Organic Gardening by Lavelle

Lavelle's Organic Gardening is absolutely full of how-to-garden expertise boiled down into easy-to-understand pages. The photos clearly show you how to follow all steps of gardening to create your flower and vegetable gardens, ponds and more. I recommend this, but must warn that the print is small!

Safely Buried by John Pesta

Safely Buried by John Pesta is not a cozy mystery.

Phil Larrison, a reporter/editor for The Gleaner, starts off innocently enough by picking up a lady, Paula Henry, clumping along the road with a cast on her broken leg. After she directs him to an out-of-the-way house where her friends live, he helps her get into the house after no one answers the door. The two of them find the residents upstairs in the bathroom in a badly decomposed state. Phil calls the police and Paula disappears.

While trying to get a story for the newspaper, Phil uncovers an intricately woven web of criminal cover-ups and corruption. Blackmail, illegal drugs and chemicals (not what you may be thinking), child abuse, and more deaths come to light - all of them supposed to be "Safely Buried".

John Pesta writes from a local perspective. Meridian County is our Jackson County. I will leave you to figure out which town he calls Campbellsville and which is Brickton. Maybe you will even recognize the area called Blind Horse Hollow where most of the action takes place.

Once I got into the story, I had trouble turning out the light before I finished the book.

Kathi Linz

Paleo Bread: Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Paleo-Friendly Bread Recipes

Paleo Bread: Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Paleo-Friendly Bread Recipes by Rockridge Press gives ten tips for baking gluten-free bread as well as dozens of recipes for different types and different flavors of breads.

The tips that sticks with me most is that paleo-friendly bread is more like a quick bread than a raised bread. It can still be toasted and dipped in your soup. It can be sliced for sandwiches. It will be different, but just as useful as gluten bread.

If you want to go gluten-free, but miss the bread or haven't found a good substitute yet, this may be the book for you.

Kathi Linz

Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love

Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love by Patricia McKissack and Fredrick McKissack, Jr. is based on Nat Love's autobiography.

Nat Love was born a slave. He describes his master as a good man, but his master failed to tell his slaves after the end of the Civil War that they were free. Once they found out, life became more difficult as they had to find the means to provide for themselves.

One by one, the older members of Nat's family die leaving Nat more and more in charge of being the breadwinner. He earns money by breaking horses. Eventually he travels west to become a cowboy.

Many well-known Western figures show up in this story: Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Bill Cody to name a few.

In the space of Nat Love's lifetime, the West changed from vast open prairies filled with buffalo and tribes of Native Americans to a land crossed by railways and a few small herds of wild buffalo.

This is not a manga book, but rather an illustrated version of real history. It reminds me of the Classics Illustrated comic books I used to read when I was young.

Kathi Linz