I love to read….it’s relaxing, it’s putting away the day’s activities
and going to a place where others live and becoming a part of their
story.  It’s kind of like watching a movie, but you get take the words
from the pages into images  that you create and envision the
characters as what you think they would look like.  It’s especially
nice to be in a nice hot bath, with a great cup of tea or a glass of
wine, scented candles lit, relaxing your body and exercising your
mind and imagination!
Reviewed By: Rose Smith, Senior Executive
Home (Marilynne Robinson) "What does it mean to come home?"
In one way or another, every character in Home is searching for
that answer. Glory Boughton, now 38 and lovelorn, has returned to
Gilead to care for her dying father. Her wayward brother Jack also
finds his way back, though his is an uneasy homecoming,
reverberating with
the scandal that
drove him away
twenty years
earlier. Glory and
Jack unravel their
stories slowly,
speaking to each
other more in
movements than in
words--a careful
glance here, a
chair pulled out
from the table
there--against a
domestic backdrop
so richly imagined
you may be fooled
into believing their
house is your own.
Meanwhile, their father, whose ebullient love for his children is a
welcome counterpoint to Glory and Jack's conflicted emotions,
experiences his own kind of reckoning as he yearns to understand
his troubled son ($15).
Just Breath (Susan Wiggs)
Bestselling author Wiggs (Snowfall at
Willow Lake) keeps her romance
reputation going with this feel-good
story of a wronged woman who gets
out on her own and gets going. Sarah
Moon, a comic-strip writer, is happily
married to Jack Daly—until she
comes home to find him entwined
and naked with a business associate
he had badmouthed to her just hours
earlier. After five years of marriage,
including months of infertility
treatments because of Jack's cancer,
infidelity is the last straw, and Sarah
pack ups and leaves Chicago for her
hometown of Glenmuir, Calif. Sarah
uses her comic strip, Just Breathe, to
vent her frustration and relieve her
stress. ($16.47)
The Love Dare
(Alex & Stephen
Kendrick)
Unconditional love
is eagerly
promised at
weddings, but
rarely practiced in
real life. As a
result, romantic
hopes are often
replaced with
disappointment.
But it doesn’t have
to stay that way.
The Love Dare, as
featured in the
popular new movie
Fireproof (from the
makers of Facing
the Giants), is a 40-
Nicholas Sparks's
14th book,          
The Lucky One
tells the
unforgettable story
of a man whose
brushes with death
lead him to the
love of his life. Is
there really such
thing as a lucky
charm? The hero
of Nicholas
Sparks's new
novel believes he's
found one in the
form of a
photograph of a
smiling woman
he's never met, but
who he comes to
day challenge for husbands and wives to understand
and practice unconditional love. The Love Dare is a
journey you need to take. It’s time to learn the keys to
finding true intimacy and developing a dynamic
marriage. Take the dare! ($8.24)
believe holds the key to his destiny. The chain of events
that leads to him possessing the photograph and
finding the woman pictured in it is the stuff of love stories
only a master such as Sparks can write.
($14.99)
The Shack
authored by
William Paul
Young is a story
about a guy, who
meets God. This
novel has literary
integrity and
spiritual daring.
"The Shack" cuts
through the
cliches of both
religion and bad
writing to reveal
something
compelling and
beautiful about
life's integral
dance with the
Divine. This story
reads like a
prayer--like the best kind of prayer, filled with sweat and
wonder and transparency and surprise. ($8.24)