The Last to Know

The Last to Know by Wendy Corsi Staub

This was my first Staub book. I keep picking up her books at the library book sale shelf or the used book store when I see them. So, I have several ready and waiting. I am so glad a buddy read made me finally move one of them to the top of my TBR pile.

Townsend Heights is an idyllic, white picket fenced, upper middle class suburban town. A place where the Mom's stay home, meet for lattes, socialize at the park, and gather for Gymboree, while the house keepers and nanny's work hard to help them keep up appearances. The Dad's go off into the city and work long hard hours to finance this picture perfect existence.

Tasha Banks misses her forever working husband, is struggling to keep up with the Jones' and is unsure the stay at home mom life is the one for her. But her own frustrations of daily life are put on the back burner when the women in her neighborhood, her friends, are being targeted. Will Tasha be next?

While My Sister Sleeps

While My Sister Sleeps

Molly Snow has always lived in her older sisters shadow. Robyn, a star runner and Olympic hopeful, tends to dominate the attention of the family. Molly, older brother Chris, and her parents run the family greenhouse business while Robyn travels the world winning medals. Until the day she collapses while training. While Robyn lays in a coma, her family must come to terms with her fate, try to figure out what she would want, and in the process, deal with family secrets and turmoil.

Ghost Stories

The Myrtles Plantation by Frances Kermeen

I love a ghost story. Even ones that seem a bit far-fetched, they always suck me in. This is the "true" story of Frances Kermeen and her husband Jim Meyers who purchase the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francesville, LA. Frances had always been drawn to New Orleans and loved this particular plantation. They had arrived in the area and decided to purchase an historic property to rehab and it seemed like fate that Myrtles was suddenly on the market. As soon as Frances moved in, she began having ghostly experiences.

Some of the stories seemed exaggerated or far-fetched, but being someone who loves a ghost story - any ghost story - I didn't care! I was drawn in anyway.

The Secret Between Us by Barbara Delinsky

The Secret Between Us by Barbara Delinsky

Deborah Monroe is a small town New England doctor in a family practice with her father. Busy juggling life as a single mother to teenage daughter Grace and younger visually impaired son Dylan, running the family practice with her ornery and grieving father and his conflict with her younger sister, is tough enough. Life gets even more complicated when Deborah and Grace are heading home on a rainy stormy night. The all of a sudden hit a man in the road who turns out to be Grace's high school history teacher. This is a story about family secrets and their consequences as well as the bond between mother and child.

I have read several books by Delinsky and also enjoy the stories she tells.

The Underground Railroad

We have been learning about the Underground Railroad in school, so I have been read a bunch of books with the kids. Here are a few:

Two YA's

Jinx by Meg Cabot


Jean Honeychurch has bad luck. So bad, in fact, that she is known simply as Jinx. After casting a spell-gone-wrong on a boy she likes in her small Iowa hometown, Jean is sent to New York City to live with her wealthy aunt, uncle, and cousins and attend a prestigious NY private academy for the wealthy. There, Jean must try to fit in, get a handle on this magic stuff, and deal with a cruel and jealous cousin who is dabbling in the dark arts.

This was a really fun and quick YA-Paranormal-Chick Lit! I always enjoy Cabot's books.


If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America by Anne Kamma, Illustrated by Pamela Johnson

Home in Time for Christmas by Heather Graham

Home in Time for Christmas by Heather Graham

Melody Tarleton is heading home to Gloucester, Massachusetts for the holidays. She used to take so much joy in the holiday and her eccentric mother's abundant decorating, but this year she was not looking forward to it. On the way, Melody suddenly came upon a man in the road, hit a patch of black ice, and then the man himself.

Jake Mallory is from another time. Sent to the gallows for treason during the Revolutionary War, Jake suddenly finds himself thrown into the future and right in Melody's path.

I found this book light and entertaining but not something I would normally be into. I love Graham's suspense books and found this one good, but not a favorite.

Cold Rock River by JL Miles

Cold Rock River by JL Miles

Set in the early 1960's in rural Georgia, Cold Rock River tells the story of seventeen year old Adie Jenkins who finds herself pregnant and married to the handsome and philandering Buck. Adie realizes she needs to grow up in a hurry and sets off to find a place of their own, out from under her mother-in-law, Verna's, controlling finger. She rents a broken down cabin from a man named Murphy where she meets Willa Mae who becomes a close friend and confident. Willa Mae shares the diary of a young slave woman, Tempe, with Adie. For all of the heartache, loss, and trouble Adie experiences, she is able to read about Tempe's similar woes and how to persevere.

I really loved this story, the characters, and even the setting of the rural south. JL Miles is an author I have never read nor even heard of. I read this book as a buddy read and am so glad I did or I would have never discovered it.