Elizabeth Moon is my favorite sci. fic. author.  I have read most of her books from cover to cover twice and parts of them 9 or 10 times.

Cold Welcome is a bit different from her other series, yet she keeps the same well developed characters.  Her female protagonist, Ky, is returning to her home world after years away fighting a war.  She is returning  as a hero. But her shuttle is sabotaged by a group that is determined to kill her and all her family. Survival is the name of the game. Ky is strong, both physically and mentally, but her enemy is old, well financed, established, and has a secret they are desperate to keep.  Ky and the passengers she is marooned with must die if the enemy's secret is to be kept.

The passengers are not military and sometime reluctant to follow Ky's leadership. They don't really believe they are in danger from people meaning to actually KILL them dead and cause Ky trouble. The discovery of the enemies' hidden cave proves to be both Ky's possible salvation or her and the group's death warrant.

This is a novel that will be difficult for the reader to put down before the last page is read.

A Wrinkle in Time

MADELENE L'ENGLE created a classic in her book, A Wrinkle in Time. The novel is imaginative, thought provoking, adventurous, all the elements that made me ignore everything I should have been doing, and read the book from cover to cover in one, long, satisfying setting.

Meg and Charles Wallace are 'different' and the conversational target of all those others who are 'normal'. The normals aren't called upon to confront 'evil' and save Meg and Charles' father, however. Who are the strange beings that come to Charles and Meg?  Are they spirits, ghosts, angels, or something else?

Some of the author's lines that grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go.
       "Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that explanations don't exist."

       "There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for the standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, all alike as the muffins in the muffin tin."

      "We can't take credit for our talents.  Its how we use them that counts."

     A Wrinkle in Time is a wonderful novel for any child or adult able to read and imagine a world like and yet unlike the world we live in.

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen pulls adults as well as children into the challenging world of youth. What can a young boy do to save and endangered specie of bird? Quite a lot really, and some of it will get him into serious trouble with the law. What can Roy do about the school bully?  He's had lots of experience with bullies in different schools as his family moved around the country.  Some of his solutions are a bit unorthodox and are fun to imagine as the reader follows Roy from one encounter to another. Our granddaughter requested this book for Christmas, and I can see why she wanted it.  It is a great read.
Readers 4th grade  through adults will enjoy this novel.

Different and Dangerous

       Eddy Turner and his best friend Scott, both with ESP talents, are planning a fun weekend at a family reunion in the Big Thicket area of East Texas. Scott's reoccurring visions of a hangman's noose is a threat Eddy wants to avoid thinking about.  Is the noose a warning for Scott or for him. Or is it for someone else? When will they know?  When will the axe fall?
       The pickup is loaded with food, camping gear, clothes, and fishing gear, but illness and storms of weather and emotion have a way of disrupting their best laid plans.
       Can a man who feels he must die be saved? Will a story heard years ago, an almost forgotten story, be the key to reaching a tormented, harassed individual? Will help come in time to prevent the faces and voices from pushing the victim over the edge and into death? by Galand Nuchols holds the answer.
Different and Dangerous

Play The Cards You Are Dealt

        Play The Cards You Are Dealt by Galand Nuchols is the author's tiny step into the world of science fiction, or is ESP really a well hidden fact and not science fiction at all? Eddy Turner is an empath, feeling others' emotions offear, joy, curiosity, pain, etc. Dealing with the constant stimulus of emotional fallout from
people surrounding him daily is difficult.
       Eddy's stepfather is  physically and emotionally abusive to both Eddy and his mother. Their secret plans to escape the man are interrupted when Eddy's second ESP talent makes itself known. Friends of Eddy's blood father are called.  With their help, Eddy and his mother begin a new life in a secret compound where talents are protected and trained to use their special gifts.
       Can Eddy's anger and distrust of people be overcome by these new people in his life? Will he ever have real friends like normal boys his age? When he protests that life isn't fair, he is given the advice he must play the cards he is dealt.

     George Will's Article in the Longview News- Journal - Thursday July 6, 2017 titled The sequence to success should be a wake-up call to all our high school and college students.  The article is long and has a number of references to prestigious research institutions that indicate there is a pattern connected to reaching that goal of "Success".
   How do today's adults define success?  According to Will's article today's young adults define success as - insurance against poverty. And the recipe or sequence to the success pattern according to information from the Brookings Institution is:

•        First get at least a high school diploma

•        Then get a job. 

•         Then get married

•         Only then have children                     

    The above steps should be taken in that order. The formula is not a sure thing, however. Yet Wills quotes Wang and Wilcox research of couples ages 28 to 34 and found that "only 3 per cent of those who followed this sequence are poor." That means 97 percent were experiencing 'success.' I'll take those odds any day of the week.
      I keep remembering what someone told me years ago.  "The choices you make today affect the rest of your life."  George Will's article, "The Sequence to success," is well worth your time to dig out and read top to bottom.

Hurray For Our Young People

Twice in two weeks I have been privileged to discover young people out working along side our streets and on our school grounds. Three cheers for the kids and their sponsors!!!

Last week I passed a group from St. Michael's picking up trash along Florey and Choctaw Streets. I asked if I could take a picture of them and they agreed. Today I drove past P.E. Wallace School and saw a bunch of kids planting trees.  I had to stop, ask questions and take pictures.  I learned the group went to the Houston Zoo in April as part of an Earth Day Program.  Center Point Energy then gave them over one hundred Bottle Brush and Crape Myrtael trees to plant. I lucked out and caught the students in the act of finishing their planting on the school grounds along Choctaw Street.

I can image these same students twenty or thirty years from now stopping by Mt. Pleasant and pointing out the school they attended in 5th and 6th grade and showing them the very tree they planted May 5, 2017. They may also remember the crazy old lady that stopped to take their picture.