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Something old, something new
Where do authors find inspiration? It could be their home neighborhood or a distant locale. Perhaps it's a current event or an episode plucked from history. In the case of writer Geralyn Dawson, it was a real-life organization, the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation. The foundation funds its work by holding sales of wedding gowns, which are donated by brides young and old across the nation.
In Dawson's heart-tugging novel, The Pink Magnolia Club, three generations of strangers instantly bond for life in the women's bathroom at one such wedding dress sale. The women of the newly formed Pink Magnolia Club blossom in three diverse life stages. Holly turns down Justin's proposal because she believes she's doing him a favor, but she's really hiding from her own fears. Her boys now grown and independent, Maggie faces divorce on the brink of her silver anniversary, the petals of her predictable life fluttering apart. Grace is the fading flower who wants to live to celebrate her golden anniversary. Showing once again the humor and flair of her historical romance writing, Dawson delivers a contemporary bouquet on the power of women's friendships. This is a memory worth making.
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Could she be?
The provocative question Jennifer Crusie poses in her sparkling new romantic comedy would give any proper con man pause: Could his lady-love be Faking It? Folk art paintings, fanciful furniture, forgeries and foolery have Davy Dempsey's head spinning. The source of his trouble is one Tilda Goodnight, art gallery owner, heir to the Goodnight family's unique artistic talents and the woman who could settle Davy down for good. Crusie's madcap tale of stolen art and mayhem contains more laugh-out-loud lusty living than a sudsy-bubble Oktoberfest in her quirky German Village neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. Snappier than a spicy sauerbraten, Faking It is liberally laced with the gemütlichkeit of savvy storytelling.
Faking It
By Jennifer Crusie
St. Martin's, $24.95
352 pages, ISBN 0312284683
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Back to the lake
When it's springtime in New England, the most Lake Henry residents should have to worry about is the maple syrup harvest. But one of their own is revealed as an alleged murderer in Barbara Delinsky's powerful domestic drama, An Accidental Woman. Poppy Blake refuses to accept her friend Heather's guilt and worse, Griffin Hughes' role in exposing her. With the surety of the change in seasons, Poppy's frozen-in-time emotions thaw as she struggles to overcome her limitations to save Heather. Just as the stark landscape of New England gives way to budding spring, Griffin taps into Poppy's potential for the sweet blush of love. An engrossing story from one of women's fiction's true masters.
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The bitter aftermath of war
Proving that the most profound human emotions know no constraints of time, Jill Marie Landis reunites a husband thought killed in battle with the wife who strayed in the inspired post-Civil War romance Magnolia Creek. For five years, Dr. Dru Talbot survives war and imprisonment on the dream of returning to his bride of a single night. But Sara Collier has suffered her own wartime reckoning with lost innocence and honor. Dru's homecoming joy turns to hellish betrayal when he sees Sara's daughter Lissybeth. The toddler in his wife's arms is not his own. In the crucible of small town judgment and jealousy, with only Dru's sister Louzanne steadfast in her support, Sara and Dru labor side-by-side through a yellow fever epidemic and find forgiveness in unexpected ways. Readers will find a tenderly written story of reconciliation and triumph.
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Sandy Huseby writes and reviews from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and northern Minnesota.
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