Alamosa Public Library

It's 1936 and the Great Depression has taken its toll. Eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort has lived in Middle Swan, Colorado, up in the high country of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, since before it was Colorado. When she first meets seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, Hennie is drawn to the young grieving girl. Nit and her husband have come to this small mining town in search of work, but the loneliness and loss Nit feels are almost too much to bear....

Hideaway: As Sophie De Luca has learned, many things really are better the second time around. She's celebrating a wonderful year of marriage to her sweet second husband, Goebel. Meanwhile, the bond between Sophie and her childhood friends Toots, Ida, and Mavis is stronger and more supportive than it's ever been. All four are happily settled outside of Charleston, and Toots, who'd sworn to never marry again after eight trips down the aisle, is so...

In Partonville, a tiny southern Illinois farming town, 87-year-old Dorothy Jean Wetstra is the self-proclaimed town matriarch. She's a regular in the main street cafe, where she helps herself to doughnuts and gossip. And she's a Wild Musketeer on the senior citizens' softball team. Aware of her own limitations, she often asks "the Big Guy" in heaven for help with the town's problems: "Dear Lord, DO SOMETHING!"

Despite her impoverished background, Rebecca is an imaginative and charming child, often composing little poems and songs to express her feelings or to amuse her younger brothers and sisters. Rebecca's joy for life inspires her aunts, but she faces many trials in her young life, gaining wisdom and understanding. -- back cover.

Miss Julia's own home is not immune to shock waves--the arrival of Latisha, housekeeper Lillian's five-year-old pistol of a great-granddaughter, sets off sparks in Miss Julia's household. But what could shake them all up even more is if anyone finds out the most troubling gossip of all--more tall tales about Miss Julia's late husband. Can Miss Julia turn the town's attention away from herself before she becomes the center of scandal? Can her cool-as-a-cucumber...

Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.

Bakerhaven, Connecticut, seems like the ideal place to host a charity crossword-puzzle tournament-after all, the town is home to Cora Felton, the beloved puzzle columnist known as the Puzzle Lady. A slew of celebrity contestants are on the way, and the locals have been invited to challenge the veteran puzzlers head-on. But the town's attention is fixated on something far more gripping than crosswords when the body of the town tart is discovered lying...

"It's been an enjoyable and murder-free time for Judith, Suzie and Becks - AKA the Marlow Murder Club - since the events of last year. The most exciting thing on the horizon is the upcoming wedding of Marlow grandee, Sir Peter Bailey, to his nurse, Jenny Page. Sir Peter is having a party at his grand mansion on the river Thames the day before the wedding, and Judith and Co. are looking forward to a bit of free champagne. But during the soiree, there's...

In Women Rowing North, Mary Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. "If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully," Pipher writes,...

In a dusty attic, on Christmas Day 1929, four teenage girls write their plans for the future on slips of paper and then hide them in a cobalt blue bottle. Sixty-five years later, a television news reporter discovers the forgotten bottle and traces the wherabouts of the now elderly women.