Reading Recommendations:The Best of Friends, a novel, Joanna TrollopeGina and Laurence had been the best of friends ever since they were teens, but never in love. For marriage they turned to others: Gina to antique dealer Fergus Bedford, who buys a elegant High Place for them to live in; Laurence to down-to-earth Hilary, with whose help he turns his shambling inheritance. The Bee House, into both home and small hotel.When Fergus decides that living with Gina and their daughter, Sophy, is no longer to his liking, it's to Bee House that Gina flees beginning a cycle of misery and heartache. It ricochets through the two families, from Sophy, who longs for things to be the way they used to be; to Gus, Laurence, and Hilary's son, who adores Sophy; to Gina's eighty year old mother, Vi, who has found true love for the first time in her life. In her loss, Gina turns to her dear friend, Laurence and finds something utterly unexpected, the kind of love that will send both their marriages to the brink of betrayal.Joanna Trollope has said, "It is a mark of good fiction that the writer's eye is a kindly one that there is a sense we are all in this together." That sympathetic eye is evident on every page of Trollope's own work: she understands the complexities and dilemmas of everyday life better than almost anyone. As The Wall Street Journal has said, her books are "Readable without being trivial, accessible without being labored." The Best of Friends is an irresistible, must have book that you'll read, remember, and treasure all year long.Flash Floods of Texas, Jonathan BurnettIn Texas, water is a blessing and a curse. How many times have you heard the television or radio alert, "We are now under a flash flood watch."? While this force of nature is a regular occurrence in the state and has caused a tremendous amount of destruction and heartache, no one until now has recorded in a single place the history of flash flooding in Texas. After combing libraries and archives, grilling country historians, trekking to flood sites and collecting scores of photographs, Jonathan Burnett chose twenty eight floods from around the state to create this narrative of a century of disastrous events. Beginning with the famous Austin dam break of 1900 and ending with the historic 2002 flooding in the Hill Country. Burnett chronicles the causes and courses of these catastrophic floods as well as their costs in material damage and human life.Dramatic photographs of each event, including the major floods of Brady, San Saba, Llano, and Lampasas in our area.I found this book very interesting and informative.Daughters of Memory, a novel, Janis ArnoldTerrible things took place during the childhood of two sisters growing up in a Texas town. As adults, each strives to come to terms with them in this compelling story of two women caught up in a bitter family conflict.The older sister, Claire Louise, is rebellious; she runs away, and for then years nothing is heard of her. Macy Rose, the younger, "good" sister, is level headed and responsible. She graduates from college, marries, and builds a life for herself in Houston, some distance from the family farm.It is when Claire Louise returns home, two children in tow, and begins to take over her parents' lives and property that the rivalry between the two sisters becomes overt. The decline and failing health of their parents and grandmother become the occasion for a contest that grows even more desperate.Seeking compensation for her mistreatment in an aggressive pursuit of what she feels should be rightfully hers, Claire Louise moves into a position of growing dominance over her parents. Macy Rose finds herself drawn into a frantic effort to counter her sister's moves, and her seemingly secure marriage becomes dangerously frayed as she attempts to deny the inevitable reality of her grandmother's growing old.As each sister tells her story, their intensifying rivalry, which the death of the grandmother brings to a head, culminates in a discovery as shocking as it is revelatory, providing a poignant, unforgettable climax to a powerful and keenly perceptive novel.From the Texas Bookshelves.See you at Rylande