"Sweeping Up Glass" is a wonderful story exploring family relationships and the damage done by hate and deception. As the reader follows Olivia from childhood into adulthood, we can see the poor choices she makes but also the circumstances that are beyond her control. It is easy to sympathize with her and I found myself pulling for her throughout the book. This novel would be a great book group selection.

This love story has an unexpected romantic couple and is written very much like a Hungarian folk tale. Some of the characters are not named and referred to only by their occupation: the potter, the mayor, etc. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and its cast of zany characters. I highly recommend it.

Valley of the Lost was a tough book to finish. I found it to be slow-moving with characters that I really didn't care about. I felt Molly was too immature to be taken seriously as a constable, and Lucky wanted to buck the system whenever possible as a salute to her past as a flower child. By the time the pace of the story picked up, in the last quarter of the book, I was no longer interested in the outcome.