Fresh Pick for Saturday, January 9th, 2016 is MISS RUFFLES INHERITS EVERYTHING by Nancy Martin #DidYouMiss A delightful start to a new series! About MISS RUFFLES INHERITS EVERYTHING Rich and flamboyant Honeybelle Hensley, the most colorful character in Mule Stop, Texas, dies a suspicious death and enrages the whole town by leaving her worldly fortune to the most undeserving recipient-her dog. The incorrigible Miss Ruffles is a Texas Cattle Cur, not a cuddly lapdog, and when Honeybelle was alive, Miss Ruffles liked nothing better than digging up Honeybelle’s famous rose garden after breakfast, chasing off the UPS man before lunch and terrorizing the many gentleman callers who came knocking at cocktail hour. But now Miss Ruffles is in danger, and it’s up to Sunny McKillip, the unwilling dogsitter, to keep her safe. Sunny is new to Texas, and sometimes she feels as if she’s fallen into an alien world. If it isn’t the pistol- packing football fans and the sweet-talking, yet ruthless ladies of the garden club who confound her, it’s the rowdy rodeo hounds and the tobacco-spitting curmudgeon at Critter Control who have her buffaloed. With a killer on the loose and a cowboy lawyer keeping a suspicious eye…

From Chelem Beach, near a small fishing village on the Mexico Gulf coast. I’ve taken my coffee down to the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, where at the tip of the wooden breakwater an ancient pelican meditates. Miles out, gliding along the horizon white chips betray fishermen’s boats quietly waiting for their catch. I have come to the beach to await my Muse. A fickle lover. Our perspective shifts as we grow older, and sometimes we see our lives from a far distance—a mountain top, say, or further still, from the cusp of the moon or a star. And we are astonished by the long journey filled with unexpected and exhilarating moments as well as anguish. From among the galaxies, we humans appear infinitesimal specks on an insignificant, 4.5 billion years old rock. Our planet circles not the greatest of suns. And our galaxy is merely one of the 100 million galaxies in the group of galaxies in which we live, and our group is only one of 100 million groups of galaxies. It all began 13.8 billion years ago; scientists tell us, with the burst of a singularity, a tiny infinitely heavy something. Time came from that moment,…

Even before I started writing A WEEKEND OF MISBEHAVING, I was always drawn to the nanny/boss trope. Okay. I admit it. I watched one too many episodes of The Nanny growing up. Then, of course, there are fabulous classics like The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins—despite the nanny not snatching the guy on the latter, she was still the focal point of the movie/Broadway musical. Recently, hot celebrities like Ben Affleck and Gavin Rossdale were rumored to have cheated on their respective wives because of a hot affair with their nannies. Those marriages ended up in divorce. Coincidence? Maybe. The fact is, whether they are perceived in the media as the life-saving creatures who can bring warmth and assistance to a busy family, or the sexy females with a hidden agenda (hello, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle!) nannies are interesting characters to write. Why? Because they are living and/or working for a different family. This family has rules, baggage, and a past. The nanny is able to watch them, and learn from them, teach them, and at the same time question her own ideas and values. It’s really a fascinating interaction. Here’s a teaser from A WEEKEND OF…