FICTION
1. THE APPEAL
by John Grisham
Doubleday
Political and legal intrigue ensue when a Mississippi court decides against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste.
2. 7TH HEAVEN
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Little, Brown
In San Francisco, Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club hunt for an arsonist and a missing teenager.
3. DUMA KEY
by Stephen King
Scribner
A Minnesota contractor moves to Florida to recover from an injury and begins to create paintings with mysterious power.
4. STRANGER IN PARADISE
by Robert B. Parker
Putnam
Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, must protect a hit man's intended victim.
5. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.
6. PLUM LUCKY
by Janet Evanovich
St Martin's
Stephanie's grandmother finds a bag of cash and goes gambling in Atlantic City, pursued by the money's owner.
7. WORLD WITHOUT END
by Ken Follett
Dutton
Love and intrigue in Kingsbridge, the medieval English cathedral town at the center of Follett's Pillars of the Earth.
8. THE SENATOR'S WIFE
by Sue Miller
Knopf
A woman lives with her husband's persistent infidelity.
9. PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
by Geraldine Brooks
Viking
A rare-book expert unlocks the secrets of a medieval manuscript.
10. SIZZLE AND BURN
by Jayne Ann Krentz
Putnam
A member of the Arcane Society, dedicated to paranormal research, helps a woman with psychic powers.
11. WHERE THE HEART LEADS
by Stephanie Laurens
Morrow
With the help of a well-born amateur detective, a society woman in London investigates the disappearance of several orphans in the 15th Cynster novel.
NONFICTION
1. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD
by Michael Pollan
Penguin Press
A manifesto urges us to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
2. AN INCONVENIENT BOOK
by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe
Threshold Editions
Beck's solutions to problems including global warming and political correctness.
3. REAL CHANGE
by Newt Gingrich with Vince Haley and Rick Tyler
Regnery
How to build a better America, from the former speaker of the House.
4. I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!)
by Stephen Colbert et al
Grand Central
The wit and wisdom of the mock pundit of Comedy Central's Colbert Report.
5. TOM CRUISE
by Andrew Morton
St Martin's
An unauthorized biography of the movie star.
6. HOPE'S BOY
by Andrew Bridge
Hyperion
A memoir of a childhood in foster care by an advocate for poor children.
7. LIBERAL FASCISM
by Jonah Goldberg
Doubleday
This "alternative history of American liberalism reveals its roots in, and commonalities with, classical fascism."
8. QUIET STRENGTH
by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker
Tyndale
A memoir by the first black coach to win a Super Bowl (He did it with the Indianapolis Colts last year.)
9. ICEMAN
by Chuck Liddell with Chad Millman
Dutton
A mixed martial artist who competes for the Ultimate Fighting Championship describes his life and his fights.
10. GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS
by Eric Weiner
Twelve
A writer explores to what degree an individual's happiness is intertwined with a shared geography and culture.
11. THE COMMISSION
by Philip Shenon
Twelve
The story behind the Sept. 11 report.
12. BOOM!
by Tom Brokaw
Random House
The retired news anchor assesses the 1960s.
On the final approach to Lanshan Workstation (嵐山工作站), logging trains crossed one last gully over a dramatic double bridge, taking the left line to enter the locomotive shed or the right line to continue straight through, heading deeper into the Central Mountains. Today, hikers have to scramble down a steep slope into this gully and pass underneath the rails, still hanging eerily in the air even after the bridge’s supports collapsed long ago. It is the final — but not the most dangerous — challenge of a tough two-day hike in. Back when logging was still underway, it was a quick,
From censoring “poisonous books” to banning “poisonous languages,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried hard to stamp out anything that might conflict with its agenda during its almost 40 years of martial law. To mark 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the anti-government uprising in 1947, which was violently suppressed, I visited two exhibitions detailing censorship in Taiwan: “Silenced Pages” (禁書時代) at the National 228 Memorial Museum and “Mandarin Monopoly?!” (請說國語) at the National Human Rights Museum. In both cases, the authorities framed their targets as “evils that would threaten social mores, national stability and their anti-communist cause, justifying their actions
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
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