'Dreamers of the Day'

Mary Doria Russell's "Dreamers of the Day" starts out promisingly: Agnes Shanklin, spinster schoolteacher from Cedar Glen, Ohio, has lost her entire family to the remnants of the 1918 influenza epidemic. To console herself, and to finally break free from her mother's relentlessly critical spirit (which still echoes in her head), she decides to visit Egypt where her late sister's family lived before their deaths.

Agnes is a fine protagonist and it is a pleasure to see her emerging from the hard shell of her mother's dismissal. Because of her sister's connections in Cairo, Agnes becomes acquainted with T.E. Lawrence, which leads her into the seat of power to hobnob with Gertrude Bell, Winston Churchill and a Jewish German agent named Karl Weilbacher whose interest in her may either be the first romance of her life or an avenue to her knowledge of what the British are doing in carving up the Middle East.

So far so good, but part way through Agnes's engaging adventure the book bogs, becoming less a story and more a history lesson. The book also takes an odd turn when we discover that Agnes is dead and her narration comes from a sort of listless afterlife where she is temporarily "living" with her dachshund, Rosie, whose personality and bathroom habits played an excessive part in their previous existence.

Russell is a fine writer and the story of British machinations in the Middle East is less well known than it should be, but it might have been better told as straight history.

'Martha Stewart's Cookies'

"Martha Stewart's Cookies" is currently climbing the bestseller ladder (one wonders how, with all those calories), and who wouldn't want to know how to make Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies and Fresh-Peach Drop Cookies, especially given the ravishing photographs which accompany each recipe?

Here's the thing: Whenever we have a new Martha Stewart cookbook come in to the library, we play the Ingredient Bailout game, invented by Carla Zollinger, head of reference. The game leader reads the list of ingredients and each participant has to bail out when she reaches an ingredient she doesn't currently have in her kitchen. No one has yet made it all the way through a single recipe, although our children's librarian survived whole milk and anise extract, only to founder on cake flour.

So, if you want to bake any of these beautiful cookies (and you will), realize that you will need to make a trip to the store first, and probably to Williams-Sonoma rather than Albertson's. If you are planning to give the cookies away (why would you?), Stewart has a helpful concluding section on how to package your gift. Presentation is all, they say, but Martha Stewart's cookies in Martha Stewart's packaging is nothing short of boffo.

• Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. E-mail her at lauraw@provo.lib.ut.us.