In stores this week:
 by
Martin Cruz Smith
A passenger train hurtling through the night.
An unwed teenage mother headed to Moscow to seek a new life.
A cruel-hearted soldier looking furtively, forcibly, for sex.
An infant disappearing without a trace.
So begins Martin Cruz Smith's masterful Three Stations, a suspenseful,
intricately constructed novel featuring Investigator Arkady Renko. For the
last three decades, beginning with the trailblazing Gorky Park, Renko (and
Smith) have captivated readers with detective tales set in Russia.
Renko is the ironic, brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to
heinous crimes when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have
occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not only
wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well. In Three Stations,
Renko's skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been
technically suspended from the prosecutor's office for once again turning up
unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant
young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter
of Moscow's main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to
everyone-except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some
inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia's premier charity
ball, the billionaires' Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes
interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow's rich and famous, many of whom are
clinging to their cash in the face of Putin's crackdown on the very
oligarchs who placed him in power.
In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and haunting vision of an
emergent Russia's secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a
bureaucracy still paralyzed by power and fear.
 The
Last Lie by Stephen White
"New York Times" bestselling author Stephen White returns to his beloved
Alan Gregory series with a taut, ripped-from-the-headlines crime story.
Stephen White's most recent bestseller, The Siege, featured his series
character Sam Purdy in a relentlessly paced stand-alone thriller that
critics hailed as "brilliantly conceived and executed" ("Publishers Weekly")
and "the best and most interesting terrorism thriller I've seen." ("The
Washington Post") Now, in The Last Lie, White returns to his Alan Gregory
series roots with the popular characters and Boulder setting that first
launched him onto the bestseller lists and attracted legions of fiercely
loyal fans.
Shortly after Alan and Lauren welcome their affluent new neighbors-a legal
legend in women's rights law and his beautiful wife-the couple hosts a
housewarming party that ends in quiet disaster. One of their guests, a young
widow, elects to spend the night after indulging in too much wine, only to
wake the next morning with no memory beyond getting ready for bed. Was she
drugged? Raped? Lauren, a deputy district attorney, and detective Sam Purdy
are both privy to facts they can't share with Alan, but Alan soon discovers
that he has a most unusual perspective into what truly happened after the
housewarming party. Before Alan can discover all the pieces to the puzzle,
an important witness to the events is murdered. Alan fears that other
witnesses-people he loves-will be next.
Smart, topical, and deftly plotted, The Last Lie delivers the pulse-pounding
return of one of contemporary fiction's most enduring heroes.
See all new releases this
week...
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S
NEST, by Stieg Larsson.
(Knopf, $27.95.) The third
volume of a trilogy about a Swedish hacker and a journalist.
THE RED QUEEN,
by Philippa Gregory.
(Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $25.99.)
More intrigue during the War of the Roses, centered on Margaret
Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII; by the author of “The Other
Boleyn Girl.”
THE HELP,
by Kathryn Stockett.
(Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95.)
A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi.
STAR ISLAND,
by Carl Hiaasen.
(Knopf, $26.95.) A paparazzo attempting
to kidnap a drug-addled pop star grabs her stunt double by mistake.
THE REMBRANDT AFFAIR,
by Daniel Silva.
(Putnam, $26.95.) The art restorer and
assassin Gabriel Allon discovers that there are deadly secrets
behind a stolen painting.
FLY AWAY HOME,
by Jennifer Weiner.
(Atria, $26.99.) A senator’s
extramarital affair affects his wife and daughters.
PRIVATE,
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
(Little, Brown, $27.99.) The
head of an investigation company pursues the murderer of his best
friend’s wife.
 The
Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry
The true story of the murderesses who became media sensations and
inspired the musical "Chicago" Chicago, 1924.
There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second
City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland
capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special -
worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be
playwright and a "girl reporter" for the "Chicago Tribune,” the
city's "hanging paper." Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about
clubs, cooking and clothes, but the intrepid Miss Watkins, a
minister's daughter from a small town, zeroed in on murderers
instead. Looking for subjects to turn into a play, she would make
"Stylish Belva" Gaertner and "Beautiful Beulah" Annan -
both of whom had brazenly shot down their lovers - the talk of the
town.
In the tradition of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City and
Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, Douglas Perry vividly
captures Jazz Age Chicago and the sensationalized circus atmosphere
that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal. Fueled by
rich period detail and enlivened by a cast of characters who seemed
destined for the stage, The Girls of Murder City is crackling social
history that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the
age and its sober repercussions.
 The
Devil in The White City by Erik Larson
Purchase - secure Amazon
Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to
give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel. . . . A dynamic,
enveloping book. . . . It doesn't hurt that this truth is stranger than
fiction." --The New York Times
This book came to me last year, it had been highly
recommended by a few people who love books. I was at a conference and
an Exec at Random House spoke about the fact that it was his favorite book
of all time. Devil in The White City is fascinating, it is two stories
in one, the first an account of a serial killer living and killing in the
vicinity of the Chicago Worlds Fair, the second and for me the most
interesting the story of how the 1893 worlds fair came about and its impact
on North American culture and construction. This is a book that is
hard to put down and reads like fiction but more riveting because its not.
If you pay close attention, you also get a clue as to why Disneyland ever
came to be many years later. - Dagny
more....re
Our New List - Top 100
favourite places to read a great book:
here
You now have more titles to choose from when deciding to
read great books
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Atlas Shrugged
Pillars Of The Earth
The Great Gatsby
The Caine Mutiny
The Time Travelers Wife
The Curious Incident... dog Night-Time
Water for Elephants
Spanish Fly
Valley of the Dolls
The Navigator of New York
 The
Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep
South
by Robert W Straley, Robin Gaby Fisher, and
Michael O'McCarthy
A story that garnered national attention, this is the harrowing tale
of two men who suffered abuses at a reform school in Florida in the
1950s and 60s, and who banded together fifty years later to confront
their attackers.
Michael O'McCarthy and Robert W. Straley were teens when they were
termed "incorrigible youth" by authorities and ordered to attend the
Florida School for Boys. They discovered in Marianna, the "City of
Southern Charm," an immaculately groomed campus that looked more
like an idyllic university than a reform school. But hidden behind
the gates of the Florida School for Boys was a hell unlike any they
could have imagined. The school's guards and administrators acted as
their jailers and tormentors. The boys allegedly bore witness to
assault, rape, and possibly even murder.
For fifty years, both men---and countless others like them---carried
their torment in silence. But a series of unlikely events brought
O'McCarthy, now a successful rights activist, and Straley together,
and they became determined to expose the Florida School for Boys for
what they believed it to be: a youth prison with a century-long
history of abuse. They embarked upon a campaign that would change
their lives and inspire others.
Robin Gaby Fisher, a Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist and author
of the New York Times bestselling After the Fire, collaborates with
Straley and O'McCarthy to offer a riveting account of their
harrowing ordeal. The book goes beyond the story of the two men to
expose the truth about a century-old institution and a town that
adopted a Nuremberg-like code of secrecy and a government that
failed to address its own wrongdoing. What emerges is a tale of
strength, resolve, and vindication in the face of the kinds of
terror few can imagine.
 Germs
Gone Wild by Kenneth King
Battling a new generation of corporate giants and uncovering threats
right in our own backyard, Kenneth King's Germs Gone Wild reveals
the massive expansion of America's bio-defense research labs and the
culture of deception surrounding hundreds of facilities that have
opened since 9/11.
King experienced the menace of bio-defense research firsthand when
local government and business leaders tried to lure a new facility
to his hometown in Kentucky. Researching the safety claims, he not
only found many of them to be completely false, but was also
horrified by the lack of oversight and the recklessness with which
these labs genetically modified pathogens like smallpox, Ebola, and
influenza without a care for what happened to the public if there
was ever a "leak." And yet the greed that drove the development of
these labs has effectively counteracted any cautionary checks by the
government and universities. All have been seduced by the economic
gains and corporate stipends that come with compliance and turning a
blind eye.
But now, the reality of these labs and the germs they manipulate
will finally be brought to light, as King examines the controversies
surrounding plants from Maryland to Boston and Utah, to the
Department of Homeland Security's dubious National
Bio-and-Agro-Facility (NBAF) project, and the precautions-or lack
thereof-being taken to protect us all from a deadly pandemic.
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