Kate DiCamillo tells an amazing tale of a mouse named Despereaux, a princess named Pea, and many other memorable and unique characters. It reads like a fairy tale, yet speaks volumes to children and adults.

My grade-school daughters enjoyed this book as we read aloud this summer.

At first glance, Talie Ingrim is an enviable woman. Her husband is successful in his career, they have a lovely one-year-old son, and she finds out she is expecting another child. Life is so very good.

Talie is happy and content, until she begins reading a family heirloom journal written by one of her ancestors. She also begins to notice differences between her son’s development and other children of the same age in a playgroup. She unwillingly discovers a legacy she had no idea she’d passed on to her son, and perhaps her unborn child as well: Fragile X Syndrome.

In an artfully and lovingly crafted novel, Maureen Lang tells the stories of Talie and her several-greats grandmother, Cosima. Through journal entries in Cosima’s own voice, as well as skillfully-told narratives in both nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Lang weaves a story that is at once difficult, sad, exciting, heartbreaking, and heartwarming.

The Oak Leaves is a novel that informs as well as entertains. It is both easy and difficult to read: easy in a captivating narrative style that is fast-paced and engaging; difficult in its subject matter of genetics, love, and most of all, God’s grace. The Oak Leaves will stay with me for a long time.

Find this book at Amazon.com.

Author's website: www.maureenlang.com

Jeanne Marie Leach crafts her historical western novel around a protective yet naïve mother, her outlaw son, and the handsome bounty hunter who captures her heart.

Mattie’s plight is clear throughout the story. She must find her son Will and help him make his peace with God. She will not rest until she accomplishes her goal. In her devotion to God and to her son, bounty hunter Cyrus Braydon finds much to admire in Mattie, an attractive widow who both intrigues and frustrates him.

Their journeys—apart and together—lead them to and away from Will, but ultimately closer to God.

Leach’s novel is well-crafted and easy to read. I especially liked the title character, Mattie Gordon. She is likeable and believable, not only for her faith in God and devotion to her son, but also in her naïveté, her wish to believe the best rather than the worst about all people.

I recommend this novel for fans of period western romances.

www.jeannemarieleach.com

from the back cover:

Conutless times throughout history, people--mostly young adults--have grown weary of status quo, legalistic, lifeless Christianity. Moved by God, believers have been used to spread radical ideas that fostered life-changing encounters with Christ across the globe. These movements have left a lasting mark on the generations that followed.

Author Alvin L. Reid (of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) believes that God is stirring a movement once again and wants to know--are you ready to join?
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Written specifically with the millennial generation in mind, this book would be great for anyone in ministry, particularly youth, college, or young adult ministry.

Thanks to Kregel Publications for a copy of this book.

Mameve Medwed's book is truly delightful. The title is a bit cumbersome, much like the antique chamber pot our gal Abby decides to take to the Antiques Roadshow. Who knew it was worth so much?

I picked this up on my recent road trip, and I am so glad I did. It is a good story, just a bit of chick lit mixed in with a family drama and a lot of information about antiques, Harvard, and the married poets, the Brownings (Robert and Elizabeth), to whet one's appetite for more knowledge about it all.

If you are looking for a good summer read, find this at your local bookstore (for me, it was on the summer sale shelf at a South Dakota Barnes & Noble).