder daughter Annie, who thinks she may be having an affair with an author feels that she should also move with them. If only to keep an eye on her impulsive sister and capricious mother and on their dwindling purse strings.

In an homage to Jane Austen, Schine has adapted "Sense and Sensibilty" and moved it to Westport, Conneticut. As the sisters try to look after their "grieving" mother, she has told all that instead of divorcing her Joseph has died, they mingle with the suburbs version of aristocracy and love starts to blossom for both of them. Annie and Miranda find themselves struggling between the demands of reason and romance.

May Pick/ From Harvey River

By Lorna Goodison

"From Harvey River" is the story of the "fabulous Harvey girls" in particular the author's mother, Doris who seemed to live in two places at once on the tropical island of Jamaica. Kingston, where she raised her daughter Lorna and her eight siblings, and Harvey River in the parish of Hanover where she was born and spent her childhood.

To grow up in Harvey River, named after her English grandfather, meant a life of Victorian niceties in her parents home combined with the rich bounty of the land for Doris Harvey. Even with her strong-willed mother Margaret and her dreamer of a father David plus her somewhat overbearing sister Cleodine and the rest of her siblings and extended family life was sweet and simple. When Doris meets and marries her husband Marcus Goodison, their fortunes change. His garage business failing, they are forced to move to Kingston and face the harsh urban lifestyle, and Harvey River becomes a place that Doris frequently returns to in her dreams.

Lorna Goodison weaves together island lore with the story of her mother's life, from the eden of Harvey river to when "things changed" and they moved to Kingston. No matter how hard life became, however, the author remembers her mother's bottomless cooking pot, how she could sew clothes to fit any shape and the first word all her children learned to read was SINGER.

April Pick/ BRAVA VALENTINE

By Adriana Trigiani

In this sequel to, "Very Valentine" we catch up with the Angelini/Roncalli family as Gram is about to get married in Italy to long time love, Dominic. Granddaughter Valentine is feeling a mix of emotions. Happiness for her beloved grandmother but bereft at the thought of losing her business partner, roommate and sounding board, not just to marriage, but also the fact that Teodora will be living thousands of miles and an ocean away from her!

The one bright spot is that Valentine is looking forward to possibly renewing her acquaintance with Dominic's handsome and charming son, Gianluca. But family and business interrupt the reunion. first there's Aunt Feen, whose bitterness leads to a drunken wedding toast and a visit to the hospital, then there is Gram's announcement that Valentine's new business partner will be none other than Valentine's brother Alfred, who she loves as her brother, but dislikes as a person in general.

When she returns home, Valentine must get her new line of shoes off the ground while maintaining the integrity of Angelini Custom Shoes. She also discovers long lost secrets and an unknown branch of the family. A new roomate, romanced by letters from Gianluca, and a trip to Buenos Aires keep Valentine busy, but also wondring. Is it possible to have love and success? Has seeing the men in her family betray their wives made her afraid to love and trust? The year passes, seasons change, and Valentine grows and changes also into the confident, and loving business woman her Grandmother nutured.

April Pick/ TRUE CONFECTIONS

By Katharine Weber

Candy, candy, candy! How sweet it is! Or so it may seem, but when you run a family owned candy company, there can be bitter with the sweet.

So goes the novel, "True Confections" by Katharine Weber. It's the story of the Ziplinsky family and the candy company, Zip's that they have run since it began in 1910. But this story is told in a somewhat unique way, in the form of a written affidavit by Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, the wife of Howard, who is the great-grandson of Eli, a Hungarian immigrant and founder of Zip's.

"True Confections" is not only the story about candy, although there are quite a few side stories about candy-making, ingredients, and the novel even mentions some real-life candy companies, like Mars and Hershey's and their histories. The novel also tells the story of immigrants making new lives for themselves in a new world. The threat of WWII on the European Jewish community and families being separated, and even the Third Reich's plan to establish a compound on of Madagascar for the exiled Jewish people. It's also the story of an outsider looking in, wanting to belong and finally becoming a part of the family. It's about running a business and moving it forward into the future while still trying to stay true to the past.

Now don't worry. Even though the novel is written as an affidavit, it is not filled with a bunch of legalese. Bouncing back and forth between the present and the past, Alice tells the story of the Czaplinsky brothers and their candy. She explains the dynamics of this family as a family member but also as a business woman looking out for her company and her children's' inheritance. There is humor and warmth to the story also as it covers the universal themes of family, love, and betrayal.

March Pick/ The Privileges

By Jonathan Dee

In this economy is it still possible to have a life of boundless privilege? What does it take and what decisions would anyone make to have and keep it all?

Meet Adam and Cynthia Morey, so perfect for each other, they become a sort of fortress against the world. Marrying young, they are eager to start the life they dream of. Adam is a rising star in the world of finance and private equity, with a beautiful home in the upper reaches of Manhattan, wonderful children, plenty of money and a life of privilege in which any desire can be acted upon they seem on the verge of attaining their dream. But that dream is not arriving fast enough to suit Adam and Cynthia.

Then Adam is confronted with a choice. A choice that can give his family happiness, the dream of privilege. The sense that the only acceptable way of life is one of infinite possibility. How much is he willing to risk for that life?

The couple's boundless love for each other helps guide them through a life that is touched by fortune, changing over time and realizing in the end what it means to leave the world a richer place than you found it.

March Picks/ Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

By Beth Hoffman

Novels featuring strong, southern women have always delivered good stories with characters that people can relate to, enjoy and care about. "Saving CeeCee Honeycutt" is such a novel. It centers on 12 year-old Cecelia Rose Honeycutt and the women who shape her life one summer in Savannah.

It's the mid-1960's and CeeCee has spent most of her young life caring for her mother Camille, a former beauty queen who is slowly slipping into psychosis and reliving her days as the Vidalia Onion Queen of 1951. CeeCee's father is a traveling salesman whose stops home become shorter and shorter because he cannot deal with his wife's illness. CeeCee's one spot of normality is her aged neighbor, Mrs. Odell and the books she can escape into when her mother is too much to handle.

When Camille is killed by a truck, CeeCee's great-aunt Tootie Caldwell, whom she has never met, shows up and whisks her off to Savannah to live for the summer. In this picturesque Georgia city, CeeCee sees another side of life than what she has become used to and she also meets a group of women that will affect her life and help her to grow. There is of course her aunt Tootie who is involved with seeminly every good work and organization in the historic city, her housekeeper, the all-knowing Oletta Jones, the exotic neighbor Miss Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard and even the insufferable Violene Hobbs, at whose house the local police officer has been seen in compromising situations. With the help of these women and the beauty of Savannah, CeeCee begins to heal and enjoy being a child once again.