FICTION
1. THE 5TH HORSEMAN
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Little, Brown
Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club investigate unexplained deaths at a San Francisco hospital.
2. THE TENTH CIRCLE
by Jodi Picoult
Atria
When his teenage daughter is date-raped, a comic-book artist is overwhelmed by rage he thought he had buried with his past.
3. 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.
4. THE HOUSE
by Danielle Steel
Delacorte
A workaholic lawyer's life changes when she buys a crumbling mansion.
5. CELL
by Stephen King
Scribner
What remains of humanity fights to survive after a mysterious force scrambles cell phone users' brains.
6. THE TEMPLAR LEGACY
by Steve Berry
Ballantine
A former Justice Department operative becomes involved in a desperate search for the long-lost treasure and secrets of the medieval Knights Templar.
7. 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.
8. FALSE IMPRESSION
by Jeffrey Archer
St. Martin's
A murderous international
conspiracy swirls around a
stolen Van Gogh.
9. IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN
by Sarah Dunant
Random House
A courtesan and her friend and pimp, a dwarf, make their way in Renaissance Venice.
10. NIGHTLIFE
by Thomas Perry
Random House
A woman detective in Portland, Oregon, hunts a woman serial killer.
11. THE REBELS OF IRELAND
by Edward Rutherfurd
Doubleday
A story of six families against the sweep of Irish history from 1597 to 1922.
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 & Giroux
A columnist for The New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy.
3. FREAKONOMICS
by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Morrow
A maverick scholar applies economic thinking to everything from sumo wrestlers who cheat to legalized abortion and the falling crime rate.
4. YOU'RE WEARING THAT?
by Deborah Tannen
Random House
How mothers and daughters communicate.
5. BLINK
by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown
The author of The Tipping Point explores the importance of hunch and instinct to the human mind.
6. MANHUNT
by James Swanson
Morrow
The 12-day pursuit of John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
7. 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.
8. LEFT TO TELL
by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin
Hay House
How a woman found God after surviving the Rwandan genocide.
9. MISQUOTING JESUS
by Bart Ehrman
Harper-SanFrancisco,
How mistakes and changes by ancient scribes shaped the Bible
we use today.
10. THE BROTHERS BULGER
by Howie Carr
Warner
The story of two Massachusetts brothers, one a criminal, the other a politician.
11. TEAM OF RIVALS
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Simon & Schuster
The political genius of Abraham Lincoln, from the author of No Ordinary Time.
12. TEACHER MAN
by Frank McCourt
Scribner
The author remembers his years teaching English in New York City.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your