GREAT READS

This is an utterly fascinating and readable true story of Ambassador William Dodd and family's experiences living in pre-WWII Berlin.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago who was not Franklin Roosevelt's first choice for ambassador, Dodd brings al...

This book is so much more than the wartime nostalgia that the cover hints at.

After the wars ends, husband and father Janusz is reunited with his Polish housewife Silvana and son, Aurek. He has set them up in his pride and joy: a proper English hou...

If you're looking for a big, fat book to lose yourself in this summer, pack up East of the Sun by Julia Gregson. In the time between the wars, three Englishwomen find themselves on their way to Bombay for three very different reasons. One, Rose, bea...

It's not your usual Amish fare. The heroine, Sienna Collins, is a Philadelphia ad executive suspended from her job while she's under investigation by the federal government for crimes she knows nothing about. She heads to her Harmony Grove B &...

At last a cookbook whose recipes do not disappoint! In fact, the meals produced from these pages exceeded my expectations. Emeril Lagasse, longtime Food Network TV chef, as well as reknowned chef in his own right and proponent of flavorful food, h...

Perhaps you thought the hilarious Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella had exhausted itself...think again! A true shopper never dies or cures herself -- she just reinvents herself!

We have seen Becky Bloomwood Brandon go from young twenties-somethi...

This is a fascinating account of all we know of waves, how ships have been swallowed by them, how scientists map them and seek to discover the origins of rogue waves, how waves can potentially sweep away whole coastlines, how tsunamis travel huge dis...

Operation Mincemeat was a cleverly devised plan concocted by two intelligence officers in 1943 London that sought to deceive the Nazis into thinking the Allies would attack Greece and Sardinia and not the actual-intended Sicily. Their idea was to ge...

Who would have ever have thought that an ordinary housewife's diary would be interesting?  When England's "Mass Observation" experiment started in 1937, intending to foster a "science of ourselves" by setting up hundreds of volunteers to write d...

This is a story about a boy named Willie, a scrawny, scared little thing who, during World War II, is evacuated from London to the English countryside.  He is taken in a bit reluctantly by a gruff old man, a widower, Mr. Tom who soon realizes th...

This is the story of a New York City secretary in a dead-end job, who decides to cook every recipe in Julia child's massive cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Not only did she cook every recipe, but blogged about it, too, and eventu...

The recent popularity of the movie Julie and Julia may lead to you read the book of the same name by Julie Powell, and even check out the cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking,  but what you may enjoy even more is the story of Julia Chil...

Middle school can be difficult enough even if you're a normal kid, but when you arrive there from being homeschooled on a farm commune by your hippie grandmother, you are pretty much doomed.  Thus Cap Anderson finds himself an oddity (never ate ...

This is my new favorite Christmas story.  It's a short children's picture book packed with such a wallop you can't help but choke up at its surprise ending.

Frankie is a poor boy in the Appalachians back in the 1940's who benefits every year fr...

In this light and frothy fast-paced romp about a stolen multi-million dollar wine collection, (think $100,000 bottles) insurance detectives representing a firm reluctant to pay out the claim follow the  trail of the suspected thief to some ...

Paulsen is known primarily for his Newbery medal book Hatchet (the story of a boy stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with only a hatchet,)   but in a way, The Voyage of the Frog, is superior,  having  a soul-searching beauty missi...

For everyone who thinks life would have been better a hundred years ago, Manhattan executive Logan Ward does more than talk about it, he does it.  He and his family were trying to be green in their New York City high-rise, but finally they caved...

Who would want to read about someone who lived all over the world, dined in some of the fanciest restaurants and hobnobbed with the high society of another era? I would! Once in a while you just need a little escapism in your life. Food critic Moira ...

It's a funny, witty, yet heart-rending and warm coming-of-age story that puts you inside the head of thirteen-year old Jeffrey, a high school student, who seems just like any other kid. He loves to play drums, has a crush on the hottest girl in schoo...

It usually starts with a seed of a thing:  a boy growing up in the Ozark Mountains reads The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and is inspired to write just such a grand book.   What he put into it is probably the best advice given all ...

This book is much more than meets the eye, because although it seems to be just a graphic novel with its comic strip narration, it tells a real story-of the author's childhood in Iran during those critical years of their own revolution and war with I...

Even if you're not an animal lover, this one has that gotcha factor: after all, who could resist  the pathos of Disney's Dumbo? And this is the story behind that very Disney tale, without all the candyfloss.  The story follows Modoc as a ba...