Miss Julia Stands Her Ground

Ross, reminiscent of Jan Karon and Fannie Flagg, reintroduces the popular Miss Julia, a plucky busybody ""of a certain age,"" in this seventh novel (after Miss Julia's School of Beauty) in her ongoing series. Miss Julia again stands tall in a quaint, narrow-minded Southern city in the western North Carolina mountains, this time facing a paternity dispute over her beloved Little Lloyd, who may be her philandering, deceased former husband's son by another woman, Hazel Marie. To prove Little Lloyd's lineage without actually exhuming a corpse, Miss Julia's new husband Sam Murdoch suggests they retrieve a specimen of her late hubby's DNA, launching a search to find an appropriately personal item-a hairbrush comes to mind, as do the dead man's gallstones. As if that isn't enough to keep her busy, Miss Julia discovers the women of her church have circulated a petition nominating her to run for the board of elders, and the woman claiming Little Lloyd as her own volunteers Miss Julia's home for a wildly inappropriate party. Enjoyable but formulaic, it's light beach reading that should fulfill fans' expectations.