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The release of new postal stamps on the market is exciting especially if it is your hero or heroine. I've had my favorite stamps. However, I never thought about the stamps which become collector items. For example, where is their country of origin? That's why "The One - Cent Magenta" by James Barron is a very gripping book to read. Some of the collectors know they have a treasure and other collectors like Harry Vaughn, a twelve year old, have no idea what they have in their hands. That makes for eccentric people and pretty ordinary people who choose to become stamp collectors. I have to start with the twelve year old. He paid sixteen dollars and some cents for his magenta stamp. At the exact opposite side of the totem pole is the businessman who walks around with a briefcase chained to his wrist. Inside is the stamp that is a rarity. Along the way, there are many fun facts in this non-fiction book about a very, very valuable stamp with a strange color. Groucho M

  "Himself" by Jess Kidd is an Irish tragedy. The novel takes place in Ireland. The main character is a man named  Mahony. His life is very sad. If you're in the mood for carrying around a box of tissues, you will love this novel. His life begins as an infant placed on the doorstep of Saint Anthony's orphanage. Twenty six years later he is ready to set out on a road of discovery to find his mother. His mother is Orla Sweeney. She led a tragic life.. There is the feeling she looked for love in all the wrong places never finding it until giving birth to Mahony. She loved the baby, but the cards or the ghosts of the past work against her. She does not survive to see the baby grow up. Neither does she survive to see him  smile at the angels. The fates are against her. Like most abandoned children, Mahony wants to know about his parents. He wants to know what happened to his mother and if lucky, he might find out who fathered him too. "Himself" by Jess Kidd is

It's a British Newspaper and a staff mixed up in the politics of Russia. There also are Royals and the famous Faberge eggs. All of this is found in "The Kill Fee" by Fiona Veitch Smith. During the Twentieth Century, there were the White Russians, the good guys, who sided with the British. There were also the Red Russians who wanted a new Russia where the people would have more control. It became very easy for me to learn and recognize the White Russians. It seemed much harder to keep up with the characters on the Red side. Thank goodness for the name chart at the front of the book. If there is any interest in Old Russia, the murders of Tsar Nicholas III and his Tsarina Alexandra and their family, you will like this mystery. Also, if there is any fascination with Rasputin and what happened to him is a reason to fly swiftly through all the pages. There is a runaway named Nana and a child named Anya. I felt the strain and stress of  these two people.  I wanted to rema

While I love Time Travel novels, I didn't know the reason characters did it. In "Yellowstone Heart Song" by Peggy L. Henderson, Aimee falls backward in time to 1810. Her modern life is spent in the time of 2010. Zach Osborne, Daniel's father,  is the one who sends people back and forth in time. Zach does it by touching a dried snake head he keeps in a pouch around his neck. What is thought provoking to me is that Aimee feels she needs to time travel because it allows her to "escape reality." The e book is well done. I thought so much about Yellowstone Park and its animal life like Bison and Elk.I also had the chance to discover the names of  Indian tribes. There are the Blackfoot Tribe, Tukedeka Tribe and the Shoshone Tribe. It's exciting learning how one tribe is very different in temperament from another tribe. I also read about the hot springs. Surprising to me, some springs are hotter than other springs. I also loved the fact that Aimee is a Trau

This book is very inspiring. From the beginning, I felt curious by the question "what is man?" The question is very intellectual,However, Martin Luther King gives simple answers to the question. There are quotations by John Donne and Shakespeare. Especially meaningful are Martin Luther King's thoughts about the New Jerusalem. It doesn't take long to read the book. It's very short. In the end, it is again about love.

Oh my goodness! Why did I choose this story for Friday the 13th? I'm not superstitious. I have a healthy respect for sidewalk cracks, the number thirteen and cracked mirrors. I need to add voodoo on to the short list of superstitions. I don't know much about voodoo. This morning it greeted me in Niyah Moore's novella "Beneath The Bayou."  I had to look up the term and try to remember old movies as well. I had heard of sticking pins in dolls. These are little ways of manipulating our world to get our way. It must make the gods unhappy, at least my God to see us putting a skeletal head before a prayer. "Beneath The Bayou" begins with an Afro-Brazillian and the location, New Orleans.  Are there more churches there or more people who believe in magic? That would make an exciting statistic.  I picked this novel because of the title. I like titles using the word "bayou." I remember a novel by Nora Roberts with the word bayou in it. The title is

Zadie Smith is really testing me. One moment I'm in America with the dancing stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The next moment I'm meeting the well known people of England whom I don't know. There is my test. These are people I've never heard or read about in my life. Don't worry; this doesn't hinder my reading. It makes my reading of Swing Time more exciting, more fun. Her novel is like bread. It's very nourishing. It's emotional in a dry sort of way. There are paragraphs where I want to remain for a few days. My weakness is that I don't like to stop and underline or highlight my thoughts. After all, you can't highlight or underline the beauty of a rose. All you can do is hold it lightly in your hand and sniff the delicious fragrance. I want to walk gently. I will take my time reading and learning about these two girls and their families who are so different from one another and yet the same in some ways. I can almost hear their la