Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books that are either by Maine authors, set in the Pine Tree State or have other local ties.

THAT YANKEE CAT, by Marilis Hornidge, Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, 2002, 102 pages, $14.95.

Anyone who has ever made the acquaintance of a Maine coon cat knows there is a lot more to the breed than long, smooth, shaggy fur, hair tufts at the tips of the ears and a bushy tail they’re prone to wrapping around themselves.

There also are a sociability, intellect and curiosity that make them hard to resist. Just ask any of the lucky families that adopted five little coon cats born to a very protective mother in Orrington last spring.

The new owners and more experienced devotees will enjoy the third edition of Marilis Hornidge’s “That Yankee Cat, the Maine Coon.” Originally published in 1981, the third edition includes new material. Its many pictures make it a keeper – even without the collection of cat tales, the history of what may be the only native American breed of cat, and tips on care and feeding.

In her epilogue to the book, Hornidge writes that man didn’t create the Maine coon in the first place and, with any luck, man won’t ruin it either. The owners of the young cats from Orrington would agree – the last thing they want to do is change these gems. But they would like to have them leave their Christmas tree ornaments alone. – Carroll Astbury

VACATIONING IN MY

DRIVEWAY, by Terry Marotta, Ravenscroft Press, Winchester, Mass., 2002. $12.95

A collection of 52 short essays arranged to coincide with each of the year’s 52 weeks, these are captivating and often surprising bits of prose.

I’m quite sure from my reading that the author is Irish – Marotta, I’ll bet, is her married name. My deduction is based on the lilt of her writing, its sprightly rhythms and the author’s charming insights. She loves her family and her heart beats to nature’s tempo, for this is an altogether romantic writer seasoned with the bite of life’s realities.

You won’t have to begin at the beginning. If it’s December when you begin reading, start with December. You’ll find yourself hooked and before you know it you’ll have read all 52. Or if it’s gray November and you’d like a taste of more friendly weather, turn to May. “Sometimes by a pond in spring,” writes this muse of time, “evening stretches and reclines like a lady in rustling silk. Sometimes by such a pond, evening yawns and lies down like a happy dog.”

This is a New Englander writing here, a Yankee born, who has grown up with the rhythms of the four seasons played year after year in her life as child, girl and mother. And she has children who grow as you read, a husband who is a good and noble man, plus aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and the men, women, and children she encounters each day of her busy and energetic life. She is both a city and a countrywoman, aware of Nature as well as Man and her readers are the beneficiaries of the breadth of her experience.

If you choose to read one essay each week of the year, you can count on at least one very good day. – John N. Cole

LIGHTHOUSE HAUNTINGS: 12 ORIGINAL TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, edited by Charles G. Waugh & Martin H. Greenberg, Down East Books, Camden, 2002, $19.95.

This is an engineered book, in the sense that most automobiles are designed for specific owners and particular functions. This collection of a dozen tales of life and events beyond the norm was probably (and I’m making this up) the result of a group brainstorming session with editors and publishers around the table making suggestions for a fail-safe seller.

“Why not a collection of Maine coast ghost stories?” says one. And another says, “Yes, why not? You know how our summer visitors love to romanticize about sitting around the fire after dinner, listening to the roll of the surf and thinking how great it would be if they had a book to read aloud. You know, the way it was before television. And how much better if the book were a bit scary, a ghost story so everyone could huddle a bit closer.”

Something like that. Because this is what was pulled together and published. And, most certainly, will end up on the shelves of many summer cottages to be taken down at nightfall and read aloud. The 12 tales were commissioned from 12 talented writers, each one instructed to tell a ghost story centered around a lighthouse somewhere along Maine’s long and romantic coast.

Because lighthouses are generally isolated structures which have all, at one time or another, been battered by storms, witness to shipwrecks and human distress, and inhabited by lonely keepers, they are beloved by ghosts, phantoms and other unworldly visitors. You will meet many within these haunted pages. – John N. Cole

THE SUMMER COUNTRY, by James A. Hetley, Penguin Putnam, New York, 2002, $14.

“Stupid woman,” the snake’s voice hissed in Maureen’s ear. “People you care about are in great danger. Your sister is lost and hunted by my animals. Fiona has captured Brian and holds his soul in her deadly hands.

The land is eating David, plants rooting in his flesh and sucking his life out through his sightless eyes. Only you can save them.”

As if Maureen didn’t have enough on her agenda, talking to her trees and trying to find allies in the fantasyland of the Old Ones, which is quite a lot piled on the plate of an unhappy young woman working at a dead-end job in Naskeag, Maine. But, as you might expect of this heroine of Jim Hetley’s first novel, Maureen is a formidable young woman with more than the usual set of talents. Hetley, who lives in Bangor, once a trash collector, is also an architect and refrigeration plant engineer.

Which helps explain the exotic intricacies of this fantasy tale, for there are dragons, ogres and more just a long step away from Naskeag Falls.

Maureen’s early forebears from the Celtic lands of Mordred and Merlin have not vanished from their dimensions on this earth, and readers are swept into their Summer Country along with more otherworldly villains that you can imagine. For this is a fantasy without limits, a tale where nothing is held back, where restraint is a word never heard.

“How does this world define sanity?” Maureen asks herself, and surely has a more difficult time than most of us trying to answer. – John N. Cole