The past recedes at a galloping pace and with the widespread lack of knowledge of history and shortening of attention spans, it is easy to forget the indelible imprint of the dominant personalities of the 1980s who changed the course of modern history. They were, of course, President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. Currently editor at large for National Review, a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, John Sullivan has written The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister ($27.95, Regnery Publishing), a book that details the collaborate efforts of three people who revived faith, prosperity, and freedom in the West. Together they brought the Marxist empire of the Soviet Union to an end, set in motion the thriving economies of the U.S. and the U.K. and saw the Pope revive a Catholic Church rocked by social revolution. Mankind is fortunate when the right combination of personalities occurs at the right time to save it from those who would enslave it. This book is a terrific read and a reminder that today’s leaders must meet a new test of freedom over tyranny.

When one has been a writer and book critic for a lifetime, a book like The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, PhD, is warmly received ($19.95, Regnery Publishing, softcover) and if you have a son or daughter in high school or college, I recommend you give them a copy. The reason for this is the way this topic, vital to any truly educated person, has been and is being taught these days as various "isms" have overtaken the topic, subverting it to the point where "dead white men" has become the term for some of the greatest authors of English and American literature (as well as women authors). It was from this literature that generations learned the virtues of piety, bravery, chivalry, tradition, and other values. What are the real lessons of Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Dickens, and others? This excellent guide reveals the truths not being taught in our schools and universities today.

A certain kind of person—perhaps you—will enjoy The Intellectual Devotional: 365 Daily Lessons from the Seven Fields of Knowledge ($22.50, Rodale), gathered together by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. The book invites you to "revive your mind, complete your education, and roam confidently with the cultured class." Were one to read each brief segment daily, you would by the end of the year have read topics ranging over history, literature, the visual arts, science, music, philosophy, and religion between each Monday to Sunday. It’s a tasty mixture of diverse topics, all of which represent the kind of knowledge a reasonably well-educated person should know, but none of us can have delved into every area covered, so this clever book does it for us. One of Jules Verne’s famous novels was "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and this notion of life and creatures hidden away from view is examined in Hollow Earth by David Standish ($24.95, Da Capo Press) who relates the various speculations about a hollow center, an idea already ingrained in nearly every culture and religion. For anyone who enjoys lively intellectual and cultural history, this book will take them on a tour from ancient civilization to the present, complete with some 40 illustrations, maps, diagrams, and movie powers.

Men, Love & Sex: The Complete User’s Guide for Women ($22.95, Rodale) by David Zinczenko, Editor-in-Chief of Men’s Health, with Ted Spiker, will no doubt prove helpful to any women who wonders what makes men fall in love, why some cheat, what they expect in the bedroom, and what they truly crave from a relationship more than anything else. Drawing on the responses to various questions raised by the magazine, the authors have put together a book that provides answers to the most common questions raised about masculine behavior. Boys and Their Toys by Bill Adler, Jr. ($19.95, Amacom) is about "understanding men by understanding their relationship with gadgets." This book reveals how men use gadgets to assert their independence, relieve stress, connect to their lost childhood, and even express their nurturing side—without having to admit it. Adler’s engaging, humorous style makes for easy reading as he reveals that, "In some indefinable way, gadgets are both a reflection and a component of men’s egos." Thus, if you criticize the gadget, you are criticizing the man.

New books are not ignoring the girls either. The Black Book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets by Kym Douglas and Cindy Pearlman ($14.00, Plume, softcover) by two celebrity journalists is filled with some great and often surprising information on the way the celebrities and their beauty gurus put on the best face for the world. These people often put in long hours at work, but look gorgeous on the red carpet is part of the job, so how do they reduce puffiness, lose five pounds in a week, put shine in their hair, et cetera? Some of the most famous ladies have shared their secrets and now any reader can benefit. The Tuff Chix Guide to Easy Home Improvement by Paige Hemmis of ABC’s "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" ($16.00, Plume, softcover) reflects the way many women are going single or raising kids on their own these days and need to know how to fix things around the place. Instead of the usual dry manual geared for men, this book demonstrates that women can handle home fix-its and repairs on their own. From painting to electrical repairs and much more, this is a great book for the take-charge gal. Decorating Easy by Jane Cumberbatch ($24.95, Quadrille Publishing) is 160 pages filled with great ideas enhanced by 70 color photographs and white line drawings. This is an ideal book for any woman (or man) who needs sensible advice on how to create a professional-looking style to their home without spending a fortune to do it. The author offers lessons in the basics of how to put an entire room together, from the basic architecture structure, the use of space through furniture selection, down to the small, but essential decorative touches that make it your very own creation.

One of my favorite board games is Monopoly and now Phil Orbanes has written its history in Monopoly® The World’s Most Famous Game—and How It Got That Way ($26.00, Da Capo Press). With more than 250 million copies sold worldwide and special editions in over sixty nations, Monopoly is the world’s most popular proprietary game. It is uniquely American and it continues to symbolize the U.S. system of economic opportunity since Parker Brothers first introduced it more than 70 years ago. Originally rejected by Parker Brothers because they thought it took too long to play and was considered too confusing for the average person ended up helping to pull the company out of America’s economic depression. Filled with little known facts, this book makes for lively, interesting reading.

While the issue of illegal immigration continues to evoke passions, there’s no question that Mexican cuisine has become the newest addition to the American palate. For those who want to prepare it themselves, there’s Mexican Light: Healthy Cuisine for Today’s Cook by Kris Rudolph ($17.95, University of North Texas Press, softcover). The author is a native of Houston and owner of the El Buen Café in San Miguel de Allendo, Mexico, where she lives. The fifty recipes and text are offered in both Spanish and English, and include a description of the most common ingredients. They range from appetizers to after-dinner refreshers, and each includes information on the amount of calories, carbohydrates, et cetera. From a Fiesta Salad to Chicken with Tomatillo-Cilantro Salsa, the health-conscious gourmet will find much to enjoy. Mexicans have been eating well since the days of the Aztecs and now you can too.

It’s 2007, so that means the 2008 national elections are already "in play." One example is The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’s Dossier on Hillary Clinton by Amanda B. Carpenter ($19.95, Regnery Publishing), a Capitol Hill correspondent for Human Events. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a contributor to the online Internet site of this publication, but I must confess that, while the book is carefully documented, its tone is one of unremitting hostility and I found it just a tad off-putting. That said—modern elections are so vicious and ugly that I may be being a bit naïve. Suffice it to say that anyone who wants ammunition to dispute Sen. Clinton’s effort to secure her party’s nomination will surely find it here.

Every so often a book comes along that fits no category, that is beautifully produced, and which will appeal to a niche of people. This is the case with Chickasaw: Unconquered and Unconquerable ($45.00, www.chickasaw.net). It is a coffee table book featuring the photography of David G. Fitzgerald and essays by Jeannie Barbour, Amanda Cobb, and Linda Hogan. It documents the culture of this Indian tribe with 125 images of its people and essays that tell about their lives, history, and culture. Based for 150 years in southwestern Oklahoma, after having been removed from their original homelands in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, they kept their traditions intact and, for anyone interested in our Native Americans, it will prove a great reading and viewing experience.

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Getting Down to Business (Books)

The study of economics lost one of its greatest minds, Milton Friedman, in November of last year. He was passionate about freedom and keeping government from interfering with the most basic element of choice that underlies the open marketplace of goods and services. A unique book, Inside the Economist’s Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists ($74.95/$29.95, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, hard and softcover) is edited by two other famed economists, Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett. They sat down with sixteen of their colleagues and their candid interviews make for some lively reading that even those unfamiliar with this critical field of analysis would find interesting. For those whom economists represent the guidance needed in an every shifting landscape of events, this book offers some excellent insights.

One sure way anyone and any business succeeds is to anticipate future changes and trends. Eric Garland is a futurist who has written Future, Inc: How Business can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next ($24.95, Amacom). His book will surely prove useful as it reveals the time-tested methods of collecting information, analyzing trends, and using the findings to guide strategic planning. By combining the techniques he describes with one’s own curiosity about what is happening everywhere, new opportunities will present themselves. It is not as mysterious a process as one might think and by keeping an eye on things such as an aging population, information technology, media and communications, and energy, you can get ahead of the curve and gain a competitive edge.

The world of publishing is awash in books offering all kinds of advice for everyone from the person seeking their first job to the investor to the manager and salesperson. Let’s take a look at just a few of the more recent books that I have received.

Hire Me, Inc. ($19/95, Entrepreneur Press, softcover) is subtitled, "Package yourself to get your dream job." The author, Roy J. Blitzer, has nearly three decades of experience as an executive and management consultant in the field of human resources, so he knows what he’s talking about when he says, instead of being a job seeker, you should envision yourself in a uniquely entrepreneurial way, as the ultimate product! His book provides the kind of information anyone can use to achieve this goal, offering various strategies and good advice to provide the reader with a competitive edge. A book I would recommend to the younger worker just beginning their career is Mike Jacobs’ Working 101: Everything you Need to Know to be Happy and Successful at Work ($15.99, available via Amazon.com). It is filled with good, commonsense advice for anyone who is a member of the "working class." Virtually anyone will benefit from this softcover, but attitude is the primary focus of this book and anyone can develop the proper attitudes to enjoy their job and encourage others to want to promote them. For the first-time manager, there’s Manager Mechanics: People Skills for First-Time Managers by Eric P. Bloom ($16.95, Capital Books, Sterling, VA, softcover). Here are all the problems, pitfalls, and tricks to avoid them in an easy-to-read jumpstart to the career of anyone who gets promoted to head a team. Knowing what to say and how to say it can enhance climbing the ladder of success. Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English That Works by Gretchen S. Hirsch ($18.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) makes it quite clear that, whether you are an entry-level candidate preparing for an interview or a CEO, avoiding grammatical gaffes, incorrect word choices, or inappropriate language can have a powerful effect on your success. As often as not, those passing through our current educational system have not been taught these things and can suffer as the result. This book can help anyone who feels this is an area that needs improvement.

One’s mental and emotional skills are critical to success in any job and there are some books on that topic as well. For example, there’s Michael Useem’s The Go Point: When It’s Time to Decide ($25.00, Crown Business), subtitled "Knowing what to do and when to do it." Citing many examples of both good and bad decisions, the author who is a professor of management at the Wharton School as well as the director of its Center for Leadership and Change Management, has written a lively book that is filled with insights into the minds of decision makers on battlefields and in boardrooms. Learning how to make hard and fast decisions when they matter the most and impact teams of people is often something that takes years of experience to acquire. Now you can do so by reading this book. What People Want: A Manager’s Guide to Building Relationships that Work by Terry R. Bacon ($27.95, Davies-Black Publishing, Mountain View, CA) is another one of those books that provide the kind of insight managers need to achieve success. Bacon is the founder of Lore International Institute, a global executive development firm that works with Fortune 500 companies. He has coached thousands of executives on leadership, management, and interpersonal effectiveness over a career of three decades. His book is the equivalent of sitting down with a personal trainer who can help you deal with whatever problems you have as a manager. Now that’s a bargain! Coaching for Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to Developing the Star Potential in Your Employees by Bob Wall ($24.95, Amacom) explores what one can do when an employee is destroying his own career and the morale of those around him or her because they lack good interpersonal skills. Lack of empathy for the needs of others, otherwise called emotional intelligence, is one of the main causes of poor performance in the workplace and this book, as its title says, provides the know-how for any manager who must deal with this problem.

The Mind of the Customer by Richard Hodge and Lou Schachter ($29.95, McGraw-Hill) looks at the way the world of sales is changing and why the old methods no longer work. While do that, they present all the concepts, models, and best practice lists one will need to become a world-class salesperson faced with new business realities. You could spend thousands of dollars to acquire the knowledge this book provides or you could buy this book and learn what nearly a hundred top sales executives at America’s leading companies have shared with you. If knowledge is power—and it is—this is the kind of knowledge that will transform your career in sales. Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service is now in its fourth edition ($18.95, Amacom, softcover) with more than 500,000 sold. Written for the service provider in a witty, engaging style, it offers real tactics to apply in a world where customers are smarter and more demanding. It doesn’t get much better than this book when it comes to this topic. In this age of inter-connectiveness via networking, blogs and email, Andy Sernovitz sat down to write a book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking ($24.95, Kaplan Publishing) to help anyone get started, measure results, and know what is ethical and what is not. This is about having an active dialogue with consumers while driving positive word of mouth. Since this depends on trust, it is the key to what every salesperson has learned over the years, but it takes it into our modern age of personal and instant communications that includes podcasts and websites such as MySpace, Facebook and other outlets where word of mouth can spread like wildfire. As in any such enterprise, there’s a right way and wrong way of doing this, so read this book first.

Despite the fact that the real estate boom seems to be receding somewhat, the fact is that this field always goes through cycles and, with 300 million Americans needing a place to live or work, the field of real estate still offers the potential for success. Real Estate Advantages: Tax and Legal Secrets of Successful Real Estate Investors by Sharon Lechter, CPA and Garrett Sutton, Esq. ($17.99, Warner Business Books softcover) can make the difference for anyone contemplating getting into real estate investment, considered by many to still be the best form of investment anyone can make. This book’s authors, an accountant and a lawyer, explore the complexities and explains them in ways that reveals that one does not have to be rich to get into real estate investment, but it helps to know what to do and what to avoid. If you prefer, you can also get an audiobook version of this book ($24.99, Hachette Book Group). Whether a first time or seasoned investor, this book will tell you where to find good advisors, create steady monthly income, reduce your risks, and pay less in taxes. Steve Dexter says that what you owe today is what you will be worth tomorrow in his new book, Real Estate Debt Can Make You Rich ($21.95, McGraw-Hill, softcover). The very word, debt, is enough to put fear into the majority of Americans, but Dexter, a seasoned mortgage lender, who decided to get into real estate investment after watching people whose loans he approved get wealthy. This is a serious handbook by an industry insider and not for someone looking for a quick score, buying and flipping properties. And you won’t need a degree in math or economics. Dexter spells out what you need to know.

Of course, we all know people who have gotten into debt and need to know how to get out. If you are one of those people, there’s How to Get Out of Debt by Harine Freeman ($19.95, Adept Publishers, POB 60851, Washington, DC 20039, softcover). The author has written a self-help book describing the step-by-step method she used to get out of debt, maintain good credit, and create a spending plan to manage your money. It’s full of practical advice on where to file complaints, sample letters, spending plan spreadsheets, statute of limitations time periods, and much more. For the past five years, Ms. Freeman has been the CEO of a credit repair and money management company, so she knows what she is talking about. Retire Secure! The Key to Making Your Money Last as Long as You Do by James Lange, a CPA and attorney, ($24.95, Wiley) is full of good advice on what tax and accounting documents you need to keep, how long you should keep them, and which you can eventually toss. As the son of a CPA, I can tell you this is the kind of thing everyone needs to know and, happily, in the age of the computer, you can store such data more easily than ever before. The added factor of potential identify theft makes careful documentation essential.

Finally, two audiobooks may unlock the key to success. Both are from Hachette Audio and the first is by Liz Claman, a CNBC business news anchor. The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received ($24.98, 3 CDs) reflects the insights provided by famed folks such as Warren Buffett, Suze Orman, Jim Cramer, and Steve Forbes, among dozens of other leading financial experts. These are the wealth-accumulation secrets they learned and now they are yours for a small investment of your own. Sandy Weill is a man who started with $30,000 he borrowed in 1960 to create one of the leading securities firms in the nation. After selling his company and becoming president of American Express, he then took over a sleepy consumer loan company and built it into a global bank, Citigroup. The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy ($29.98, 6 CDs) is his story.

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Children’s Books to Begin the New Year

It’s the New Year for us on January 1^st, but for the Chinese the Lunar New Year will begin on February 18^th. In Korea, too, the holiday will be celebrated with rice cake soup, ceremonial bows to elders, and children will put on "hanbok", traditional Korean clothes with bright colors. Author-illustrator Hyun-Joo Bae is a graduate Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, South Korea, and her book, New Clothes for New Year’s Day, ideal for readers aged 4 to 8, shows a little girl putting on her new clothes in anticipation of greeting family and friends ($15.95, Kane/Miller). The illustrations are marvelous and the book is a good way to teach young readers about this unique culture. In a world that is growing smaller every day, a book like this brings us closer together.

The first two titles in a children’s book series about Morgan horses by Ellen Feld and illustrated by Jeanne Mellin have each won a "Children’s Choice" award from the International Reading Association and both were recommended in previous editions of Bookviews. Now comes the third, Shadow, the Curious Morgan Horse ($15.95, Willow Bend Publishing, PO Box 304, Goshen, MA 01032). Anyone who has watched a colt in a barnyard pasture with its mother knows that they are, indeed, curious about everything they see, though tending to stay close to the mare. This is a story for those age 8 and up about such a colt who slips away and has a variety of experiences meeting wildlife in the area, gets lost, and is guided back to the farm by a basset hound who uses her scent to find the way. It is a beautifully illustrated, delightful story. Rosalyn Schanzer has written and illustrated 14 books for young readers and her latest is John Smith Escapes Again

($16.95, National Geographic). Most Americans know John Smith as the fellow who married Pocahontas after she rescued him, but he lived a life of many adventures and they are told her against the history of his times from his birth in 1580. Any youngster, age 10 and up will find this a fascinating and exciting true story; it was based on his own writings. He is an American hero because Jamestown, England’s first permanent colony in America, would not have survived without him. He was a brave, honest, fair leader and he loved the new, wild place his countrymen would settle. He would have loved the place it became.

Part of our nation’s history is its Civil War. Thomas A. Allen has written Harriet Tubman: Secret Agent ($16.95, National Geographic) that tells the true story of how daring slaves and free Blacks spied for the Union during the war. Tubman had escaped from slavery and was associated with the "Underground Railroad", a system of safe houses that helped slaves escape to freedom in the north. As always, history is always more interesting than fiction and this story is no exception. The author sifted through military and intelligence archives, diaries, letters and little-known memoirs to bring the facts to light in a gripping, exciting story. A famed shoot-out has become part of the lore of the Old West and is retold for younger readers by Gayle Martin in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral: Luke and Jenny Visit Tombstone ($14.95, Five Star Legends, PO Box 6698, Chandler, AZ 85246). Young readers, age 9 through 12, will enjoy what is planned as the first in a series of historical fiction novels. The author is famous throughout Arizona for her knowledge of the State’s colorful past. This is a trip back to the 1880s and a fabled, brief era of our nation’s history. You can visit www.TombstoneBook.com to learn more.

You, Them and the Others is a children’s book written and illustrated by Ernesto Guerra Frontera and translated from the Spanish by Daniel Frost ($12.95, Pasiteles Publishing Company, Belmont, MA, softcover). Idea for those aged 8 and up, the original version received excellent reviews in Peru and Puerto Rico. It is wonderfully amusing as the reader is invited to imagine waking up one morning to discover their house has been invaded by "Them"; five strange beings that have extraordinary sensory powers. Oculus has huge powerful eyes, Manus has large skillful hands, Auris has sensitive ears, Nasus an infallible nose, and Bucca a big mouth and an insatiable appetite. They claim your house is now their castle and what follows is a struggle between you "Them" and the "Others" to survive, to understand human existence, and to create a better world. In short, it is a delightful and fanciful tale.

Patricia Derrick has penned a series of very amusing books for children aged 2 to 8, illustrated by J-P Loppo Martinez. Published by Animalations™ of Las Vegas, Nevada, these books also include a five-minute musical audio CD. Priced at $18.95, they appeal to the natural inclination of children to enjoy imaginary friends and the author provides some wonderful ones in Riley the Rhinoceros, Rickity & Snickity at the Balloon Fiesta, Dody the Dog Has a Rainbow, and Farley the Ferret of Farkleberry Farm. There are others too. Derrick has thirty years of experience as a classroom teacher and owner of early learning schools in Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Her stories do not "talk down" to young readers, but rather encourage them to learn and enjoy "big words" like "preposterous" that she notes are learned easily when the meaning is explained. The illustrations of these books is superb and, yes, there is no doubt that young readers will improve their reading skills, but most of all they will be enjoying the stories and artwork. Debuting officially in February, you can learn more about them by visiting www.animalations.com.

I am not a fan of children’s books that come with an agenda as opposed to just wanting to entertain youngsters. An example of this is Tale of a Great White Fish by Maggie De Vries ($15.95, Greystone Books) that tells of a sturgeon who lives an impossible 177 years, escaping sport fisherman and other perils. This book has an "environmental" message about yet another "endangered" species and is just too intent on the biological aspects of life as a sturgeon to be very interesting.

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Novels, Novels, Novels!

The mother of all novels, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is out in a new translation, the first in forty years, by Anthony Briggs ($18.00, Penguin Classics, softcover) at 1407 pages! It has been hailed as the best translation of this masterpiece. In case you missed out on it, the backdrop of the story is Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and Tolstoy follows the changing fortunes of its characters and their families, Pierre Bezukhov, search for meaning in his life, the cynical Prince Andrei, and Natasha Rostov, whose impulsiveness threatens to destroy her happiness. The book is famed for its battle sequences and explores the human condition through its cast of several hundred characters. Tolstoy, who died in 1910, also authored "Anna Karenina", and many short stories and essays. He and his wife, Solya Andreevna, had thirteen children. Reading this novel is, in itself, an epic experience, but also a rewarding one.

Eric Dezenhall is back with a new novel, Spinning Dixie, ($24.95, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press) and it is a great romp, a laugh-out-loud story that ranges between Atlantic City and a Confederate mansion in Tennessee and a not-too-distant future Washington, DC. Cognoscenti know Dezenhall is a master of crisis control, a public relations specialty that defends clients against the frequently unfair and untrue claims meant to deliberately damage their reputations, but he is also a skilled novelist with several to his name. One can find the Washington insider aspect reflected in a very funny story of a newly resigned White House press secretary who receives a request from a woman out of his past. Jonah Eastman, then age 18, had fallen in love with Claudine Polk whose family owned Rattle & Snap, a historic Tennessee plantation. He was there in the 1980s to keep him out of harm’s way during an Atlantic City mob war that his grandfather may have started and out of a delirious adolescent passion for Claudine. Now, decades later, she has called on him to save the plantation from her divorced tycoon husband. For this Jonah must secure the help of all manner of shady characters as well as his friend the President, a former Governor of Mississippi. Dezenhall’s Jonah narrates this irresistible story of Jewish, Southern, and Mafia culture that you will not want to miss!

A wide variety of new novels keep arriving, so let’s take a brief look at some of the latest. If you like a mixture of suspense and exotic places, try Alan Dean Foster’s Sagramanda that is sub-titled "a novel of near-future India" ($25.00, PYR, an imprint of Prometheus Books). Sagramanda is a city of 100 million in which Taneer, a scientist who has absconded with his multinational corporation’s secret project code is on the run from both the company and his father. A cast of characters surrounds Taneer, from the man hired to find him, his father who wants him dead for shaming the family, the man who wants to help sell the codes for $30 million and collect his fee, the women in his life, and even a chief inspector searching for a serial killer. Etc! The author brings a lot of talent to this novel, providing a roller coaster of reading enjoyment. I must confess that I am still not sure of the location of Nick Bantock’s Windflower ($24.95, Chronicle Books) but it seemed more like India than anywhere else. This bestselling novelist tells the story of Ana, a beautiful young dancer, who is promised in marriage to a man she doesn’t love. Along with her grandfather, she knows the marriage will do more harm than good for her tribe, so she flees by moonlight on the eve of her wedding. This unusual novel is enhanced by 200 color illustrations that form a frieze through the book. Brimming with myth and magic, this new tale is bound to please Bantock’s fans and win new ones.

Kristen Heitzmann is a popular suspense writer and she returns with Freefall ($13.99, Bethany House, softcover) set in Hawaii. When a young woman stumbles out of the Hanalei Mountains on the island of Kauai with no memory of who she is or how she got there, Cameron Pierce reluctantly agrees to investigate the mysterious circumstances of her arrival. He begins to suspect she is far from an innocent victim and, as she begins to recall fragments of what led her to this place, she and the cynical Hawaiian investigator begin to realize that the stakes surrounding her identity are higher than either expected.

The suspense is pretty intense in Giles Blunt’s By The Time You Read This ($19.95, Henry Holt) that is officially due out in February. Detective John Cardinal is on the hunt for an ingenious killer. It is autumn in Canada’s Algonquin Bay where his partner is hunt for a young girl who is being used as a sex slave and being traded online by her predators. Cardinal has been grieving the loss of his wife, but when he receives a string of hateful anonymous notes about her death, he begins to suspect homicide. His colleagues think he is too emotionally involved to do the investigation, so he goes it alone. From first page to last, you will want to go along on this investigation.

Murder, like real estate, has lot to do with location, location, and location. In this case it’s Washington, D.C. The author, Patrick Hyde, is an attorney with more than 1,300 criminal cases to his name, so he had plenty of experience to call on with his debut novel, The Only Pure Thing ($14.95, Beckham Publications, softcover) in which defense attorney, Stuart Clay, is called upon to represent a homeless man found near the scene of a crime involving a severed head. He has to launch an investigation that takes him from D.C.’s high-end communities to its seedier parts of town, teeming with danger and violence. We get a tour of the D.C. criminal justice system as Clay races to connect the dots between a band of homeless revolutionaries, aging New York mobsters, and D.C. real estate developers. This is an impressive start as a novelist and one looks forward to the next story, we are told that more Stuart Clay mysterious are on the way. Another powerful story of murder, The Budapest Connection, ($24.00, Prometheus Books) is the work of renowned forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee, and the critically acclaimed mystery writer, Jerry Labriola, MD. It is a dank fall night at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in New York City when the police discover the naked corpses of three murdered young women. Their bodies are neatly arranged to form a perfect triangle, each face up with one eye glued open and the other shut. A team of forensic scientists is called in to solve the murder scene. Mystery lovers are going to enjoy this one, particularly given the popularity of television shows like CSI.

Taylor Holden has debuted as a novelist with The Sense of Paper ($14.00, Bantam Books, softcover), a story that anyone with an interest in art and history will enjoy because it is about a British journalist, a woman who, tormented by her war-time experience, escapes to a secluded cottage in Suffolk and, to distract herself from her failed marriage and the ghosts of her past, immerses herself in the work of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings and the history of paper. Her research brings her into contact with a successful artist and Turner scholar. The author calls it a novel of obsessions and as one moves deeper into it, it too becomes an obsession of emotional discovery. Paul Auster is an acquired taste because he doesn’t write in the traditional ways of other novelists. His latest novel, Travels in the Scriptorium ($22.00, Henry Holt) will be released in February and is about an older man along in a room who is identified only as Mr. Blank who is seeking to find out where he is, how he got there, and whether or not he can get out. This is metaphor writ large, but Auster makes it into an intriguing mystery as he receives various visitors.

Rust and Bone is a collection of stories by Craig Davidson ($13.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) in which the landscape is a literary war zone where the author serves up dogfights, bar brawls, and washed-up boxers in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway. It is a dead end world of the desperate and self-deluded peopled by prizefighters, fighting dogs, sex addicts, gamblers, by alcoholics and other walking wounded. Davidson knows this world well and the reader is introduced to a slice of life that most of us will never encounter, except of course through the safety of the pages of this interesting collection of humanity’s castoffs.

That’s it for January! The new year has begun auspiciously with a variety of interesting and intriguing books.

Don’t forget to take a moment to visit Bookviews’ own Featured Books section to discover an eclectic selection of books worthy of your attention. And don’t forget to tell your friends about Bookviews so they can join you when you return next month!

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