"The False Friend" explores what it is like to suddenly find that you need to revisit a tragedy of your past and as you try to explore what really happened you begin to find out who you were and that may come as something contrary to what you believed you were. As Celia revisits her past and looks up the people involved, she finds that things are not and were not what they seemed. Some of this is reminiscent of someone looking back at "Mean Girls" and wondering how it all happened.

Ms. Goldberg explores this topic with great insight and the reader begins to wonder what would happen if they went back to speak frankly to the friends they left behind. The book is thought provoking and well written.

The Queen's Lover opens a new window in to the stories of the monarchy of England that has not been seen in great detail in the past. With our interests in Henry the VIII and the Tudors, this is a story showing "how they got there" and what happened before there was a Henry the VIII. Bennett does a wonderful job making you feel that you are watching this story unfold in front of you. It puts the other stories in a new light having seen what went before them. It is an excellent way to learn of the time and to feel what it was like to live them.

The Year of the Flood is an interesting look at what would happen if there was a Flood that did not involve water and yet wiped out most of the people on earth. It looks at a variety of issues that would affect the future earth including bioengineering of plants and animals. It is an excellent portrayal of what might be. Science fiction fans will love the future world that is presented. The difficulty is that being able to picture in your mind the genetically spliced animals can become a problem with the way the reader “sees” what he or she is reading. This would be a great movie.

Reading Stuffed brought out all of the ways that the marketing sector of our world manages to trick us into all sorts of varied behaviors. The book brings this out in a variety of ways and lets the reader know that we have been duped into believing all that the ads tell us. It also explains the fact that we truly do not know what it is that we are putting into our bodies and that product placement is everything. The point is well made in the first chapter and repeated with very specific detail throughout the book.