What Plant Where by Roy Lancaster

Here is a book for people who love to garden. This handy guide gives you suggestions for all the different spots in your garden; shady, sunny, dry, wet, clay, sandy, you name it. It is divided into five main sections, beginning with perennials and progressing to trees. It has a picture for each specimen. It talks about color and texture for every season and provides zoning charts so you know what works for Iowa.  It also tells how big the plant will get and if it would be better in front or in the back. I have used this book to identify plants, and it has a wonderful index as well. I have picked it up on several occasions to just look at learn about plants. An older book, but one I always enjoy.

One Summer: America 1927, by Bill Bryson

     Just as the title indicates, Bryson chronicles the events of the summer of 1927.  What a summer it was!  You’ll read about Jack Dempsey, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Robert Byrd.  You’ll read about “The Jazz Singer”, the creation of television, crazy tabloid murder trials, record flooding, flagpole sitting, and Mount Rushmore.  This is a very enjoyable, readable book, that gave detail to the general knowledge that most of us have about the major events of that time.  

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia

High school student Alice Hatmaker has an amazing voice.  She is delighted that her twin brother, bassoonist Bert, gets to attend the annual statewide music conference in the grand Bellweather Hotel with her.  Full of confidence and anticipation, little did Alice know what the weekend has in store for her.
Alice is staying in the same room that had a murder-suicide 15 years earlier witnessed by the young bridesmaid Minnie Grave.  Could a murder happen in the same room again?  Alice and Minnie cross paths and their lives are impacted, as with the other characters in this multi-plot story, including the concierge Harold Hastings, the abrasive conductor Fisher Brodie and the chaperone Natalie Wilson.
I enjoyed this novel and was surprised by the ending.