As Judy and the rest of the Virginia Dare Bookworms prepare for the Book Quiz Blowout competition against second- and third-grade readers, her team discovers the other group has a fourth-grader and worry about their chance of winning sets in.

"Claudia's not worried when she hears her newest baby-sitting charge, Betsy Sobak, is a great practical joker. After all, how much harm can one little girl do? Plenty. Claudia breaks her leg as a result of one of Betsy's mean jokes... and now she's talking about quitting the club. Baby-sitting, she says, is just too dangerous. Kristy thinks Betsy needs to be taught a lesson. She also thinks the Baby-sitters are just the ones to do it. Watch out,...

"Fall festivities are underway in Coral Shores, Miami. Cuban-American cooking show star Miriam Quiñones-Smith wakes up to find a corpse in her front yard. The body by the fake tombstone is the woman that was kicked out of the school's Fall Festival the day before. Miriam's luck does not improve. Her passive-aggressive mother-in-law puts her in charge of the Women's Club annual gala. But this year, it's not canapes and waltzes. Miriam and her girlfriends-squad...

"A group of women realize that life is full of half-finished relationships and projects; however, they discover that the outcome is not as important as the journey" -- Provided by publisher.

Food anthropologist Miriam Quiñones-Smith's move from New York to Coral Shores, Miami, puts her academic career on hold to stay at home with her young son. Adding to her funk is an opinionated mother-in-law and a husband rekindling a friendship with his ex. Gracias to her best friend, Alma, she gets a short-term job as a Caribbean cooking expert on a Spanish-language morning TV show. But when the newly minted star attends a Women's Club luncheon,...

This New York Times best seller by Helen Hooven Santmyer recounts the lives of a group of women who start a study club in a small town in southwestern Ohio in 1868. Over the years, the club evolves into an influential community service organization in the town. Numerous characters are introduced in the course of the novel but primary are Anne Gordon and Sally Rausch who, as the book begins, are new graduates of the Waynesboro Female Seminary....

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity,...

After a devastating storm ravages Sweet Briar, the folks in town are busy cleaning up the damage. Tori Sinclair, the Yankee librarian, has her hands full at the library, but when she hears that fellow Sewing Circle member Rose's house was heavily hit, she and the other ladies offer to help out. But Rose assures them that her former student, Kenny Murdock, will be doing her repairs as soon as he finishes up next door at Martha Jane Barker's house....

"A recipe for living. . . New friends can be found in unexpected places. For Bridget and Amy, that place was the cancer ward of an Anchorage hospital. Now, as each struggles to overcome loss, they lean on each other for support--sharing suppers, laughter and tears. Bridget and Amy aren't about to let hardship knock them down--Bridget plans to return to her veterinarian school studies, Amy to her position as a second-grade teacher--but neither feels...