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Recommended Reading

Having left her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, fifteen years ago under troubling circumstances, psychic Towner Whitney reluctantly returns after her eighty-five-year-old great-aunt Eva suddenly disappears and joins local cop John Rafferty in his investigation into the mystery.

On a February day in 2008, Forrest Church sent a letter to the members of his congregation, informing them that he had terminal cancer; his life would now be measured in months, not years. In that remarkable letter, he wrote: “In more than one respect, I feel very lucky.” He went on to promise that he would sum up his thoughts on the topics that had been so pervasive in his work—love and death—in a final book.

Her life turned upside-down when a Japanese internment camp is opened in their small Colorado town, Rennie witnesses the way her community places suspicion on the newcomers when a young girl is murdered, an event that prompts Rennie’s own perspective change and the discovery of dangerous secrets

In a series of private interviews, conducted over sixteen years with the stipulation that they not be released until after his death, the former president offers a revealing, reflective self-portrait as he describes his relationships with Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton; experiences on the Warren Commission; and opinions on the Bush administration, the Iraq war, family, and aging.

An unstinting personal account by the humorist and advice columnist for “Ask Amy” describes her inspirational, haphazard experiences with divorce, traveling throughout the country, and resettling in her hometown, where her extended family helped her to raise her daughter.

A professional crime scene cleaner profiles his grisly industry and the eccentric colleagues who have shaped his career, in an account that describes his experiences with some of the more interesting cases that have required his services.

When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.

Raised since he was a baby by ghosts, werewolves, and other residents of the cemetery in which he has always resided, Bod wonders how he will manage to survive amongst the living with only the lessons he has learned from the dead.

A medical examiner reveals facts about how people harm their bodies and what to do to live better and longer, from how being too fat or too thin can kill, to the consequences of smoking, to stupid car mistakes that can turn the highway into a death trap.

Feeling at the top of her game when she is suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life as her concept of self gradually slips away.

In the aftermath of a Chippewa-Finnish man’s death from Lou Gehrig’s disease, his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law read the family history he has left behind, study his philosophies about death, and struggle to redeem their own pasts.

Five years after the death of her mother, Dakota is running their knitting store part time with the help of members of the “Friday Night Knitting Club,” each of who is seeking solace in their friendship from their own challenges in life.

Margaret Hughes, a septuagenarian living in Seattle, takes in a series of boarders who help her cope with her illness, and whose lives become unexpectedly connected to each other.

Witnessing the murder of her younger brother by Mexicans, Siki, a young Apache women, vows to become a warrior and uses her skill with weapons and her clairvoyant powers in her fight against the Mexicans and “White Eyes” who try to take away the land of her people.

“Tuck” represents the final installment of a completely reimagined epic of the man known as Robin Hood and told in a far more eerie, earthy, and elemental way than ever before

In 1288, as King Lear watches his kingdom descend into chaos, the king’s fool, Pocket, and Pocket’s apprentice, Drool, take it upon themselves to restore order amidst the mayhem, and in the process make a surprising discovery about their own heritage.

A coming-of-age memoir by a Vietnamese American recounts her struggles for an American identity in the pre-politically correct climate of the Midwest and her passion for American food in the face of her family’s Buddhist lifestyle.

In Tokyo, a French teacher studying Japanese meets a Japanese man studying French, a relationship that at first delights them both but ultimately ends in separation.

Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a novel about family, the repercussions of war, and the bonds that sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family—Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, and Termite’s soldier father, Robert Leavitt.

When the sea takes everything, including his family, Mau, forced to become a man, must find the strength within him to defy expectations and the courage to forge new beliefs.

A lone witness to a bombing attack at a West Virginia art gallery, aspiring artist Hummingbird Collins begins receiving ominous recorded messages by a cult leader who is determined to rid the world of everything he considers unattractive.

Chinese-American P.I. Lydia Chin is called in by former mentor Joel Pilarsky to help recover a cache of stolen jewelry belonging to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, only to discover that a priceless missing gem—the Shanghai Moon—may be among the jewels.

Leaving her husband at home, Daniela journeys from Tel Aviv to East Africa to mourn the death of her older sister and to confront her grieving brother-in-law, a scientist still struggling with the death of his soldier son in an incident of “friendly fire” on the West Bank.

After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he begins getting over his lifelong feeling of worthlessness.