Exploring the Mitten

You don't have to travel very far to find interesting destinations. Off the Beaten Path: Michigan provides lots of unique places for you to explore, grouped by area. Among them: the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Abbott's Magic Manufacturing Company in Colon, and Kitch-Iti-Kipi near Manistique (the state's largest natural spring). We have a wonderful variety of entertaining options within our own state!

Secrets from the past.

A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay, is a novel about secrets and the crushing cost of those secrets. Antoine, an unhappily divorced,forty something architect decides to take his sister Melanie on a vacation for her birthday. They go the the island they spent many happy summers as children until their mother died unexpectedly. Driving home Melanie turns to Antoine while she is driving to tell him something shocking she remembered about their mother-and drives off the road. She barely survives the accident and in the aftermath she and Antoine start remembering and investigating their mother's life. In the course of a few months,the revelations are many and lives are changed. A beautifully written novel, this will draw you into the character's world of Paris and their lives.

Frozen Iceland

Frozen Assets is the first book in a new crime series set in Iceland and features Gunnhildur "Gunna" the cop. She's a tough woman in a man's world and up to her neck investigating government corruption after a body is found floating in the harbor. The book jacket says "...is a piercing look at the endemic corruption that led to the global financial crisis and bankrupted Iceland's major banks..." For the American reader, this is a novel with a great sense of place,and a heroine to admire. ML

Dinner's Ready

Perfect One-Dish Dinners might take the stress out of meals for you. Pam Anderson gives all sorts of ideas for stews, casseroles, salads, and grilled entrees. If you feel like doing a bit more, she's got accompanying recipes for appetizers and desserts, too. I can't wait to try out the spicy chicken enchiladas verde and the shrimp wonton crisps with Asian pesto. Yum!

The Dirty Life

Kristin Kimball was a thirty-something writer living in New York City when she went to interview a farmer for an article. The farmer put her to work and also was handsome and interested. This precipitated a life change, moving to a farm and living with a partner. Kimball and her husband bought their own farm eventually,farmed with draft horses and raised and butchered their own meat. She describes the back breaking labor as well as the pleasures of farm life in this well written memoir, The Dirty Life: On Farming,Food, and Love.

Forgotten History

Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, has created a compelling story about how ancestors' actions can have unforeseen long-lasting effects. In The Lake of Dreams, Lucy returns home after years abroad to tend to her mother and make tough decisions about her future. She discovers, locked away in a trunk, a beautiful hand-woven cloth with women's suffrage pamphlets. She's intrigued by the story behind the items, and her research reveals some painful truths about her own family which some would rather be left unearthed.

You can win!

Never Lose Again: Become a Top Negotiator by Asking the Right Questions by Steven Babitsky and James J. Mangraviti Jr. will help you with any situation from dealing with the phone company to buying a car or a condo. The two lawyer authors have a system of key questions that will allow you to make better deals. Starting with a general "how's everything going?" to wrapping up a deal with "How much do you estimate that will come out to?" this book guides you by examples.