We at the library hope you had a Merry Christmas.  We sure did here in sunny California, although one has to admit that not every day here has been sunny--a good thing for the Central Valley which is still in need of even more rain and did not get all the rain which the southern part of the state received.  Therefore people are looking forward to "the rainy season" here (January and February) and hoping there will be many more inches falling--just not all at once!!  And that is just around the corner, so we at Finley Library wish YOU a Happy New Year to come with many of your wishes answered and lots of books in your future--all checked out from Finley Public Library!

Here's a couple reviews:

Separate Beds by LaVyrle Spencer.  (PB)  Catherine Anderson--from the "wrong side of the tracks"--and Clay Forrester meet on a blind date.  It is one of those times when heady wine and 4th of July fireworks carry them away and Catherine becomes pregnant.  The rest of the story tells how they try to resolve the situation:  He has two wonderful parents who want to be a large part of the life of their only son's child.  She has a drunken father who thinks his "ship has come in" and a defeated mother who has been verbally and physically abused and has watched the same thing happen to her children--neither parent give any obvious affection to their children.  Catherine and Clay do not have an easy time of it--the reader would not call this a gentle love story, but it is a love story nevertheless.  And though the end is already pre-determined (SPOILER ALERT--if you don't want to know how it turns out, don't read the back cover!), but how they get there is a journey.  Enjoyable for those that like fairly predictable love stories...Spencer really knows how to write them.

 Dead Sleep by Greg Iles.  (PB)  Interesting Premise:  Serial kidnapper/murderer takes women, poses them nude in a bath tub and paints their portrait.  He calls them "Sleeping Women" and they become enormously popular among a certain group of men who like that kind of thing and will pay big prices to have them.  In reality, however, the women are drugged and nearly dead, soon to be buried under the painter's house.  The FBI is involved, but so is the twin sister of one of the victims who has been "missing" and "presumed dead" for about eighteen months.  It is a "full-court press" to find this killer or even the painter, but it takes the twin sister getting involved to get the job done. The fact that she is a renowned freelance news photographer adds some interesting facets to the investigation and the story.  There is some romance involved that the reader can see coming a mile away, but the book, itself, is relentless--I read it in one day!