Mystery, Crimes, and Witch Trials

Devil-Devil by Graeme Kent
It's not easy being Ben Kella. As a sergeant in the Soloman Islands Police Force, as well as an aofia, a hereditary spiritual peacekeeper of the Lau people, he is viewed with distrust by both the indigenous islanders and the British colonial authorities. In the past few days he has been cursed by a magic man, stumbled across evidence of a cargo cult uprising, and failed to find an American anthropologist who had been scouring the mountains for a priceless pornographic icon. Then a mission station, Kella discovers an independent and rebellious American nun, Sister Conchita, secretly trying to bury a skeleton.

Three Seconds by Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom
In this dark and gripping novel, Piet Hoffman is the Swedish police's most valuable secret operative. His cover is that of a lieutenant inside the ruthless Polish mafia trying to take over amphetamine distribution within Sweden's prison system. With this, his most dangerous assignment, success will mean a new identity and the freedom to start a new life with his wife and young sons. When a botched drug deal involving Hoffman results in the cold-blooded killing of a police informant, the investigation, assigned to the brilliant but haunted Detective Inspector Ewert Grens, leads to a string of unsolved cases in which key evidence has been withheld under mysterious circumstances.
READALIKE to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Deliverance from Evil by Frances Hill
Salem, Massachusetts, Winter 1692: In a settlement constantly under threat of outside attack, even close neighbors harbor secret grudges. When George Burroughs escapes to Salem after a Native American raid in Maine, he finds himself confronted by uneasy memories and a new love. The community is prepared to battle the hardships of making a life in a new land, but no one suspects that the most dangerous enemy lies within. Close by, in the parsonage of Reverand Samuel Parris, two girls are seated by the fire and play at fortune-telling as snow falls softly outside. What starts as a game sends one of the girls into a hysterical trance, and Salem begins its descent into madness.

Tea, Reality, and Stunts

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family by Tamara Chalabi
For much of the twentieth century, the Chalabis were among the most influential families in Iraq. In the 1920s they were at the forefront of their country's awakening to modernity, and they played an integral part in the establishment of its monarchy. As courtiers, politicians, businessen, rebels, merchants, and scholars, the Chalabis enjoyed vast privilege until the end of the 1950s, when they were forced to flee to the land of exile, myth, and imagination, where their beloved homeland took on the quality of a phantom country. In between came rebellions, foreign interventions, and the transformative development of oil wealth.

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. According to the world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, the reason for this mass exodus to virtual worlds is that video games are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, McGonigal reveals how we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world.

Stuntman! My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life by Hal Needham
"I wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up, was dragged by horses, and along the way broke fifty-six bones, my back twice, punctured a lung, and knocked out a few teeth...I hung upside down by my ankles under a biplane in The Spirit of St. Louis, jumped between galloping horses in Little Big Man, set a world record for a boat stunt in Gator, jumped a rocket-powered pickup truck across a canal for a GM commercial, was the first human to test the car air bag -- and taught John Wayne how to really throw a movie punch."

Love, Revenge, and History

Trespass by Rose Tremain
In a silent valley in southern France stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Aramon, the owner, is so haunted by his violent past that he's become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin while he drowns himself in drink. Meanwhile, his sister Audrun, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life. Into this closed world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London, who has escaped to stay with his sister. When he sets his sights on the Mas, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences are set in motion.

Wanna Get Lucky? by Deborah Coonts
A young woman plunges from a Las Vegas sightseeing helicopter, landing in the pirates' lagoon in front of the Treasure Island Hotel in the middle of the 8:30pm pirate show. Almost everyone writes her off as another Vegas victim. But Lucky O'Toole smells a rat. She's head of Customer Relations at the Babylon, the newest, most opulent megacasino and resort on the Strip, so she's got a lot on her plate...Still, Lucky can't resist turning over a few stones.

Teaching History With Film: Strategies for Secondary Social Studies by Alan S. Marcus
Visit any school in the United States and chances are that you will find at least one of the social studies teachers showing a film about history. Along with the textbook, movies are one of the most prominent teaching aids in the history classroom. Yet, when middle and high school history teachers look for models of the effective use of motion pictures in history classrooms, the cupboard is surprisingly bare. This book provides a fresh, engaging, and clear overview of teaching with film to effectively enhance social studies instruction.

Love, War, and Mystery

Where Serpent's Sleep by C.S. Harris
London, 1812. The slaughter of eight young prostitutes in a house of refuge near Covent Garden leaves only one survivor -- and one witness: Hero Jarvis, reform-minded daughter of the Prince Regent's cousin, Lord Jarvis. When Jarvis quashes any official inquiry that might reveal his daughter's involvement, Hero launches a investigation of her own and turns to Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, for help. Working in uneasy alliance, Hero and Sebastian follow a trail of clues leading from seedy brothels and docksides of London's East End to Mayfair mansions of a noble family with dark secrets of its own to hide.

Love Me If You Dare by Carly Phillips
When hostage negotiator Rafe Mancuso takes a bullet to save Sara Rios, his former partner, his actions make him a bona fide hero -- and New York City's newest most eligible bachelor. Then Rafe admits that Sara is much more than just another woman he's rescued. Suddenly, a firestorm of gossip turns him into exactly what he doesn't want to be: the Bachelor Blog's newest hot topic. His only solution is to leave town and get himself out of the spotlight.. and sexy, jaded Sara out of his mind.

Flirting With Destiny by Sara Hylton
Summer 1914. As the storm clouds gather over Europe, four privileged young women prepare to leave school and embark on adult life. But for Louise, Imogen, Cora, and Miranda, the outbreak of war will change everything, shattering dreams and upsetting their plans for the future. Instead of foreign holidays and glamorous parties, leading to marriage to a suitable young man, they must learn to adjust to a new and very different world.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo
In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Bagdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. This book is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship -- a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war. Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband's hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence.

Wilderness, Paths, and Sports

The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom 1879 - 1960 by Douglas Brinkley
A riveting history of America's most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska -- Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes--from extraction industries.
The Simple Abundance: Following Your Authentic Path to Something More by Sarah Ban Breathnach
Before Simple Abundance became a New York Times bestseller that helps millions of women discover their authentic selves, the author was running workshops that actively guided and inspired others onto the Simple Abundance path. Now Sarah recreates the heart of these workshops on the page, bringing their essence to women everywhere. In twelve chapters, one for every month, here is a whole year of soulcraft. From gratitude to play, from connecting to the sacred to facing your fears, Sarah provides thoughtful exercises, explorations, excursions and other creative, pragmatic, hands-on ways to probe your deepest feelings to reveal your authentic self.

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won, and lost. Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of the games in all sports and why it exists; the surprising truth about the universally accepted axiom that defense wins championships; the subtle biases that umpires exhibit in calling balls and strikes in key situations, and more.

Vonnegut, Toibin, and Newton

While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut
Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideas of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains--until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A cruster newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays--a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer's widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about "the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit." But what will she find out when she goes to meet him in the flesh?

The Empty Family by Colm Toibin
These stories are set in present-day Ireland, 1970s Spain, and nineteenth-century England and are about people linked by love, loneliness, and desire. "Silence" is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, widowed and abandoned by her lover, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. In "Two Women," an eminent Irish set designer, aloof and prickly, takes a job in her homeland, and is forced to confront devastating emotions she has long repressed. "The New Spain" is the story of an intransigent woman who returns home after a decade in exile and shatters the fragile peace her family has forged in the post-Franco world. And in the breathtaking long story, "The Street," Toibin imagins a startling relationship between two Pakistani workers in Barcelona--a taboo affair in a community ruled b obedience and silence.

Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton
Beneath a dying red suit sits the proud and ancient city of Villjamur, capital of a mighty empire that new sits powerless against an encroaching ice age. As throngs of refugees gather outside the city gates, a fierce debate rages within the walls about the fates of these desperate souls. Then tragedy strikes--and the Emperor's eldest daughter, Jamur Rika, is summoned to serve as queen. Joined by her younger sister, Jamur Eir, the queen comes to sympathize with the hardships of the common people, thanks in part to her dashing teacher Randur Estevu, a man who is not what he seems.

Death, Freedom, and Odysseus

Indulgence in Death by J.D. Robb
When a murder disrupts the Irish vacation she is taking with her husband, Roarke, Eve realizes that no place is safe -- not an Irish wood or the streets of the maniac city she calls home. But nothing prepares her for what she discovers upon her return to the cop shop in New York City... A driver for a top-of-the-line limousine service is found dead--shot through the neck with a crossbow. With a method established, but no motive to be found, Eve begins to fear that she has come across that most dangerous of criminals, a thrill killer, but one with a taste for the finer things in life--and death.

The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger
When Lady Duff Gordon, paragon of London society, departs for the hot, dry climate of Egypt to seek relief from her debilitating tuberculosis, her lady's maid, Sally, doesn't hesitate to leave the only world she has known in order to remain at her mistress's side. As Sally gets farther and farther from home, she experiences freedoms she has never known--forgoing corsets and wearing native dress, learning Arabic, and having her first taste of romance. But freedom is a luxury that a lady's maid can ill afford, and when Sally's newfound passion for life causes her to forget what she is entitled to, she is brutally reminded she is a mistress of nothing. Ultimately she must choose her master and a way back home -- or a way to an unknown future.

The Lost Books of Odyssey by Zachary Mason
This is reimagined tale of Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With hypnotic prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that, taken together, open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations.