Book Talk

March 2010 update

In February I listed a lot of the new self-improvement books the library had received. Here is the antidote to all that, Live a Little by Doctors Susan M. Love and Alice D. Domar.  Worrying about our health is unhealthy. Break the rules! Skip that morning run. And if you’re tired of your morally righteous diet - eat a brownie. Perfect health is a myth so we should aim for healthy enough.

Writer Roger Rosenblatt’s daughter, physician, and mother of two young children, died unexpectedly from an asymptomatic heart condition. Making Toast is the story of learning to deal with the unthinkable. He and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and granddaughters to survive and heal after Amy’s death.

In early twentieth century New York, poisoning was the way to a perfect murder. The coroner’s office had little to do with science. That changed in 1918 with the appointment of Charles Norris. With toxicologist Alexander Gettler, not only crimes were solved, but the new science made possible the awareness of environmental toxins.  The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum, explores case after startling case.

“Let us reward our female offspring.” This clue to the importance of his daughters was left by Genghis Kahn. The Queens turned their father’s military victories into an empire as they established an economic system, and fostered education, religion and trade. Expunged from the historical record, rumors still escaped to the western world. Jack Weatherford, author of The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, has received the Order of the Polar Star for his service to the Mongol Nation.

Peter Hessler spent seven years diving through largely rural parts of China to see how roads and cars were changing the Chinese landscape. In Country Driving: a Journey through China from Farm to Factory, he travels along the Great Wall observing farming areas vacated as young people head to industrialized areas, the mountains north of Beijing turn into tourist meccas, and an urban area hoping to become an industrial center.

Fiction

Many are mourning the death of Robert B Parker. The author of more than fifty books, his loss will be felt. His newest is Split Image. The body of an associate of tough guy Reggie Galen is found stuffed in a trunk. When the next body is that of a high ranking crime boss, Jesse Stone knows he has a serious problem.  The bad news is that there is only one more Parker book to be published!

Private investigator Lola Cruz returns home to find her relatives gathered for a funeral…hers. The body of a murdered woman had been found carrying her ID. Who was the murderer really after-Lola or the dead woman? In between romantic entanglements, salsa dancing and helping at her parent’s restaurant, Lola looks for the killer in Hasta la Vista, Lola! By Misa Ramirez.

James Thompson was born in Kentucky but has lived in Finland for the past decade. He is in the right place to enjoy the surge of interest in mysteries coming to us from that area. Read Steig Larsson? In Snow Angels, Inspector Kari Vaara, of Kaamos, Lapland investigates the murder of a Somali immigrant. Whether a hate crime or a sex crime, he struggles to keep the murder from turning onto an explosive national situation.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian