Hi and welcome to Episode Five of Forecast Stormy. If you'd rather listen to than read this, please see http://forecaststormy.libsyn.com.

Have you seen THE LEGEND OF ZORRO? It’s terrific. Visually stunning. Antonio Banderas is beautiful, Catherine Zeta-Jones is beautiful, Adrian Alonso who plays their son is beautiful, and Tornado the horse (all nine of them) – beautiful. :-) In this movie, California is trying to become a state but a lawless group of elitists is attempting to keep that from happening. Against the wishes of his wife, Alejandro De la Vega has to once again don the black mask, cape and hat and become Zorro. THE LEGEND OF ZORRO is exciting, funny, sexy and totally entertaining. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s well worth the price of admission.

I know THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by Sue Monk Kidd has been around for quite a while now (the copyright date is 2002), but I’d never read it until this past week. I didn’t think I’d be interested in a book about bees. My thanks go out to Alison Woo who recommended the book. Although the author uses bees and beekeepers as a metaphor weaved throughout the book, the true story is that of a girl coming to grips with her past and her present; and of the women who help her realize her worth. Set amid racial hostilities in the South in 1964, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES is the story of Lily Owens, a motherless teen who rescues her African-American “stand-in mother” from a group of bigots she insulted on her way to register to vote. The two go on the lam and wind up in South Carolina living with a trio of beekeeping sisters. The book is beautifully written. Kidd has a knack for capturing just the right emotion with her words. For example, this paragraph takes place at the end of Chapter One, just after an arrest. “The door closed. So quiet it amounted to nothing but a snap of air, and that was the strangeness of it, how a small sound like that could fall across the whole world.”

If you’ve read THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES and you’re still looking for a book with Southern flavor, injustice and a loveable underdog, you might try HARPERS’ JOY by Bert Goolsby. Also set in South Carolina, this one takes place a bit earlier than THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES. In HARPERS’ JOY, Candle Reid's life is falling apart. He's a lawyer whose competence is compromised by alcoholism. His wife kicks him out, and then his law partner dies. Can things get any worse? On the other hand, Dewey Coltraine's life is just beginning, or so he thinks. He has just married the prettiest girl in town, and he has a new job. But when he's arrested for killing one of Harpers' Joy's most influential men, will Candle Reid be able to save him? You can learn more about this book and find a link to an excerpt at www.graceabraham.com.

Speaking of Grace Abraham Publishing, they’ve revised their MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR Christmas E-booklet. To get your free copy, send an e-mail to Gayle Trent at [email protected] with MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR in the subject line. The booklet features gift ideas and links to humorous items and recipes.
As always, if you have any ideas for me, or any movies, books or TV shows to recommend, please e-mail me at [email protected].