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I collect cookbooks. Now, I’m not known for my cooking, though I do bake some wonderful cheesecakes that do very well at my church’s dessert auctions. The youth of our church decided to produce a cookbook as a fundraiser. We were all asked to provide recipes. As I’m not a person who makes up recipes, I was a bit stumped until I remembered my father’s cookbook. I’m not talking a published cookbook, but a collection of recipes in Dad’s own handwriting. Soups, stews, potpies, vegetable side dishes—to say they took me back in time is an understatement.

What author is prolific, fun, testosterone loaded, and a great read? Clive Cussler. If you haven’t read any of his works, I highly recommend that you start. They are great fun—nothing heavy, but there’s lots of adventure and action. I’ll grant you that some of the premises are a little over the top, but, hey, what’s wrong with that in a work of fiction?

I was introduced to a new writer in May—K.O. Dahl, referred to as the Norwegian Henning Mankell on the back cover of his latest book, The Man in the Window.

[amazon cover 0571230911] Discovering that this was not the first in a series, I had to order The Fourth Man, winner of Norway’s Riverton Prize for Best Crime Novel, and start at the beginning. I was so taken with this first book that I decided to review it, a wonderful pager-turner that was difficult to put down.

In my hometown of Hastings, Nebraska, we have a number of fun, affordable events during the summer. In June, the Cottonwood Festival makes its appearance at Brickyard Park, a lovely city park with an outdoor amphitheatre and rolling hills.

In May, PBS showed adaptations of three books from Henning Mankell’s series featuring Kurt Wallander: Sidetracked, Firewall, and One Step Behind. (Visit Henning Mankell’s Web site to learn more about his writing.)

I’ve been a Mankell/Wallander fan for a long time. As always, I was concerned that the shows would stay as true as possible to the books and to the character of Wallander. Fortunately, I was pleased with both.

Well, as I write this, I am worried about getting my bag packed for two weeks in Italy and Greece.

Julie Bohlen, who works for Silver Planet, and three of her daughters are going with me on a 10-day tour of Italy with ACIS, and then the five of us head off on our own for three days in Greece. Both are places that I have always wanted to visit and thought I probably never would.

[amazon cover 0385340990] My friend Nancy Jelinek, who also reviews books and maintains a blog on Silver Planet, has already posted a review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; however, I just finished reading it myself and had to let you know what I think of it too.

Author Thomas Perry won the Edgar Award for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzer’s Dog was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, but my favorite books of his are those he wrote as a series featuring his character Jane Whitefield: Vanishing Act, The Face Changers, Shadow Woman, and Dance for the Dead.