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Rozelle’s Facts columns also a treat in book
Published July 19, 2009
Sundays with Ron Rozelle
By Ron Rozelle
TCU Press
$19.95 trade paperback
If you are (as I am) a fan of Ron Rozelle’s weekly column in The Facts, you will welcome this book of his discourses on subjects as varied as gossip and the Oscars, bookstores and holidays, Maugham and culinary perfection.
Open the book on any page, and with one quick glance you’ll find a thought-provoking sentence or two, often things that remind us of our own past experiences or thoughts.
In his “One cold October night under a starry sky,” for example, Rozelle remembers a line from the John Wayne movie, “The Alamo,” the place where Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie tries to convey to Davy Crockett (Wayne) his admiration for Mexico and her people.
“They’re not afraid to die,” Widmark says. “But what’s more important, they’re not afraid to live.”
Thinking over that bit of dialogue, Rozelle writes that even though John Wayne neither wrote nor delivered the line, “(It’s) always his voice I hear when I think of those words, and it’s always his life that comes to mind.
“Because his was obviously a life that he wasn’t afraid to live. And share. Not only with his friends and family, but with total strangers.”
If you’re a fan of Rozelle’s column, you’ll want to pick up this book. And if you’re not, you’re missing some great reading.
Killer Keepsakes
By Jane K. Cleland
Minotaur Books
$24.95 hardcover
Josie Prescott, owner of Prescott’s Antiques and Appraisals, is worried about her assistant, Gretchen, who has disappeared after returning to her New Hampshire home from a vacation in Hawaii.
When Gretchen has been missing for a couple of days, Josie goes by her house, where she finds a dead man in the living room, but no sign of Gretchen.
When it turns out that Gretchen is really someone else, and that the dead man is her ex- husband, police are convinced that Gretchen is a killer.
Josie is not convinced, however. She has known Gretchen and worked with her for four years, and while she freely admits that a clam would have communicated more about its past than Gretchen has, she’s sure that her friend and co-worker is not only missing, but is in danger.
A couple of men show up at the antique store looking for Gretchen, someone breaks into the business, and Josie discovers that some of the architectural artifacts she has bought have been stolen.
It’s an engaging novel with a gutsy heroine and a background that includes a lot of information about antiques and collectibles.
I’ll be looking for Cleland’s future novels about Josie.
The Dead Man
By Joel Goldman
Pinnacle
$6.99 paperback
Shaking is what he does, Jack Davis tells people when his body-wrenching tics begin.
Forced out of his job as an FBI agent because of this physical problem, he is sought by billionaire Milo Harper as chief of security for a research project into dreams.
And security is needed as one after another of the subjects of the dream study die in exactly the way they have dreamed about.
Police said the first couple of victims were not murdered — one a suicide and the other an accident — but Jack quickly learns that not only are the police wrong, but that these aren’t the only victims.
As he begins to investigate, he is joined by an unlikely partner, the woman who owns the house where he lives, a former police officer who has served a prison term for the theft of diamonds.
In “The Dead Man,” Goldman does what novelists are supposed to do: tell an engrossing story, show development of the characters and lead the reader to believe that every one of them is real.
Loving a Lost Lord
By Mary Jo Putney
Zebra
$6.99 paperback
Mariah Clarke is the granddaughter of a gypsy, and though she hasn’t the kind of “gifts” her grandmother possessed, she is awakened one night to the conviction that she must leave her bed and go to the river’s shore.
There, she finds a young man clinging to a bit of wood, almost lifeless from the cold, exhaustion and injuries.
When he regains consciousness, he is unable to remember even his name, and Mariah calls him Adam — for the first man.
Meanwhile three friends are trying to discover whether he might have survived a boat explosion.
This historical romance is one of Putney’s series about the adventures of three friends.
Marie Beth Jones is a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton.
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