Gods in Alabama by Jackson, Joshilyn The Number One BookSense Pick for April!When Arlene Fleet heads up north for college, she makes three promises to God: She will stop fornicating with every boy who crosses her path; never tell another lie; and never, ever go back to the "fourth rack of hell," her hometown of Possett, Alabama. All she wants from Him is one little miracle: make sure the body is never found. Ten years later, God has broken His end of the deal. Alabama has landed on Arlene's Chicago doorstep in the form of her high school archenemy, a young woman who wants to find the golden-haired football hero who disappeared during their senior year. To make matters worse, Arlene's African American boyfriend, Burr, has given her an ultimatum-introduce him to her lily-white family or he's gone. Arlene would rather burn up in a fire than let him meet her steel magnolia Aunt Florence; her eccentric, half-mad Mama; her sweet-as-pecan-pie Cousin Clarice; and all the rest of her deeply racist kith and kin. But the fickle finger of fate is pointing her south. All too soon she and Burr are on their way to confront Arlene's redneck roots, the secret she ran from, and the crime that stole her peace of mind. Back in the small town of her girlhood, Arlene's demons are closing in-and after a decade of running away, Arlene must face them all. Yet while the truth threatens to destroy the life she has built for herself, it just may open her eyes to a love powerful enough to revise her past and alter her future. Crackling with humor, defiantly endearing characters, and plot twists that will astonish even the most jaded reader, Gods in Alabama will send you careening from tears to laughter and back. Most of all, it brings a unique, rough-around-the-edges heroine to life and makes her a permanent part of your own.

Mauve: How one man invented a color that changed the world by Garfield, Simon Mauve is a curious book with an implausible subtitle: "How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World." Changed the world? Mauve? It turns out that what English chemist William Perkin was after was not a reddish purple but a cure for malaria. While his quest to create an artificial quinine failed, Perkins did manage to create an oily sludge that turned silk an attractive light purple. His experiment uncovered the world's first chemical (and thus mass-producible) dye. Mauve took the fashion world by storm and opened the door to a wide spectrum of man-made colors and dyes. Simon Garfield's biography of the forgotten Perkins is highly readable examination of a pioneer in science and industry.