Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng opens near the end of the story with Isabelle (Izzy) Richardson burning down her family’s home.

Roots in North Mississippi for me, in New Hampshire for my daughter-in-law, leave us looking at sad trees in South Mississippi. As green leaves turn brown and drop, we long for autumn.

Girls of Brackenhill, an intriguing newly published mystery by Kate Moretti, begins when Hannah Maloney is summonsed to her Aunt Fae’s death in a suspicious car accident.

First, I will give the gist of the scientific explanation of the scene from my first walk of the day as the sun joins me in greeting the morning.

On the front flap and the back cover of his new book, Don Tate says, “That’s what stories do. Protest injustice. Soothe. Teach. Inspire. Connect. Stories save lives.” Then he writes William Still and Hi

My first vote was in the multigenerational Butler Country Store, converted for the day to a voting precinct. I was proud to become a part of the process.

Added to my love of biography and history, I had a personal reason for wanting to read the book that I review today. I remember as a child that people often said that Mama looked like Eleanor Roosevelt

You haven’t asked about my favorite icon or tab to push on my computer, but I am going to tell you anyway. I love to push “send.”

Looking back a year, celebrating a birthday during this pandemic took on a whole new look. Last year, sisters, children, grandchildren, and a niece gathered and went out to eat in a local restaurant specializing in Southern cuisine and had a splendid time, little knowing what the next year would bring.

To be fair, the cardiologist having only been aware of my history since he put three stents in my heart a year ago, did not intend to be funny. In order for you to recognize the joke when it comes, I will begin with a bit of backstory.

Michael Tunnell discovered a diary in the Utah State Historical Society in Salt Lake City, kept by a third grade class in the Topaz Camp in Utah. This group of Japanese American children wrote and drew pictures of the happenings during that year.

Barbed wire fences, in the country, are useful for marking off which part we have to mow and which part the neighbors have to mow. Dogs, Shetland ponies when they can discover an opening, kids, and cats pay little attention to these markers which brings me to today’s topic.

If you have never thought of a picture book about intestines and stomach contents, much less one that is clever and beautiful, get ready!

My latest writing publication simmered in my head and has been whittled into several forms since the real-life occasion in my junior high classroom that inspired it a number of years ago.

When a book begins with a six-year-old village boy in a dirt clearing watching his perfectly still uncle get six ritual lines sliced across his face with a sharp knife, you know the book is not set in Kansas.

Ninth anniversary celebrations are marked by pottery to symbolize a simple natural element that is changed with careful work over time into a finished piece that is beautiful or useful, and sometimes both.

My photographed sign comes from the library where my writers group used to gather when we could still meet. It’s appropriate for this month when librarians and other book people discuss banned and challenged books.

“Home is

where the Army sends you.”

The plot of Furia, a young adult novel by Yamile Saied Mendez, centers around the identity of Camila Hassan in Rosario, Argentina. To her abusive father and her isolated mother, she is a girl.

Oscar Hammerstein’s lyric in The King and I has Anna singing “If you become a teacher, by your students you’ll be taught.” I’m sure every true teacher would attest to the truth of this saying, but I have a particular instance in mind as I write this.