Gardening Books

Time-Saving Gardener: Tips and Essential Tasks, Season by Season by Carolyn Hutchinson. This book is for gardeners with only a few hours a week to spare, it is organized by season and task. It includes detailed instructions and illustrations, and an alphabetized directory of easy-care plants.

Front Yard Gardens: Growing More than Grass by Liz Primeau. Learn to plan, design and plant a mixed garden, consisting of flowering plants, shrubs and cacti. More than 200 color photographs are provided. Have a landscape that requires less watering and chemicals.

The Gardener’s Color Palette: Paint your Garden with 100 Extraordinary Flower Choices by Thomas Fischer. With 100 flower selections presented by color scheme, each entry in this book includes photographs and information on plant size at maturity, bloom time and hardiness zone. Recommendations are made on attractive pairings and controlling aggressive plants.

Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens by Barbara Pleasant. Enjoy flavorful vegetables and save money when growing one of these gardens. The text includes information on plants and materials required, planting instructions, maintenance tips for the season, and more.

The Shadow of Your Smile

Here is another in a long line of light mystery/romance novels from writer Mary Higgins Clark. In this book, the potential announcement of a long-suppressed family secret threatens to disrupt two undertakings. One is the effort to achieve beatification for Sister Catherine, a now-deceased nun who possibly had brought about two medical miracles. Jeopardizing the success of this endeavor is the suspicion that Sister Catherine had given birth to a child out of wedlock in her youth; a child that subsequently was given up for adoption. The second undertaking is the survival of the Gannon Foundation, nearing bankruptcy because of mismanagement by greedy heirs. Pediatrician Monica Farrell unknowingly is involved with both of these situations. Is she also the granddaughter of Sister Catherine? The criminals eventually are exposed and romance is revealed. The plot moves along smoothly and the characters are likeable, except for the villains who are suitably corrupt.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Author Cathleen Schine presents what has been called the modern version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. This novel depicts the lives of Betty, an elderly well-to-do woman and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie. Reality takes a calamitous turn when Joseph, the husband and father, announces that he wants a divorce after almost fifty years of marriage. Of course, another woman is involved. Left homeless while divorce proceedings plod on, Betty accepts an invitation from a wealthy friend to stay at an available property that he owns in Westport, Connecticut. Her daughters decide that they will temporarily live with their mother until she has adjusted to her situation. Together again, life as they know it takes a turn both humorous and stressful.

Ms. Schine’s razor-sharp assessments of the various characters that the three women meet and socialize with, and her satirical views on modern-day society, are worth the price of admission to this complicated world.

Half Broken Horses by Jeannette Walls

Half Broken Horses is the “true-life novel” version of Jeannette Walls grandmother’s life, Lily Casey Smith. Lily is the mother of Rosemary Smith Walls, the subject of Jeannette Walls earlier memoir, The Glass Castle. Lily Casey Smith is portrayed as a progressive woman, who was never conquered by anything life threw at her. The novel follows Lily from age 10 to Jeannette Walls’ birth. Lily leads an exciting life, traveling 500 miles on horse back at age 15 to take up teaching in Red Lake, Arizona with a pearl handled handgun in her bag. From this moment teaching is forever entwined with her life, taking her to various locations throughout the Southwest. Teaching allows her to meet her husband, Jim, who is the father of her two children, Rosemary and Little Jim. Lily survives a surprising amount of tragedy and strife throughout her life and the tough as nails gal manages to survive it all. This is a wonderful quick reading novel, which will never fail to surprise its reader.

About the Author: Jeannette Walls was born c. 1960 in Phoenix, Arizona. She graduated from Barnard College and was a NYC journalist for 20 years. She currently lives in rural Virginia with her husband John Taylor.

Read-a-likes:

Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander

Blue Skies, No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family by Lynne V. Cheney

The Prodigal Daughter: Reclaiming An Unfinished Childhood by Margaret Gibson

Farmworker's Daughter: Growing Up Mexican in America by Rose Castillo Guilbault

The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl


Pamela L. Wells, Lindenhurst

The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives

Humans are not the rational creatures we believe ourselves to be. Using a wide range of scientific and psychological studies, author Shankar Vedantam reveals that many of the decisions we make originate from outside of our conscious awareness. Although it may seem shocking, biases often rule our choices and evaluations.

Vedantam, also the author of the Washington Post’s “Department of Human
Behavior” column, describes how unconscious biases overtake knowledge and rational thinking, and helps the reader to understand why. He examines such situations as: why some World Trade Center victims rushed out of the building to safety while others felt it safer to remain inside; why women’s salaries are less than those of men, and transsexual men who become women earn less than transsexual women who become men; and the telescope effect in which news stories about one suffering individual garners more attention than stories about millions of genocide victims.

This is an enjoyable read for popular psychology buffs.

Deception: An Alex Delaware Novel

Psychologist Alex Delaware and Police Lieutenant Milo Sturgis are at it again; that is, they’re in search of answers to a mystifying murder. Author Jonathan Kellerman recounts the tale of a young teacher who was murdered, and her body left preserved in a bathtub full of dry ice. The victim, who was employed by an exclusive preparatory academy, left behind a DVD accusing three fellow teachers of sexually abusing her. Is one of them the murderer?

Milo is assigned the case by his chief who has personal reasons for downplaying the murder; his son attends the academy and the chief fears that any scandal will ruin his son’s chances of getting into an Ivy League college. The Sturgis/Delaware team conducts their usual interviews, surveillances and computer investigations to bring the case to a satisfying close, but not until the murderer strikes again.

Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Author Michael Pollan presents an examination of the four different types of meals that we Americans eat, and the consequences it has for our health and our ecosystem. Pollan is a journalist who has written several books and articles about food and agriculture, and now is a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley. For this book, he investigated the differences between the industrial corn-reliant agricultural system, the organic or alternative food system (both small and large-scaled), and food foraged through hunting and gathering. Pollan appeals to the reader’s interest with his eloquent, fact-based text and a full character assessment of each of the individuals he meets on his journeys. He also reflects upon the moral issues of eating meat.