To understand the present and make an informed judgment about the future, it is vital to read history and Michael B. Oren has gifted us with an extraordinary look at "America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present," the subtitle of his book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, ($35.00, W.W. Norton). Though initially daunting for its length; it is 604 pages not including its notes and index, the history Oren provides moves along at a good pace, revealing how the Middle East has played a role in our nation’s history, going back to the Barbary pirates whose raids on American merchant ships forced the new nation to rid itself of the Articles of Confederacy in order to create a new form of government. What America needed then was a navy to insure its security and subdue the Arab piracy, thus affording free access to the Mediterranean. It got that plus a Constitution that has served us well since then. Oren tells the stories of the many remarkable people, among them missionaries who established schools and hospitals to bring modern civilization to the region and who struggled with a culture whose mentality was trapped in the seventh century. Most interesting, perhaps, is Oren’s dispassionate review of America’s relations with the Middle East since the end of WWII. Attacked by forces of Islamic extremism, the future of our nation is once again in the balance.

I’ve been waiting for a really good book about Ronald Reagan’s presidency and it usually takes at least a decade or more for one to show up because it takes that long to be able to see some of the outcomes of the decisions that were made. John Patrick Diggins has written Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History ($27.90, W.W. Norton) that is just out this month. If you think Reagan was "a man of considerable intelligence and great character whose lifelong passion for personal liberty and individualism drove him to become one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history" then you are going to enjoy this book. Diggins, a Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, serves up a fresh and illuminating reevaluation of Reagan’s presidency and legacy. It is little wonder that we now commonly compare those who followed him to the man himself. Already, his eight years in office are seen as a kind of golden age of Republican and conservative values, but we tend to forget he worked closely and well with a Democrat controlled Congress. This is a wonderful examination of Reagan’s life and the steadfast beliefs he held that guided his years in office.

Increasingly, I believe, Americans are beginning to review the role and the consequences of the environmental movement whose objectives have too often had tragic consequences. In Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health ($25.99, Nelson Current) John Berlau, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, documents how Rachel Carson’s view of pesticides led to the deaths of millions when DDT was banned. (Thirty years later the World Health Organization has called for its use against Malaria.) He points to how the restriction on the use of asbestos contributed to the collapse of the World Trade Center, why carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and how environmentalism impeded the construction of floodgates that could have spared New Orleans the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Step by step, he reveals a radical, anti-human, anti-technology, anti-capitalism agenda that has put at risk protection against disease and the extension of the benefits of modern technology to people around the world.

Are you about to publish a book this year? If so, pick up a copy of From Book to Bestseller: An Insider’s Guide to Publicizing and Marketing your Book! Written by Penny Sensevieri ($29.95/18.95, Morgan James, New York. Also available as an audio book on CD) the author is an expert on how to get noticed among the thousands of books that will also be published in 2007. My pal, Dan Poynter, another expert on the topic, has written the foreword to this step-by-step guide that provides a road map to navigating the tricky terrain of book promotion whether you are marketing your first or fiftieth book. As a reviewer who routinely receives five to eight books every day, I can tell you that, particularly for the novice author, this book is invaluable. My pal, Sandra E. Lamb, a writer with tons of professional experience, has revised her book, How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write ($19.95, Ten Speed press, softcover) and is worth its price for the excellent advice she provides, particularly for those in the business world who need good resumes, special reports, press releases, business plans, letters, et cetera! It’s all here and it’s worth keeping in mind that those who communicate best generally reap the rewards of that skill.

Among the many Italians who left their home country to make a life for themselves here in America were my father’s parents, so naturally when I received Ultimate Italian Trivia by Scott Frush ($14.95, Marshall Rand Publishing, softcover) I was hooked. It contains more than 1,600 trivia facts, a couple of "Top 10 of Italy" lists, along with a timeline of Italian history, descriptions of key events, quotes from famous Italians and Italian-Americans; enough to provide lots of entertainment while providing lots of interesting information. If you are a descendent of Italian ancestry or if you’re just interested in Italy, this is the book for you. For the best buys in classical music, pick up The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs Yearbook 2006-7 ($22.00, Penguin softcover), a thick volume that contains reviews of hundreds of CDs issued since the main guide was published last.

Finally, I am a neat freak. I am one of those horrid people who maintain meticulous files and know where to find anything anytime. So you can imagine my dismay when I received an audiobook, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, ($24.98, Hachette Book Group) by David H. Freedman and Eric Abrahamson. It is also available, of course, in book format from Little, Brown & Company. So, for all of you who are surrounded by crammed closets, cluttered offices, and like to plan while multitasking down the highway, this book will prove a great comfort because it confirms the widely held notion that a bit of disorder is a natural part of all things. The authors provide an array of true stories and case studies to back up their theme.

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The Topic is Health

The lack of adequate and appropriate communication between physicians and their patients is the subject of Your Doctor Said What? Dr. Terrie Wurzbacher has written an excellent book ($22.95, Life Success Publishing, Scottsdale, AZ) that anyone who has to deal with a doctor on a regular basis should read. It has been determined that the average length of a doctor’s visit is only about 15 to 20 minutes and the author, a physician for more than thirty years, thinks this is too short a time to discuss something as important as your health. This is an inside look at the way medicine is practiced these days and how to spot the telltale signs that your doctor may not be listening well enough and why you may feel that you are being rushed through the system. In this regard it will empower the reader to insure they receive the best care available.

Perhaps you too have noticed all the advertising and coverage about the use of Botox as a safe and easy way to look ten years younger? If so, be careful. That’s what Dr. Eric Kaplan, MD says in his book Dying To Be Young ($19.95, Nightengale Press, Mequon, WI, softcover). It turns out that some of the toxin may be counterfeit, raw Botulinum Toxin, and you could find yourself fighting for your life. That’s what happened to the author and his wife. Part survivor story and part powerful warning, this is how they experienced complete paralysis, total life support, six weeks in a Florida hospital, and a lengthy state in a rehabilitation center. This is one of the fastest growing cosmetic procedures in the nation, so I suggest you read this book before you elect this procedure. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone thinking about it.

I can recall spending many happy hours as a child just playing whether in my backyard or the nearby school yard with its swings and seesaws. Dr. David Elkind, PhD, thinks Americans have forgotten how to get their children away from the television set and computer monitor to be more physically active and I agree. He has written The Power of Play ($24.00, Da Capo Press). You will, too, after you read this author who is concerned at the loss of many hours of free time today’s children can enjoy, including at least eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. One result is quite obvious and that’s the fact that an estimated 13% of children these days are judged to be obese. Moreover, the author says that the lack of play can stunt a child’s emotional, behavioral, and even their intellectual growth. This is a book that every parent should read. On the theme of raising a happy, well-adjusted child, famed physician, Bernie Siegel, the author of Love, Medicine & Miracles, has written Love, Magic & Mudpies ($17.95, Rodale) on how to raise kids to feel loved, be kind, and make a difference. All parents feel a bit overwhelmed by the advice they get from friends and family so an independent voice like Siegel’s is always welcome. Tourette Syndrome can strike youngsters at a very early age and there’s now a children’s book, written by someone who had it beginning at age four until age nine. Tic Talk: Living with Tourette Syndrome is written by Dylan Peters and illustrated by Zachary Wendland ($14.95, Little Five Star, a division of Five Star Publications, Chandler, AZ) with a foreword by Major League baseball player, Jim Eisenreich. This neurological disorder affects an estimated one in 1,000 children, usually between the ages of six and nine. If you know someone that has this problem, give them this book and read it yourself. It’s a winner!

At the other side of the aging cycle and the potential for Alzheimer’s disease is examined in Mom’s OK, She Just Forgets: The Alzheimer’s Journey from Denial to Acceptance by Evelyn McLay and Ellen P. Young, with a foreword by Dr. Barry Gordon, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins ($16.00, Prometheus Books, softcover). Published in November, I am a tad late getting around to it, but you shouldn’t be if you are beginning to see the signs that may be indicators of this dread disease. This is a reassuring and helpful handbook for families by experienced caregivers who suggest various behaviors, tools, and techniques for moving beyond denial.

I am always wary of diet books. It is well established that most diets do not work and that most who have lost weight will gain it back within five years. Still, not a day goes by when we are not told that some new device or diet will help us lose extra pounds. Dr. Scott Isaacs, an endocrinologist and the author of Hormonal Blance: Understanding Hormones, Weight, and Your Metabolism ($16.95, Bull Publishing Company, Boulder, CO, softcover) examines the role of hormones in our lives in a book initially published in 2002 and now updated and revised. Writing in clear, simple terms, Dr. Isaacs profiles each hormone system and explaining how imbalances can affect weight or perpetuate obesity. He spells out a balanced and nutritional way of eating to achieve balance. If this is a problem that you have been unable to solve, this book may well hold the answer.

Another book on the same topic is 7 Principles of Fat Burning by Eric Berg, DC, a chiropractic doctor ($24.95, Action Publishing, Los Angeles) specializing in nutritional research and weight loss who says that eating in moderation is the worst advice when it comes to hormone health and weight loss. The author says that calories are not the issue, but the body’s ability to burn fat is. Moreover Dr. Berg says that incorrect exercise can prevent proper fat burning. The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace is by Martha Beck, PhD ($25.95, Rodale) who says that, "Overeating and putting on fat is the normal psychological response to the mere expectation of being chronically hungry", i.e., dieting. The author discusses new research that suggests that millions of overweight dieters are programming themselves to get fatter! This book is intended to teach the reader psychological exercises that will permit them to eat in ways that will not add pounds. In other words, it’s not just the pounds on your body, it’s the hunger in your brain.

The Serotonin Power Diet by Judith J. Wurtman, PhD and Nina Frusztajer Marquis, MD, ($24.95, Rodale) offers a diet regime that uses your brain’s natural chemistry to cut cravings, curb emotional overeating, and lose weight. In this book, the power of serotonin, a brain chemical that increases feelings of well-being is recommended because it also turns off the appetite. According to the authors, eating your favorite starchy and sweet snacks in carefully calculated amounts and at specific times will cause your body to increase its natural serotonin production. Rodale, of course, is known as a leading publisher of health-related books, so there may well be something to this concept. Likewise, The Feel Good Diet by Cheryle Hart, MD, and Mary Kay Grossman, RD, ($22.95, McGraw-Hill) puts forth the benefits of boosting one’s serotonin to avoid cravings, reduce stress, and produce the weight loss you want. Because I have no knowledge whatever as to the merit of the advice being offered, I have to warn you that you are on your own with regard to any of these books about hormones. And, finally, there’s Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet by Peter H. Gott, MD, with Robin Donovan ($21.99, Warner Wellness). This book advocates eliminating flour and sugar from one’s diet while recommending lean meat, brown rice, vegetables and other things. The book comes with recipes, pantry and food lists, the usual thing you will find with yet another diet that focuses on specific food groups as the answer to weight loss. Like the other diet books noted, Bookviews is merely taking note of it, not necessarily recommending them. You need to consult with a physician or nutritionist. Indeed, that should probably be the first thing you do!

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Getting Down to Business (Books)

I never fail to be amazed by the vast flow of books on business, investment, management, and all things to do with career and success. It is truly endless, but somewhere in the midst of it is a book that will prove helpful to someone at a particular point in their life. Let’s see what the latest batch holds.

My eye was caught by Generation Debt by Anya Kamenetz ($14.00, Riverhead books, Penguin Putnam, softcover) whose subtitle says it all: "How our future was sold out for student loans, credit cards, bad jobs, no benefits, and tax cuts for rich geezers—and how to fight back." I was fortunate to have been born at a time that preceded the need for huge debt just to attend college and my view of credit cards has always been to pay them off in full every month. As for tax cuts for rich geezer, I fit the geezer category, but not the rich one. That said, it cannot be denied that most of us, old and young, are caught in a system designed to keep us in debt and squeeze us dry for everything we do. If you feel the same way, you will want to read this interesting, provocative book. There’s an interesting book by Betsy Cummings, Real World Careers: Why College is Not the Only Path to Becoming Rich, ($13.99, Warner Business Books, softcover) may be the best investment any young person will make as it explains that today’s job market has lots of room for people who leave school early or don’t plan to go to college at all. While a degree has been seen as the door through which everyone must pass through that is changing as there are many fields that do not require it. I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating their future.

For those trying to get a handle on the globalized future, there’s The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World-Class Companies is Overtaking the World by Antoine van Agtmael ($28.00, Free Press, Simon & Schuster). Americans are beginning to notice that many of our top companies are no longer in the lead when it comes to all kinds of industries and businesses. The author believes that, by the mid-century, developing nations will overtake the industrialized world in size and importance, while several multinationals have already transformed themselves into world-class competitors. It’s why Samsung is more widely recognized than Sony, why many regional jets are made by a Brazilian company, and why Corona, a Mexican beer, sells more to Americans than Heineken. Computers are not only made, but also designed in Taiwan and China. To get invaluable insight to the top 25 multinationals, this is the book to read!

In a similar fashion, Michael Edesess has written The Big Investment Lie: What Your Financial Advisor Doesn’t Want You to Know ($24.95, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA). Since so many Americans have investments these days, this book is a flashing light warning because, as Edesess reveals, most people across all income levels are poorly informed about financial matters, thus making them easy marks for the investment industry’s manipulative tactics. These folks often end up with negligible results for the money they have invested. The author offers "Ten New Commandments for Smart Investing." An economist and mathematician who currently chairs International Development Enterprises USA, the author has been around the block. Other books want to help you deal more effectively with money and among them is Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money by Joan Sotkin ($24.95, Prosperity Place, Santa Fe, NM.) I don’t know many folks who don’t have money problems of one sort or the other and the author hosts a podcast show on money matters. If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of prosperity, this is a good place to start. Untapped Riches by Susan and Anthony Cutaia with Robert Slater ($18.95, Amacom) says that one of the largest stumbling blocks standing in people’s way to attaining great wealth is the misconception that they lack the capital they need to invest. Most homeowners, say the authors, are sitting on "untapped riches", unwittingly tying up money in equity they could be investing elsewhere for greater return. This book, they promise, will change the way you think about borrowing money, investing and mortgages. Lastly, money is often the number one reason couples fight. Financial Bliss: A Couple’s Guide to Merging Money Styles and Building a Rich Life Together by Bambi Holzer ($21.95, Amacom) provides a template by which the complex relationship with money can be smoothed by achieving financial harmony through effective communication. If this is a problem in your marriage or relationship, then this is the book to read this year!

If you want more red meat to chew on, pick up a copy of Timothy P. Carney’s The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money ($24.95, Wiley). It sports a foreword by columnist Robert D. Novak and blurbs from the Wall Street Journal’s Paul A. Gigot, Congressman Ron Paul, and CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow, my friend Don Devine, a professor of political science, and Fred L. Smith, Jr, the founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. With a pedigree like that, you have to know this is one hell of a book as it skewers the great and powerful institutions of our time. Working together, the author reveals, they reap billions through a complex webs of higher taxes, stricter regulations, and shameless government handouts. All this while consumers, taxpayers, and entrepreneurs foot the bill. Time to pick up the pitchforks and go into the streets! Picking up on this theme, Jack E. Lohman has written Politicians: Owned and Operated by Corporate America: Why Campaign Reform is Crucial to the U.S. Economy and National Security! ($23.95, Colgate Press, PO Box 597, Sussex, WI 53089). By visiting www.MoniedPoliticians.com you can learn more about this book. The systems, formal and informal that determine how candidates for public office are selected and funded are incredibly complex and Lohman had pulled back the curtain to reveal out they work.

To get a handle on success, there are books like Achieve Sales Excellence by Howard Stevens and Theodore Kinni ($24.95, Platinum Press) that spells out seven customer rules for becoming the new sales professional. Based on a propriety 14-year study by the HR Chally Group, the ongoing battle for differentiation makes today’s sales professionals, some 17 million in the U.S. alone, the most effective weapon in a company’s arsenal. As one professor of mine once noted, nothing happens until someone sells something to someone else. For this brave new world, this book will provide the tools to make that success happen. Sell the Brand First: How to Sell your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty by Dan Stiff ($24.95, McGraw-Hill) is jam-packed with practical teaching tools, case studies, real-life examples, and workbook-style exercises to get both rookie and experienced salespeople alike thinking about and using brand in an entirely new way. This is not your father’s world of sales and selling. To get a jump-start on new trends and the future, this book will prove very helpful.

Executive skills were never more important in today’s business world. Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. has written A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell ($15.00, Amacom, softcover), a helpful and humorous manual filled with realistic, proven advice for making the most of a bad situation. The book describes a wide range of difficult types of employees and how to deal with them. For those baffled by employee behaviors and frustrated by personal shortfalls, Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success? ($21.95, Amacom) by Chuck Martin, with Peg Dawson, Ed.D, and Richard Guare, Ph.D, challenge the conventional wisdom about continuous learning, self-improvement, and achievement. Instead, the authors propose that twelve capabilities, fully developed and essentially unchangeable by young adulthood, determine a person’s unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. They determine how tasks are executed, regulate decision-making, control emotions, and are the deciding factor in success or failure. They are called executive skills and this book examines them to give the reader a powerful self-assessment tool to identify them. Another book, one that is getting a lot of buzz, suggests that, while you may have reached a level of success, something about you is keeping you from moving to the next one. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There ($23.95, Hyperion) is intended to show successful people how to become even more successful. What could be more American than that? What’s it really about? Those annoying habits you have and don’t even know exist. How to identify them and get rid of them is the theme of this book. This book should be taken seriously…by you!

Compliance & Conviction: The Evolution of Enlightened Corporate Governance by Curtis J. Crawford, Ph.D., is the kind of advice only a former CEO, senior executive, chairman and director can dispense. It is a comprehensive guide for the highest echelons of corporate America. It says that good corporate governance should not be left to chance. Too many companies learn that lesson too late. Filled with historical perspectives, studies, hands-on assessment tolls, and much more, this book could be a lifesaver for many corporations. Finally, Stephanie Capparell of the Wall Street Journal has written The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business ($25.00, Free Press, Simon & Schuster). The rivalry between Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola is the stuff of business legend, but what is less known is the struggle of African-Americans to gain access to corporate America. The author provides a rare historical look at the introduction of African-Americans to big business, recounting the fascinating tale of the Pepsi special-markets team that opened the doors to a world formerly closed to them.

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Novels, Novels, Novels!

The Most Secret Window by Natalie Vanderbilt ($13.95, Random River Press, Highlands Ranch, CA, softcover) is most certainly a novel, but it is unlike any you have read because it is told in some of the most luxurious poetic language I have read in years. Indeed, its subtitle is "Poetry as a Weapon." It is a passionate story of lovers. The year is 1910 and the locations are San Francisco and Maine. It is told as free verse or sonnets as a narrative of a wealthy shipping magnate in the midst of a battle with a corporate rival who lives both in the reality of his business, his friends, and the woman in his life, but who finds solace in an imaginary lover. All this may seem like so much romantic nonsense, but the great talent of the author is that she uses the story as a platform for some of the most evocative, powerful language put to use as literature. It is simply intoxicating.

Humor is hard to write and a truly humorous novel is an achievement. This is the case of Robert Gussin’s Trash Talk ($14.95, Oceanview Publishing, Ipswich, MA) in which, tired of the bad behavior of professional athletes, the commissions have imposed a mandatory non-sports related education requirement for football, baseball, basketball, and hockey players. When one of the players sees an ad for an upcoming "S.E.S. ‘Trash Talk’" symposium, he and his colleagues assume they will be learning how to improve their language skills, but discover instead it is the annual meeting of the Sarasota Environmental Society (S.E.S.) and the subject is garbage and recycling! This is a very funny book that throws together two cultures that have nothing in common, examining misbehavior, miscommunications, and major league misunderstandings.

The Middle East has always fascinated Americans and other westerners. Too much of what we think we know about it comes from books and movies that play off of themes of exoticism and fantasy. The reality of the Middle East, however, screams off the front pages these days as too often a place of ancient hatreds played out as modern atrocities. One such atrocity was the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire during the early decades of the last century. To this day, the Turks deny it, but it is part of their history and Elif Shafak has written The Bastard of Istanbul ($24.95, Viking) in which that Armenian tragedy evokes that extermination effort. She was, in fact, arrested and charged with "violating Turkishness" under Turkey’s penal code. Only an international protest kept her from serving a long prison term. The story revolves around Asya, a 19-year-old bohemian Turkish girl living in Istanbul who loves Johnny Cash, French existentialists, and has been raised by her "aunties", four sisters of the Kazanci family. One of the men of the family lives in Arizona with an American who has a daughter by a previous marriage to an Armenian. The daughter identifies with her heritage and comes to Istanbul in search of her identity, bonding with Asya. How these two families relate and learn from one another makes for a masterful story of a cultural divide.

Viking has recently published two very different novels; the first being Traveler, by Ron McLarty ($24.95). It is the story of Jono Riley, a fifty-something part-time actor and bartender living in Manhattan. The novel explores his coming of age in the 1960s with his three best friends and the shocking death of his first love that he revisits after a passage of forty years. It is a novel of the emotional journey we all make and it is a story you can make along with Jono Riley as told by a masterful novelist. The second novel is Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle ($24.95) featuring the main character of his previous novel, The Woman Who Walked into Doors, a 39-year-old woman struggling to stay afloat in the course of an abusive marriage and a worsening drinking problem. In this novel, she is now 48 and recently sober, but still deeply afflicted by the scars, as are her four children, left by her late husband. The novel chronicles a year in her life as she seeks to re-claim her dignity, stay sober, and to reconnect with her previously neglected children. Though it could have been a quite bleak story, it is in fact a redemptive one, chocked full of colorful characters and much wit. It is testimony to the human capacity to overcome adversity.

An interesting story of what it is like to be an Arab living in the United States in the post 9-11 era is told in Once in A Promised Land by Laila Halaby ($23.95, Beacon Press, Boston, MA). Life for emigrants from Jordan, Jassim and Salwa, has changed, pulling at the threads of their tenuous marriage and threatening to destroy their comfortable middle-class life in an Arizona suburb. It is the second novel of the Jordanian-born Halaby whose first was a winner of a major literary award. This novel looks at lives transformed by an event outside of their comfortable existence. It is both a national and a personal disaster for the couple and one that fills their personal universe with the subsequent suspicions they must face and the tragedies it inflicts. Events in the Middle East are generating novels and a very exciting one is Richard North Patterson’s Exile ($26.00, Henry Holt) in which a trial lawyer, David Wolfe, must defend a woman he loves against the charge of conspiring to assassinate the prime minister of Israel. His successful life in San Francisco is about to take a strange turn when he receives a call from Hana Arif, a Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret affair while in law school. When a suicide bomber kills the visiting prime minister she is accused of being the mastermind. Moreover, Wolfe is Jewish, on the brink of running for Congress, and Hana is married to a militant Palestinian. Oy! But you will enjoy this one from cover to cover.

History is evoked in James R. Clifford’s novel of intrigue and suspense, Double Daggers, ($16.95, Dan River Press, softcover) about four men, separated by time, but each obsessed with acquiring a coin known as the Eids of March or Double Dagger, said to have been minted by Brutus to celebrate his role in the plot to kill Julius Caesar on March 14, 44 BC. The coin comes with a curse and how it plays out is reflected in the lives of Brutus, then a knight during the Crusades, followed by a Nazi SS lieutenant, and a modern day Wall Street trader. It is no accident that each era is awash in the blood of humanity. Anyone with a love of history will thoroughly enjoy this carefully researched and splendidly told story that spans the centuries. To learn more about it, visit www.jrclifford.com. The past is forever reaching out to touch us in the present. An example of this is a novel by Eva Etzioni-Halevy, an author who survived time in an Italian concentration camp and, after World War II, moved to Palestine and saw the re-birth of Israel. She moved away but returned fifteen years ago in search of her religious roots. The Garden of Ruth ($14.00, Plume softcover) is based on the biblical story and is a historical imagining of the Book of Ruth, set in ancient Bethlehem. Told through the voices of a niece of the prophet Samuel and Ruth herself. For a visit to that long lost world, this novel will provide a rewarding experience.

Making one’s way in life with a mixed-race heritage is the background music to Rachel M. Harper’s novel, Brass Ankle Blues ($13.00, Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, softcover). "When I was seven I told my father that I wanted to grow up to be invisible", is the way this coming of age novel begins as it chronicles one summer in the life of Nellie Kincard, who is neither wholly white, nor black. Reeling from the separation of her parents, she finds herself on the way to a family lake house in rural Minnesota with her father, a professor of African-American literature, and her estranged cousin, leaving behind her mother and the life she is trying to forget. The summer is a journey toward a truly American identity. This is an impressive debut for the author. Another excellent debut is by Albyn Leah Hall who has authored The Rhythm of the Road ($24.95, Thomas Dunne Books, division of St. Martin’s Press) featuring a truck driver’s daughter, Jo, who grows up in the front seat, sharing his love of country music, junk food, and the open highway. Only the place is Ireland and England, not America, and Jo’s mother is unknown to her. When she is twelve, they pick up a hitchhiker, Cosima Stewart, an American country-western singer who becomes a surrogate big sister to Jo. When Jo’s dad falls into a deep depression, she seeks refuge with Cosima, following her and her band to California. Dealing with the painful elements of her life is the real journey that Jo is taking and which is explored in this first novel by a New Yorker who now lives in London.

Murder and intrigue has long been a staple of storytellers and the international bestseller, The Oxford Murders, by Guillermo Martinez is now available in softcover ($13.00, Penguin Books). Born in Argentina in 1962, the author has earned a well- deserved reputation for his novels and short stories. In this novel, a visiting Argentine graduate student finds his landlady, an elderly woman who helped decipher the Enigma Code during World War II, murdered in the parlor of her quiet Oxford home. Her mentor, a renowned Oxford logician has received an anonymous note with the words "the first of a series." As the murders pile up, so do the list of suspects. The author is a Ph.D. in mathematical science and uses this knowledge in the story because whoever is murdering his victims appears to be illustrating a mathematical theorem! It takes two unlikely detectives to solve the puzzle before the killer strikes again!

Frank Caceres, PhD, got a jolt of bad news some years ago when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but he has turned it into fodder for a very interesting new novel, Chronic Nights ($20.95, iUniverse), one heck of a thriller that begins with a man in a wheelchair crossing a speeding van’s path. When the driver wakes up in the hospital, he learns that his wife and daughter are dead and embarks on a course of vengeance. Meanwhile Bill Colon has been forced to accept his MS, attending a mobility disabilities support group. He is shocked to learn that its members are falling prey to a crazed serial killer. When his brother-in-law, a homicide detective, gets assigned to the latest case, Colon feels compelled to get involved in the investigation. The question is whether they will find the killer before Colon becomes the next victim? This is a very well written and suspenseful story whose previous novels, "Because They Were" and "By Reason of Privilege" have gained him a growing group of fans. To learn more, visit http://www.novel-guy.com.

Fans of the novelist, Alice Hoffman, will welcome news that two of her novels, Skylight Confessions and The Ice Queen are now available as audio books, the former read by actress Mare Winningham ($29.98) and the latter by actress Nancy Travis ($14.98). Both are from Hachette Audio, as is Lalita Tademy’s Red River read by Tim Cain and Gammy Singer ($29.98). Hoffman has seventeen novels to her credit and has a special appeal with female readers. Tademy was a former vice president with Sun Microsystems who left the corporate world to trace her family’s past. This resulted in her first novel, Cane River, that became a 2001 Oprah Book Club selection. To learn more about these and other titles, visit www.hachettebookgroup.com.

That’s it for February!

Don’t forget to visit our Featured Books section before you leave. There you will find a selection of unique fiction and non-fiction books worth your attention. And tell your friends about Bookviews.com so they too can enjoy our monthly report on a range of books, many of which do not receive the attention in the mainstream media that they deserve.

Come back in March as we report on the many new books being published this spring!

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