Leisure reading

'Coming Home to Myself'

By Wynona Judd with Patsi Bale Cox

New American Library, $25.95.

Wynona Judd, along with her mother, Naomi, sold more than 20 million records worldwide and earned five Grammys as the Judds. As a solo artist, Wynona has sold 9 million albums.

In this memoir, with the help of a professional writer, she tells her story, beginning with her youth in Kentucky and concluding with her career and home life in Nashville. In the interim, both Wynona and Naomi suffered from serious illnesses and bankruptcy.

Wynona was told by her doctor in 2003 that her increasing weight, and her cholesterol and triglyceride levels, made her "a walking time bomb." As she writes in her memoir, she had "hit a wall."

She explains how love helped her make a new beginning, change her diet, her lifestyle and start her life over again. — Dennis Lythgoe

'The Grace That Keeps This World'

By Tom Bailey

Shay Areheart Books, $24.

Tom Bailey has an eye for dialogue and sense of place. He is also quite adept at describing relationships between fathers and sons. He's won awards for his short stories.

His skill is evident in this, his first novel, which is written almost as a short-story collection. Each chapter is told by a different character.

The technique succeeds beautifully in illuminating everyone's motives. However, the novel suffers from a lack of suspense. The problem comes in the first chapter, told by the mother. It is quite plain that when her husband and two sons leave to go deer hunting it is the last time she'll see the three of them together.

After that, the reader is not willing to let the story unfold slowly. You want to find out who dies and how. You are not willing to savor the characters, which is too bad. — Susan Whitney

'The Investigation'

By Gary Magneson

Barricade, $23.95.

The "Mormon Will" got national press in 1976 when Howard Hughes, America's wealthiest man, died and, according to this "will" left one-sixteenth of his fortune to The Chuch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and another sixteenth to Melvin Dummar, a gas-station attendant.

According to the story, Dummar picked up Hughes in the Nevada desert and took him to Las Vegas, and Hughes was so grateful that he wrote Dummar into his will. After some investigation and testimony by Hughes' associates and family members, the will was discredited.

In this book, Gary Magnesen, a retired FBI agent and Utah resident, asserts that new evidence proves the will is authentic.

Now ill with cancer, Dummar finds his case has long since passed the statute of limitations, so there is nothing to be gained by him — unless it is his reputation. It is Magneson's opinion that his research vindicates Dummar. — Dennis Lythgoe