The Travelers

Chris Pavone

Crown Publishing Group

It's 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is? Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he's living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can t refuse. Soon Will's bad choices and dark secrets take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he's drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all. It's 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.

The Folded Clock: A Diary

Heidi Julavits

Anchor Books

Rereading her childhood diaries, Heidi Julavits hoped to find incontrovertible proof that she was always destined to be a writer. Instead, they revealed me to possess the mind of a phobic tax auditor. Thus was born a desire to try again, to chronicle her daily life now as a forty-something woman, wife, mother, and writer. A meditation on time and self, youth and aging, friendship and romance, faith and fate, and art and ambition, in The Folded Clock one of the most gifted prose stylists in American letters explodes the typically confessional diary form with her trademark humor, honesty, and searing intelligence.

The Steel Kiss

Jeffery Deaver

Grand Central Publishing

Amelia Sachs is hot on the trail of a killer. She's chasing him through a department store in Brooklyn when an escalator malfunctions. The stairs give way, with one man horribly mangled by the gears. Sachs is forced to let her quarry escape as she jumps in to try to help save the victim. She and famed forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme soon learn, however, that the incident may not have been an accident at all, but the first in a series of intentional attacks. They find themselves up against one of their most formidable opponents ever: a brilliant killer who turns common products into murder weapons. As the body count threatens to grow, Sachs and Rhyme must race against the clock to unmask his identity--and discover his mission--before more people die."

The Waters of Eternal Youth

Donna Leon

Atlantic Monthly Press

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a nearby man, an alcoholic, who heard her splashes and pulled her out, though not before she suffered irreparable brain damage that left her in a state of permanent childhood, unable to learn or mature. The drunk man claimed he saw her thrown into the canal by another man, but the following day he couldn't remember a thing. Now, at a fundraising dinner for a Venetian charity, a wealthy and aristocratic patroness the girl's grandmother asks Brunetti if he will investigate. Brunetti's not sure what to do. If a crime was committed, it would surely have passed the statute of limitations. But out of a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a willingness to fulfill the wishes of a guilt-wracked older woman, who happens to be his mother-in-law's best friend, he agrees. Brunetti soon finds himself unable to let the case rest, if indeed there is a case.

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg

Random House

From the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon The Power of Habit comes a fascinating new book that explores the science of productivity, and why, in today's world, managing "how" you think rather than "what" you think can transform your life. At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key concepts from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

Ordinary Light: A Memoir

Tracy K. Smith

Vintage

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her remarkable story, giving us a quietly potent memoir that explores her coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter. Hereis the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.

We Are Afghan Women: Voices of Hope  

Introduced by Laura Bush 

George W. Bush Institute

Scribner Book Company

With an introduction by former First Lady Laura Bush, We Are Afghan Women chronicles the lives of young and old, daughters and mothers, educated, and those who are still learning. These determined women are defying the odds to lead Afghanistan to a better future. Their stories are a stark reminder that in some corners of the world the struggle continues and that women's progress in society, business, and politics cannot be taken for granted. Their eloquent words challenge all of us to answer: What does it truly mean to be a woman in the twenty-first century?