Quick Breads

Easy and delicious quick breads are perfect for adding that special something to an otherwise dull meal. Renowned baker Beatrice Ojakangas presents more than sixty tasty and inventive recipes, including hearty Cheddar Apple Bread, Sour Cream Cinnamon Coffee Cake, and Hot Pepper and Bacon Corn Bread. She also serves up quick versions of such classics as aromatic Herbed Irish Soda Bread, German Stollen, Scandinavian Julekage, and the sweetly perfumed Italian Panettone. Quick breads require no kneading or rising, and most can be assembled in ten to fifteen minutes. Ojakangas provides recipes for tea breads, fruit and nut breads, sticks and rolls, coffee cakes and holiday breads.

Polymer Clay for the First Time

Readily available, inexpensive, and easily manipulated, polymer clay is an ideal beginner's medium, and Syndee Holt does an admirable job of introducing it. She sets the stage with background on materials and basic handling, then presents 27 approaches and variations as a series of questions on technique whose answers are full-fledged projects. "How do I make a pinroll cane?" for instance, explains a simple cane process and uses it to cover a candleholder. Other cane methods yield jewelry, a frame, a barrette, drawer pulls, and a covered pen, utilizing both basic canes (bull's eye, banner, checkerboard, blended) and pictorial types (flower, millefiori, star, face, shaman).

Surgical Anatomy of the Face

Univ. of Washington, Seattle. Atlas presents relevant facial anatomy from a surgical point of view. Includes such topics as facial contour analysis, facial embryogenesis, tissue foundation, anatomic regions, and variations in facial anatomy with race, sex, and age. High-quality drawings and photographs.

Dead Giveaway

She's a Texas heiress and a brand-new P.I. specializing in adoption cases. But Abby Rose focuses more on what money can't buy-like answers in a case of a baby abandoned years ago and a present-day murder.

Pick Your Poison

Out of school, out of work, and out of motivation, Abby Rose is contemplating her life and wondering what to do next. It's the kind of situation that would get some girls down, but luckily Abby's got a heart the size of Texas-and a bank account to match. But when she discovers the gardener dead in her greenhouse, Abby realizes what she needs to do with herself: she needs to solve a murder...