"Find Yourself" With a Good Book From JCPL!

I have never painted anything in my life, with the exception of walls and paint by number sets. Picking up a paintbrush and using my imagination to create something out of nothing are not in my MO. That's why when I brought home a ceramic piece, crafted by my mother in law years before she passed on, I really didn't intend to paint it myself. But, being the do-it-yourselfer that I am, I decided to give it my best shot. Dragging out the paints and brushes, my kitchen table became a study in art as I began to get creative early one afternoon. By 11:00 pm that night, I was bleary eyed and getting clumsy, but decided to do just one more thing before packing it in for the night. That was a bad idea; just ask my cat. Timing is everthing, and as I spilled the brown paint I had just opened back up, my 25 pound orange cat got caught in the crossfire, and in just seconds, his striped, orange coat became a brown blob. Running for cover with me close behind, the hissing and biting ensued as I did the best I could to relieve his hair from permanently splotchy, blotchy brown, back to his original color. My day of self-discovery ended in a mass of brown towels and one really mad cat, which brought me to realize that I should have followed my first instict; do not try to be creative when I already know I don't have a creative bone in my body. I should have stuck to my real bedtime ritual, and that is to open a good book until sleep takes over.

That's my story, and here are some new fiction titles from JCPL, just waiting to be part of your daily ritual!

Grief and denial turns to shock for the friends and family of Greg and Tess MacAvoy when their anniversary sail turns tragic and the pair is found dead. Along with 3 other couples, Greg and Tess were part of a group lovingly called, "The Castaways." "The Castaways" by Elin Hilderbrand is a masterfully woven tale, intense in character driven plot, bringing to life the loyalty, devotion, and love of closely knit friends who also have skeletons in their closets and secrets to be revealed.

The silence of autopsy patients speaks volumes to forensic psychiatrist, Jo Beckett, as she unravels the mysteries behind cadavers while performing psychological autopsies, determining the cause of death for each subject. When Jo is asked to perform a psychological autopsy on a living person who has lost his memory, she has to read between the lines, stringing clues together only to discover that her patient's amnesia must be reversed before disaster strikes San Francisco in "The Memory Collector," Book 2 of the Jo Beckett Series by Meg Gardiner.

As Jericho Ainsley lay dying, the former head of the CIA and Wall Street tycoon summons former lover, Beck DeForde to his bedside. "Jericho's Fall" by Stephen L. Carter features Beck DeForde as an unforgettable heroine, plunging her into the intricately woven plot and battle of wits between foreign governments and powerful corporations with an edge of the seat suspense that delves into the morality of our government offices and the possible meltdown of America's financial system.

Searching for peace from a too-eventful career as a detective, Cam Richter buys a seven hundred acre plantation in North Carolina, but the pretty plantation has its price, and the cost may be Cam's life as the history of the house comes back to haunt him in "Nightwalkers" by Peter T. Deutermann.

Clearly, creativity also has its price. Cost of paints to cover a ceramic piece; $10, cost for brushes; $5, an 11 pm voyage through the house in hot pursuit of an orange cat who is about to color my world and everything in it brown; priceless.