Beautiful Creatures- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

I gave this book 3 stars on Good Reads.  It held my attention, and I liked the atmosphere.  I didn't like the ending.  I guess I expected it to be more dramatic.  I don't think I'll be reading any more of this series.

Book description from Amazon:
"There were no surprises in Gatlin County.
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that's what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything."

Speaking from Among the Bones- Alan Bradley

This series is wonderful.  Flavia is a delight.  I love how the author perfectly creates an 11 year old girl living in 1950s England.  
This is one of those series where each book feels like a visit with old friends.

"Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case."

 Aunt Dimity's Death- Nancy Atherton

I was a bit skeptical about this book, but I was pleasantly surprised (in spite of the improbability of the story line). It is a true cozy mystery with a bit of romance thrown in.  It isn't a typical mystery (there is no crime involved) but it kept me reading.  

From Library Journal

Atherton's first mystery combines a strong sense of traditional English fare with an insistent gothic spirit. Suffering from her recent divorce, her mother's death, and an erratic income, Lori Shepherd receives notice from a prestigious Boston law firm that she must travel to England in order to meet the requirements of a will. While visiting her benefactor's "haunted" cottage with lawyer friend Bill, she uncovers important clues relating to a World War II mystery. Lightweight, nicely written material complete with a few heart palpitations.

No Place like Home- Mary Higgins Clark

This book was horrible.  All you need to know about it is in the below description (from Amazon).  The culprit is obvious through most of the book.  There were way too many details, and it was just too long.  
I kept reading because I was expecting some surprise twist at the end.  Nope.  
I really hate it when I waste time reading a bad book.

"A young woman is ensnared into returning to a place she had wanted to leave behind forever -- her childhood home. There, at the age of ten, Liza Barton had shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged step-father, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed with Cartwright, and the tabloids compared her to the infamous murderess Lizzie Borden, pointing even to the similarity of their names.

To erase Liza's past, her adoptive parents change her name to Celia. At age twenty-eight, a successful interior designer in Manhattan, she marries a childless sixty-year-old widower, Laurence Foster, and they have a son. Before their marriage, she reveals to him her true identity. Two years later, on his deathbed, he makes her swear never to tell anyone so that their son, Jack, will not carry the stigma of her past. Two years later, Celia is happily remarried. Her peace of mind is shattered when her new husband, Alex Nolan, surprises her with a gift -- the house in Mendham, New Jersey, where she killed her mother. On the day they move in, they find the words little lizzie's place -- beware painted on the lawn, splotches of red paint all over the house, and a skull and crossbones carved into the door.

More and more, there are signs that someone in the community knows Celia's true identity. When Georgette Grove, the real estate agent who sold the house to Alex, is brutally murdered and Celia is the first on the crime scene, she becomes a suspect. As Celia fights to prove her innocence, she is not aware that she and her son, Jack, are now the targets of a killer."

Cajun Cuisine and More- Paul Raphael

"Unique Cajun Cookbook but this is much more than a manual for Cajun cuisine; it is a collection of Cajun humor, an assortment of native history, an inspiring variety of bedtime stories, and a dash of colorful lives and unique events thrown in for seasoning."

This was an interesting book.  Being a life-long resident of Louisiana, I had already heard some of the stories and most of the history, but it was interesting just the same. 

The recipes are typical Cajun dishes.  

I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about Cajun culture.