Darkness the Color of Snow
By Thomas Cobb
William Morrow  $25.99
This is Cobb's fifth novel which  brings his understated character development to a story of a small community in economic decline. The citizens take their frustration out on a deeply divided rivalry between the police and the politicians. Triggering the rage is the death of one of the town's "bad boys", a mischievous youth who is popular with the girls, and is the son of one of the influential few. Only the reader knows the truth as all sides scramble to better their positions for the declining tax base and handful of jobs. All too reflective of small-town America today, the idyllic past conflicts with the harsh realities of the modern world as a totally honest police chief struggles to defend his department and town.Each well defined character is recognizable from our everyday life.
~review by Mike Toal

Did you Ever Have a Family By Bill Clegg
Scout Press  $26.00
On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's life is completely devastated when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter's fiance, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke--her entire family, all gone in a moment. And June is the only survivor. Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak. From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding's caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke's mother, the shattered outcast of the town--everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.
Elegant and heartrending, and one of the most accomplished fiction debuts of the year, "Did You Ever Have a Family "is an absorbing, unforgettable tale that reveals humanity at its best through forgiveness and hope. At its core is a celebration of family--the ones we are born with and the ones we create. Longlisted for the Booker Prize.
~Recommended by Sue Boucher and Bonnie Foley
 
Lake Bus to Wisdom
By Ivan Doig
Riverhead  $28.95
Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for female trouble in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way. Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless readers.
~Recommended by Jill Webb

Marriage of Opposites
By Alice Hoffman
Simon and Schuster  $27.99
A forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro--the Father of Impressionism.
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel's salvation is their maid Adelle's belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle's daughter. But Rachel's life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father's business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frederick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.
~Recommended by Sue Boucher


The Nature of the Beast
By Louise Penny
Minotaur $27.99
Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village.
But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal.

X
By Sue Grafton
Putnam  $28.95
X is the 24th letter in the English alphabet, and Sue Grafton's 24th book in her best selling Kinsey Millhone mysteries.It is also symbolic of the "unknown" factor.
Kinsey is unknowingly sucked into a seemingly simple case for her one-woman detective agency that turns dark and deadly.A sociopath serial killer cleverly has avoided all detection until Kinsey comes along. However, can she offer any proof before the next victim falls? And, keep herself from being a victim?Sue Grafton is a master at keeping several cases in the air at the same time, riveting the reader to page after page of excitement and enjoyment.
X is no exception. The only sad point of the book is that there are only two letters of the alphabet left.
~Review by Mike Toal