Cynthia Hartwick

I don’t usually read series out of order, but I’d picked up the sequel to this book a bit over a week ago, when some woman standing next to me in the bookstore recommended it. It was funny and interesting, so I went back to find the first book in the series.

Ladies with Options tells the story of the founding of the Larksdale Ladies and their investment club – how they begin after being told they’ll have almost no financial cushion once they or their husbands retire, and how they decide to take matters into their own hands.

It’s the beginning of the ’80’s and personal computers in every house aren’t yet a reality. The Ladies have a young college student they are mentoring, who is taking computer science classes, and suggests they look at these new companies called Dell and Microsoft, and invest in them.

It’s fairly easy to predict what happens. The side stories of the Ladies are not so predictable – one has a marriage that must be rebuilt, one discovers her sexuality, and one finds true love.

This novel is a lovely light read, if you want a book that will make you laugh and cheer.

Cynthia Hartwick

I picked this up about a week ago in Barnes and Noble, not because it grabbed me, but because the woman standing next to me said, “That was a really great read. I always wonder if things are any good, so I’ve decided to tell people when I see them looking for new things to read.”

I thought that was delightful, and I recommended The Red Tentin return, since it was sitting on the same table.

In any case, Ladies With Prospects is the second book to feature the Larksdale Ladies Investment Club, a group on Minnesota women who formed an investement club back in book one, and since then have made it big, and are now controlling stockholders of a company in the midst of the tech boom from a few years back.

It was a fast novel, well written, and funny in spots, and the characters were believable, especially if you’ve ever spent time in the midwest. I definitely recommend it as a summer novel, because it’s light without being stupid. And I liked it enough to go back and find the first book.

Myla Goldberg

I picked up Bee Season not long after I’d finished reading The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, but, as happens, I didn’t read it for a long while later.

It’s a stark story about a young girl who is looking for something to excel at, something to pull her away from a rather tragic, and extremely dysfunctional home life. She finds it in the form of a spelling bee, which she wins on a fluke.

I had a hard time reading this book, because the lack of communication among the family members made me want to throttle them, and because the depression in it is completely unrelenting.