Admitting my obvious indifference toward cooking, it would seem that the last thing I would want to do is read a memoir by Julia Child. Maybe I am a glutton for punishment, but I could not help buying My Life in France after seeing a picture of Julia Child’s kitchen faithfully re-created for the upcoming movie Julie & Julia. Paul Child’s grandnephew, Alex Prud’Homme collaborated with Julia Child when the latter was in her 90s, to bring this book to life. Together they managed to tell a relaxing, meandering story with the elegance and humor one would expect from Julia Child and the charming style one would expect from a professional writer like Alex Prud’Homme.

After fifty-five years in Hollywood, former Moose County resident, Thelma Thackeray, returns to Pleasant Street in Pickax “to die.” She qualifies that statement with the comment that she would first like to have some fun. Being spry for 82 and apparently fit as a fiddle, Thelma perhaps intends to spend many years having fun before the other eventuality takes place.

After reviewing women’s lit for two years for Girlebooks, I began to wonder when we might get around to publishing a review of a book written by a man. I had visions of something by Sir Walter Scott, as his books are revered and mimicked at least a dozen of our authors. However, Scott will have to wait while we point you toward a contemporary Science Fiction author–one of my favorites. We publish this review because the subject matter is especially relevant to our line of business: electronic books.

Eight Cousins is a series of vignettes that illustrate the affection of the cousins and their parents, aunts, and uncles for each other. The tales demonstrate that family members can disagree with, and even disappoint, each other yet still hold each other in the highest regard. Rather than a series of conflicts or problems to solve, the novel tells about the ways in which the family works things out before they become conflicts. In spite of its dearth of conflict or challenge, however, the novel does come through with many amusing and satisfying stories.

First published in 1880, this second novel in the “Mr. Gryce” series lays out two apparently unrelated mysteries to which Mr. Gryce assigns “Q” to investigate. Green introduced Q in The Leavenworth Case as rather a shadowy character who gets the job done in spite of, or more likely because of, his strangeness. The Leavenworth Case has been Anna Katharine Green’s best-known and best-selling novel. However, owing to the storytelling prowess of Q and a compelling story-within-a-story told by Holman Blake, A Strange Disappearance was for this reader even more enjoyable than the first.

Published around 1870, What Katy Did tells the story of a rambunctious, headstrong twelve-year old girl who is infinitely likeable in spite of (or perhaps because of) these unfeminine traits. Katy has a zillion plans for the future, and any efforts at gentility go out the window as she rushes headlong into her destiny. Unfortunately, her destiny is not exactly what she had foreseen.

Published in 1682 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was one of the first books published in the New World. It became a best seller in the New World and in England and went through fifteen editions by 1800. In the literary history and review, A Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter calls it the first American literary form dominated by Women’s experience.

In this quasi-sequel to The Black Moth, Heyer changes the names of the characters, although their personalities remain recognizable and their histories and relationships remain much the same. The story follows as an amusingly twisted romance, forcing the reader inside the skin of a young ward–admiring, yea, worshiping a character who has no right to be admired, much less worshiped. Georgette Heyer skillfully keeps the reader guessing how this story could and should resolve itself, and the joy of reading the story is that anyone who has read Heyer previously knows not to take anything for granted.