FICTION
1. CELL
by Stephen King
Scribner
What remains of humanity fights to survive after a mysterious force scrambles cell phone
users' brains.
2. THE DA VINCI CODE
by Dan Brown
Doubleday
A murder at the Louvre leads to a trail of clues found in the work of Leonardo and to the discovery of a secret society.
3. MEMORY IN DEATH
by J.D. Robb
Putnam
Lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks the killer of a woman who was blackmailing her; by Nora Roberts, writing pseudonymously.
4. SEA CHANGE
by Robert Parker
Putnam
Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, searches for the killer of a woman whose body washed ashore.
5. THE LAST TEMPLAR
by Raymond Khoury
Dutton
A coding device stolen from an exhibit of Vatican artifacts may hold clues to the medieval Knights Templar's long-lost treasure and their secrets.
6. LOVERS AND PLAYERS
by Jackie Collins
St. Martin's
After their father calls them
together, Red Diamond's three sons (and their friends and
relations) grapple with sex, secrets and murders on both coasts.
7. GONE
by Lisa Gardner
Bantam
A former FBI profiler searches for the kidnapper of his ex-wife.
8. THE HOSTAGE
by W.E.B. Griffin
Putnam
An Army officer probes the murder of an American diplomat and the kidnapping of his wife, whose brother is linked to the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.
9. OUTBOUND FLIGHT
by Timothy Zahn
Lucas/Del Rey/Ballantine
In a new Star Wars novel, a Jedi mission to colonize worlds
beyond the known galaxy
becomes a fight for survival.
10. THE HUNT CLUB
by John Lescroart, Dutton
A private investigator, a homicide detective and their friends search for the murderer of a local judge.
11. MARY, MARY
by James Patterson
Little, Brown
The FBI agent Alex Cross tracks a Hollywood killer who announces his crimes via e-mail.
NONFICTION
1. MARLEY AND ME
by John Grogan
Morrow
A newspaper columnist and his wife learn some life lessons from their neurotic dog.
2. THE WORLD IS FLAT
by Thomas Friedman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A columnist for The New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy and presents an overview of globalization trends.
3. FREAKONOMICS
by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Morrow
A maverick scholar applies economic thinking to everything.
4. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
by Joan Didion
Knopf
The author's attempts to come to terms with the death of her husband and the grave illness of their only daughter.
5. MY FRIEND LEONARD
by James Frey
Riverhead
The author of A Million Little Pieces, which author and
publisher acknowledge contains numerous fabrications, remembers a helpful mobster friend.
6. MANHUNT
by James Swanson
Morrow
The 12-day pursuit of John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
7. YOU'RE WEARING THAT?
by Deborah Tannen
Random House
How mothers and daughters communicate.
8. FOR LACI
by Sharon Rocha
Crown
Laci Peterson's mother recalls her daughter and describes her killer's trial.
9. BLINK
by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown
The author of The Tipping Point explores the importance of hunch and instinct.
10. OUR ENDANGERED VALUES
by Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster
The former US president warns against blurring politics and fundamentalist religion.
11. AT CANAAN'S EDGE
by Taylor Branch
Simon & Schuster
US in the King years, 1965-68; the final volume of the trilogy.
12. CONFESSIONS OF A VIDEO VIXEN
by Karrine Steffans
Amistad/HarperCollins
A tell-all by an actress who has appeared in many hip-hop
videos.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s