When you hear Peres speak, his words are carefully considered and seamlessly delivered in idiomatic English overlaid with his heavy Polish accent. It’s hard to hear one of his arguments and not be impressed by how balanced and erudite he is.

Peres asked Bar-Zohar, a prolific writer and Ben-Gurion’s biographer, to write his story as well. The author had two conditions, one, that Peres cooperate fully, and two, that Peres not see the manuscript prior to publication. Peres said, "It goes without saying." That exchange seems to characterize Peres as well as any other. Peres emerges as a gentleman, a poet, and an eloquent, persuasive, fair, knowledgeable man who loves Israel, elegant clothing, European culture, and beautiful women.

While Peres was criticized for never having fought in any of Israel’s wars, neither was he touched by scandal. The story of Peres is the story of determination in the face of intense and relentless opposition by figures like Golda Meir, Rabin, and interestingly Pinhas Sapir. (no relation that I know of). We read of Israel’s heroes like Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin, and Peres’s warm relationship with the Netanyahu family.

The author has known Shimon Peres for decades, and their political paths diverged. Sometimes they found themselves in conflict, and while the author has apparently gone out of his way to create a balance in the telling, his admiration for Peres is just as apparent.

Robin Miller’s focus on her Food Network show and in this new cookbook is ‘morphing ingredients from one meal to the next". She uses light healthy ingredients, though full fat products could certainly be substituted. Her directions are crystal clear, and no great cooking technique is required, but that is not to say that foodies won’t love some of these simple recipes for entertaining as well as weekday meals. For that reason, the 200 recipes make this book a great value for cooks at any skill level and a good tool for reducing waste in the kitchen. Food is just too expensive for that. Miller calls for prepping ahead and planning well in terms of menus and shopping.

Among the more tantalizing recipes, there’s beef and noodles in Thai peanut sauce, chicken fingers with spicy avocado sauce, coconut lime chicken with chiles, and Greek pasta salad with feta and shrimp. There are recipes for all kinds of meat and seafood including tilapia. How about Asian salmon cakes with sesame wasabi cream. There are simple but creative dessert recipes as well, like mandarin napoleons with sugared wonton wrappers, and sherbet-stuffed oranges with caramel-pecan sauce. These recipes are very easy, and the dishes flavorful.

Big Red (Otto) and Old Red (Gustav)Amlingmeyer are back, thank heaven, in this engaging, clever, funny, and original series about a cowboy who wants to be like Sherlock Holmes. Otto and Gustav, two devoted brothers, are all that’s left of their family after a flood washed away all they had. Since then, they’ve worked as cowpokes, but all the while Gustav was yearning to solve mysteries like his hero, the venerable Mr. Holmes. Gustav can’t read, so it’s Otto who reads stories of some great ‘deducifyin’ by the man himself, and in their last adventure, Gustav proved he could ‘deducify’ as well as anyone else.

Otto chronicled their adventure, but he’s reluctant to send his manuscript to a publisher, and that makes Gustav furious, because Gustav is a man who believes in following one’s dreams.

This time, the pair have agreed to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad which has been robbed by a gang before. Unfortunately, Gustav has a mean case of motion sickness, and when he steps onto the train platform to get some air, he spots a human head flying out from under the train. He figures there’s more body where that came from, and the adventure begins. There’s hidden treasure, train robbers, a nasty snake, a hobo who thinks he’s royalty, a very pretty lady, and a whole lot more.

If you need a good laugh, here you are. This series has it all, well-plotted, well-paced, devilishly funny yarns, excitement, suspense, and more laughs. The first book in the series is Holmes on the Range which is out in paperback.

When 32 year-old cancer survivor but love-lorn Jesse Long leaves her Richmond home to make a fresh start in Harwich Port on Cape Cod she is forced to confront the truth of the old adage, "Wherever you go, there you are." Upon arrival Jesse meets up with a much-loved older family friend who introduces her to hospice work-work Jesse jumps into head first. In this psychological, issues- oriented novel about assisted suicide, Jesse must also come to grips with her own need to choose unavailable men and her mother’s affair with a much younger man.

The Lavender Hour is a thought provoking novel with a very familiar setting for lovers of old Cape Cod. It is not a book for the faint of heart or for the reader looking for light entertainment. In fact this novel asks and attempts to answer probing questions-How does being alone with a beloved parent who suddenly dies impact one’s ability to enter into lasting relationships? Is it OK for a woman to enter into a relationship with a much younger man? If that woman is your mother how do you deal with it? Is assisted suicide wrong? What is denial and how does it manifest itself?

Anne LeClaire’s characters are real. Even now I find myself wishing I could interview Jesse. Her subject matter is unnerving. Apparently no one ever told her that hospice work and assisted suicide are incompatible –and that neither is good subject matter for a novel. That’s a good thing. Certainly this novel will bring more people into this debate even as it develops in Jesse, Faye, Nona, Paige and Luke are unforgettable characters struggling with real life issues. Like real life the peaceful conclusion of the novel is a bit unsettling if you are a "happy-ever-after" fan. This novel is no fantasy.

In this delightful ninth entry in the Hannah Swensen mystery series set in Lake Eden, Minnesota, it’s time for the Tri-County Fair. Besides baking for the festivities, Hannah is one of the judges in the baked goods event, but when Hannah finds one of her colleagues dead as a dishrag, it’s murder that takes first place.

As usual, Hannah is dying to solve the mystery, but she’s got her own problems. Her cat, Moishe, is acting very strangely for one thing, and for two others things, Mike and Norman are still falling all over themselves to get Hannah’s undivided attention, but little do they know another competitor seems to be throwing his hat in the ever-widening ring. I have been rooting for Norman for years, but Hannah is hard to please, obviously, because everyone knows she should marry Norman, ( he’s a dentist) and the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.

There’s depth in this series about Dixie Hemingway, a former sheriff’s deputy on Siesta Key, Florida who lost her husband and three-year-old daughter to an accident involving an elderly driver. Unable to perform her job any longer, Dixie quit law enforcement and became a pet sitter instead. She lives in a small apartment on top of the garage at her old family homestead. Her brother, a firefighter, and his male partner, an undercover cop, live in the main house.

This time out Dixie discovers the body of a local, very wealthy iconoclast, while she’s out walking an aging dachshund. It’s murder of the most evil kind, and everyone knows the brother did it, but how can Dixie prove it? Well, the very attractive, enigmatic Det. Guidry doesn’t want her proving anything. He wants only to see her throw off her heavy burden of sorrow, and Dixie being Dixie, it’s amazing what that girl can accomplish when she puts her mind to it.

Let me assure you, however, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s a lot of quirky goodness in the characters, and the many one-liners are really funny.