The queen of water is a basically true story of Virginia, a Quichua girl of Ecuador, born in a poor mountain village. At the age of seven, Virginia is given to a mestizo couple to care for their little boy--supposedly for a monthly salary and with frequent visits home. (In Ecuador, mestizo generally means people who are not indigenous, or of Native American origin.) But Virginia finds that she is really their slave, expected to do whatever they tell her.

    Don't deny this happens to you.  We all get down, hit a rough patch, lose a job or get a divorce.  Sometimes a gripping action movie is just what you need.  But sometimes nothing works but a good, heartwarming laugh. For those moments, there is one author I can always count on.  He's gone now, but his works will endure. The author is James Herriot, whose real name was James Alfred Wight, or Alf.

    The volume The dragonriders of Pern contains three of my all-time favorite titles: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The white dragon.  Anne McCaffrey is a prolific writer with multiple scifi/fantasy series, but her Pern volumes are the most numerous and arguably the most popular.  What has always appealed to me, first, is Pern itself: its beautiful dragons and Earth backhistory and curre