When you begin to read Houri, you are descending into Iranian airspace through the voice of Shahed, a man returning to his homeland on the third anniversary of his father's death. His name means “witness',” and through his eyes, Mehrdad Balali allows you to see his country juxtaposed in a time warp of culture. Shahed left Iran as a youth, running away to America. His father died in 1979, but this pilgrimage takes him back to a Post-Revolutionary Iran, a new world for Shahed. He steps out of the plane into a strikingly different climate upon his return. There is evidence of subjugation and authoritarian rule everywhere. The obvious, bearded men and veiled women. The more subtle changes would only be noticed by a “witness” from the past, missing landmarks, renamed streets, businesses that have vanished....more

In What the Bayou Saw, the familiar adage, “The truth will set you free” is portrayed in vivid and sometimes uncomfortable detail. Community college instructor, Sally Stevens harbors a secret that eats away at everything she touches, mostly her marriage and her soul. When Sally’s favorite student implicates three of her other students in a brutal assault, the burden of her past comes back to haunt her. Can she find healing from harmful traditions and the secret she swore to keep? This isn’t a formulaic story where readers will sit back in their easy chair able to predict what happens next. Layer by layer, the story unfolds exposing the cruelty of racism and the bitter pill of betrayal, mixed with the beauty and heartache of a hidden friendship....more

As an only child, whose parents were also only children, I value memories as something rare and fragile. Sometimes a doctor asks me something about my childhood medical history and I simply don’t know – and there’s no one alive who is likely to remember the answer to the question. So I’m inclined to value memory. But after reading Viktor Mayer-Schonberger’s The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, I’m now seriously inclined to also value the reverse. There are, from my youth, as is I think the case with most people, plenty of incidents that can still produce an inward cringe when I’m remind of them – and no doubt there were many more similar events over which my brain has drawn a merciful veil....more

Nightlight follows the misadventures of high school student Belle Goose who falls for Edwart Mullen, a classmate she believes to be a vampire. Nightlight opens with Belle Goose leaving Phoenix and moving to Oregon for the sake of her mother's relationship with street-hockey player Bill in what she describes as a "self-exiled, exile." Belle states "It's no big deal. I want to go. I want to leave all of my friends and the sunlight for a small, rainy town. Making you happy makes me happy." This is one of the first of many jabs at some of the blatant flaws in the original Twilight series....more

This fantastic follow-up to The Rossetti Letter finds Claire Donovan in London teaching history at Cambridge. Claire is thrilled to be in London and even more thrilled to be near fellow professor Andrew Kent. That is, until fellow professor Derek Goodman is murdered — a professor the entire college saw her argue with. Shortly before Derek's murder Claire had shared with him that she'd run across an amazing find in the Cambridge libraries, the diary of a female physician from the 1600's. Hannah Devlin had been physician to the king's mistress — an amazing feat considering that it was illegal for women to practice medicine in those days....more

Jeannette Walls is shaping up to be one of this decade's most fascinating storytellers. The adventures of her family in The Glass Castle were mesmerizing and truly an unforgettable read. With a pen that glows with brilliance, her writing in Half Broke Horses is bedazzling. In her words, this is the true life novel of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who died when the author was eight. Half Broke Horses portrays her grandmother’s life told through all of the many stories she heard as a child. ...more

In choosing to marry a man with children, Stepmonster author Wednesday Martin joined a grim statistic: over half of all adult women marry a man with children, and seven percent of those partnerships will fail. So, one in two women will do this, ignoring the warning signs, not fully sure where to fit in, and not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ early on. As Martin found firsthand, the longer a woman with stepchildren waits to find her way into the family, the harder it is for her to ever draw the line or be taken seriously as an adult with authority. There is a skill to learning when to take a stand and when to disengage. ...more

Kenneth Taylor – well known as the author of The Living Bible, and founder of Tyndale House publishers – was a man dedicated to conveying the Christian message to children (he had 10 himself) in simple, understandable truths. Big Thoughts for Little People, a much-loved, best-selling picture book has now received fresh new illustrations while maintaining Taylor’s text from the original edition. Many readers my age may be familiar with the original version of this classic title, which was wildly popular during the ‘80s, and be looking forward with nostalgic fondness to sharing this new release with their own children. I however, missed out on the first edition as a child, so it was with fresh eyes that my daughters and I dug into it together....more

There are the ladies on the right: Laura Ingraham, Anne Coulter. There are the ladies on the left: Rachel Maddow, Laura Flanders. Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Network's Democracy Now!, is just about as left as they come; she's the kind of liberal Rush Limbaugh loves to hate; she could be the model for his portrait of the lunatic left. Moreover, she would probably welcome his bloviating attack. There could be no better sign of a person's righteousness and basic humanity than to be the object of the Limbaugh ire....more

Douglas Hofstadter is a larger-than-life academic researcher who manages to combine a thirst for beautiful forms with the most penetrating theoretical insights, whether it is in mathematics, music, linguistics, philosophy, or the visual arts. He is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences but also has an involvement in Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology. No surprise then that he gravitates to the most fundamental overlapping problems, the notion of the self, the I, the problems of volition, perception, mind, and consciousness. These problems are notoriously difficult to understand because we are the object of our own study....more