Hildy Good is the top real estate seller in the area.  She has lived in Wendover, MA for her entire life.  She knows everyone’s history, and what their houses look like.  She is 60 and divorced, with two grown daughters.  Those daughters staged an intervention and Hildy was stuck going to rehab, even though she knew that she was only a social drinker.   Now everyone in her small town knows that she has stopped drinking.  Only, she hasn’t.  Hildy is very likable, even when she may be doing some very questionable things.  This book was a quick read.  Small towns have secrets, even ones people try to keep from themselves.

Reviewed by Fiona Swift

In this touching memoir Worth recounts her life as a midwife in post – World War II London. At the age of twenty-two Worth trained with an order of Anglican nuns whose mission in life was providing prenatal care, safer childbirth, and post-partum advice to the impoverished women in the Docklands slums of East End London. The absolute horrid conditions in the tenements, the almost total lack of public health care, and the joys and dangers of childbirth are all graphically yet lovingly conveyed. The author paints a portrait of a time hardly imaginable in a modern society, but exist it did. The stories of her interactions with the women, men and children of the area as she assisted in perhaps the most intimate of human dramas, childbirth, are ones that linger long after the book is back on the shelf.

Reviewed by Neica Dey

Years of secrets and deception were about to be exposed the same day that Adele Alban died. Her daughter, Grace, and her teenage daughter return to the grand mansion, Alban House, on the shores of Lake Superior. After years of absence from her childhood home, Grace soon realizes the home is shrouded in family secrets and mysteries that lie within the walls of the secret passageways. For her own safety and her daughter’s, Grace must untangle these secrets and get to the truth behind the deaths that have occurred over the years. With the help of Reverend Matthew Parker they find more than they were looking for. This book is filled with mystery, paranormal activity, romance, witches and spells and will leave you wondering what is real and what isn’t. You might want to leave the lights on when you read this one!

Reviewed by Linda Brown

Justine Nolan and her twin brother, Richard, were told by their mother that their dear grandmother had died in a plane crash.  Ten years later, when a letter arrived for their distant and non-communicative mother, Justine opened it and learned that their grandmother was still alive and living in Istanbul.  Full of anger at the deception, Justine immediately left for Istanbul where she not only located her dear Gram, but where she started to uncover the family secrets that stretched all the way back to World War II and the holocaust.

As the truth of the present unfolded through the discoveries of the past, so did the future and the promise of romance.

Reviewed by Kathy Dittrich

Louisa Clark was perfectly happy working as a waitress in a café.  Then her boss informed her that he was moving to Australia.  Lou lived with her parents, sister and nephew, and they relied on her income to help make ends meet.  She tried several jobs, until she interviewed for a position as a companion for a quadriplegic.  She had no nursing experience, but was surprised that she was hired anyway.

Will Traynor grew up in a well-to-do family.  He had always been driven and active.  Then he was in an accident that left him a quadriplegic.  There was little that could be done to improve Will’s condition, and his parents took him in.  When Louisa discovered that Will did not want to live anymore, she took it upon herself to make a “calendar of adventures” to show him that he could still have a meaningful life.

This book brings up the question of what exactly it means to live one’s life.   What makes a good life?  Should a person be allowed to decide not to live?  It certainly shows how many more options one has if one is wealthy, but is that enough?

Reviewed by Fiona Swift

Clark fans will enjoy the latest in her Piper Donovan series – especially since the setting is guaranteed to conjure up summer, with the sandy beaches and gentle waves of Sarasota, Florida. 

Piper, who juggles a struggling acting career with helping her mother in her cake-decorating business, has agreed to help make the wedding cake for her cousin.  Not only is she helping with the cake, but Piper is also the maid of honor. 

Wedding plans are in jeopardy when one bridesmaid comes up missing, a body is found on the beach where the wedding is scheduled to take place, and other ominous doings indicate that something is definitely wrong.  Piper vows to get to the bottom of things and save the wedding.  By doing so, she puts herself in the sights of a killer.

An Amish angle adds to the interest in this enjoyable dead-of-winter beach read.

Reviewed  by Kate Tesdell

Even many lovers of history are unaware of the forgotten surge of racial equality that started in France before the French Revolution and ended with the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many “men of colour”, brought from what is now Haiti, flourished in the private schools, salons and armies of pre-revolutionary France.
One of these young men was known to the world as Alex Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas (pere, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) and grandfather of Alexandre Dumas (fils, author of Camille). He was born of a French father and a former slave mother. After spending a small time in slavery, he was finally sent by his father to a school in France also attended by members of the French aristocracy. He joined the French army as a private, but his skills, looks and personality soon helped him rise to the position of general in the Revolutionary armies and to lead men to battle in the Italian Alps, Malta, the Middle East and Egypt.
Ironically, he met his “Waterloo” after coming to the attention of Napoleon who, at first, praised him and helped him build his career as a general, but later came to hate him because Dumas deplored the corrupt and cruel acts perpetuated by Bonaparte on his campaigns (and didn’t hesitate to inform the great man of his feelings). When Dumas and another general arrived in the south of what is now Italy on their way home from Egypt – Napoleon had left that country without informing his generals – they were unaware that unfriendly forces had taken over the area and they were imprisoned for several years with no response from their former commander
Taken from extensive research by the author from notes found in the Dumas museum in the town where the general lived with his wife and children, and from the memoirs of his son, Alexandre Dumas (pere), this biography is stuffed full of facts about Haiti, France before and during the revolution and Napoleon’s campaigns. Although young Alexandre was only four when his illustrious father died, he greatly admired the man and used his character and parts of his story in his adventure novels, thus immortalizing a unique individual who may otherwise have been forgotten by history.
Reviewed by Audrey Lewis

Crowley, a Harvard-trained psychotherapist, and Elster, a management consultant and executive coach, have put together a quick, simple guide to navigating the often turbulent waters of the all-female (or mainly female) work environment.

Their down-to-earth approach divides problem co-workers into several different types of “mean girl”, ranging from the “Meanest of the Mean” to the worker who “Doesn’t Know She’s Mean”, and finishing with “Group Mean”.  They describe specific examples of behaviors exhibited by these workers, then give concise, practical and specific steps on how you can respond to such behaviors in a cool, calm and professional manner.

Highly recommended for all female employees who want to learn ways to handle inner-office issues with class and composure.

Reviewed by Kate Tesdell

Fiction can be a valuable tool when it comes to understanding the humanity of war.  Widow of the South is based on a true story about the Battle of Franklin which took place in Franklin, Tennessee on November 30, 1864.  Franklin was a horrific slaughter with 3,000 Union and nearly 7,000 Confederate casualties including 14 Southern Generals- more than any other single battle.  Widow of the South tells the story of Carrie McGavock and her Plantation home, Carnton, which was sequestered by the Confederate Army to become a field hospital and later, by McGavock’s own personal crusade,  a battlefield cemetery.

With 4 Generals dead on her porch and a mountain of amputated limbs piled high as the roof of her smokehouse, Carrie McGavock is pulled out of her own personal despair to care for her soldiers.  Carrie notices  Zachariah Cashwell from all the thousands of other men bleeding and dying around her, and recognizes something in him – a willingness to die – which she herself has been consumed by since the deaths of her children. It is the power of their unrequited love that drives the novel to its hugely emotional conclusion. Hicks has perfected the art of mixing fact and fiction, and turned the book into a profound meditation on what it means to live, love and die.

Reviewed by: Kimberly White, Head of Hoyt Library

Scarlett O’Brien is obsessed with Hollywood fantasy. Unfortunately for her, her twenty-something life in the middle of England doesn’t much resemble her favorite romantic comedies.  She’s bored with her job and is trying to decide if she really loves her fiancé enough to marry him when she gets the opportunity to house sit in the Notting Hill section of London. Her days begin to resemble a Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts movie, but it’s up to Scarlett to decide whether her interesting new neighbor is a romantic hero (à la Jude Law in The Holiday) – or if real life can be even better than the movies.

This fun and light novel manages to reference just about every great romantic comedy of the past 25 years. If you enjoyed Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sleepless in Seattle, or Pretty Woman, then you’ll want to give this one a look.

Reviewed by Lynn Heitkamp