Bears in the Hibiscus is a humorous romance novel by frequent Blue Rose Bouquet contributor Janelle Meraz Hooper.

Bears in the Hibiscus is a a book about Mary, a divorced woman in her late thirties who is resisting the dating scene. When her ex-brother-in-law Mark, a Montana Park Ranger, lets her know he’s interested, Mary’s life becomes complicated because getting involved with him would also mean becoming a part of her ex-husband’s family again. When fate puts Mary and Mark in Hawaii at the same time, romance begins to bloom. However, Mary still struggles with her initial feelings about her ex-in-laws. Will she be able to overcome her fear of pressure from Mark’s family and make a new life with Mark?

You can read Chapter 1 of this novel on this Janelle Meraz Hooper’s Web page.

What follows here on The Blue Rose Bouquet is:

Chapter 3: The Montana Kahuna

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by Pamela Rice Hahn

Introduction:

I imagine this is the first book you’ve read that’s written by somebody who’s inside of a computer, instead of just seated at one typing in his story. In fact, now might be a good time for you to boot up that CD that came with this book. You’ll need it later in the journey anyhow, and for now it’ll give you a chance to see what I look like and allow me to officially introduce myself.
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by Janelle Meraz Hooper

Note: When this short story first appeared in The Blue Rose Bouquet, it was an excerpt of Chapter 1 of the author’s (as yet) unpublished novel, A Three-Turtle Summer; see the author bio after this excerpt for exciting book details!

It’s A Three-Turtle Summer—hot—and Grace has to dump a man who’s meaner than a rattlesnake and dumber than adobe.

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Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett is available in HARDCOVER and PAPERBACK.

Quoting from the info on amazon about this book:

Everybody wants more time, which is why on Discworld its management is entrusted to the experts: the venerable Monks of History, who store it and pump it from where it’s wasted, like underwater (after all, how much time does a codfish really need?) to places like cities, where harried citizens are forever lamenting, “Oh where does the time go?”

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by Pamela Rice Hahn and Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D.

Book excerpt:

Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours

Rhyme

Rhyme is a series of word endings that repeats the same, or similar, sounds.

Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard….

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by Pamela Rice Hahn

I imagine the first cookout occurred one day when, after a thunderstorm, cavemen (and women) from the Bar-B clan formed a queue around a wooly mammoth that had been zapped and charred by a bolt of lightning. Once they tasted that fire-roasted flavor, mammoth tartare just didn’t satisfy their palates anymore. Finding a way to duplicate that aroma and piquancy became as important as their hunting rituals. This was a can-do tribe!

So, because they were a forward-thinking group of nomads, they formed a committee. The committee then designated project teams, whose job it was to find ways to grill meat for the next feast. They rounded up herds of animals and trapped them in the valley, while the more limber members on their team danced a rain dance around the perimeter. They herded those animals to different locations, just in case the rumors about lightning strikes frequency were true.

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Passages from:

The Walking Drum by Louis L’amour

“It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become?

“Most people whom I encounter were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination…

“Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity and movement and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.”

From: The Walking Drum by Louis L’amour

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A favorite passage from:

Chicken Soup for the Surviving Soul:
101 Stories to Comfort Cancer Patients and Their Loved Ones

THE “WE” NURSE
by Norman Cousins

When I was in the hospital, I had a “We” nurse. She began each sentence with “How are we today?” “We need to have a bath.” This really irritated me, so I decided to play a little joke on her.

One day, she brought in a specimen cup and requested a urine sample. After she left, I poured my apple juice into the cup. When she returned for the specimen, she observed it and noted, “My we’re a little cloudy today, aren’t we?”

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by Judith A. Chance

At first glance, Ronny looked like every other kid in the first-grade classroom where I volunteered as the Reading Mom. Wind-blown hair, scuffed shoes, a little bit of dirt behind his ears, some kind of sandwich smear around his mouth.

On closer inspection, though, the layer of dirt on Ronny’s face, the crusty nose, and the packed grime under his fingernails told me he didn’t get dirty at school. He arrived that way.

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The disappearance of one family’s child and the impact that moment has on every aspect of their lives is illustrated by the passage below.

A favorite passage:

They stood in the bower the lilacs formed. Pat scolded and then snapped; Beth leaped into the driver’s seat. She didn’t kiss him. She would see him in two days, anyway. In fact, she would see Pat before the sun went down, Beth later recalled — and she had not kissed him then, either, not then or for months afterward, so that the first time she did, their teeth knocked, like junior-high kids’, and she noticed, for the first time, that his tongue tasted of coffee — a thing she had never noticed before, during all years when his tongue was as familiar in her mouth as her own.

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard is available in PAPERBACK and TRADE PAPERBACK.

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