The Defector, by Daniel Silva, is the most current in the series about Gabriel Allon–the ultra cool Israeli spy. Let's hope it's not the last.

The White Garden, by Stephanie Barron. I'm in a serious Vita Sackville-West phase. I'm researching her life, reading her writing and studying her design style. She and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, bought Sissinghurst Castle in Kent in 1930 and for the ensuing 32 years developed one of the most magnificent gardens in England. Sackville-West created the much-copied "one-colour gardens," the most notable of which is the White Garden. This fascinating novel is set against the background of Sissinghurst Castle where a manuscript–perhaps the last thing Virginia Woolf wrote prior to her drowning–is the catalyst as Barron delves into the relationship between Sackville-West and Woolf.

V. Sackville-West's Garden Book, edited by Philippa Nicolson. Sackville-West chronicled her gardening experiences in a column she wrote from 1947 – 1961 for the London Observer. Nicolson (Sackville-West's daughter-in-law) selected from among those columns and presents them in this anthology. Sackville-West had an appealing style which Nicolson mentioned in the Foreword: "She established with her readers a gentle, bantering relationship, like that of an amateur gardener talking to a friend about their horticultural triumphs and follies–boasting a bit, laughing a bit, grousing a bit, mingling reminiscence with hard advice, and sentiment with something approaching poetry."

Far Flung and Well Fed, by R. W. Apple Jr. Apple was a reporter and bureau chief at The New York Times. He was also a world traveler and gourmand who often wrote features for the Times of the places that he and his wife Betsey visited and of the food they ate. This compilation includes about 50 of those wonderfully written essays which are part travelogue, part food memoir.

This also appeared in the Askov American, Askov, Minnesota.