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The thing I particularly dislike about nail polish is the part where you've put on 5 coats and it begins----again---to chip! How revolting! How ugly! How typical! Thank heavens for pros like Lindsay Walker who can look at my short nails (and chipped polish) and do magic and make them look better.

My model is Kim, here on the library staff, who has lovely, well-groomed nails and has to keep cutting them back! Mine take 6 months but my hair grows a lot, so maybe it's a trade-off.

The Fiction books have some excellent authors to pick from and a lot more that I won't have room for, so please come in and browse through the new Fiction titles, at your leisure, and find a favorite to take home.

Remember the title, "The Christmas Box"? A runaway best-seller--melted off the shelves of libraries and bookstores. Well, Richard Paul Evans has a new one, "The Last Promise" It concerns one of the eternal questions that one can get asked, in life; agreeing that individuals can grow and change and this affects their outlook on relationships yet what is the ultimate responsibility to family? Do you opt for one at the expense of the other?

When Eliana, called Ellen by her friends back in America, moves back to Italy, to rustic Tuscany, to live among the arts and when she fell in love and was married to a wonderful man and moved back to America, her story seemed to be a fairy tale. She had a son, witha bad case of Asthma and struggled with that even as she resigned herself to a husband becoming increasingly distant and realized she wasn't loved, like she'd hoped.

Then she has an "encounter" with an American, Ross Story , who also loves art as she does, and the question comes up of sacrifice, divorce, true love triumphing---all the bells and whistles. He's not one of our greatest authors, on the Roth or Hemingway level, but he writes well, drawing his characters broadly and moving the story line along. Come and and look at it.
 

If there's one thing I like better than "dead body" books, it's Medieval "dead body" books and Margaret Frazer writes very good, believable ones, the latest being "The Bastard's Tale". I grew up surrounded by good books (but was closely watched to shield me from the infamous Guy de Maupaussant!) and studied the classic works in college, among them William you-know-who, "Macbeth's" author.

One of my other favorites was Chaucer----in the original language, thank you----and our class felt that learning about his Pilgrims was worth the effort to wade through his devilishly difficult writing; but now my question is (I'm usually too lazy to look something up!) how many were there and was a character called "The Bastard" one of them? I somehow doubt it, but this book has him as the title, so----.Anyway, the year is 1447, and powerful men from all over England have been summoned to the pilgrimage town and destination of Bury St. Edmunds for the passing of laws and the paying of taxes but a small group of the noblemen are there to bring down their rivals and involve the very throne and monarchy.

Into this comes Dame Frevisse, brought down from her nunnery by her good friend and cousin, Lady Alice of Suffolk. The swirl of politics is kept boiling by the Bishop of Winchester, and while desperate acts of loyalty and love are pledged and given, sometimes even these are not enough to save innocent men. She writes a delightful story and, indeed, the series does put me in mind of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales". Come read a little bit in it for yourself.

On a recent flight, I noticed, with much amusement, the two books the men on the plane were reading---John Grisham's "King of Torts" (which I understand has INFURIATED the legal eagles!) and Griffin's "Under Fire". So, let's talk about the latter title and this story is not about WW2 but the Koreans vs. United States, back in 1950.

Captain Ken McCoy's report on a possibility of conflict with North Korea so displeases the high command that his report is not widely circulated and he is "released from active service" Of course it was hard to overlook his having won the Distinguished Service Medal and Britain's equivalent Victoria Cross, but, oh, well.

Anyway, the North Korean Army crosses the 38th parallel and the Korean War is on, and to the families of the men called up, the names of Inchon and Pusan will become only too unwelcomely familiar. A "rattling good yarn" whether you like "war" stories or not 'cause the characters are believable and the action seems real.

Come and check it out. "The Drift" is by an excellent author who is just "on the verge" of being really well known and his novel "Stray Dogs" was made into the movie "U Turn" by another author, Oliver Stone. This story is about how Charles Harmon, a black man "living white" and well in an upper-middle-class neighborhood became, "Brain NiggerCharlie", a train tramp riding the rails and leaning on drugs.

Then, Charlie's asked a favor ( I thought of taking a bath and shaving but then, again, who'd notice, given they are ALL odiferous and in need of a shave?) and it is to find the young niece of the man who taught him to "ride the rails". The girl is lost on the rail lines, in the Pacific Northwest, along the "corridors of racist hate." The trail is made up of lies, deceit, cowardice, hopelessness, and a string of unsolved murders. Charlie may be willing to go down that path but is not willing to go back down the path that leads him back, after all these years, to himself.

I'm sorry not to have given the author's name, next to the title, but it is John Ridley and I can almost guarantee that we will be hearing from him on the Best Seller list----I mean, Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins made it! Anyway, he's worth your time to peruse a few paragraphs and see what you think.

Have you ever heard of the character, "Nameless Detective?" He's the invention of Bill Pronzini, who's won the Shamus Award for crime fiction three times and is almost always on Best Seller List, and his newest is "Spook".

Nameless has made some changes, in his professional life----barely escaping with your life will make you think about doing that!---and taken on a partner, in the field, and making his young, capable assistant, Tamara, a full partner in the firm. He and Jake, the ex-cop hired to help in the field work, are called into the underworld of San Francisco to investigate the identity of an old man, gentle and mentally disturbed, who was found dead in an alley. His street name was "Spook", because of his habit of constantly talking to two ghosts he called Dot and Luke, and eventually they track him back to a small isolated town, Aspen Creek.

"Meanwhile, back at the ranch, " in Nameless' office, 17 years of repressed rage is about to burst forth from a man who's carrying a Micro Uzi! This author writes dialogue that's so strong and stacatto you could walk on it and the pace doesn't let up just 'cause you think you've got to quit reading and get to bed---you'll stay up late with this one. Pronzini doesn't pull any punches with language, either, but it all "fits" the story. Maybe you should go in with a friend and buy this one.

Okay, that's it----I'm off to pick some nail polish and consider eating the remaining half of my "Skor" candy bar while watching "ER" tonight. Have a good week-end, return the call from your brother (or sister), remember to put Pre-Emergent weed killer on your lawn, and don't even THINK of giving ME up for Lent! I'm giving up volcanic ash bathing, betting on snail races, no more body surfing on Meade Lake, and keeping count of how many used car lots there are! Bye! See ya!