Orbit by John J. Nance

March Staff Selection from Suzi

It's 2009, and the protagonist, Kip Dawson, has won a seat on an American Space Adventure spacecraft, Intrepid, which will orbit the earth. There are problems: a rock smashes into the craft, killing the pilot and the radios, leaving Dawson to fly it back to Earth. He writes his epitaph on the craft's laptop computer, not knowing that thousands of people have received it on the Internet, triggering a vast struggle to rescue him. - Excerpt from Booklist.

A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith

March Staff Selection from Jan

The story of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family who battle the hardships of the frontier to rise from a dirt-poor Cracker life to the wealth and standing of real estate tycoons. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias MacIvey arrives in the Florida wilderness to start a new life with his wife and infant son, and ends two generations later in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that the land has been exploited far beyond human need. The sweeping story that emerges is a rich, rugged Florida history featuring a memorable cast of crusty, indomitable Crackers battling wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the swamp.