Hello ladies and happy every Holiday I missed. To those of you who do know me, I am back and mentally back on track (I think). To those of you who don't, well I was I am a member, love everyone here. Went away to do some great mission work and had some very tragic things happen. Many hours of therapy later, and actually returning to the Dominican I think I have healed, I am not bitter, sad, or frightened to leave my house any more. I am able to talk about it and I feel that I can share with postive feelings now. But enough of that. Am I to late for April? Please tell me that I can play in April? Max is 4 and we just looked at Co-op preschool. HE is a mama's boy and didn't want to go to big boy school yet. Maryanne~ I have a box for you that I need to send, but um lost your address.. So Merry Christmas when it comes. Ahh. I just don't know what to say or who to say it to because I am scared I will leave someone out. I tried to read as many posts as my brain can handle, but I am sure that I will need some help. Babies and ornaments, tornados and ahhh.. I am not in Kansas anymore. Please feel free to email me with any personals that you'd love to share. I apologize for being gone so long. If there is anything that you want to know email me. If I need to re-join let me know if there is room. Mayanne_ my big sis.. I hope all is well, miss you and thanks for all your support thru this, even though I was a bad lil sis and became an introvert. But guess what? I am back and better. Missed you all Laura.... beans

When I was working, I would walk for 30 min and I had a 30 min rt commute, so I got 60 min of listening to audio books in every day, so I burned through a lot of audio tapes. I started lisa gardner and they were good, but they got to be so much more of the same, that I'd read the blurb and have no idea if I'd read that one or not. I read some of the prey series...eyes of prey was just too chilling...but given past life events, I can no longer do the super graphic serial killer type things any more...they are just too upsetting. The Grafton alphabets are much more my speed. Now I get books on tape out of the library when we do a driving trip...the two of us have laughed our trips along listening to the Evanovich mysteries...makes driving much more pleasant.

In addition to ones already listed: Nevada Barr, her heroine is a National Parks Ranger Stuart Woods - only those where the protagonist is a female former sheriff. These are set in a locale in Florida very close to where I live (Central Florida, east coast) Dorothy L Sayers - Lord Peter Whimsy Colin Dexter - he wrote a series featuring Inspector Morse. The public TV stations aired numerous movies based on Morse, on the Mystery series.

I do like a series, but I also like an author who writes stand alone books that bring in the same characters from a different viewpoint. One of my favorite authors is Tabitha King (wife of Stephen). Five of her seven novels are set in fictional Nodd's Ridge, Maine. While each is a stand alone book, there is a sense of continuity as new characters are introduced that expand or complete the histories of previous characters and allusions are made to events in previous Nodd's Ridge novels. Events and characters are seen from different viewpoints. The first book I read was "One on One" which was written in 1993. The main character is Samuel Styles. "Pearl" was written in 1988 and is about Samuel's step-mother. "The Book of Reuben" was written in 1994 and the main character is Samuel's father. "Caretakers" was written in 1983 from the viewpoint of a caretaker in Nodd's Ridge. The order in which read makes no difference. There are amusing references in Tabitha's novels to the works of her husband. For instance, she includes a note in the afterword of "One on One" that the state basketball finals against Castle Rock depicted in her novel took place before the destruction of the fictional Castle Rock portrayed in her husband's "Needful Things." Another favorite author is Maeve Binchy whose books include references to characters and events in previous books. It has a "coming home" feel to recognize characters and places and events.