Stop Calling Him Honey and Start Having Sex! by Maggie Arana and Julienne Davis

Stop Calling Him Honey and Start Having Sex! by Maggie Arana and Julienne Davis Not my usual choice I know, but worth reading, even if you don't think your sex life needs rekindled. Arana and Davis believe that our daily habits that can kill the spark in a relationship. Their advice is not about buying sexy lingerie or scheduling date nights or "just doing it" whether you're in the mood or not. They promote treating each other like adults with love and respect, which means no androgynous nicknames, no baby talk, keeping the bathroom door shut. A lot of the book isn't about sex necessarily though. It's about being your own woman, remembering that you are in fact an individual, that your husband compliments you but isn't your other half. It's really about exploring all the parts of yourself that are valuable and unique. As women and men, we are many things: wife/husband/partner, mother/father, career person, homemaker, cook, housekeeper, gardener, caregiver for humans...
Read More

Teaser from Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop

"That" was a man in the same Santa suit I'd seen him wearing upstairs. His eyes, how they twinkled as they continued not to blink. His cheeks were like roses (or rather the blood drying upon his cheeks was) and his nose was like a cherry . . .  a large, crushed black cherry. A twist of his head — more specifically the odd angle at which it lay against his shoulders — soon gave me to know St. nick had nothing to dread. Not this Christmas Eve, not the next. He was as dead as the toy department of Macy's on Christmas morning. (pg. 181, "The Long Winter's Nap" by Rupert Holmes in Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop edited by Otto Penzler) I'm really enjoying this collection so far. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along. The rules are easy and I only cheated a little. Grab your ...
Read More

Winner!

Congratulations to the winner of  The Family Dinner by Laurie David, with recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt. Benita I hope you get as much use out of it as I'm sure I will. 'll be sending you an a-mail shortly. I just need your address to pass on to the publisher. If you didn't win, you can purchase it at Amazon.com or from an independent bookstore through IndieBound. My copy was provided by the publisher for review and the above is my honest opinion. I am an Amazon and IndieBound affiliate....
Read More

An Outlaw Thanksgiving by Emily Arnold McCully

An Outlaw Thanksgiving by Emily Arnold McCully (Suggested reading level: Grades K-4) How would like to have shared Thanksgiving dinner with Butch Cassidy and his gang? Thrilled, scared, grateful? While this story is fiction, according to the author's note it's based on an actual Thanksgiving dinner that took place in 1886. In November 1886, Clara and her mother are heading west on the train to meet Papa in Utah and then head on to California. Their train gets snowed in and a nice man who they met on board offers to take them with him to Brown's Hole for a few days, until the train is dug out. He promises them a real Thanksgiving dinner with respectable ranchers. The feast is magnificent, but then Clara recognizes on of their hosts from a wanted poster- it's Butch Cassidy! She's brave enough to ask him if he's planning on robbing the train. "Well, a poster don't tell the whole story of a man," Butch said. "We've all...
Read More