The Girdle of Melian

ooks! Two new releases!   Safe From Harm by Leah Mercer She will do anything to protect her child. When Ali Lawton flees her broken marriage to spend the last months of her pregnancy in her late grandmother’s seaside cottage, all she wants is to be alone. Then she meets Michael and Meg, the couple next door, and she’s drawn into their idyllic family life – a vision of what she could have had if things were different. When Michael suddenly leaves for a work trip, Meg invites Ali to move in. The women form a close bond, but the more time Ali spends with Meg and her baby daughter, the more she notices her friend’s erratic behaviour. As time passes and Meg spins further out of control, Ali begins to wonder where Michael actually is and why he hasn’t returned. Is it possible he’s not on a work trip at all? When Ali gives Meg a beloved childhood toy as a peace offering, she hopes it will give the friends a chance to heal. But Meg becomes distressed when she sees the toy and ...

reat Baby-sitters Club reread! My Agatha Christie reread has been slightly derailed...by the Great Baby-sitters Club Reread! My daughter's reading the books for the first time and I'm rereading them along with her, my first reread in a decade or so. I'm amazed at how well the books hold up! Obviously the references to clothes are very 80s and some of the more sensitive topics are treated with a rather light hand, but then, the whole series is written that way -- light and fun and warmhearted. I always wanted to live in that town and have a great big group of happy friends and neighbours. Obviously there are problems and fights that come up, but overall the friendships and loyalty are strong. I barely got up to book 50 before I stopped reading them for the first time, at age 13 or so, and I don't think we'll go any further than that this time -- for one thing, after around book 40, Scholastic started using ghost writers (even though Ann M Martin edited and appr...