Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Michael Lewis

W. W. Norton

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Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover one another, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. This they do by creating an exchange in which high-frequency trading source of the most intractable problems will have no advantage whatsoever. The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think Wall Street guy. Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits. The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it."

Frog Music

Emma Donoghue

Little, Brown and Company

Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.

Game for Five

Marco Malvaldi

Europa Editions

n this enjoyable series debut, Marco Malvaldi beckons readers into Bar Lume, the terrain of barman Massimo Viviani in the coastal resort town of Pineta near Pisa. The bar is where everything happens, especially gossip, among Massimo and a coterie of arguing, card-playing pensioners. It's where Massimo refuses to serve hot cappuccino on sweltering days and where one morning a stranger reports a girl's body in a nearby trashcan. Massimo notifies the police, meets Inspector Fusco and Dr. Carli at the scene, and is immediately engrossed. Fusco, thought by some to be a fool, clearly needs Massimo's keen observations. The victim's friend Giada, Dr. Carli, and staff from the neighboring disco all drop by the bar, providing fodder for the amateur sleuthing of Massimo and the pensioners.

Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel

Nevada Barr

Minotaur Books

Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on vacation-an autumn canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath's fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment; and her daughter, Katie, who is thirteen. For Heath and Leah, this is a shakedown cruise to test a new cutting edge line of camping equipment. The equipment, designed by Leah, will make camping and canoeing more accessible to disabled outdoorsmen. On their second night out, Anna goes off on her own for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed with rifles, pistols, and knives, have taken the two women and their teenaged daughters captive. With limited resources and no access to the outside world, Anna has only two days to rescue them before her friends are either killed or flown out of the country

Mystery Writers of America Presents Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue from the Cold War

Jeffery Deaver, Raymond Benson

Grand Central Publishing

Nuclear brinksmanship. Psychological warfare. Spies, double agents, femme fatales, and dead drops. The Cold War--a terrifying time when nuclear war between the world's two superpowers was an ever-present threat, an all-too-real possibility that could be set off at the touch of a button--provides a chilling backdrop to this collection of all-new short stories from today's most celebrated mystery writers. Bestselling authors Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson--the only American writers to be commissioned to pen official James Bond novels--have joined forces to bring us twenty masterful tales of paranoia, espionage, and psychological drama. In Joseph Finder's "Police Report," the seemingly cut-and-dry case of a lunatic murderer in rural Massachusetts may have roots in Soviet-controlled Armenia. In "Miss Bianca" by Sara Paretsky, a young girl befriends a mouse in a biological warfare laboratory and finds herself unwittingly caught in an espionage drama. And Deaver's "Comrade 35" offers a unique spin on the assassination of John F. Kennedy--with a signature twist.

John Wayne: The Life and Legend

Scott Eyman

Simon and Schuster

John Wayne was one of Hollywood's most famous and most successful actors, but he was more than that. He became a symbol of America itself. He epitomized the Western film, which for many people epitomized America. He identified with conservative political causes from the early 1930s to his death in 1979, making him a hero to one generation of Americans and a villain to another. But unlike fellow actor Ronald Reagan, Wayne had no interest in politics as a career. Like many stars, he altered his life story, claiming to have become an actor almost by accident when in fact he had studied drama and aspired to act for most of his youth. He married three times, all to Latina women, and conducted a lengthy affair with Marlene Dietrich, as unlikely a romantic partner as one could imagine for the Duke. Wayne projected dignity, integrity, and strength in all his films, even when his characters were flawed, and whatever character he played was always prepared to confront injustice in his own way. More than thirty years after his death, he remains the standard by which male stars are judged and an actor whose morally unambiguous films continue to attract sizeable audiences. Scott Eyman interviewed Wayne, as well as many family members, and he has drawn on previously unpublished reminiscences from friends and associates of the Duke in this biography, as well as documents from his production company that shed light on Wayne's business affairs. He traces Wayne from his childhood to his stardom in "Stagecoach" and dozens of films after that. Eyman perceptively analyzes Wayne's relationship with John Ford, the director with whom he's most associated and who made some of Wayne's greatest films, among them "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," "The Quiet Man," and "The Searchers." His evaluation of Wayne himself is shrewd: a skilled actor who was reluctant to step outside his comfort zone. Wayne was self-aware; he once said, "I've played the kind of man I'd like to have been." It's that man and the real John Wayne who are brilliantly profiled in Scott Eyman's insightful biography of a true American legend.

Breathe

Scott Magoon

Simon and Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books

Take a deep breath and dive into a day in the life of a baby whale, told with luminous illustrations and spare text, with a fresh twist on a timeless message. "Swim Play all day. Breathe." This simply told story follows a young whale on a journey of discovery as he experiences his first day at sea on his own He swims, explores, and makes friends in his marine habitat. After a day of independence, this little whale delights in returning home to his mother. Young readers will be drawn to Scott Magoon's reassuring story of adventure.