Don Noble

This week, Don reviews "Birding to Change the World" by Trish O'Kane.

Margaret Verble, a member of the Cherokee Nation, writes about the lives of Native Americans in the modern era.

This Meg Langslow mystery novel evokes Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express."

This week, Don reviews "Rockin' Around the Chickadee: A Meg Langslow Mystery" by Donna Andrews.

This week, Don reviews "Accidental Activist: Changing the World One Small Step at a Time" by Mary Allen Jolley.

We learn at the end of this volume that Mary Allen Jolley died, at the age of 95, just 16 days after she and her friend and volunteer editorial assistant, Jan Pruitt, delivered the manuscript to Joe Taylor at the Livingston Press. That is a shame. Ms. Jolley would have derived a good deal of satisfaction from the reception of her honest, unadorned memoir, titled "Accidental Activist: Changing the World One Small Step at a Time."

This week, Don reviews "Midnight Cry: A Shooting on Sand Mountain" by Lesa Carnes Shaul.

Lesa Shaul is a professor of English at the University of West Alabama, but she grew up on Sand Mountain. Her book, "Midnight Cry," is a lively true crime study, thoroughly researched in public records and interviews. This book is untainted by the dust of academe or of any variety of literary theory.

As a writer of cozy mysteries like the "Bones" books, of which there are now 27, Carolyn Hines has some things going for her and some challenges.