Good summer reading books continue to arrive daily at your local branch of the Mid-Columbia Library.  Here are three new books that come highly recommended. :p>

Sweet Hush, by Deborah Smith.  Every family has its secrets and Hush McGillen Thackery has carefully buried hers to protect her son.  She’s worked hard her entire life to build a prosperous empire in the Georgia mountains, growing and selling the famous “Sweet Hush” apple.  Her late husband’s reputation as a faithful and supportive spouse is just another myth she’s propagated along with the apple folklore she feeds her customers.  Everything unravels when her son, Davis, leaves Harvard to bring home his new bride, Eddie Jacobs, only daughter of the President of the United States. :p>

Secret service personnel at her gate, reporters in helicopters and abusive phone calls from the irate first lady are just the beginning of Hush’s dilemma.  Nicholas Jacobek, ex-special forces, and a relative of the first family, is sent to Georgia to ensure the safety of Eddie and to investigate the motives of Hush and her family.  Political enemies of the President soon expose the shocking truth Hush has desperately tried to conceal from her son.  With innate strength of character, Hush defies her critics and defends her family in the best tradition of southern matriarchs. :p>

Deborah Smith has written another poignant, funny and ultimately inspiring novel of a family facing threatened destruction and growing stronger in the process. :p>

[Little, Brown and Co., 3 Center Plaza, Boston MA 02108, 2003, 324 pages; reviewed by Marsha Bates, MCL-Kennewick Branch] :p>

Shopaholic Ties the Knot, by Sophie Kinsella.  This is Kinsella’s third volume in the hilarious saga of Becky Bloomwood, English fashionista with designer taste on a Gap budget.  (Previous titles are Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan.)  Part three finds our heroine living her dream in New York City, working as a personal shopping consultant at Barney’s and, best of all, engaged to her beau, Luke Brandon.  With her usual flair for ducking difficult situations, Becky can’t seem to tell her mother or her tyrannical future mother-in-law where the wedding will actually take place…in her family’s back garden in Oxshott, England; or at the Plaza Hotel with the cream of New York society in attendance.  And how can she possibly choose between registering at Tiffany’s, Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf’s or Barney’s?  Will she wear Vera Wang, or her mother’s wedding gown that makes her look like a “sausage roll”?  The ironclad contract she unknowingly signs with a Nazi wedding planner in New York leaves her little choice, but how can she break her mother’s heart?  As the big day draws ever closer, Becky wonders how she will manage to be married in New York and Oxshott on the same day. :p>

[Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, NY NY 10019, 328 pages, 2003; reviewed by Marsha Bates] :p>

Chocolate Quake, by Nancy Fairbanks.  Chocolate Quake is the fourth in the author’s “Culinary Mysteries” series, and finds Carolyn Blue, a professional food writer, in another mess.  This time she accompanies her college professor husband to San Francisco (thus the barely forgivable pun of the title); he to attend a scholarly convention and she to spend some quiet and enjoyable time eating at fine restaurants, writing food columns, and soaking up local atmosphere. :p>

Things have never worked out in the “quiet and enjoyable” way in the previous novels of the series and, of course, they do not here.  Readers however will have an enjoyable time reading this fast-paced mystery, as Carolyn seeks to exonerate her innocent but tremendously annoying mother-in-law, charged with a bloody murder, with the help of a gay private investigator, who happens to be a motorcycle riding ex-professional football star.  (If you demand grounded plausibility in the storylines of your reading choices, go elsewhere.)  And the recipes from real and acclaimed San Francisco eateries will make your mouth water too. :p>

[Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson St., NY NY 10014, 2003, 290 pages; reviewed by Brian Soneda, Assistant Director, Public Services] :p>