Start early, spend the day on the ski hill or at the beach & dinner is ready when you come home! Take a culinary voyage around the world to discover the favorite comfort foods of nearly 50 countries. Fallen in love with: Swedish meatball stew, Irish stew, Ossobuco alla Milanese, Cuban Ropa Vieja, Coq au Vin and Spicy Indian Vegetable Stew. Also try by this James Beard award winning author, The Best Soups In The World. Section 442

The Whistling Season is terrific. I absolutely adored this book. Set in rural Montana, narrator Paul Milliron recalls the autumn and winter of 1909-1910 when he was 13. Paul's widowed father hires a housekeeper, sight unseen, from a Minnesota newspaper ad. When Rose and her scholarly brother Morris arrive, life will never be quite the same in Marion Coulee. Charming, uncluttered prose and a story as grand as the Montana sky.

What makes your dog's tail wag? Is it the sound of you coming in the door? Or perhaps a walk in the park or best of all, or a great belly rub? Wag! by Patrick McDonnell, the creator of the comic strip Mutt, brings us a delightful picture book about what makes a lively little dog named Earl happy. In the end, it is love that makes Earl's tail wag.

Though wintry weather came to northern Michigan late, I was glad for the snowy, cold weekend and my book of choices for last weekend. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is haunting and mysterious; very reminiscent of a Bronte novel. Ailing Author Vida Winter has spent the last six decades spinning tales to the delight of her many readers. Over these six decade she has also spun many tales of her own life. Wanting to tell the final true tale, the thirteenth tale, she summons biographer Margaret Lea top write her story. Both women have past secrets and ghosts that surface and haunt their visits. Beautifully written.

Simpler than you think instructions encourage you to turn your fresh, sweet milk and cream into butter, creme fraiche, mozzarella and more. Then use these wonderful ingredients in some of your favorite recipes (and the recipes in this book too) Your friends will be in awe and you don't have to tell them how easy it is.

It has been 14 years since Pat Conroy graced his fans with one of his signature grand southern novels, but it was worth the wait. South of Broad is big and sprawling, at times gothic and set in Charleston, South Carolina. The year is 1969 and our narrator, Leo King is the son of a high school science teacher and ex-nun high school principal. The family has struggled through a family tradegy which leaves Leo very isolated most of his childhood and teenage years. But as his senior year begins, he finds himself the center of a group of seniors only Pat Conroy could create. This group remains tight over two decades despite racism, marriage, breakdowns and the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Critics say it is "a love letter to Charleston and an ode to lifelong friendships."

William Trevor is a masterful and poetic Irish writer. His graceful, yet start prose, weaves the reader through Ireland's countryside. Every character in his stories has a story to tell. On an early summer morning in town of Rathmoye, Ellie Dillahan, the farm wife of a much-older husband, has a chance encounter with a free-spirited photographer, Florian Kilderry. Her life of comfortable solitude and farm chores is disrupted by Florian's attention and the tow start meeting on country lanes and in near towns. Trevor portrays people as they are, fragile, hopeful, resigned, they are products of life's circumstances. He offer no tidy endings just much to ponder about the human heart.