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Birds used to teach lessons in local book southern arizona authors : Husband-wife team produces readable guides Author mixes mystery with O'odham culture A lot of area history . . . and a little bit of the law Love of golf spurs short stories Southern arizona authors : Successful tale of losses and the bomb Southern Arizona authors : Fun reads will entertain young and old 'Chopin Manuscript' wins top Audie southern arizona authors : 'Cool in Tucson' points Gunn toward Tucson Southern arizona authors : Singing Wind store to honor two writers

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Families, fictional and real, are a popular topic for authors young, old, veteran and novice. Often authors use family stories, recollections and diaries as a basis on which to build their work.

In "Mary George: Her Book" (PublishAmerica, $24.95) Green Valley author Marilyn Anne Pate writes she has used her grandmother's life as a guide in painting a picture of Mormon pioneer life in the West in the 1880s. The George family's lot was filled with high purpose and grim hardship. At 8, bright, independent Mary is her exhausted 26-year-old mother's only helper in caring for a family that included eight children. Eventually, Mary shakes free to marry the man she loves.

"Predestined: Embracing the Miracle of Life" (Tenacious Books, $12.99) by Shawn M. Jackson is an intimate, emotional and detailed account of what it means to bring a baby with a serious birth defect into the world. Life expectancy is brief — in this case, little Aaron, who suffered from a rare brain affliction, encephalocele, lived a year.

In "The CarobTree" (BookSurge, $16.99), Ron Benjamin, retired salesman, Vietnam vet and Jewish-Christian, tackles the issue of Jews and Jesus.

Combining romance, the Holocaust and a good deal of background from both the Old and New Testaments, he follows the lives of two young women and their families. They travel from Europe to America and struggle with religious issues and family problems.

And we have thrillers.

Don West's jaunty prose style and likable hero, private investigator Nestor Pike, help his readers stick with the many plot lines woven into "The Art of Murder" (Dancing Bear Books, $14). In the main story, the world-famous Getty Museum finds itself with a load of fakes for what was intended to be a landmark show of Middle Eastern artifacts.

"A Flash of Moonlight" (PublishAmerica, $21.95), sailor and archaeology buff Patrick Harding's latest, contains a mysterious crystal that just may hold the secret to the treasures of ancient Aymara people of Bolivia. It also might save the life of Jed Hoyle, a New Orleans contractor, who finds the crystal among the lean collection of personal belongings of his late twin, Greg, an archaeologist. Dr. Greg Hoyle, a strong swimmer, was reported drowned in Lake Titicaca while searching among the ruins of Bolivia's indigenous past. Jed smells a rat. Since Aymaran culture was subsumed by the Incas, even before the Spanish arrived, Harding has a good time letting his imagination wing it on what might really have happened to them and their vast holdings of gold and precious gems.

For new children's titles, we have " 'Preposition' the Kitten: From Beginning to End," (PRMHR Press, $15) by retired elementary schoolteacher Cornelia Kazal (who was also a gag writer for comedienne Phyllis Diller). If you've always been a little shaky on this ubiquitous bit of grammar, let the antics of a lively kitten help you make a connection.

Sherman and Mr. Peabody, of Bullwinkle fame, aren't the only ones with a time machine. In "Come Home John Henry" (Trident Media, $20.50), two pre-teen siblings, Brandon and Jessica, build a "time traveler" that brings John Westley Crockett (Davy Crockett's eldest son) and his Shawnee friend, Keanu, from 1835 on the Tennessee frontier to urban Nashville in 1998. The youngsters hope Crockett will save their family from the clutches of a very bad stepfather. Randy Lee Purdy's imaginative tale is nicely written and fun to read.

"August Webster and the Candy Rock Mountain" (Trafford, $22.50) by B.J. Myers is a young adult sci-fi story of a teenager who lives in the Southwest with his extended family and possesses magic properties including a jacket that allows him to fly.