Today I want to release my scientific findings on the "earthworm question." You may recall, I found three earthworms in my mailbox and questioned their capacity to crawl up the wood post and continue upside down on a smooth metal surface, around a sharp corner and into the box. After weeks of painstaking research, I came to the irrefutable conclusion the neighbor kids put the worms in the mailbox. I basically conducted one experiment. As I was digging in the garden one day, I unearthed a giant earthworm. Because of his substantial size, I assumed he was strong, aggressive and advanced in his thinking. I placed his body halfway on top of a four-foot wood railing. The other half of his body hung down over the side. I watched to see if Mr. Worm could heft himself up on top of the railing. It didn’t go well for him. He fell off into the grass and a few minutes later a robin snatched him up for a tasty snack. I felt kind of bad about that, but in the scheme of the universe, it’s not a national disaster. So that’s where we are on the earthworm situation. If anyone has scientific data to refute my findings, I would be willing to consider it. We have some fabulous new titles by your favorite authors on the shelf this week. "McKettrick’s Choice" by Linda Lael Miller. When news came that there was trouble back in Texas, Holt McKettrick left his mail-order bride at the altar and he never looked back. John Cavanagh, the buffalo soldier who raised Holt, is being forced off his land and his friend, Gabe, is about to be hanged. Riding hard, Holt reaches San Antonio just as Lorelei Fellows torches her wedding dress. Lorelei refuses to marry a sleazy lawyer and takes refuge on the tiny dilapidated ranch left to her by her mother. Intrigue, danger, and greed are up against integrity, kindness, and love in this engrossing western romance. "The Twelfth Card" by Jeffrey Deaver is a two-day cat-and-mouse chase through the streets of uptown Manhattan as detective Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs try to outguess Thompson Boyd — a nondescript, innocuous man, but one whose past has turned him into a killing machine. Boyd is after Geneva Settle, a high school girl from Harlem, and it's up to Lincoln and Amelia to figure out why. The motive may have to do with a term paper that Geneva is writing about her ancestor, Charles Singleton, a former slave. A teacher and farmer in New York State, Charles was active in the early civil rights movement but was arrested for theft and disgraced. Lincoln and Amelia work frantically to figure out where the hired gun will strike and stop him, all the while trying to determine what actually happened on that hot July night in 1868 when Charles Singleton was arrested. "One Shot" by Lee Child. Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says, "You got the wrong guy." Then he says, "Get Jack Reacher for me" ... and the slam-dunk case explodes. Reacher is teamed with a young defense lawyer who is working against her D.A. father and dueling with a prosecution team that has an explosive secret of its own. Like most things Reacher has known in life, this case is a complex battlefield. But, as always, in battle, Reacher is at his best.