To learn of the publication of a new novel by Anne Tyler is cause for celebration. To have it in your hands is pure joy! And that's how good it is to read "Three Days in June," the story of a failed marriage during the preparations for a new marriage, that of the couple's daughter.

The bride's mother, Gail, always ever competent and in charge, had a tough day at work when the school's headmistress suggests a promotion is not in the works because of Gail's "weak social interaction skills." This follows other recent difficulties in Gail's life caused by the parent's of the groom who seem to be usurping her duties as the bride's mother. Gail leaves work early and finds that her ex-husband Max has arrived unexpectedly to stay at her home during their daughter's wedding festivities. And he has brought a cat! Gail has never wanted a pet!

The stage is set for the events of the next three days: Max surprises her with his helpfulness as the minutia of life unfolds: a trip to the dry cleaners, eating out, taking a walk…he seems much nicer and more interesting than when they were married. As the daughter's wedding events unfold, we learn why her parent's marriage ended.
This slim novel about marriage is Tyler's 25th book, published 20 years after "Amateur Marriage," her ninth novel. Tyler's characters are always wise and amusing, warmly human as they wander through life, exhibiting the same good points and faults that we all can relate to. As always, they become like family to the reader. They teach us how to "get through life." "Three Days in June" is another Anne Tyler novel that those of us in middle age can all relate to.

Spencer Quinn, author of thirteen popular mysteries featuring Chet (the dog) and Bernie (his owner), has penned a new novel, Loretta Plansky's Revenge, about a widow in her 70s who is scammed out of her life's savings by a late night phone call from someone pretending to be her grandson.

The story takes place both in Florida, where widow Plansky lives in a plush condo, and in Romania, where she goes after deciding the local police weren't doing enough. There she meets the rather sympathetic perpetrator, Dinu, a skinny teenager, who is being groomed for a life of crime by his Uncle. She has quite the adventure in the Transylvanian Mountains…involving old hotels and motorcycles, as well as Dinu's crime family, and a new possible love interest named Max.

Is Mrs Plansky's Revenge possibly the first in another charming series? Quinn is not saying!

"Stealing" is the heartbreaking story of now 9 year old Kit Crawford, the only child of a white father and a Cherokee mother, who died of TB when Kit was 6. She lives in rural isolation and spends non-school days fishing by herself on the banks of the bayou. One day she notices that someone has moved into a shack that belonged to her uncle, who was killed in a knife fight. She becomes friends with the beautiful new neighbor, Bella. But Kit is the center of a violent crime and is taken from everyone she knows and loves and moved, first to a "white" fundamentalist Christian home in town, and later to a religious boarding school where she and other Native American children are stripped of their heritage.
Author Margaret Verble, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction, has written a compelling coming-of-age story that is hard to put down. It is one of the best books I have read in the past year.