The Girl in the Spider's Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel

David Lagercrantz

Knopf Publishing Group

Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return! She is the girl with the dragon tattoo a genius hacker and uncompromising misfit. He is a crusading journalist whose championing of the truth often brings him to the brink of prosecution. Late one night, Blomkvist receives a phone call from a source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female superhacker a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium,  turns to Salander for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda. The secret they are both chasing is at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals, and governments around the world, and someone is prepared to kill to protect it. The duo who captivated millions of readers in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest join forces again in this adrenaline-charged, uniquely of-the-moment thriller.

Girl Waits with Gun

Amy Stewart

Houghton Mifflin

Constance Kopp doesn t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.

Jade Dragon Mountain

Elsa Hart

Minotaur Books

On the mountainous border of China and Tibet in 1708, a detective must learn what a killer already knows: that empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell. Li Du was an imperial librarian. Now he is an exile. Arriving in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he is surprised to find it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. All have come for a spectacle unprecedented in this remote province: an eclipse of the sun commanded by the Emperor himself. When a Jesuit astronomer is found murdered in the home of the local magistrate, blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits. But Li Du suspects this was no random killing. Everyone has secrets: the ambitious magistrate, the powerful consort, the bitter servant, the irreproachable secretary, the East India Company merchant, the nervous missionary, and the traveling storyteller who can't keep his own story straight. Beyond the sloping roofs and festival banners, Li Du can see the mountain pass that will take him out of China forever. He must choose whether to leave, and embrace his exile, or to stay, and investigate a murder that the town of Dayan seems all too willing to forget.

The Last American Vampire

Seth Grahame-Smith

Grand Central Publishing

In Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death. Henry's will be an expansive journey that first sends him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash. Along the way, Henry goes on the road in a Kerouac-influenced trip as Seth Grahame-Smith ingeniously weaves vampire history through Russia's October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and the JFK assassination.

You Need More Sleep: Advice from Cats

Francesco Marciuliano

Chronicle Books

Our feline friends have spent eons observing, napping, pondering, napping, and taking notes about the human condition. In between naps, they've realized that we humans could use some catlike guidance when it comes to handling the ups and downs of life. In this book they've condescended to share their invaluable wisdom in short advice columns such as "Always Stay at Least 30 Feet from a Loved One" and "Never Let Anyone Dress You." Whether it's coping with romance, surviving a social gathering, or clawing your way to the top of the corporate ladder only to realize you can't get down, the cats in this book will have you relaxed and ready to take on the world Just after one more nap.

Nine Essential Things I've Learned about Life

Harold S. Kushner

Knopf Publishing Group

As a congregational rabbi for half a century and the best-selling author of twelve books on faith, ethics, and how to apply the timeless wisdom of religious thought to everyday challenges, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner has demonstrated time and again his understanding of the human spirit. In this compassionate new work, his most personal since When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner relates how his time as a twenty-first-century rabbi has shaped his senses of religion and morality. He elicits nine essential lessons from the sum of his teaching, study, and experience, offering a lifetime's worth of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice, inspiration for a more fulfilling life, and strength for trying times. With fresh, vital insight into belief ( there is no commandment in Judaism to believe in God ), conscience (the Garden of Eden story as you've never heard it), and mercy (forgiveness is a favor you do yourself, not an undeserved gesture to the person who hurt you), grounded in Kushner's brilliant readings of Scripture, history, and popular culture, Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life is compulsory reading from one of modern Judaism's foremost sages.

Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them

Nancy Marie Brown

St. Martin's Press

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Nancy Marie Brown's Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.