Book Talk

Mysterious Forces  

With the shortening days and worsening weather, there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book – especially a mystery!

You can always count on Jonathan Kellerman for an absorbing plot. In Bones, an eco-volunteer receives a disturbing phone call claiming something “real dead” is in a protected marsh.  The first reaction is that the call is a prank, but then the body of a young woman is found. And she is just the first. Homicide detective Milo Sturgies calls in psychologist Alex Delaware when he realizes a serial killer is at work.

John Gardner brings back Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Moriarity. He is alive and well and setting up crime syndicates in the United States. Called back to London, he finds his concerns there have been overrun by a rival gang led by Idle Jack. Visit the London underworld as Moriarity fights police and criminal alike.

Even as she takes refuge at her high desert ranch from a particularly violent and dangerous case, Sharon McCone is drawn into a murder investigation. Traces of violence at a deserted resort lead her across Nevada to an isolated ranch. Burn Out by Marcia Muller in a new entry in this popular series.

Good news for fans of David Baldacci’s Camel Club series is the arrival of Divine Justice.  The men who destroyed Oliver Stone’s life are assassinated and the manhunt for Stone begins. Master spy Macklin Hayes doesn’t want Stone found, he wants him dead! The Camel Club members will risk everything to save their friend.

You will be relieved to know that in Heaven there is a Department of Good Intentions. Indeed, Bailey Ruth Raeburn is a member and rather than death hindering her investigative skills it gives her an inside track. And the pastor’s wife sure needs her meddling, errr, help. There’s a dead man on her back porch. Read Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart.

It must be easier to write books with bad news than good, because lots have arrived this month.

We’ll begin with the end. The end of the world, that is. In Death from the Skies: these are the Ways the World will End, astronomer Philip Plait helps sort truth from fiction and rates the doom probabilities. There is an asteroid scheduled to hit earth in 2036. The sun will burn out. Solar flares deplete the ozone layer…

The teaser for the next books reads “The mortgage crisis was only the beginning…”, so this is not for the faint of heart. David M. Smick, who has advised both Republican and Democratic presidents, has written The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. He starts the story in August 2007 when it became evident that the credit market was freezing up, and takes you through cause and effect, and the dangers of our interconnected economies. This could not be more current!

You’ll remember Arthur Laffer as a member of President Reagan’s economic team. He, along with Stephen Moore and Peter J. Tanous, has written The End of Prosperity: how High Taxes will Doom the Economy-if we let it Happen.   Still a supply-sider, he moves his philosophy to our current economic situation.

Even Mother Nature is against us. Fruitless Fall: the Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis by Rowan Jacobsen documents the effects on agriculture by colony collapse disorder. Even our highly industrialized food production relies on the little honeybees for pollination. Last year professional beekeepers found that thirty billion bees had mysteriously died.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian