The Deadly Past: Historical Mysteries for the Kindle (30 Mar 10)

For anyone who loves a good mystery and wants to combine entertaining reading with learning about the past, the historical mystery is the ticket. Why try to figure out "whodunnit" in the library with the candle stick, when you can accompany a monk from an isolated monastery in medieval France in a perilous journey across Europe to solve the murder of a pilgrim to the Holy Land or a young psychologist/detective as she solves the mystery of a soldier murdered mid-battle during World War I?

Here are a half-dozen historical mysteries that may whet your appetite for even more crimes in other times:

The Winter Thief: A Kamil Pasha Novel, by Jenny White. W. W. Norton & Company. Print Length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Jenny White is a professor of anthropology at Boston University, specializing in Turkey. This is the third of her Kamil Pasha mysteries, following The Sultan's Seal and The Abyssinian Proof.
"The nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, in the throes of political upheaval, again provides the vividly realized background for this third mystery featuring Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha. White demonstrates her in-depth knowledge of Turkish history in a deftly plotted and clever tale of intrigue, duplicity, and violence. The disappearance of illegal firearms, an explosion, a bank heist, and a deadly fire are just the beginning of a case that demands all of Kamil’s personal and professional resources. When Vahid, the scheming and sadistic head of the secret police, discovers the presence of Armenian communists in the area, his actions lead to a bloody massacre and near war. As Kamil and the police attempt to squelch rumors of rebellion and expose the true criminals, threats carried out on his family and against his livelihood render this case personal..." - Jen Baker for Booklist.

A Darker God, by Barbara Cleverly. This is book three in the author's Laetitia Talbot series, following The Tomb of Zeus and Bright Hair About the Bone. Bantam. Print Length: 416 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"It’s 1928, and British archaeologist and amateur sleuth Letty has recently returned to Athens from a dig in Crete when her friend, mentor, and former lover Andrew Merriman is murdered, his stabbed body found during a rehearsal of Agamennon, which he translated from Aeschylus. The next day his sharp-tongued wife, Maud, who knew of her husband’s dalliances, also dies, presumably pushed from her home’s second-floor window, casting suspicion on actress Thetis Templeton, Maud’s visiting cousin and Andrew’s current lover. DCI Percy Montacute from Scotland Yard, an amateur actor newly posted to Athens, is present when Andrew’s body is discovered and heads the investigation, aided by Letty. In addition to bringing deductive reasoning to the case, Letty becomes an endangered player... A complex, well-plotted historical mystery enlivened by its feisty and more-than-modern protagonist." - Michele Leber for Booklist.

Veil of Lies: A Medieval Noir, by Jeri Westerson. Minotaur Books. Print Length: 288p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (28 reviews). Kindle edition $9.17. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Crispin Guest is a disgraced knight, stripped of his rank and his honor - but left with his life - for plotting against Richard II. Having lost his bethrothed, his friends, his patrons and his position in society. With no trade to support him and no family willing to acknowledge him, Crispin has turned to the one thing he still has - his wits - to scrape a living together on the mean streets of London. In 1383, Guest is called to the compound of a merchant - a reclusive mercer who suspects that his wife is being unfaithful and wants Guest to look into the matter. Not wishing to sully himself in such disgraceful, dishonorable business but in dire need of money, Guest agrees and discovers that the wife is indeed up to something, presumably nothing good. But when he comes to inform his client, he is found dead - murdered in a sealed room, locked from the inside." - Amazon.

The Last Illusion, by Rhys Bowen. This is book nine in the Molly Murphy series that began with Murphy's Law. Six of the nine books are available in Kindle editions. Minotaur Books. Print Length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Irish immigrant and PI Molly Murphy is thrilled to have a ticket to the theater to see a trio of illusionists that are all the rage. Indeed, headlining is Harry Houdini, the most sensational of them all; he has just returned from entertaining European kings and queens for a brief run on Broadway. But before Houdini can even take the stage, the opening act goes horribly wrong and to the crowd's shock the illusionist saws into his assistant. In the aftermath, the stunned performer accuses Houdini of tampering with the equipment he keeps under lock and key. And he's not the only one critical of 'The King of Handcuffs'. Risking his life every night, Houdini has raised the stakes to such a perilous level that he's putting lesser acts out of business. With everyone on edge, Houdini's wife hires Molly to be part investigator/part bodyguard, but how can she protect a man who literally risks his life every night? And how is she going to uncover whether these masters of illusion are simply up to their tricks or if there truly is something much more treacherous going on..." - Amazon.

Bellfield Hall: Or, The Observations of Miss Dido Kent, by Anna Dean. Minotaur Books. Print Length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"1805. An engagement party is taking place for Mr Richard Montague, son of wealthy landowner Sir Edgar Montague, and his fiancee Catherine. During a dance with his beloved, a strange thing happens: a man appears at Richard's shoulder and appears to communicate something to him without saying a word. Instantly breaking off the engagement, he rushes off to speak to his father, never to be seen again. Distraught with worry, Catherine sends for her spinster aunt, Miss Dido Kent, who has a penchant for solving mysteries. Catherine pleads with her to find her fiance and to discover the truth behind his disappearance. It's going to take a lot of logical thinking to untangle the complex threads of this multi-layered mystery, and Miss Dido Kent is just the woman to do it." - Amazon.

The Mapping of Love and Death, by Jacqueline Winspear. This is book seven in the Maisie Dobbs series. You may wish to start reading the series with the flagship offering: Maisie Dobbs. HarperCollins. Print Length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (30 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"August 1914. Michael Clifton is mapping the land he has just purchased in California's beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, certain that oil lies beneath its surface. But as the young cartographer prepares to return home to Boston, war is declared in Europe. Michael - the youngest son of an expatriate Englishman - puts duty first and sails for his father's native country to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is listed among those missing in action.
April 1932. London psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs is retained by Michael's parents, who have recently learned that their son's remains have been unearthed in France. They want Maisie to find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among Michael's belongings - a quest that takes Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love. Her inquiries, and the stunning discovery that Michael Clifton was murdered in his trench, unleash a web of intrigue and violence that threatens to engulf the soldier's family and even Maisie herself." - Amazon.
For additional information about Jacqueline Winspear and the indomitable Maisie Dobbs, visit the author's web site.

Kindle Genre Watch: Sci-Fi, Romance and Western Fiction (28 Mar 10)

Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth.

Book jacket. Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in sci-fi, romance and western fiction include:

SCIENCE FICTION

Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer. St. Martin's Press. Print Length: 352 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, the greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane. The tale of Harold's life is also one of an alternate reality, a lucid waking dream in which the well-heeled have mechanical men for servants, where the realms of fairy tales can be built from scratch, where replicas of deserted islands exist within skyscrapers. As Harold?s childhood infatuation with Miranda changes over twenty years to love and then to obsession, the visionary inventions of her father also change Harold's entire world, transforming it from a place of music and miracles to one of machines and noise. And as Harold heads toward a last desperate confrontation with Prospero to save Miranda's life, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the creation of the greatest invention of them all: the perpetual motion machine." - Amazon.

A Enemy of the State by F. Paul Wilson. Wilsongs. Print Length: 300 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
The core book of the LaNague Federation series, An Enemy of the State was first published in 1980. It is newly-available in a Kindle edition, along with subsequent volumes Wheels Within Wheels, Healer, Dydeetown World, and The Tery - each at the reasonable price of $2.99.
"Peter LaNague's unique revolution sets out to topple the entrenched Outworld Imperium as well as fundamentally altering every Outworlder's concept of government. To accomplish this he must ally himself with a madman, trust the word of the last of Sol System's robber barons, make incisive use of the consummate warriors from the planet Flint (without allowing them to run amok), confound at every turn the omnipresent forces of the Imperium, and, every now and then, make it rain money. And those are the easy parts." - http://repairmanjack.com/

Portal by Imogen Rose. Self-published first novel. Print Length: 350 p. Kindle edition $0.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Come find me two years ago. Six words that propelled ice hockey playing tomboy, Arizona, into an alternate dimension. In one moment, she went from being a varsity hockey player in New Jersey to a glamorous cheerleader in California. She found herself with a new dad. She found herself in a new life. One that she had apparently lived in always. Everyone knew her as Arizona Darley, but she wasn't. She was Arizona Stevens. She knew she had to find her way back to her real life. Then she met Kellan..." - Amazon.

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Backlash by Aaron Allston. LucasBooks. Print Length: 352 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Repercussions from the dark side’s fatal seduction of Jacen Solo and the mysterious plague of madness afflicting young Jedi continue to wreak havoc galaxy-wide. Having narrowly escaped the deranged Force worshippers known as the Mind Walkers and a deadly Sith hit squad, Luke and Ben Skywalker are in pursuit of the now Masterless Sith apprentice. It is a chase that leads to the forbidding planet Dathomir, where an enclave of powerful dark side Force-wielders will give Vestara the edge she needs to escape - and where the Skywalkers will be forced into combat for their quarry and their lives. Meanwhile, Han and Leia have completed their own desperate mission..." - from the hardcover edition.

ROMANCE

In Serena's Web by Kay Hooper. Bantam. Print Length: 416 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"At twenty-six, Serena Jameson is a handful - brilliant, manipulative, and passionate, at least when it comes to righting the wrongs of the world. Her father, a renowned computer magnate, is worried about Serena’s impetuous nature - as well as a far more tangible threat - and entrusts a colleague, handsome Brian Ashford, to ferry her on a trip across the country. But as usual, Serena has ideas of her own. A novice in affairs of the heart, Serena asks Brian to give her a crash course in seduction so that she can tame the notorious womanizer Joshua Long. But what starts as a simple lesson in love becomes a complex erotic dance, as both men find themselves caught in the snares of Serena’s undeniable wiles. Is Serena trying to attract her declared target or her teacher? Who is really ensnaring whom? And can she finish weaving her web before the mysterious cabal eager to kill Serena’s father manages to succeed - over her dead body?" - from the paperback edition.

Second Chance by Christy Reece. Ballantine Books. This is book five in the Last Chance Rescue series. All five volumes are available in Kindle editions, beginning with Rescue Me. Print Length: 416 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Working for Last Chance Rescue, Cole Mathison has been to hell and back. But being responsible for the death of an innocent man is a hell like no other. Longing for redemption, Cole finds himself embroiled in the mysterious disappearance of Keeley Fairchild’s young children. Rescuing the children is his mission - but falling in love with the widow of the man he inadvertently killed was never in the plans. When Keeley’s life is threatened, Cole’s demons must take a backseat to the most important mission of his life. He might never know the heaven of Keeley’s arms, but he’ll never survive the hell of failing to save her." - www.christyreece.com.

The Chesapeake Diaries: Coming Home by Mariah Stewart. Ballantine Books. Print Length: 400 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In the wake of his wife’s murder, agent Grady Shields turned his back on the FBI - and everything else - to retreat into the vast solitude of Montana, grieve for his lost love, and forget the world. But after years in seclusion, his sister’s wedding draws him to St. Dennis, a peaceful town on the Chesapeake Bay. Though he swears he isn’t interested in finding love again, Grady can’t ignore the mutual sparks that fly when he meets Vanessa Keaton. Although her past was marked by bad choices, Vanessa has found that coming to St. Dennis is the best decision she’s ever made. Bling, her trendy boutique, is a success with tourists as well as with the townspeople. She’s made friends, has a home she loves, and has established a life for herself far from the nightmare she left behind. The last thing she’s looking for is romance, but the hot new man in town is hard to resist. And when Vanessa’s past catches up with her, Grady finds that he’s unwilling to let her become a victim again..." - from the paperback edition.

Shattered by Karen Robards. Putnam. Print Length: 400 p. Kindle edition $13.65. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"While growing up on a prestigious horse farm, Lisa Grant took her exalted position in life for granted, growing close to her mother after her parents divorced. So she doesn’t hesitate to leave her law practice in Boston to take care of her mother, who is suffering from ALS and impending financial ruin. Lisa is lucky to get a job as a research assistant for District Attorney Scott Buchanan, her former lowly neighbor who made good. As a teen, Lisa tortured Scott with sexual innuendos, while he did odd jobs for her mother, and now it is Scott’s turn to lord it over Lisa. Sexual tension crackles between the two, but when Lisa is late for court, Scott orders her to work on cold-case files. On her first foray, she finds a picture of a missing family, and the mother looks just like her. Suddenly, her life becomes harrowing. With no one else to turn to, she confides in Scott, who, surprisingly, agrees to help, knowing that Lisa won’t like what they discover..." - Patty Engelmann for Booklist.

The Vampire and the Virgin by Kerrelyn Sparks. Book 8 in the Love at Stake series that began with How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire. All eight titles are available in Kindle editions. HarperCollins. Print Length: 384 p. Kindle edition $5.59. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Olivia's packing list: 1. Sunscreen 2. Bathing suit 3. Flip-flops. FBI psychologist Olivia Sotiris was looking for a cool ocean breeze, sand between her toes, and a break from her crazy, chaotic, and sometimes all-too-dangerous life. But when she escaped to the small Greek island of Patmos, all she got were meddling grandmothers trying to marry her off. Can't they see that none of the men around interests her - except Robby MacKay? Robby's packing list: 1. Synthetic blood 2. More synthetic blood 3. Jogging clothes (even vamps have to stay in shape!). Robby needs to cool off, too, since all he can think about is revenge on the Malcontent bloodsuckers who once held him captive-but then he meets Olivia, the beauty with wild curls and a tempting smile. When a deadly criminal from a case back home tracks her down, Robby will have to save her life - along with giving her a first time she'll never forget." - Amazon.

WESTERNS

Snowbound by Richard S. Wheeler. Publisher. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $14.29. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In this powerful biographical novel, Richard Wheeler, winner of the Owen Wister Lifetime Achievement Award and five Spur Awards, tells the amazing tale of the American explorer and hero, John Fremont, and his attempt to find a railway route to the west along the 38th parallel. Trapped in the snowbound Colorado mountains, Fremont must fight his way out. He battles the frigid elements in a harrowing journey over the backbone of the continent. In this tale of desperate danger and fierce courage, Wheeler presents the reader with a survival saga par excellence - a struggle of man against man, man against nature, man against himself..." - Amazon.

The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume. Publisher. Print Length: Kindle edition $1.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Raine (1871-1954) grew up on a cattle ranch on the Texas-Arkansas border, spent time with the Arizona Rangers, worked as a journalist in Denver, and eventually settled down to write westerns. He often produced two books a year and was active until his death in 1954. This compilation includes Wyoming, Brand Blotters, Ridgway of Montana, A Texas Ranger, Bucky O’Connor, Mavericks, Crooked Trails and Straight, The Vision Splendid, The Pirate of Panama, A Daughter of the Dons, Steve Yeager, The Highgrader, The Yukon Trail, The Sheriff’s Son, A Man Four-Square, Oh You Tex!, The Big Town Round-Up, Gunsight Pass, Tangled Trails, Man Size, and The Fighting Edge. With active table of contents.

A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 26 Mar 10

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the March 26th issue include:


Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, by Lisa Miller. HarperCollins. Print length: 368 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...brainy, engaging...a sweeping historical and literary geography of heaven..." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Drawing on history and popular culture, biblical research and everyday beliefs, Heaven offers a new understanding of one of the most cherished - and shared - ideals of spiritual life. Lisa Miller raises debates and discussions not just about our visions of the afterlife, but about how our beliefs have influenced the societies we have built and the lifestyles to which we have subscribed, exploring the roots of our beliefs in heaven and how these have evolved throughout the ages to offer comfort and hope. She also reveals how the notion of heaven has been used for manipulation - to promulgate goodness and evil - as inspiration for selfless behavior, and as justification for mass murder. Lisa Miller is an award-winning journalist in the field of religion. The religion editor at Newsweek, she writes a regular column on the intersection of spirituality, belief, ethics, and politics." - Amazon.

The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald. Random House. Print length: 432 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...Henry is deeply flawed..., but House sweeps along with such page-turning vitality that his story is indeed irresistible." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (15 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"It is the middle of the twentieth century, and in a home economics program at a prominent university, real babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For a young man raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime. In this captivating novel, bestselling author Lisa Grunwald gives us the sweeping tale of an irresistible hero and the many women who love him. From his earliest days as a 'practice baby' through his adult adventures in 1960s New York City, Disney’s Burbank studios, and the delirious world of the Beatles’ London, Henry remains handsome, charming, universally adored - and never entirely accessible to the many women he conquers but can never entirely trust. Filled with unforgettable characters, settings, and action, The Irresistible Henry House portrays the cultural tumult of the mid-twentieth century even as it explores the inner tumult of a young man trying to transcend a damaged childhood..." - www.randomhouse.com.

The Bone Thief, by Jefferson Bass. Book five in the Body Farm series. All five books are available in Kindle editions, starting with Carved in Bone. Jefferson Bass is the pen name of the forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass and writer/documentary filmmaker Jon Jefferson. HarperCollins. Print length: 368 p. MYSTERY. EW's slant: "...fascinating forensic science and snappy wiseacre dialogue..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Dr. Bill Brockton has been called in on a seemingly routine case, to exhume a body and obtain a bone sample for a DNA paternity test. But when the coffin is opened, Brockton and his colleagues, including his graduate assistant Miranda Lovelady, are stunned to see that the corpse has been horribly violated. Brockton’s initial shock gives way to astonishment as he uncovers a flourishing and lucrative black market in body parts. At the center of this ghoulish empire is a daring and prosperous grave robber. Soon Brockton finds himself drawn into the dangerous enterprise when the FBI recruits him to bring down the postmortem chop shop - using corpses from the Body Farm as bait in an undercover sting operation. As Brockton struggles to play the unscrupulous role the FBI asks of him, his friend and colleague medical examiner Eddie Garcia faces a devastating injury that could end his career..." - Amazon.
You may wish to read more about the real Body Farm at the Jefferson Bass website.

Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage, by Richard Stengel. Crown. Print length: 256 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"We long for heroes and have too few. Nelson Mandela, who recently celebrated his ninety-first birthday, is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint. He liber­ated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite oppressor and oppressed in a way that had never been done before. Now Richard Stengel, the editor of Time maga­zine, has distilled countless hours of intimate conversation with Mandela into fifteen essential life lessons. For nearly three years, including the critical period when Mandela moved South Africa toward the first democratic elections in its history, Stengel collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography and traveled with him everywhere. Eating with him, watching him campaign, hearing him think out loud, Stengel came to know all the different sides of this complex man and became a cherished friend and colleague. In Mandela’s Way, Stengel recounts the moments in which “the grandfather of South Africa” was tested and shares the wisdom he learned... It captures the spirit of this extraordinary man - warrior, martyr, husband, statesman, and moral leader - and spurs us to look within ourselves, reconsider the things we take for granted, and contemplate the legacy we’ll leave behind." - from the hardcover edition.

Still Midnight, by Denise Mina. Reagan Arthur Books. Print length: 352 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Still Midnight isn't the Scottish novelist's best book - that would be Field of Blood - but you can feel the intelligence, sweat, and research she poured into it." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 (18 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Alex Morrow is not new to the police force-or to crime-but there is nothing familiar about the call she has just received. On a still night in a quiet suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, three armed men have slipped from a van into a house, demanding a man who is not, and has never been, inside the front door. In the confusion that ensues, one family member is shot and another kidnapped, the assailants demanding an impossible ransom. Is this the amateur crime gone horribly wrong that it seems, or something much more unexpected? As Alex falls further into the most challenging case of her career, Denise Mina proves why 'if you don't read crime novels, Mina is your reason to change' (RockyMountain News)." - Amazon.

Bone Fire, by Mark Spragg. Knopf. Print length: 256 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...as slow and shambling as a run-down pickup, but that allows the fine-tuned characters wide-open space to breathe and their grief to become palpable." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $14.27. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays. The sheriff, Crane Carlson, needs no reminder of this but gets one anyway when he finds a kid not yet twenty murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who’s going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather. Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife and - far too young - their only child; and his long-absent sister has lately returned home from Chicago after watching her soul mate die. His granddaughter, Griff, has dropped out of college to look after him, though Einar would rather she continue with her studies... Completing this extended family are Barnum McEban and his ward, Kenneth, a ten-year-old whose mother - Paul’s sister - is off marketing spiritual enlightenment. What these characters have to contend with on a daily basis is bracing enough, involving car accidents, runaway children, strokes and Lou Gehrig’s disease, not to mention the motorcycle rallies and rodeos that flood the tiny local jail. But as their lives become even more strained, hardship foments exceptional compassion and generosity, and those caught in their own sorrow alleviate the same in others, changing themselves as they do so. In this gripping story, along with harsh truths and difficult consolation come moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg..." - www.randomhouse.com.
$9.99 or less alternative: Spragg's earlier novel set in the American West in the 1940s: The Fruit of Stone.


moar funny pictures

Current and Choice Nonfiction for the Kindle (24 Mar 10)

What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative. - Tracy Kidder.

Nonfiction encompasses a wealth of reading possibilities - history, essays, memoirs, scientific research, travel guides, cookbooks - essentially everything that is based on fact, real events and real people. Recent nonfiction titles for the Kindle that you might have missed:



The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, by Elif Batuman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Can the practice of literary scholarship and the art of literary criticism generate true tales of hilarity, pathos, and revelation? Yes, if you’re Batuman, a writer of extraordinary verve and acumen who braids together academic adventures, travelogues, biography, and autobiography to create scintillating essays. A self-described 'six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman' who grew up in New Jersey, Batuman became enthralled by the great Russian writers, studied Russian, and, after some rough spots, embraced the study of literature as her life calling. Precision is Batuman’s path to both humor and intensity, whether she’s writing about her fellow comparative-lit grad students at Stanford, 'magic' library moments (such as discovering a link between Isaac Babel and King Kong), antic miscommunications at international literary conferences, a visit to St. Petersburg’s ice palace, and, in several piquant installments, her strange summer in Samarkand, studying the Uzbek language and literature." - Donna Seaman for Booklist.

The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World Via its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes, by Carl Hoffman. Broadway. Print Length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"You have to wonder who in their right mind would voluntarily fly on an airline with one of the world’s worst safety records, or ride on a commuter train on which passengers die on an alarmingly regular basis. The answer is obvious: for most of the world’s travelers, Hoffman tells us, travel is no luxury. The majority of today’s travelers are not tourists; they travel because they must - usually for work - and they are routinely forced to endure incredibly unpleasant circumstances. Hoffman, being an adventurous travel writer, thought it might be instructive to take a few months and travel the world the way most of its nontourist population does: on the least safe airlines, the most crowded buses, through some of the most inhospitable and dangerous places on the planet. The result is a thoroughly fascinating book, full of shocking stories and plenty of things to make your skin crawl (cockroaches, anyone?)." - David Pitt for Booklist.

The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club, by Maeve Binchy. Anchor. Print Length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In this motivational guide for aspiring writers, Binchy displays the same generosity of spirit that has endeared many of her fictional characters to readers of her best-selling novels. Presented in the form of chatty letters, Binchy’s missives range from the practical to the inspirational. Writing in the intimate tone of a longtime confidante, she doles out encouragement, inspiration, and advice in equal measures for scribblers of every genre and every literary medium... Suggestions from other writers, agents, editors, and publishers are included throughout, and as an extra bonus, some short stories previously unpublished in the U.S. are included..." - Margaret Flanagan for Booklist.

Who Do You Think You Are?, by Megan Smolenyak. Viking. Print Length: 224 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"The ground-breaking NBC series Who Do You Think You Are? takes seven of America's best-loved celebrities - from Lisa Kudrow to Susan Sarandon - on an emotional journey to trace their family history and discover who they really are. The revelations are sometimes shocking, sometimes heartbreaking, and always fascinating. With the Who Do You Think You Are? companion guide, you will learn how to chart your own journey into your past and discover the treasures hidden in your family tree...everything a beginner needs to know to start digging into their roots, including: Starting the search, census information - where to find it and how to use it, what birth, death, and marriage certificates have to tell us, how to track down immigration and military documents, the latest breakthroughs in DNA testing, the best online resources to conduct your searches.. Megan Smolenyak is the chief family historian and spokesperson for Ancestry.com, the largest genealogical company in the world." - Amazon.

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, by Peter Hessler. HarperCollins. Print Length: 448 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (15 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In his latest feat of penetrating social reportage, New Yorker writer Hessler again proves himself America's keenest observer of the New China. Hessler investigates the country's lurch into modernity through three engrossing narratives. In an epic road trip following the Great Wall across northern China, he surveys dilapidated frontier outposts from the imperial past while barely surviving the advent of the nation's uniquely terrifying car culture. He probes the transformation of village life through the saga of a family of peasants trying to remake themselves as middle-class entrepreneurs. Finally, he explores China's frantic industrialization, embodied by the managers and workers at a fly-by-night bra-parts factory in a Special Economic Zone. Hessler has a sharp eye for contradictions, from the absurdities of Chinese drivers' education courses - low-speed obstacle courses are mandatory, while seat belts and turn signals are deemed optional - to the leveling of an entire mountain to make way for the Renli Environmental Protection Company. Better yet, he has a knack for finding the human-scale stories that make China's vast upheavals both comprehensible and moving. The result is a fascinating portrait of a society tearing off into the future with only the sketchiest of maps." - Publishers Weekly.

Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific, by Robert Leckie. Bantam. Print Length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (12 reviews). Kindle edition $9.00. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country... Woven throughout are Leckie’s hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight." - Amazon.
First published in 1957. Material from Helmet for My Pillow was adapted for HBO’s epic miniseries The Pacific, airing March 14, 2010 and concluding on May 16.

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui. Three Rivers Press. Print Length: 192 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (43 reviews). Kindle edition $8.30. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old. Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled - not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces. ...Nujood now tells her full story for the first time. As she guides us from the magical, fragrant streets of the Old City of Sana’a to the cement-block slums and rural villages of this ancient land, her unflinching look at an injustice suffered by all too many girls around the world is at once shocking, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable." - Amazon.

Dining with al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East, by Hugh Pope. Thomas Dunne Books. Print Length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars ( 1 review). Kindle edition $14.84. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...Hugh Pope presents his modern-day explorations, mined from more than three decades, of the politics, religion, and aspirations of Muslim peoples to show how the Middle East is much more than a monolithic 'Islamic World.' An Oxford-educated scholar of the Middle East and acclaimed former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Pope has lived and worked in two dozen countries throughout the region. In eighteen revealing chapters, he delves into the amazingly varied cultures ranging from the south of Sudan to Afghanistan and from Islamabad to Istanbul. His probing and often perilous journeys - at one point during a meeting with an al-Qaeda missionary, Pope is forced to quote Koranic verse to argue against his own murder - provide an eye-opening look at diverse societies often misportrayed by superficial reporting and 'why they hate us' politics. ...Pope weaves a rich narrative that embraces art, food, poetry, customs, and the competing histories of the Middle East..." - Amazon.


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Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (22 Mar 10)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and open their pocketbooks. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

ON THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW (22 MAR 10).
ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (22 MAR 10).
ON ABC'S GOOD MORNING AMERICA (24 MAR 10)

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, by Wes Moore. Spiegel & Grau. Print Length: 288 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A story about two young African-American men who share the same name and grew up on the same inner-city streets, but wound up in vastly different places. Author Wes Moore, a Rhodes Scholar, former Army officer and White House Fellow, works in investment banking. The other Wes Moore, a drug dealer, is imprisoned for life. Both are in their early 30s. Upon reading about the other Wes's 2000 conviction for armed robbery, the author wondered how the lives of two youths growing up in the same time (1990s) and place (Baltimore) could take such divergent paths. Drawing on conversations with the other Wes and interviews, the author creates an absorbing narrative that makes clear the critical roles that choices, family support and luck play in young people's lives." - Kirkus Reviews.

ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (24 MAR 10):

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, by James Martin. HarperCollins. Print Length: 432 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For over 500 years, the Jesuit Order of Catholic priests, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, have enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a society of scholars, educators, free-thinkers, and activists. In this digestible account of all things Jesuit, James Martin, S.J., encapsulates the uniquely Ignatian concept of spirituality. Translating the essence of the Jesuit philosophy into layman’s terms, he uses both traditional stories and personal anecdotes to vividly illustrate the Jesuit approach to God, friendship, social justice, decision-making, prayer, simplicity, obedience, and self-actualization. Martin’s engaging, intimate tone will appeal to anyone interested in understanding the history, the efficacy, and the universality of the Jesuit mission and way of life. Martin, the author of My Life with the Saints (2006), has a way of popularizing serious religious issues without trivializing their impact and significance." - Margaret Flanagan for Booklist.

ON NPR'S DIANE REHM SHOW (25 MAR 10):

Made for Goodness, by Desmond M. Tutu and Mpho Tutu. HarperCollins. Print Length: 224 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Nobel Peace Prize–winner Desmond Tutu, who lived through South African apartheid and helped to clean up its criminal consequences by chairing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, could write a grocery list and people would get something out of it. With his daughter Mpho, an Episcopal priest in Washington, D.C., the retired Anglican archbishop writes a relatively personal book about his fundamental, faith-based beliefs about human nature: people are basically good because they are made in God's image. He maintains this in the face of the horrific events he has witnessed in his country and elsewhere, and he bases his belief in part on simple experiences throughout his life that have involved family and, significantly, his failures..." - Publishers Weekly.

Kindle Genre Watch: New in Fantasy & Mystery Fiction (20 Mar 10)

Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth.

Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the Kindle Store so you don't have to. Recent genre fiction releases in fantasy and mystery fiction include:

FANTASY

Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan. Book six of the Wheel of Time series that began with The Eye of the World. Tor. Print length:720 p. Kindle edition $7.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...we plunge again into Robert Jordan's extraordinarily rich, totally unforgettable world: On the slopes of Shayol Ghul, the Myrddraal swords are forged, and the sky is not the sky of this world. In Salidar the White Tower in exile prepares an embassy to Caemlyn, where Rand Al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, holds the throne - and where an unexpected visitor may change the world. In Emond's Field, Perrin Goldeneyes, Lord of the Two Rivers, feels the pull of ta'veren to ta'veren and prepares to march. Morgase of Caemlyn finds a most unexpected, and quite unwelcome, ally. And south lies Illian, where Sammael holds sway..." - Amazon.

Dead, Undead, or Somewhere in Between by J. A. Saare. Eternal Press. Print length: 244 p. Kindle edition $6.95. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"No one knows better than Rhiannon Murphy that one bad corpse can ruin your whole day. She left behind the flash and sass of Miami for the no-nonsense groove of New York City, eager for a clean slate and a fresh start. A bartender by trade, a loud mouth by choice, and a necromancer by chance; she managed to keep her nifty talent hidden from those around her - until now. The deliciously good-looking vampire, Disco, knows her secret. When he strolls into her bar to solicit help investigating the mysterious disappearances of his kind from the city, Rhiannon discovers he’s not the kind of person that appreciates the significance of the word no..." - Amazon.

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire. Book two in the October Daye series, following Rosemary and Rue. Publisher: Daw. Print length: 400 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"After spending fourteen years lost to both the fae and mortal worlds, only to be dragged back into Faerie by the murder of someone close to her, October 'Toby' Daye really just wants to spend a little time getting her footing. She's putting her life back together. Unfortunately, this means going back to work for Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, doing her duty as a knight errant. That isn't the sort of thing that exactly lends itself to a quiet existence, and before she knows it, Toby's back on the road, heading for the County of Tamed Lightning in Fremont, California to check on Sylvester's niece, January..." - www.seananmcguire.com.

MYSTERY

Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein. Book 12 in the Alexandra Cooper series that began with Final Jeopardy. Dutton. Print length: 400 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"What do a boatload of illegal immigrants, a congressman, and the body of young woman who has been stabbed in the chest have in common? Not quite what you think. And that’s part of the beauty of Fairstein’s latest, which takes a fairly routine bunch of crime-fiction elements and twists them into something unexpected. As usual, readers get a taste of the city along with its political wrangling as Fairstein invests her plot with dollops of her beloved Big Apple’s architecture and history... Providing legal expertise is prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, who works hard to maintain the integrity of her office while maneuvering around New York’s most powerful politicos. On hand, as usual, is her sidekick-partner, the smart, argumentative cop Mike Chapman, whose teasing keeps the counselor on her toes and occasionally off balance. While Fairstein keeps lots of balls in the air here, she juggles them with aplomb. - Stephanie Zvirin for Booklist.

Money to Burn by James Grippando. HarperCollins. Print length: 368 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Grippando’s new stand-alone has a setup that feels a bit familiar: an investment banker impulsively marries his girlfriend, who promptly disappears; several years later, he’s shocked to discover that all of his accounts have suddenly been wiped out, the funds transferred to an offshore bank via an account set up in his dead wife’s name. Luckily Grippando is a skilled writer (his stand-alones are generally more interesting than his Jack Swyteck series), and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. The novel’s protagonist, Michael Cantella, is a solidly defined character in the business-thriller mold, and the supporting cast ranges from coldly manipulative to warmly - but perhaps deceptively - friendly. The plot is mostly straightforward but with enough small twists and unexpected shifts to keep readers from feeling like they’ve read all this before." - Booklist.

Deep Shadow by Randy Wayne White. Book 17 in the Doc Ford series that began with Sanibel Flats. Putnam. Print length: 368 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Forget palm trees and beaches. This is Randy Wayne White's Florida: murderous ex-cons, looted Cuban gold, voracious swamp creatures. Carl Hiaasen is the best-known contemporary chronicler of the Sunshine State's murkier reaches. White's series featuring marine biologist Doc Ford, however, harks back to an earlier teller of Florida tales - John D. McDonald. McDonald's hero was 'salvage consultant' Travis McGee, often accompanied by his economist/boat-bum sidekick, Meyer. Ford has a buddy, too - a hippie sailor named Tomlinson. In White's latest novel, Deep Shadow, Ford and Tomlinson team with a commercial fisherman and a troubled teen in a treasure hunt that goes horribly awry. The fisherman has located a downed plane full of gold stolen from pre-Castro Cuba. It's at the bottom of a lake in the middle of a swamp. Ford and Tomlinson, accompanied by teenager Will Chaser, undertake what ought to be an easy salvage dive. They encounter life-threatening problems in the water and on land. Tomlinson and Chaser are trapped underwater when a ledge in the lake collapses, and the fisherman is taken hostage by ex-cons who just killed five people in a home invasion. Stalking them all is a mysterious predator with a long tail and glowing eyes. It's too big to be an alligator, and it's hungry. " - Shawna Seed for dallasnews.com.

Horns by Joe Hill. HarperCollins. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...a dark, funny exploration of love, grief, and the nature of good and evil. Ignatius William Perrish wakes up bleary and confused after a night of drinking and 'doing terrible things' to find he has grown horns. In addition to being horribly unsightly, these inflamed protuberances give Ig an equally ugly power - if he thinks hard enough, he can make people admit things (intimate, embarrassing, I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that details). This bizarre affliction is of particular use to Ig, who is still grieving over the murder of his childhood sweetheart (a grisly act the entire town, including his family, believes he committed). Horns is a wickedly fun read, and reveals Hill's uncanny knack for creating alluring characters and a riveting plot. Ig's attempts to track down the killer result in hilariously inappropriate admissions from the community, heartbreaking confessions from his own family, and of course, one hell of a showdown." - Daphne Durham for Amazon.

Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline. St. Martin's Press. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $14.20. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Bennie Rosato looks exactly like her identical twin, Alice Connolly, but the darkness in Alice's soul makes them two very different women. Or at least that's what Bennie believes, until she finds herself buried alive at the hands of her twin. Meanwhile, Alice takes over Bennie's life, impersonating her at work and even seducing her boyfriend in order to escape the deadly mess she has made of her own life. But Alice underestimates Bennie and the evil she has unleashed in her twin's psyche, as well as Bennie's determination to stay alive long enough to exact revenge..." - Amazon.

The Last Surgeon by Michael Palmer. St. Martin's Press. Print length: 384 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Dr. Nick Garrity, a vet suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, spends his days and nights dispensing medical treatment from a mobile clinic to the homeless and disenfranchised in D.C. and Baltimore. In addition, he is constantly on the lookout for his war buddy Umberto Vasquez, who was plucked from the streets by the military four years ago for a secret mission and has not been seen since. Psych nurse Gillian Coates wants to find her sister's killer. She does not believe that Belle Coates, an ICU nurse, took her own life, even though every bit of evidence indicates that she did - every bit save one. Belle has left Gillian a subtle clue that connects her with Nick Garrity. Together, Nick and Gillian determine that one-by-one, each of those in the operating room for a fatally botched case is dying. Their discoveries pit them against genius Franz Koller - the highly-paid master of the 'non-kill' - the art of murder that does not look like murder. As Doctor and nurse move closer to finding the terrifying secret behind these killings, Koller has been given a new directive: his mission will not be complete until Gillian Coates and Garrity, the last surgeon, are dead." - Amazon.


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A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 19 Mar 10.

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the March 19th issue include:

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, by Alan Bradley. Dell. Print length: 384 p. MYSTERY. EW's slant: "...smart, irreverent, unsappy mystery, hobbled only by a predictable plot." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (40 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Flavia’s world is 1950s England - specifically, a very old country house that just happens to have a long-abandoned chemistry laboratory. And Flavia just happens to be fascinated by chemistry - particularly poisons. This helps her solve mysteries because, as Flavia says, 'There’s something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind.' This time she becomes involved with the members of a traveling puppet show that features the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. When the puppetmaster is mysteriously electrocuted during the show, Flavia knows it can’t be an accident..." - Judy Coon for Booklist.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paol Giordano. Viking. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "haunting...quiet heartbreaker." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (15 reviews). Kindle edition $13.65. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one-it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both 'primes,' are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface..." - Amazon.
$9.99 or less alternative: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.

Our Hero: Superman on Earth, by Tom De Haven. Yale University Press. Print length: 240 p. CULTURAL HISTORY. EW's slant: "...an extended meditation on the role the flying Krypton orphan has played in comic books, cartoons, movies, and TV." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Since his first appearance in Action Comics Number One, published in late spring of 1938, Superman has represented the essence of American heroism. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the Man of Steel has thrilled audiences across the globe, yet as life-long Superman Guy Tom De Haven argues in this highly entertaining book, his story is uniquely American. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the midst of the Great Depression, Superman is both a transcendent figure and, when posing as his alter-ego, reporter Clark Kent, a humble working-class citizen. An orphan and an immigrant, he shares a personal history with the many Americans who came to this country in search of a better life, and his amazing feats represent the wildest realization of the American dream. As De Haven reveals through behind-the-scenes vignettes, personal anecdotes, and lively interpretations of more than 70 years of comic books, radio programs, TV shows, and Hollywood films, Superman's legacy seems, like the Man of Steel himself, to be utterly invincible." - Amazon.

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession, by David Grann. Doubleday. Print length: 352 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...by turns horrifying, hilarious, and outlandish." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (30 reviews). Kindle edition $14.82. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Whether he’s reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone- tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling stories that explore the nature of obsession and that piece together true and unforgettable mysteries. Each of the dozen stories in this collection reveals a hidden and often dangerous world... There is the world’s foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes who is found dead in mysterious circumstances; an arson sleuth trying to prove that a man about to be executed is innocent; and sandhogs racing to complete the brutally dangerous job of building New York City’s water tunnels before the old system collapses. Throughout, Grann’s hypnotic accounts display the power - and often the willful perversity - of the human spirit. Compulsively readable..." - Amazon.
$9.99 or less alternative: Grann's earlier The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon , Grann's account of the 1925 expedition of British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett who set out on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed.


Losing Charlotte, by Heather Clay. Knopf. Print length: 272 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...she describes moments with beautiful precision and aptly replays the murky, battering numbness of grief, but that murkiness too often extends to her characters and plot." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Raised on their parents’ Kentucky horse farm, Charlotte and Knox Bolling grow up steeped in the cycles of breeding, foaling, weaning, and preparation for sale that the Thoroughbreds around them undergo each year. As sisters, they are as tightly connected within that vast and beautiful landscape as their opposing natures - and the subtly shifting allegiances within their close family - allow. When Charlotte leaves Four Corners Farm, marries Bruce, and moves to Manhattan’s West Village, the sisters’ feelings for each other remain as intense and contradictory as ever, despite the distance between them. But nothing will solder their lives more fatefully than Charlotte’s pregnancy and the day on which she delivers twin boys, then dies of complications following their birth. Together, Knox and Bruce - sister and brother-in-law in name, but strangers in every other respect - take up the work of caring for Charlotte’s two motherless boys... A gripping, powerfully affecting debut novel from a stunning new writer." - Amazon.

Kindle E-Books on the Cheap: A Weekly Selection (16 Mar 2010)

Once you've purchased an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, the wonderful world of public domain, Creative Commons and free e-book promotions opens up to you. This regular Kindle Reader feature points you to a few of the most interesting new free (or very cheap) e-books available for download from the web.

Free selections for this week include a history of e-books from 1971 to the present, a Regency novel whose hero bears the unlikely name of Barnabas Barty, science fiction by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Andre Norton, a memoir that inspired a popular Claudette Colbert/Fred MacMurray film back in the '40s, a Damon Runyon Omnibus, and a detective story involving a mysterious Egyptian cat statue.

A Short History of EBooks, by Marie Lebert. NONFICTION. Download site: Manybooks. Format: .azw for Kindle. Price: Free.
"A short history of ebooks - also called digital books - from the first ebook in 1971 until now, with Project Gutenberg, Amazon, Adobe, Mobipocket, Google Books, the Internet Archive, and many others. This book is based on thousands of hours of web surfing and 100 interviews conducted worldwide." - Manybooks.

The Amateur Gentleman, by Jeffery Farnol. ADVENTURE. Download site: MobileRead. Format: .prc for Kindle. Price: Free.
"The Amateur Gentleman is an early novel by the popular author of Regency period swashbucklers, Jeffrey Farnol, published in 1913. The novel was made into a film in 1936 with Douglas Fairbanks Junior starring as the protagonist, Barnabas Barty. The format of the novel is essentially that of a bildungsroman. It tells the story of the Barnabas Barty, the son of John Barty, the former champion boxer of England and landlord of a pub in Kent. At the start of the tale Barnabas comes fortuitously into the possession of a vast fortune - £700,000, an astronomical amount by Regency standards - and determines to use this fortune to become a gentleman." - Wikipedia.

Youth, by Isaac Asimov. SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY. Download site: MobileRead. Format: .prc for Kindle. Price: Free.
Red and Slim found the two strange little animals the morning after they heard the thunder sounds. They knew that they could never show their new pets to their parents.

The Eyes Have It, by Philip K. Dick. SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY. Download site: Manybooks. Format: .azw for Kindle. Price: Free.
Excerpt: "It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven't done anything about it; I can't think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses."

Galactic Derelict, by Andre Norton. SCIENCE FICTION. Download site: Feedbooks. Format: Mobipocket/Kindle.
"Time-travel for archaeologists was a well-guarded secret; but when the remains of an interstellar spaceship are uncovered along with the usual fossils, the time agents must call on a modern Apache Indian, Travis Fox, to guide them in the ways of his ancestors in their trip to the past. But the explorers become trapped in space as well as time, on a mad journey in an automatic starship; not even Travis Fox can tell whether any of them will ever see Earth again." - www.iblist.com.

The Egg and I, by Betty McDonald. HUMOR. Download site: MobileRead. Format: .prc for Kindle. Price: Free.
An amusing memoir recounting the author's experience as a newly-wed working on a chicken farm in Washington State. It was a huge bestseller at the time and in 1943 it was made into a popular movie starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray.

A Damon Runyon Omnibus. SHORT STORIES. Download site: MobileRead. Format: .prc for Kindle. Price: Free.
"This collection of 41 short stories was compiled by forum member, Ralph Sir Edward, who has added a short Introduction and a Glossary, which he has generously put into the public domain. RSE has also done most of the proofreading. I’ve done the layout, formatting, and a cursory proofing; also a cover." - Patricia at MobileRead.
"[Runyon] was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. ... He spun humorous tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by 'square' names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as 'Nathan Detroit,' 'Big Jule,' 'Harry the Horse,' 'Good Time Charley,' 'Dave the Dude,' or 'The Seldom Seen Kid.' Runyon wrote these stories in a distinctive vernacular style: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions." - Wikipedia.

The Egyptian Cat Mystery, by John Blaine. YOUNG ADULT MYSTERY. Download site: Manybooks. Format: .azw for Kindle. Price: Free.
In Chicago, a man speaks into the tele­phone: "The cat is ready!" With these four words a chain of harrowing events is set into motion which involves Rick Brant and his pal Don Scott in ten days of danger, intrigue, and suspense. Simultaneously, on Spindrift Island off the New Jersey coast. Rick and Scotty ac­cept the well-meant invitation from Dr. Parnell Winston, of the Spindrift Scientific Foundation stall, to join him on an assignment in Egypt to investigate mysterious signals from a radio telescope recently con­structed by the Egyptian Astronomical Society. And when an affable merchant asks Rick and Scotty to deliver a small statue of a stylized Egyptian cat to a bazaar in Cairo, the boys agree, never dreaming that the harmless-looking model will place them di­rectly between two ruthless adversaries

Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (14 Mar 10)

Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and open their pocketbooks. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.

ON ABC'S GOOD MORNING AMERICA (11 MAR 10):
Culture is Our Weapon: Making Music and Changing Lives in Rio de Janeiro, by Patrick Neate and Damian Platt. Preface by Caetano Veloso. Penguin. Print Length: 224 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"At a time when interest in Brazilian culture has reached an all-time high, and the stories of one person's ability to improve the lives of others has captured so many hearts, this unique book takes readers to the frontlines of a battle raging over control of the nation's poorest areas. Culture Is Our Weapon tells the story of Grupo Cultural AfroReggae, a Rio-based organization employing music and an appreciation for black culture to inspire residents of the favelas, or shantytowns, to resist the drugs that are ruining their neighborhoods. ...an inspiring look at an artistic explosion and the best and worst of Brazilian society." - Amazon.

ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (15 MAR 10):
The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couple's Therapy Group, by Laurie Abraham. Touchstone. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"For more than a year, journalist Laurie Abraham sat in with five troubled couples as they underwent the searing process of group marriage therapy. Can Leigh and Aaron find the intimacy their marriage lacks; will Bella and Joe resolve the imbalance of power that threatens to topple their marriage; are Sue Ellen and Mark as ideal as they seem; what happened to Rachael that Michael cannot acknowledge; and do Marie and Clem, with the help of therapist Judith Coché, come back from the brink of divorce? With the dexterity of a novelist, Abraham recounts the travails, triumphs, and reversals that beset the five couples. At times wrenching, at times inspiring, the sessions bring out the long-hidden resentments, misunderstandings, unmet desires, and unspoken needs that bedevil any imperiled couple. At the same time, these encounters provide road maps to reconciliation and revival that can be used by anyone in a relationship. Along the way, the author draws on her explorations of literature and Freudian theory, modern science, and today’s cutting-edge research to decode the patterns and habits that suggest whether a troubled marriage will survive or die." - Amazon.

ON IMUS IN THE MORNING (16 MAR 10):
Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James & The Shondells, by Tommy James. Scribner. Print Length: 240 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Everyone knows the hits - Mony Mony, I Think We're Alone Now, Crimson and Clover, Crystal Blue Persuasion. They are nuggets of rock and pop history. However, few know the unlikely story of how these hits came to be. Tommy James had been performing locally, in Michigan, in rock bands since the age of 12. Prompted to record a few songs by a local DJ in 1964, Tommy chose an obscurity titled 'Hanky Panky,' which became a minor local hit that came and went. Then, in 1966, the record was re-discovered by a Pittsburgh DJ... Soon, every record mogul in New York was pursuing Tommy and the band. And then an even odder thing happened: every offer but one disappeared, and James found himself in the office of Morris Levy at Roulette Records, where he was handed a pen and ominously promised 'one helluva ride.' Morris Levy, the legendary 'godfather' of the music business, needed a hit and 'Hanky Panky' would be his. The song went to #1; James went on to do much more; and Levy continued to reign. Me, the Mob, and the Music tells the intimate story of the complex and sometimes terrifying relationship between the bright-eyed, sweet-faced blonde musician from the heartland and the big, bombastic, brutal bully from the Bronx, who hustled, cheated, and swindled his way to the top of the music industry." - books.simonandschuster.com.

ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (16 MAR 10):
Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies, by David Albright. Free Press. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $14.85. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"With the revelation of Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facilities, North Korea’s brazen testing of missiles and nuclear weapons, and nuclear-endowed Pakistan’s descent into instability, the urgency of the nuclear proliferation problem has never been greater. Based on his extensive experience in tracking the illicit nuclear trade as one of the world’s foremost proliferation experts, in Peddling Peril David Albright offers a harrowing narrative of the frighteningly large cracks through which nuclear weapons traffickers - such as Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan - continue to slip. Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea all use state-sponsored smuggling networks that easily bypass export regulations and avoid detection. Albright illuminates how these networks have learned many ways to trick suppliers across the globe, including many in the United States, into selling them vital parts, and why, despite the fact that, since 2007, several dozen companies have been indicted - with some pleading guilty - for suspicion of participating in illicit trade, very few prosecutions have been achieved." - books.simonandschuster.com.

New in Popular Science for the Kindle (12 Mar 10)

"It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young." - Konrad Lorenz.

Scientists read PDFs, we're told, but those of us who read for pleasure like to dip into science nonfiction now and then to keep up with what is happening in a world scientists are still uncovering. New on the Kindle popular science shelves this month:

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. Broadway. Print length: 560 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (783 reviews). First published in 2003. Kindle edition released 2010. $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey..." - Amazon.
Something About the Author: Bill Bryson is the bestselling author of a number of humorous books on travel, language and science.

Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains one of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries, by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Berkley. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In 1918, a world war was raging, and a lethal strain of influenza was circling the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it would spread across the world, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. The symptoms could include not only unending sleep but dangerous insomnia, facial tics, catatonia, Parkinson's, and even violent insanity. Then, in 1927, it would disappear as suddenly as it had arrived-or so the doctors at first thought. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and insane asylums as they try to solve this worldwide epidemic." - Amazon.
Something About the Author: Molly Caldwell Crosby holds an MFA in nonfiction and science writing from John Hopkins University and previously worked for National Geographic magazine. She is also the author of a The American Plague, a history of yellow fever.

The Essential Engineer, by Henry Petroski. Knopf. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $14.82. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world’s most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns. Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energy - among them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanol - explaining the benefits and risks of each. What’s needed is not so much invention as engineering. The Essential Engineer...sets out a course for putting ideas into action." - Amazon.
Something About the Author: Henry Petroski, the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University, is the author of more than a dozen previous books including The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance and To Engineer Is Human.

The Edge of Physics, by Anil Ananthaswamy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Print length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (30 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Despite 20th-century physics' revelations, from relativity and quantum mechanics to the physics of the atom's nucleus and the life cycles of stars, ninety-odd percent of the universe is a complete mystery, says a scientist quoted by Ananthaswamy, a consulting editor for New Scientist. Dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity: these are the topics that keep physicists awake at night, requiring bigger, more massive, more extreme experiments to test theories and uncover clues. The author takes readers behind the scenes of these experiments in some of the most inhospitable places in the world, leading the tour with wit and an eye for compelling detail. - Publishers Weekly.
"Part history lesson, part travel log, part adventure story, The Edge of Physics is a wonder-steeped page-turner." -seedmagazine.com/
Something About the Author: Anil Ananthaswamy is a consulting editor for the New Scientist in London.

The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ Is Wrong, by David Shenk. Knopf Group E-Books. Print length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $14.82. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Integrating cutting-edge research from a wide swath of disciplines - cognitive science, genetics, biology, child development - Shenk offers a highly optimistic new view of human potential. The problem isn't our inadequate genetic assets, but our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have. IQ testing and widespread acceptance of 'innate' abilities have created an unnecessarily pessimistic view of humanity - and fostered much misdirected public policy, especially in education. The truth is much more exciting. Genes are not a “blueprint” that bless some with greatness and doom most of us to mediocrity or worse. Rather our individual destinies are a product of the complex interplay between genes and outside stimuli - a dynamic that we, as people and as parents, can influence." - Amazon.
Something About the Author: David Shenk is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com and has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper’s, The New Yorker, NPR, and PBS. He has written five books, the most recent of which is a history of Chess entitled The Immortal Game.

The Language of Life, by Francis S. Collins. HarperCollins. Print length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A medical revolution is upon us and bestselling author Collins..., director of the National Institutes of Health, does a fabulous job of explaining its dimensions. Our knowledge of the genetic basis for disease has increased exponentially in recent years, and we are now able to understand and treat diseases at the molecular level with personalized medicine - care based on an individual's genetic makeup. Collins presents cutting-edge science for lay readers who want to take control of their medical lives. In an enjoyable form, he discusses cancer, obesity, aging, racial differences, and a host of other concerns. ... By using case studies throughout, he does a superb job of humanizing a complex scientific and medical subject." - Publishers Weekly.
Something About the Author: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is one of the world's leading geneticists. He is the former director of the National human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of health, where he led the successful international effort to complete the human Genome Project.

An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World, by Anders Halverson. Yale University Press. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $14.30. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Anders Halverson provides an exhaustively researched and grippingly rendered account of the rainbow trout and why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial freshwater fish in the United States. Discovered in the remote waters of northern California, rainbow trout have been artificially propagated and distributed for more than 130 years by government officials eager to present Americans with an opportunity to get back to nature by going fishing. Proudly dubbed 'an entirely synthetic fish' by fisheries managers, the rainbow trout has been introduced into every state and province in the United States and Canada and to every continent except Antarctica, often with devastating effects on the native fauna. Halverson examines the paradoxes and reveals a range of characters, from nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. Ultimately, the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship with the natural world - how it has changed and how it startlingly has not." - Amazon.
Something About the Author:
Anders Halverson is a research associate at the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West. He has a Ph.D. in aquatic ecology from Yale University.

Animal Factory, by David Kirby. Publisher. Print length: 512 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $14.84. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Swine flu. Bird flu. Unusual concentrations of cancer and other diseases. Massive fish kills from flesh-eating parasites. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly E-coli bacterial contamination. Recent public health crises raise urgent questions about how our animal-derived food is raised and brought to market. In Animal Factory, bestselling investigative journalist David Kirby exposes the powerful business and political interests behind large-scale factory farms, and tracks the far-reaching fallout that contaminates our air, land, water, and food. ...Kirby follows three families and communities whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighboring animal farms." - Amazon.
Something About the Author: David Kirby is the author of Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism.


moar funny pictures

The Kindle Reads Mysteries with an International Flavor

Reading a good mystery novel set in another country can be pleasurable on several levels. You grapple with the whodunit aspect and, while doing so, you absorb something of the unique flavor - the language, sights, history and politics - of the country and perhaps a substrata of society that you would never glimpse as a tourist. Here is a small selection of crime/thriller mysteries to whet your appetite for this fascinating mystery fiction sub-genre.

BOTSWANA

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander Mccall Smith. This is book 1 of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Book 11(The Double Comfort Safari Club) is scheduled for publication next month. Anchor. Print length: 272 p. Kindle edition $1.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
The other titles in this series are equally enchanting. They are Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, Blue Shoes and Happiness, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, The Miracle at Speedy Motors and Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.
"This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to 'help people with problems in their lives.' Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors." - paperback edition, inside flap.

BRAZIL

Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage. Soho Crime. Print length: 304 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas do Pontal, where landless peasants are confronting the owners of vast estates, the bishop arrives by helicopter to consecrate a new church and is assassinated. Mario Silva, chief inspector for criminal matters of the federal police of Brazil, is dispatched to the interior to find the killer. The pope himself has called Brazil’s president; the pressure is on Silva to perform. Assisted by his nephew, Hector Costa, also a federal policeman, Silva must battle the state police and a corrupt judiciary as well as criminals who prey on street kids, the warring factions of the Landless League, the big landowners, and the church itself, in order to solve the initial murder and several brutal killings that follow...Here is a Brazil that tourists never encounter." - Amazon.

CHINA

Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong. Soho Crime. Print length: 464 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Set a decade ago in Shanghai, this political mystery offers a peek into the tightly sealed, often crooked world of post-Tiananmen Square China. Chen Cao, a poet and T.S. Eliot translator bureaucratically assigned to be chief inspector, has to investigate the murder of Guan Hongying, a young woman celebrated as a National Model Worker, but who kept her personal life strictly and mysteriously confidential. Chen and his comrade, Detective Yu, take turns interviewing Guan's neighbors and co-workers, but it seems most of them either know nothing or are afraid to talk openly about a deceased, highly regarded public figure. Maybe they shouldn't be so uneasy, some characters reason; after all, these are 'modern times' and socialist China is taking great leaps toward free speech...Tiptoeing around touchy politics and using investigative tactics bordering on blackmail, Chen slowly pieces together the motives behind the crime." - Publishers Weekly.

FRANCE

Murder in the Marais by Cara Black. Soho Press. Print length: 329 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
This is the first of ten volumes in Black's Aimee Leduc Investigations series.
"Although set in Paris in the early 1990s, Black's new series start harks back to World War II crimes. Private investigator Aimee Leduc becomes involved when she discovers the body of an elderly Jewish woman whose forehead has been inscribed with a swastika. With the arrival of a German trade delegation, meanwhile, the existence of a powerful covert group comprising former SS officers becomes clear. Aimee's subsequent investigation exposes the connection between a war-time romance gone wrong and the modern-day murder. Literate prose, intricate plotting, and multifaceted and unusual characters..." - Library Journal.

ITALY

The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri. Penguin. Print length: 352 p. Kindle edition $6.39. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic take on Sicilian life. Montalbano's latest case begins with a mysterious têtê à têtê with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, the inspector finds two young lovers, dead for fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-sized terra-cotta dog. Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takes him on a journey through Sicily's past and into one family's darkest secrets. With sly wit and a keen understanding of human nature, Montalbano is a detective whose earthiness, compassion, and imagination make him totally irresistable." - Amazon.

Blood Rain: An Aurelio Zen Mystery by Michael Dibdin. Vintage. Print length: 288 p. Kindle edition $9.65. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Despite his best efforts to please everyone and keep out of trouble, the veteran Italian Criminalpol officer Aurelio Zen has made more enemies than friends over the years. Now it's payoff time. After his last case, amid the gentle hills and lush vineyards of Piedmont, Zen finally receives the order he has been dreading all his professional life: his next posting is to Sicily, heart of the Mafia's power. The gruesome discovery of an unidentified, decomposed corpse sealed in a railway wagon on a deserted part of the island marks the beginning of Zen's most difficult and dangerous case. And indeed, it soon turns out that he will need all his cunning and skill to survive..." - Amazon.

Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon. Grove Press. Print length: 320 p. Kindle edition $8.00. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For Commissario Guido Brunetti it begins with an early morning phone call. A sudden act of vandalism has just been committed in the chill Venetian dawn. But Brunetti soon discovers that the perpetrator is no petty criminal, for the culprit at the scene is none other than Paola Brunetti, his wife." - Amazon.

LAOS

The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. E-Reads. Print length: 288 p. Kindle edition $3.21. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Dr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. And he doesn't mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side. With the help of his newly-appointed secretary, the ambitious and shrewd Dtui, and Mr. Geung, the Down-Syndrome-afflicted morgue assistant, Dr. Paiboun performs autopsies and begins asking questions to solve the mysteries relating to the death of the wife of a government official and of the unidentified body fished out of the river who didn't drown but was tortured with electricity. As it turns out, all is not peaceful and calm in the new Communist paradise of Laos." - Amazon.

THE MIDDLE EAST

Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur. HarperCollins. Print length: 416 p. Kindle edition $9.59. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Tirzah Rubin, set designer for Israeli television, is found dead under a fallen marble pillar. Michael Ohayon, the quiet, introspective Chief Superintendent of the Israeli police, arrives on the scene to begin an investigation of what first appears to be an accident and soon becomes a crime. When the killing is followed by a second and then a third death at the studio, Ohayon and his staff delve further into the deeply intertwined lives of the victims and the other major players in this closely knit television family. Was the murderer's motive love, politics, or something else? The story is rich in the culture of modern-day Israel and gives a vivid depiction of the behind-the-scenes drama of a television station, including a masterfully written scene depicting the hour before airtime..." - Ellen Bell for School Library Journal.

The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees. Soho Crime. Print length: 272 p. Kindle edition $9.86. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Author Matt Beynon Rees is a former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine. This is the first book in his Omar Yussef mystery series. It was published in the UK as The Bethlehem Murders.
"For decades, Omar Yussef has taught history to the children of Bethlehem. When a favorite former pupil, George Saba, is arrested for collaborating with the Israelis in the killing of a Palestinian guerrilla, Omar is convinced that he has been framed. With George facing imminent execution Omar sets out to prove his innocence. His classroom is bombed and members of his family are threatened. But with no one else willing to stand up for the truth, it’s up to Omar to act, even as bloodshed and heartbreak surround him." - www.themanoftwistsandturns.com.

NORTH KOREA

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church. Minotaur Books. Print length: 288 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Inspector O, a North Korean state police officer, is given an unusual assignment: go to a certain part of a certain road at dawn and photograph a certain vehicle. Little does he suspect that this seemingly inconsequential task will escalate into a case that will lead him to risk his job, and his life. The (pseudonymous) author, a veteran intelligence officer, has intimate knowledge of Asian life and politics, and it shows: he gives the North Korea setting a feeling of palpable reality, depicting the nature of daily life under a totalitarian government not just with broad sociopolitical descriptions but also with specific everyday details... The writing is superb, too, well above the level usually associated with a first novel, richly layered and visually evocative." - David Pitt for Booklist.

RUSSIA

Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin. Random House. Print length: 288 p. Kindle edition $9.65. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Set in the late 19th century, this charming, highly unusual whodunit from Russian author Akunin (the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili) introduces Sister Pelagia, a young nun in a remote Russian province far removed from the intrigue of the czarist government. Pelagia's bishop, who has discreetly and successfully employed her deductive skills before, calls on her when an uncommon white bulldog belonging to his aunt is poisoned. After the nun's arrival on the scene, the two remaining dogs in the breeding line turn up dead, leading Pelagia to suspect the killings are actually an indirect attempt to murder their wealthy mistress, whose devotion to the animals is legendary. Akunin's gently humorous omniscient narrative voice distinguishes this novel from other historical mysteries." - Publishers Weekly.

SCANDINAVIA

The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Eriksson. Translated by Ebba Segerberg. Minotaur Books. Print length: 320 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When the badly mutilated body of John Harald Jonsson - a working-class family man and an expert on the tropical fish known as cichlids - is found in the snow in the provincial Swedish town of Libro, homicide detective Ola Haver and his colleague, Ann Lindell, quickly identify a suspect, an embittered sociopath. The brilliance of Eriksson's richly detailed crime novel...lies in its psychological and even sociological insights. Eriksson not only reveals a deep, sympathetic understanding for his large cast of characters but also evokes a pervasive sense of despair, reminiscent of Henning Mankell's, in the face of the violent, amoral nature of contemporary society and the challenges it places on the police. The title derives from the common name of one of Jonsson's beloved cichlids, and the aquarium is a neat metaphor for the dynamics of smalltown life..." - Publishers Weekly.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Vintage. Print length: 480 p. Kindle edition $5.50. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel. Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Vintage. Print length: 320 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"A woman robs a bank. A corpse is found shot through the heart in a room locked from within - no firearm in sight. To the eerily intuitive Inspector Martin Beck, these seemingly disparate cases are facets of the same puzzle, and solving it is of vital importance. Only by finding our what happened in the locked room can Beck - haunted by a near-fatal bullet wound and the demise of a soulless marriage - escape from an airtight prison of his own. From its classic premise, The Locked Room accelerates into an engrossing novel of the mind. Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, and set against the backdrop of the inspired deductions and monstrous errors of Martin Beck and the Stockholm Homicide Squad, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance and gravity of real life." - Amazon.

SPAIN

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel. Soho Crime. Print length: 280 p. Kindle edition $9.60. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Madrid 1938. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist...It is at this moment, when the Republicans have surrendered, and the Guardia Civil has begun to impose order in the ruins of Madrid, that Tejada finds the body of his best friend, a hero of the siege of Toledo, shot to death on a street named Amor de Dios. Naturally, a Red is suspected. And it is easy for Tejada to assume that the woman wearing a red scarf, caught kneeling over the body, is the killer. But when his doubts are aroused, he cannot help seeking justice." - Amazon.

THAILAND

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. Vintage. Print length: 336 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Bangkok cop Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the only honest officer in his district, yet he reveres his gangster police colonel. He stays out of the city's sex trade but indulges in meth. He's the son of a crafty whore and an American GI, but his mother's hand-picked clients gave him a classical education. While his personality puzzles Westerners - Sonchai also sees the past incarnations of people he meets - these contradictory traits are quite acceptable to his fellow Thais. The more readers get to know Sonchai, the more appealing he'll become. A Buddhist, he nonetheless promises to kill those responsible for the death of his partner, Pichai. Because Pichai was bitten by a cobra while tracking a Marine suspected of jade smuggling, Sonchai's vow piques the interest of U.S. officials. Once they team him with a feisty FBI agent, the investigation takes a series of wonderfully bizarre turns." - Booklist.

TIBET

The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison. Minotaur Books. Print length: 416 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. Reader alert: The paperback edition of this book is less expensive than the Kindle version.
"Not many political thrillers are set in Tibet, and few can match the power and poetry of this debut novel by journalist Eliot Pattison. At the heart of the story is a forced labor camp where the Chinese imprison Buddhist monks and other local dissidents they've swept up since taking over Tibet. The prison also holds a few special Chinese prisoners--including Shan Tao Yun. This middle-aged man was once the inspector general of the Ministry of Economy in Beijing, specializing in fraud cases. For reasons even he doesn't understand, he has been imprisoned and brutalized, and now he spends his days breaking rocks high in the Himalayas on a road crew called the People's 404th Construction Brigade. Shan manages to survive under these harsh conditions thanks to the spiritual guidance of his fellow prisoners, but this precarious balance is threatened by the discovery of the headless body of a local Chinese official near a road construction site. The dead man's head soon turns up in a famous shrine - a cave that contains the skulls of heroic monks. The shrewd Red Army colonel in charge of the district asks Shan to conduct an investigation: offers of better food and conditions combined with threats against his monk friends convinces him to take on the task. Colonel Tan wants a fast resolution that incriminates a mute, passive monk found near the cave, but Shan is certain that the man isn't guilty..." - Amazon.