The Bitter End Birding Society by Amanda Cox -- Ana Leigh is a kindergarten teacher taking a summer break to her great aunt Cora's house in Bitter End. Come to find out Bitter End is now part of the Roan Mountain community in Tennessee so that's neat for me because I've been there. In fact, the hike at the top of Carver's Gap is among the prettiest bald hikes that we enjoy. In Bitter End, Ana meets Marilyn and Sam plus the couple who have a wedding van, and her summer turns into finding more history about her family plus joining some of the gang on their hikes and looking for birds. Pretty cute story.
The Perfect Fake by Barbara Parker -- My mother in law died three months ago, and she left a few bags of books in her spare bedroom closet. My FIL is getting rid of a lot of her stuff so I took the books. I already donated several of them to the Friends of the Library book sale, but I decided to keep a few to read between library books. This is the first and it was OK. Tom is on probation and asked to recreate a map that was damaged. To do this he has to travel overseas which is against his probation terms, but who cares, right?
The Fair Weather Friend by Jessie Garcia -- When a popular meteorologist is murdered, Carol and her niece Olivia do a bit of sleuthing to find out who might have done it. This book alternates between several voices, and was a quick read.
All the Little Houses by May Cobb -- This book ended so abruptly that I was glad to see the author mention a sequel. Perhaps then I'll see more about what happened to Nellie, Jane, Jackson, Ethan, and all those folks in a small town in Texas.
No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah -- DNF; I tried, but just couldn't get into the suspense of a dog having to go on the run due to false charges of the dog having bitten someone.
Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer -- Eliot deals with his wife's upcoming death as she has "three to six months" left after her cancer spreads. Although it was different from my experience with my mother in law, it still brought back memories of those last three weeks with her.
North Carolina Quakers: Spring Friends Meeting by J. Timothy Allen on behalf of Spring Friends Meeting; This is one of those Images of America books that I found at our local library. Recently I've been enjoying finding information about Andrew's family as looking through his mom and others' pictures and papers, made me curious about the Andrew, Zachary, and McBane families. They were Quaker settlers in the Snow Camp and Eli Whitney areas of southern Alamance County. I was thrilled to find this book as it mentions a bit about each of those families. It is mostly told through images, but they have some informative and interesting captions.
There is a membership list c. 1900 that showed some of the very people I'd been researching recently including Arka Zachary whom I've realized must have been a teacher in the area. I've got several pictures that were in her collection - probably passed down to her niece Verna Andrew Whitsell who lived with Andrew's family for a couple of decades before she died in 2000 at age 90. Unfortunately I don't know if Arka (also known as "Aunt Zach")'s stash of photos include one of her. I have so many great pictures, but 90% don't have any identifying information - ugh. Also in this book I saw a map of the southern Alamance area near Spring Friends and its mother "church" Cane Creek Friends Meetinghouse, and I saw a JW Andrew listed nearby. I'm pretty sure that is Andrew's great-grandfather, Julius Weldon Andrew. It shows how close the various families lived to their meetinghouse (the Quakers tend to use this term instead of church.)
I want to give a huge shoutout of gratitude to my friend Myrna for looking up several interesting bits of information for me, and posting some things to several family members' pages at Family Search. A neat thing is that Myrna found out that she is related - very distantly, but still! - to Andrew through his Zachary side. That would be his maternal grandfather's mother's** side. The common ancestors, sisters Elizabeth and Mary, trace back to Thomas Call (1597-1676) and his wife, Bennett Harrison (1599-1643) who were from Kent, England. Whereas Myrna's ancestor, Elizabeth, went to Massachusetts; Andrew's ancestor, Mary, went to Virginia. Thank you again for your kindness and help, Myrna!
** Andrew -----> Sarah ---->Jim Andrew ----> Nannie Iota Zachary
Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker -- I finally read Itchy Boots' book telling about her reason for starting her journey that began in the Netherlands and India where she bought Basanti, her first motorcycle for traveling to various countries as a filmmaker. She shared a few things about her life that we didn't know from watching her on YouTube. I bought this last year for our anniversary, and I just read it this month due to having other books to read from the library.
Little Promises: Hope and Encouragement from Our Daily Bread compiled by Dave Brannon -- Andrew's dad is in the midst of purging things his wife had around the house. She had a lot of baskets, and he hates trying to vacuum around all the stuff on the floor. One basket near her chair had some devotionals and I decided to keep a few to read through. This was one of those. As the title suggests, this booklet contains sayings and verses meant to give hope and encourage folks. So many are worth pondering. Here are a few I've come back to in recent days.
"Focusing on who God is rather than on what we think He should do will guide us to joy and satisfaction in Him." -- Jennifer Benson Schuldt pg. 108
"Whatever storm we encounter today, we can be confident that all is not lost. Our Pilot can handle the storm. He will get us home." -- C.P. Hia pg. 109
"Stop and take a breath. Tune out the distractions, put away the restlessness, and reflect on the wonder of God's faithfulness. Get some real rest." -- Poh Fang Chia pg. 78
Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane -- I remembered liking her past books more than I appreciated this one. Hanna, Marni, and Stella unite to find out what happened years ago when several of the Tanner family went missing. Now that their patriarch Xavier has died and the troublesome Audrey is back in town, they try to figure out what they are willing to tell others.
Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict -- An interesting look at Egypt around the 1920s when there were uprisings as the Egyptians wanted their independence from the English. Lady Evelyn joins her father and Howard Carter on archaeological digs. She's most interested in finding Hatshepsut's tomb.
24 Hours by Greg Iles -- A doctor and his family are targeted in an elaborate kidnapping plot. Will, Karen, and Abby try to survive the evil of Joey and his accomplices. This is one of the books from my MIL's stash. It was published in 2000 so it was kind of neat to read how things were back then and see how some technological things have changed in the last 26 years.
The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown -- This book took me a while to read because I've been focusing on some family tree research and sorting, looking through library books pertaining to Cane Creek Friends (family research on Andrew's side) and taking pictures of old photos and letters to send via text to Andrew's cousins, plus watching WNBA games in some free time where I'd usually read. But this book was pretty good. It alternated between the times of King Henry VIII which is where Elizabeth Barton lived, and modern times when a researcher of Elizabeth Barton's life is at a workers' retreat in England.
All Booked Up by Melody Carlson -- Riva is contemplating the sale of her home when she meets Windy who proposes that Riva take in boarders. Then Riva can keep her house and it will help those who need affordable housing. When she has four ladies living in her house, Riva enjoys the camaraderie yet it's still tough ... especially when Kitty comes into the mix.
The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman -- A mystery about twenty-two missing ribeyes (yes, really!) that features chapters on the busser, server, host, and other people who work at Aunt Orsa's Italian-ish restaurant. Different, but a cute, quick read.
